Lecture 8

Question 1

Three categories of the empirical self

Answer 1

Material self: all tangible objects, people or places that carry the designation my or mine
Social self: how we are regarded and recognised by others, how you present yourself to others
Spiritual self: all things are not tangible that carry the designation my or mine - attributes or abilities, pleasure and pain (think about ourselves as thinkers)

Question 2

What is the self-schema?

Answer 2

• are cognitive generalisations about the self
• are derived from past experience
• organise and guide the processing of self related information that are part of the individual social experience

Question 3

Impact of the self-schema on information selection and processing

Answer 3

• Behavioural evidence should be easily retrivable
• Individual differences should be evident
• processed with relative ease
• confident predictions made about future events
• Counter-schematic information should be resisted

Question 4

What are the four motives of the self?

Answer 4

• Self-assessment: desire to have accurate information about the self. Elicited by circumstances involving both success and failure, especially when knowledge of ones ability is uncertain
• Self-enhancement: Desire to achieve and maintain a positive sense of self. Elicited by circumstances involving both success and failure, especially when the particular self-view is important
• Self-verification: Desire for consistency in self knowledge. Elicited by circumstances which involve failure
• Self-improvement: Desire to improve a particular aspect of the self. Elicited by circumstances involve past threat or failure

Question 5

Self-verification predicts

Answer 5

choice of diagnostic information about central positive and negative traits

Question 6

Self-enhancement predicts

Answer 6

choice of diagnostic information about only central positive traits

Question 7

Self-verification predicts

Answer 7

confirmation of information about central positive and negative traits

Question 8

Self-enhancement predicts

Answer 8

confirmation about only central positive traits

Question 9

What did Sedikides find?

Answer 9

• Consistent with self-enhancement model, there as a perference for diagostic information for positive central traits
• suggests that self-enhancement is stronger than self-verification motive
• however there may be cultural differences in the strength of this motive

Question 10

what does self-regulation do?

Answer 10

the tendency of the self to change with respect to some reference value or goal - assume motivation for goals and avoiding undesired end states

Question 11

Self-regulatory principles

Answer 11

Regulatory anticipation - people approach anticipated pleasure and avoid anticipated pain
Regulatory reference - compare current self to appropriate alternative self state to determine progress
Regulatory Focus - do you want to get the good thing or avoid the bad thing (promotion [gain vs non-gain] and prevention [loss vs non-loss])

Question 12

How does promotion/prevention differ across cultures

Answer 12

Prevention - stronger for asian compared to euro-aus regardless of where they lived
Promotion was only stronger in euro-aus compared to asians when latter were living in home culture