Lecture 3 Flashcards
Q: What was Carl Rogers’ main pushback against Freudian perspectives?
A: He emphasized self-will and free will, arguing that people are not just reacting to their environment but actively striving for positive growth.
Q: What is self-verification?
A: The tendency to seek out relationships that confirm our existing self-view or pull away from positive relationships if they contradict our self-perception.
Q: What is self-enhancement?
A: The need to view oneself positively and maintain self-fulfillment, even though logically, not everyone can be “above average.”
Q: What is reflexive consciousness?
A: The experience of being aware of oneself.
Q: What is self-esteem?
A: A person’s overall assessment of their worth, often measured using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale.
Q: Does high self-esteem mean someone is narcissistic?
A: No, high self-esteem does not necessarily indicate narcissism.
Q: What is self-presentation?
A: How we communicate information about ourselves to others, such as through clothing, social groups, or behavior.
Q: What is impression management?
A: The conscious efforts people make to influence how others perceive them.
Q: What are the six strategies of impression management?
A:
Ingratiation – Acting likable to gain approval.
Self-Promotion – Highlighting strengths to gain respect.
Exemplification – Displaying moral integrity.
Intimidation – Using threats to influence others.
Supplication – Acting weak to receive help.
Negative Acknowledgment – Admitting flaws.
Q: How does impression management change based on familiarity?
A: People enhance impressions with strangers but tend to be more modest around those who know them well.
Q: What is the Spotlight Effect?
A: The tendency to overestimate how much others notice us.
Q: What is an internal attribution?
Q: What is an external attribution?
A: Assuming behavior is due to personal traits or characteristics. A: Assuming behavior is due to situational factors.
Q: What are attributions?
A: Judgments about the causes of behavior.
Q: At what age do infants typically develop a sense of self?
A: Around 17-18 months.
Q: Why is delayed gratification important?
A: It leads to better self-regulation, allowing people to achieve greater long-term rewards.
Q: What is ego depletion?
A: The idea that self-control is a limited resource, and once exhausted, people are more likely to give in to temptations.
Q: What is self-regulation?
A: The ability to direct and control behavior, crucial for goal achievement.
Q: What is theory of mind, and how does it relate to children?
A: Young children struggle to understand that others have separate thoughts and knowledge from their own.
Q: What are the five key sources of information in person perception?
A:
Appearance
Verbal Behavior
Actions
Nonverbal Messages
Situational Cues
Q: What is the difference between snap judgments and systematic judgments?
A:
Snap judgments → Quick, automatic, often inaccurate.
Systematic judgments → Thoughtful, requiring more information.
We are bombarded with information.
Alternative ways of processing information used to avoid being overwhelmed:
Snap judgments: made quickly and based on little information and preconceived notions
Systematic judgments: require more controlled processing
May occur when forming impressions of others that can affect our happiness or welfare
Observing a person in various situations and comparing their behavior to others in similar situations
Q: What is the Fundamental Attribution Error?
A: The tendency to overestimate personal factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining others’ behavior.
Q: What was the Fidel Castro Debate Study?
A: Participants judged debaters’ opinions as genuine, even when they knew the debaters were randomly assigned to pro- or anti-Castro positions.
Q: What is the self-serving bias?
A: Taking personal credit for successes but blaming situations for failures.
Q: What is the primacy effect in forming impressions?
A: First impressions carry more weight than later information.
Q: What is the recency effect?
A: The tendency to focus on the most recent information when making judgments.
Q: What is confirmation bias?
A: The tendency to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs while ignoring conflicting evidence.
Q: How do perceiver expectations affect judgment?
A: People tend to see what they expect to see. – Confirmation bias: tendency to seek information that supports one’s
beliefs while not pursuing disconfirming information
– Self-fulfilling prophecies: expectations about a person that causes
them to behave in ways that confirm the expectations
Q: What was Wason’s 2-4-6 Task?
A: A study demonstrating confirmation bias, where people looked for evidence that supported their beliefs rather than trying to disprove them.
When do we make attributions
We are most likely to make attributions when:
Others behave in unexpected or negative ways
Events are personally relevant
We are suspicious about another person’s motives
Defensive attribution:
blaming victims for their misfortune so that one feels less likely to be similarly victimized
Key Themes in Person Perception
- Efficiency: we default to automatic processing when forming
impressions of others - Selectivity: seeing what we expect to see by focusing on aspects
of the person that confirm our expectations - Consistency: once a perceiver has formed an impression of
someone, they tune out subsequent information
– Primacy effect: initial information carries more weight than
subsequent information
The Humanistic
Perspective
✤ In part a reaction to Freud’s
conception of human’s being “those
half tamed demons that inhabit the
human beast”
✤ Instead, embrace a positive view that
affirms the inherent dignity and
goodness of the human spirit.
✤ Self actualization
✤ One of the most influential humanistic
theorists.
✤ Rogers believed that our behaviour is not a
reaction to unconscious conflicts but rather a
response to our immediate conscious
experience of self and environment.
✤ Believed that forces that direct behaviour are
within us and when they are not distorted
by our environment, they can be trusted to
direct us towards self-actualization.
* Humanism – “a theoretical orientation that emphasizes the
unique qualities of humans, especially their free will and their
potential for personal growth.”
* This perspective is based on the following ideas:
1. Humans have an innate drive toward personal growth.
2. Humans exercise free will over their actions; they are not
pawns of their environment.
3. Humans are conscious and rational beings who aren’t
dominated by unconscious needs.
The Self
◼ Three categories of self-experience
(Baumeister, 1998)
*Reflexive Consciousness
◼Self-Esteem
*Interpersonal Being
◼Self-Presentation
*Executive Function
◼Self-Regulation
The importance of self-esteem
* Self-esteem and adjustment
* Self-esteem is strongly and consistently connected to
happiness.
* People with high self-esteem also feel more likeable and
attractive, have better relationships, and make better
impressions on others.
* People with high self-esteem persist longer in the face of
failure and cope better with setbacks.
* Self-esteem has not been linked to achievement, however.
Self-Presentation
*1) Instrumental – is presenting yourself in a way
to influence others as a means to get material or
practical rewards
2) Expressive - is a way for one to construct a certain
image of the self and claim an identity for oneself
◼Make an impression in order to claim identity
◼Not necessarily used to please others
