Lecture 4: Self, Personality, and Motivation Flashcards
1
Q
self-concept (1)
A
- An idea of the self constructed from the beliefs one holds about oneself and the responses of others.
2
Q
independent self (6)
A
- The self-concept is made up of inner attributes; internal, private (abilities, thoughts, feelings).
- Self identity is distinct from relationships; be unique, express self, promote own goals, be direct.
- Most important aspects of identity have to do with the self.
- Self is stable; doesn’t really change across time or space.
- Role of others: self-evaluation.
- Ingroup/outgroup boundary is permeable.
3
Q
interdependent self (5)
A
- The self-concept is made up of relationships with others; external, public (statuses, roles, relationships).
- Self identity is tied to relationships.
- Most important aspects of identity have to do with others; belong, fit in, occupy one’s proper place.
- Self is fluid; able to adjust, restrain self, and maintain social harmony.
- Ingroup/outgroup boundary is not permeable; tend to not make new friends easily and want to keep old friends.
4
Q
Ma & Schoeneman (1997) (6)
A
- Asked Kenyans and Americans to do the Twenty-Statements Test.
- Because Kenya is a developing society, the authors divided their Kenyan sample into groups that should theoretically vary in terms of how much they were exposed to Western cultural ways.
- Kenyan university students in Nairobi should be the most Westernized group in their sample (because they participate in an education system that was shaped by the country’s British colonial past).
- Employed adults in Nairobi might be slightly less Westernizes.
- Traditional indigenous Kenyan groups, in this case the Samburu and the Masai, would be the least Westernized.
- This is what they found.
5
Q
Kanagawa, Cross, & Markus (2001) (5)
A
- Japanese and American college students completed the Twenty-Statements Test in 4 different settings: in a professor’s office with the professor present, with a large group of 20-50 people, next to a fellow student, or alone in a room.
- On average, American responses were more positive than Japanese ones.
- American responses did not vary significantly across settings.
- Japanese responses varied very significantly, moving from least to most positive in the four conditions stated.
- These results challenge the assumption that self-concept is consistent across all settings. But also raises the question: which is the true self?
6
Q
Hoshino-Browne et al. (2005) (9)
A
- Examined cultural differences in cognitive dissonance.
- European Canadians and Asian Canadians (Study 1) or Japanese people in Japan (Study 2) came into the lab and told them they would be evaluating a menu for a soon-to-be opened Chinese restaurant.
- Assigned them two one of two conditions: self or friend—in the self condition, participants weren’t given additional explanation; in the friend condition, they had to think of a close friend and make a decision for them.
- After the manipulation, they had participants choose, rank, and rate top 10 preferred entrees out of 25 (for self or friend).
- Gave them coupons to choose from for 5th and 6th ranked entrees.
- Asked them to look over the menu again and re-rank the items.
- Measured the spreading of alternatives: sum of increased rating for chosen item and decrease rating for item not chosen.
- Found that people were more motivated to reduce dissonance for the self in Western cultures, but more motivated for the friend in Eastern cultures.
- The more Asian Canadians identified with their Asian identity, the stronger this effect was.
7
Q
motivations for self-enhancement and self-esteem (9)
A
- self-enhancement: The motivation to view oneself positively.
- self-esteem: The positivity of your overall evaluation of yourself.
- self-serving biases: Tendencies for people to exaggerate how good they think they are.
- downward social comparison: Comparing your performance with the performance of someone who’s doing even worse than you.
- compensatory self-enhancement: Focussing on, and perhaps exaggerating, how good you are at something unrelated to your setback so that you can compensate for the pain of your failure and can again self-enhance by recruiting other kinds of positive thoughts about yourself.
- discounting: Reducing the perceived importance of the domain in which you performed poorly.
- external attribution: Attributing the cause of your actions to something outside yourself.
- internal attribution: Locate the cause of actions within ourselves, such as our abilities.
- basking in reflected glory: Emphasizing our connection to successfully performing others and feel better about ourselves by sharing in the warm glow of the others’ success.
8
Q
Endo & Meijer (2004) (3)
A
- Japanese and American college students listed as many success and failure opportunities they could remember.
- Japanese participants tended to remember more failures than successes (although it wasn’t a very significant difference).
- Americans remembered significantly more successes than failures.
9
Q
face (2)
A
- The amount of social value others give you if you live up to the standards associated with your position.
- The amount of face you have access to is determined by your position; it’s more easily lost than gained.
10
Q
prevention orientation (1)
A
- Cautious approach to not losing something.
11
Q
promotion orientation (1)
A
- A concern over advancing oneself and aspiring for gains.
12
Q
Heine et al. (2001) (5)
A
- Japanese and Canadian participants privately received false feedback that they’d done either very well or very poorly on a creativity test.
- Left alone with another set of creativity items and were timed on how long they persisted on this task.
- Canadians persisted much longer after success, while Japanese persisted much longer after failure.
- Canadians → promotion focus; more interested in working on things they did well, because these were more likely to provide them opportunities to view themselves positively.
- Japanese → prevention focus; working on the things they did poorly, apparently so they could improve themselves and be less likely to fail in the future.
13
Q
incremental theory of self (1)
A
- The belief that we can easily change, and are expected to change; belief that a person’s abilities and traits are malleable and can be improved.
14
Q
entity theory of self (1)
A
- Belief that aspects of the self are largely resistant to change; abilities and traits as largely fixed, innate features of the self.
15
Q
Hamedani, Markus, & Fu (2013) (14)
A
- Proposed that EAs would be demotivated by an emphasis on interdependence.
- Study 1: Participants primed with an independent or interdependent behaviour or no behaviour (scrambled sentence task).
- Asked to solve 10 challenging anagrams, measured how many anagrams they would attempt.
- EAs: Interdependent prime was very demotivating.
- AAs: No significant difference, but independent prime did produce the most attempts.
- Study 2: Participants primed with an independent or interdependent behaviour by role-playing a job applicant.
- Asked to squeeze handgrip for as long as possible.
- AAs: No significant difference in amount of time spent squeezing the hand grip.
- EAs: Interdependent prime was very demotivating.
- Study 3: Participants asked to evaluate a course on environmental sustainability.
- Student learning and participation were either framed independently or interdependently.
- Participants predicted how motivated they would be in the class.
- Participants allocated funds to course related vs. other campus activities.
- Found that motivation mediated resource allocation.
