Lecture 9: The Self

Question 1

What was the classic Libet study in the text? and what does it illustrate?

Answer 1

• Does our conscious mind do any of the deciding?
• Based on EEG and signal timing (EEG, stare at a clock, pick a time to move your finger)
• They found that there was a signal deep in the brain that came before the person decided to move their finger.
• debates on free will

Question 2

How does new research differ from the classic Libet free will study?

Answer 2

• new research strongly challenges physiological interpretation and timing
• Interpreting the EEG results incorrectly
• The control group who didn’t move their finger also had background noise in the brain, the only difference is that the experimental group had more activity when they consciously decided to move their finger
• Ultimately leaning more towards free will

Question 3

Define the “I”

Answer 3

• a person’s consciousness, the self-aware knower, decider, and
  actor—the ‘you’ who is directing and aware of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours (most wrapped in issues of free will, self control)
• Hard to get at

Question 4

Define the “me”

Answer 4

-The self-concept is subjective; it is the mental representations-
knowledge, beliefs, evaluations, etc.—about who you are.
-One assessment tool for the self concept provides people with sheet of paper with the question “Who are you?” (20 statement test)
- Multiple selves (e.g., actual, ideal, possible)

Question 5

How do the Me (self concept) and the I interact?

Answer 5

Although we make a distinction between the I and the Me, the two aspects of self clearly interact.
For example, when people have high self-efficacy for a task (they believe they can do it), they
are more likely to actually pursue it and succeed

Question 6

What is the self reference effect?

Answer 6

The self-concept also guides people’s thoughts and shapes the way we process information. The self-reference effect refers to people’s ability to remember things better when they are associated with the self concept

Question 7

Who is the true self?

Answer 7

• Classic (and intuitive) ‘essentialist’ approach. Recall rogers, Maslow (and many others)
• Non-obvious, needs to be discovered
• A personal ‘essence’
• Internal (our true self is internal)
• Genetic(?); resistant or impossible to change (there from an early age, inherent to us, hard or impossible to change; not genetic per se but related to it)
• Indicated more by feelings than behaviours (did you enjoy pushing the old lady down or did you feel really bad about it. How they felt about it is more indicative of self than behaviours

Question 8

Where are there stronger intuitions about the true self?

Answer 8

In the west

Question 9

What theory contrasts the essentialist view of the true self?

Answer 9

• the self determination theory
• both theories share an assumption that humans are
  prone to positive growth, unless hampered by poor circumstances. The ‘self-determination’ refers to people’s sense that they are doing things that the self fully endorses—things that are authentic
• Intrinsic motivation (helps with expression of true self) & feeling authentic
• Pursuits are intrinsic because they are in line with our true self

Question 10

What is the essentialist view of the true self?

Answer 10

• the idea that each person contains an immutable essence, a set of necessary defining features, or a singular true self
• Despite the importance of this essence, it is seen
  as hidden, something that takes effort to discover and understand
• essence is usually seen as unchanging. Even as the self-concept develops, we might understand it as following a pre-determined path towards our true potential.

Question 11

How can we measure authenticity?

Answer 11

• Dispositional authenticity questionnaires assess characteristics that reflect or seem conducive to authentic experiences (e.g., I think it is better to be yourself, than to be popular)
• State authenticity is the perception or feeling that one is currently behaving
  in accordance with the true self; it varies from moment to moment. Experience sampling studies—where people rate things like momentary moods, state authenticity, self-esteem, and
  satisfaction of needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness—find positive correlations among these things, similar to disposition-level studies

Question 12

What is the relationship between authenticity and well being?

Answer 12

• Generally positive associations:
  ○ Trait authenticity correlate with SWB & PWB
  ○ Momentary authenticity reports correlate with positive emotions, meeting SDT needs
  -What does this mean?
  ○ Correlation and causal direction. Some questions about more ‘objective’ measure

Question 13

What are some curious sources of authenticity?

Answer 13

• Positive moods cause state authenticity
• Incidental (video) mood manipulations (watching comedy videos makes people feel more authentic than sad ones. Maybe because if people are feeling good they are more likely to say they feel authentic)

Question 14

What Fleeson & Wilt (2010) find in their study of dispositional vs. momentary authenticity?

Answer 14

• Disposition vs. momentary behaviour
• E.g., when does an introvert feel authentic
• ESM extraverted, agreeable, conscientious, stable and open (this is when people feel most authentic, the positive poles of these dimensions. It does not matter what the traits are, introverts feel authentic when they are being extraverted etc.)

Question 15

Does this same effect, that is feeling authentic when experiencing positive states (regardless of traits), occur in manipulation studies too?

Answer 15

• Manipulated behaviour (extraversion, agreeableness) feel authentic, regardless of disposition too
• Lab studies

Question 16

Do we see variation or consistency across roles?

Answer 16

• Variation or consistency across roles not associated with trait authenticity
• Behaving in ways consistent with traits does not seem to be related to authenticity, it seems like behaving in the positive poles is what is actually associated with authenticity in the moment
• Thus, trait consistent behavior not needed for feelings of authenticity
• How can this be? Maybe we want to claim desirable characteristics as our true self.

Question 17

Values and authenticity

Answer 17

• Values are viewed positively (‘valued’) by all
• Yet individual/cultural difference in rank (Some people view certain values as more important than others, but pretty much everyone would prefer to have the positive things)
• E.g., competence, tradition, power, benevolence
• Behaving consistent with values should be important to feeling authentic

Question 18

What was the (Benevolence) value debate study?

Answer 18

• Randomly assigned ‘pro’ or ‘con’ position on (e.g., “it is good and right to help and support the people around you”)
• Debate a hypothetical other by responding, e.g.,
• “you should not help and support the people around you because it is arrogant to assume that you can ever know what another person really needs”
• Results: behaving in value-congruent way (pro-position) produces more state authenticity (and stronger if benevolence is an important value)

Question 19

Can people feel authentic when they do something valuable in an unpleasant environment?

Answer 19

• Keep observing strong correlation between feeling good and people reporting feeling authentic
• Can people feel authentic when they do something that is not necessarily fun in an unpleasant circumstance (being a doctor in Haiti vs. being a doctor in western society with comfortable income) but is congruent with values
• More authentic when you behave in a congruent way with values in both positive and negative circumstances. If we do things against our values we don’t feel authentic

Question 20

In summary, what is the relationship between personality and authenticity?

Answer 20

• Not all ‘objective’ indicators follow intuitions (behaving against dispositions still makes people feel more authentic)
• Trait consistent not needed for authenticity
• Yet, parts of personality probably still important
• Values (other strong beliefs) (interesting that values are universal vs. idiosyncratic: authenticity = being like others?)
• More to authenticity than feeling good

Question 21

What is self efficacy?

Answer 21

• (largest term in the PP wordle)
• The belief that you can take steps necessary for success
• Specific (vs. generalized) efficacy. It is specific, we are asking about particular things that you feel self efficacious to. Quite specific to the task/behaviour at hand. Comes from a social cognitive perspective where things are more contextual and momentary as opposed to broad, general things.
• Actual Success is higher with efficacy (Choices, effort, persistence)
• Experimental evidence for causal role (E.g., health behavior interventions)

Question 22

What are the sources of self efficacy?

Answer 22

• Personal experience of success (history of success. They think they’ll succeed because they’ve done it before). But failure and resilient efficacy (People who had to do it a few times to get it right have better self efficacy than those who it came to easily and experience failure)
• Vicarious experience: If you see other people succeeding it might contribute to our own sense of self efficacy
• Persuasion: Less powerful; but more likely to be persuaded by strong arguments than weak or by experts. Can use these features to build self efficacy
• Physiological states: Helps us understand the ebb and flow of efficacy. Can also be harnessed for improving self efficacy, teaching people to calm themselves when anxious (i.e., mood management)

Question 23

What is self esteem?

Answer 23

• Primarily an evaluation of the self ( do I like myself?)
• Rosenberg self esteem scale
• A positive judgement of self, but also depends on how others view us, social feedback
• Typically trait-like, but can assess as ‘state’
• Usually a global judgement, but can be assessed in domains (e.g., appearance, school). Either way, its based more on personally valued domains
• Self esteem depends most on the things that you care about
• May include genuine positive evaluation, and potentially defensive, narcissistic views

Question 24

Where does self esteem seem to be highest?

Answer 24

• In general, SE seems high (especially in western developed countries)
• Unrealistic evaluations, optimism
• 90% of people think they are great drivers, even if they’ve been in an accident in the last month
• This might be helpful, positive illusions (debate). Believing that you’re a bit better than you are might actually be good. Positive illusions might help us persist and achieve goals.

Question 25

Among who does self esteem seem to be highest?

Answer 25

• Is this increasing in younger generations?
• Cross-temporal meta analyses, some debate still
• Perhaps due to differences with aging? As people age they mellow out, are more realistic. Teenagers have higher positive evaluations

Question 26

What do individual differences in self esteem correlate with?

Answer 26

• Happiness & less depression
• Academic success
• Persistence after failure

Question 27

What doesn’t self esteem correlate with?

Answer 27

• E.g., not objectively better relationships or general lab task performance
• Not drugs, early sex (is self esteem protective of this? no research doesn’t support this, there is not much of a link there at all)

Question 28

Is SE the outcome or the cause of good things?

Answer 28

• speculated that SE may be an outcome- not cause- of good things. Intervention studies very disappointing

Question 29

what did recent longitudinal studies about SE find?

Answer 29

• recent longitudinal studies support early SE as predictor of later good things
• Less aggression, more health, higher income
  SE seems trait-like (seems quite stable, without effective intervention seems to change very little)

Question 30

Does trying to increase self esteem with non-contingent praise work?

Answer 30

• (giving everyone a participation ribbon; this might lead people to a sense of superiority or entitlement that is not contingent on the work that is done)
• May backfire for low SE people (Telling people to say I am awesome, I am the best made people with high SE feel better and people with low SE feel worse)
• May increase narcissism

Question 31

Does striving for SE work?

Answer 31

• Striving for SE may add problems
• Contingent, unstable SE
• Distortion, aggression, derogation of others
• Challenging self esteem may lead to bad tings

Question 32

What is a summary of what we know about self esteem?

Answer 32

• Promoting self esteem directly is not very helpful (yet?)
• Self esteem ‘in the wild’ seems positive, on balance yet some less desirable forms
• Need to distinguish healthy self esteem from narcissism, entitlement etc. Self compassion may be useful in this

Question 33

What is self compassion?

Answer 33

• Roots in Buddhism
• A view of self that: Treats self with kindness, Recognizes common humanity, takes mindful approach to negative parts of self

Question 34

What are the different types of self compassion questionnaires that are used?

Answer 34

Self-Kindness vs. Judgment
– I’m tolerant of my own flaws and inadequacies.
– When I see aspects of myself that I don’t like, I get
down on myself.
Common Humanity vs. Isolation
– I try to see my failings as part of the human
condition.
– When I fail at something that’s important to me I
tend to feel alone in my failure.
Mindfulness vs. Over-identification
– When something painful happens I try to take a
balanced view of the situation.
– When I fail at something important to me I
become consumed by feelings of inadequacy.

Question 35

What are the positive correlates of self compassion?

Answer 35

• Life satisfaction
• Emotional intelligence
• Optimism
• Curiosity
• Social connectedness
• Low depression, anxiety
• Low fear of failure
• Low perfectionism

Question 36

Self compassion vs. self esteem

Answer 36

• Substantial positive correlation (.58) but not ‘same’
• Feeling safe, secure vs. being ‘better’
• Connects to others vs. distinguishing from them
• Relevant/useful with failure vs. threatened by failure (when things don’t go well that’s when we need self compassion)

Question 37

What lab studies have been done comparing self compassion and esteem?

Answer 37

• Imagined screw-ups (sports, theatre); Compassion related, but esteem not
• Video introduction with pos/neut feedback (others watch your intro video and say whether or not they would want to be your friend) Compassion OK, high SE upset and unaccepting. High SE people did not seem resilient whereas high self compassion people were ok with it
• Manipulated SC vs. SE (vs. Control) strategies. Responses to recall of past failure. SC has less negative moods, more responsibility
• A lot less research done self compassion than self esteem, early studies

Question 38

What is independence vs. interdependence?

Answer 38

• Independence (navigating the world as a individual) vs. Interdependence (being connected to other people and social groups, less focus on autonomy)
• One of many potential dimensions of difference
• Over emphasizes group (vs. individual) differences
• Lots of variation within cultures

Question 39

in terms of the self across cultures, how do invidualist (independent) cultures describe themselves vs. collectivist (interdependent)

Answer 39

• Abstracted trait vs. roles: Individualist cultures tend to describe themselves with trait terms whereas people in collectivist cultures with more interdependent sense of self tend to speak to their role relative to others
• Consistent self vs. variable self: Individual /independent tend to describe themselves as more consistent whereas collectivist/interdependent tend to describe themselves as more variable across contexts. People who are consistent in america are happier but in Korea it doesn’t matter if you’re consistent
• Self enhancement: special vs ordinary. Independent sense of self / individual societies tend to think of themselves as special and often rate their self esteem higher (but there is some mixed results).

Question 40

What may differ across cultures in terms of the self?

Answer 40

• Personal paths to fulfillment?
• More/less essentialist true self (Perhaps more of a western or individualist idea)
• (beliefs about) sources of authentic feelings?
• Levels & correlates of self esteem
• Tendency to self enhance in general?
• Some cultures where you don’t want to stand out
• Levels of self compassion?