Midterm 1

Question 1

Describe the self according to William James

Answer 1

• 1890
• Duality of self
  1) “Me”: The objective self or sense of self as an object of reflection (self-as-object)
• Everything that exists in the “me” is observable
• “Me” is anything that’s a description
• The ways in which one describes oneself, including material possessions, social roles, and personal, inner qualities
  2) “I”: The subjective part of the self
• Subjective experience of ourselves
• Takes an active role

Question 2

Describe the different selves comprising the “Me”

Answer 2

1) Material self: physical entities that belong to a person (ex: body, house/where you live, clothes, money, your belongings)
* Having a body is at the core of having a self
* Most important part of material self is our body
* Without a physical body, we don’t have a self
* Having bodies is what separates us from the rest of the world
* This isn’t the only thing describing the self because then this would mean animals are also a self (teacher doesn’t think animals are selves)
2) Social self: shaped by and expressed through interactions with others
* We have as many selves as people we have interactions with
* James said we have as many selves as we have relationship partners
3) Spiritual self: the inner self (ex: personality, core values, temperament, morals, emotions)
* AKA the mind
* Who we really are at our core
* The inner self
* Inner qualities

Question 3

Describe the “I”

Answer 3

• According to James this is the part of the self that thinks, experiences, perceives, and decides (consciousness)
• The “I” is more the fact that we have this consciousness
• Enables us to have a sense that our experiences belong to us rather than someone else
• The self-as-subject
• Provides continuity between the past, present, and future self (it links our present self with our past and our future)
• We can reflect on our past, our present self and think about the future (our goals, hopes, and dreams)
• It enables us to have a 1st person perspective
• What’s happening to us is something that belongs to us
• We experience our lives from a 1st person perspective and everyone else’s lives from the 3rd person perspective (not the case in schizophrenia where it no longer feels like one’s thoughts are one’s own but rather are hallucinations that are being inserted in the person’s mind)

Question 4

What’s the self?

Answer 4

• Your social identity and your inner processes that enable you to operate your body successfully in society
• Both the “me” and the “I”
• The self is dynamic in that it is always in flux dealing with new situations, learning, and adapting
• Today, the way psychologists think about the self is in line with James’ conceptualization of the self

Question 5

Give an example comparing the “I” to the “Me”

Answer 5

• “I”: I feel engaged right now
• “Me”: I am kind

Question 6

How did William James conceptualize the self?

Answer 6

He conceptualized the self as the “I” and the “Me”

Question 7

Describe the self-concept

Answer 7

• A cognitive representation of the knowledge and beliefs we have about ourselves, including our:
• personality traits
• abilities
• social roles
• values
• goals and desires
• physical characteristics
• Essentially, everything a person claims as “me” or “mine”
• Important because shapes how we think about the world, feel, and behave (shapes how we think and feel and therefore will influence our behaviour)
• Most similar to James’ spiritual self or what he broadly conceptualizes as the “me”

Question 8

What’s an associative network?

Answer 8

*The knowledge we possess is organized as a metaphorical network of cognitive concepts/nodes interconnected by links
* Some concepts are more central
* Links between concepts vary in strength
* Social psychologists think of the self-concept as functioning as an associative network

Question 9

What is the self-concept comprised of?

Answer 9

• Consists of personality traits, social roles, social identities, hobbies, places, physical, contradictory traits (ex: patient and impatient)
• Some of these self-aspects are interconnected
• Some are more peripheral (more distant self-concepts)

Question 10

What are some synonyms of self-aspect?

Answer 10

• Self-belief
• Self-view
• Piece of self-knowledge
• Self-schema

Question 11

Is the self-concept a unitary idea about the self?

Answer 11

• Self-concept implies a unitary, fixed, and integrated idea about the self
• We tend to think of it in this way
• But, people have lots of ideas about themselves, sometimes in contradiction with each other
• Ex: how would you describe yourself at a party vs at a job interview

Question 12

Describe the working self-concept

Answer 12

• Markus & Wurf (1987)
• The subset of self-knowledge that is the current focus of awareness
• Self-concept = the entirety of our self-knowledge
• Created moment-to-moment
• The idea that at any given moment in time, only a fraction/subset of all our self-knowledge is in our current focus of awareness (it’s in the spotlight)

Question 13

Describe situational activation in terms of the contents of the working self-concept

Answer 13

• Different situations can activate different self-aspects/pieces of self-knowledge thus creating different working self-concepts
• A lot of it depends on the situation that we’re sometimes in

Question 14

Describe spreading activation in terms of the self-concept as an associative network

Answer 14

• When specific self-aspect is activated, other self-aspects that are linked with it are also activated
• Self-aspects that are strongly linked will be activated more quickly

Question 15

What are the contents of the working self-concept?

Answer 15

• Contents of the working self-concept = self-knowledge that’s most accessible/salient at that moment
• Accessibility of self-knowledge is determined by:
  1. Distinctive to the situation
• What’s going to be in our self-concept in any given time is what’s going to be distinctive in that point in time (distinctiveness theory)
  2. Relevance to the situation/activity
• Job interview vs party
• Distinctive and Relevance form the situational activation (recency effect -> these immediately come to mind)
  3. Frequency of activation
• Very important self-aspects to the person
• Self-aspects that we engage in or demonstrate often

Question 16

Describe Distinctiveness Theory

Answer 16

• McGuire et al. (1976)
• A person’s unique, distinctive characteristics are more salient to them than characteristics that they have in common with others
• Distinctive characteristics are more valuable in distinguishing yourself from others
• This is an automatic and spontaneous process
• We don’t always strategically come up with what’s unique about us
• We just so happen to come up with things that are distinctive to others

Question 17

Describe McGuire et al. (1976, 1978) study on Distinctiveness Theory

Answer 17

• 1st study on this
• Researchers interviewed 6th graders and gave them a “who am I” exercise (ex: “I am…”)
• Found that students with distinctive features were way more likely to include those distinctive features in their descriptions than their other less distinctive features
• Students with distinctive features mentioned these more often than those with more typical features
• Ex: students born in the US were less likely to talk about where they’re from and those born outside of US more likely to talk about where they’re from
• Ex: older/younger students more likely to describe themselves as such
• Ex: those with blue/green eyes more likely to describe themselves as such compared to those with brown eyes
• Ex: those over/under weight more likely to describe themselves as such than those with average weight
• Ex: students that are Black or Latino more likely to mention ethnicity in self-description than white students
• Shows that the situational context influences what spontaneously
  comes to mind when describing the self
• What’s going to be distinctive about you in one context won’t be the same thing as what’s distinctive about you in another context
• Ex: being a McGill student at McGill will not be distinctive but being a McGill student at a random party will be distinctive

Question 18

Describe the implications of the working self-concept

Answer 18

• The self-concept is malleable and is highly dependent on the context (context-specific)
• We have different versions of ourselves
• Non-central self-aspects can enter the working self-concept
• Allows for contradictory self-aspects to simultaneously exist
• Usually not activated in the same situation
• Working self-concept influences how we behave
• Explains why we behave differently in different situations (result of different aspects being more salient than others)

Question 19

Describe Fazio et al. (1981) study on working self-concept and behaviour

Answer 19

• Does the working self-concept influence behaviour?
• Method: recruited participants and told them that they were participating in a study where they were validating a new personality questionnaire to “reveal elements of personality”
• Experimentally manipulated working self-concept:
• Extroversion prime: “what would you do if you wanted to liven things up at a party?”
• Introversion prime: “what things do you dislike about loud parties?”
• Some people had an extroversion prime and some had an introversion prime
• Idea is that everyone has moments in life where they feel and act in a more extroverted and introverted way
• Results: those in the extroverted (vs introverted) condition described themselves as more extroverted and acted more extroverted in a subsequent situation
• Spoke longer to confederate
• Sat closer to confederate
• Rated by confederate and judges as more extroverted
• The participants had no idea that they were being primed with extraversion and introversion yet they acted and felt these ways
• Shows that working self-concept depends on situational activation and that it influences behaviour

Question 20

What’s the perspective of pop culture and the media on the true self?

Answer 20

• According to pop culture and media, knowing your true self is very important
• Ex: self-help books, memes, quotes

Question 21

According to Ryan & Deci (2017) what are the elements common to theories about the true self?

Answer 21

• Ryan & Deci published a paper where they collected and reviewed all of the theories out there about what is the true self
• Commonalities:
  1. True self is natural endowment: already born with a true self
• Often in the form of potential
• Ex: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
  2. True self is what feels most authentic
• Actions consistent with internal states (feelings, needs, desires) that are subjectively experienced as one’s own
  3. People naturally want to be true to themselves
• We have a desire to behave in line with our true selves
• Living in accordance with true self leads to a satisfying
  and fulfilling life
  4. True self competes with external influences
• The true self is leading us one way and external outside pressures are leading us another way
• Reason why it is difficult to be in tune with true self and to follow it

Question 22

Describe Schlegel et al. (2013) study on the True Self and decision-making

Answer 22

• Do people believe in a true self and use it as a guide to make decisions?
• Method: recruited 60 online community participants
• Asked to “Please take a few moments to think about occasions when you had to make an important decision”
• Rated (1-7 scale) potential decision-making strategies on how important they are for making a satisfying decision, including:
• True-self-as guide (who you really are)
• Ideal self (who you really want to be)
• Past self (what you’ve done in the past)
• Future self (who you want to become in the future)
• Actual self (everyday behaviour)
• Ought self (who you think you ought to be)
• Information from others (friends’ advice)
• Rational processing (pros and cons list)
• Intuition (follow your gut)
• Religious (religious beliefs)
• Supernatural (fate)
• All these different selves that they might consult to make a decision, as well as guidance from things/people other than themselves
• Findings:
• People believe in the true self and that following one’s true self is an important strategy for making satisfying decisions
• Ps rated consulting their true self as the most important factor out of all of these options to try to reach a decision

Question 23

Describe Schlegel et al. (2013) study on the true self and actual self

Answer 23

• Method: Ps randomly assigned to describe true or actual self and rate how easy it was to do this
• True self: “who you really are”
• Actual self: “who you are in everyday life”
• They also asked Ps to reflect on the last time they made an important decision and how satisfied they felt
• Rated satisfaction with recent big life decisions
• One group had to think about their true self and rate how easy it was to think about this
• Another group of people had to think about their actual self and rate how easy it was to think about this
• Results: subjective ease related to decision satisfaction in the true self condition, but not in the actual self condition
• Found that when people said that they had a hard time to have access to their true selves/they had a hard time describing their true selves, they had less satisfaction with making decisions
• Difficulties accessing true self related to less satisfaction with decisions

Question 24

What are the implications of Schlegel et al. (2013) studies on the True Self

Answer 24

• Idea of a true self resonates with people
• People are more satisfied with their decisions when these are in accord with the true self than when they aren’t

Question 25

What are the conceptual problems with the idea of a true self?

Answer 25

1) Natural Endowment
* Natural endowment of a true self is not a provable idea
* How to assess a baby’s potential?
* Suggests that babies are born with specific destiny/ motivations for adult life which seems unlikely
* No way to prove that at birth, any particular baby is destined to pursue one path
* No way that we can examine/test this
2) Self-Beliefs are Inaccurate
* Idea of true self requires that people have accurate self-knowledge about what their true self is like
* But, lots of research suggests that our self-concepts are full of inaccuracies, biases, and are distorted (ex: better-than-average effect)
* Suggests that no self-concept is fully “true” (likely to have some inaccuracies in it)
3) True Self = What is “Good”
* True self seems to be more about social desirability, rather than acting in line with one’s unique characteristics
* In daily diary study, people report feeling most authentic when accepting external influence when making personal decisions
* People report feeling most authentic when behaving in desirable ways, rather than consistent with their actual personalities
* People assume that others are being their “true selves” when they are behaving in a morally good way
* Ex: often when someone close to you is acting poorly, we tend to explain these behaviours away and not make this about their true selves

Question 26

Describe Fleeson & White (2010) study on Authenticity and the Big Five

Answer 26

• When do people feel most authentic?
• Method: 97 participants in a lab study
• First rated themselves on “Trait” Big Five: what are they generally like?
• Participated in 10 1hr lab sessions in small groups
• Each lab session consisted of 1-2 activities
• Ex: Playing Twister, painting a picture, discussing medical ethics (diversity of activities to do so they could pull on people’s different traits)
• During activities, self-reported on “State” Big Five (how extroverted, agreeable, open to new experience, conscientious, emotionally stable are you behaving right now? -> ex: while playing twister, maybe someone felt they were being extroverted even though they’re introverted) and on “State” authenticity (how authentic do you feel right now?)
• Results: evidence for desirable-trait hypothesis
• Authenticity was positively associated with acting extroverted, agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable, regardless of the participant’s trait/typical Big Five personality
• Suggests that people felt more authentic when behaving in socially desirable ways (in North American society), rather than in ways consistent with their personality

Question 27

Describe the True Self as Desired Reputation

Answer 27

• The true self is more of a guide, than a reality
• Doesn’t mean that this is an idea that we should totally abandon and that it doesn’t exist
• Desired reputation (Baumeister, 2019) = what is valued by society (ideals) + what distinctive role one’s own abilities and traits are best suited to (actual self)
• Baumeister views the true self as people feeling most authentic when actions are consistent and are perceived by others as consistent with desired reputation
• Slightly different with different people

Question 28

Describe Self-Complexity

Answer 28

• Linville (1985; 1987)
• About the structure and the organization of self-concept
• People’s self-concepts differ in:
  1. # of self-aspects
  2. Degree to which these self-aspects are distinct from each other
• High self-complexity and low self-complexity

Question 29

High self-complexity vs low self-complexity

Answer 29

• High self-complexity: many self-aspects that are relatively distinct from each other
• Low self-complexity: few self-aspects that have a high degree of overlap with each other

Question 30

Describe the implications for wellbeing of Self-Complexity

Answer 30

1) Affective (emotional) spillover:
* Because of links between self-aspects and spreading activation, emotions associated with one self-aspect will “spillover” to other self-aspects
* Emotional spreading effect
* More affective spillover for people with low self-complexity -> harder to deal with
2) Affective extremity for low self-complexity
* Low self-complexity: greater spillover causes more extreme emotional reactions/fluctuations and changes in self-esteem (for both negative and positive life events)
* High self-complexity: less spillover allows for more emotional stability
3) High self-complexity as a stress buffer
* High self-complexity may serve as a buffer against negative consequences of stressful life events
* May explain why some people are more resilient in the face of stress/negative events
* Some people seem to be able to have more perspective on these things and be less negative

Question 31

Describe Linville (1985) study on self-complexity, failure and emotional reactions

Answer 31

• How does self-complexity affect the relationship between failure and emotional reactions?
• How does it affect people’s emotional reactions to failure
• Methods:
• Linville developed a new task: the self-complexity measured via trait sort
• Ps were then told that they were going to get an analytical thinking task
• Experimental manipulation: Ps given bogus success/failure feedback from analytic task (randomized and not accurate of performance)
• Current (state) mood and self-esteem assessed
• Findings:
• Low self-complexity showed significant and largest change in mood and self-esteem following failure/success feedback
• Evidence of spillover and affective extremity (more intense variation between low SC and high SC people)

Question 32

Describe Linville (1985) study on low self-complexity and variation in mood

Answer 32

• Is low self-complexity also associated with more variation in mood over time?
• Method: Field study to look at swings in emotions over 2 weeks
• Self-complexity measured using trait sort
• Ps completed daily emotion diary for 14 days
• Results: low self-complexity associated with greater variation in emotion ratings over time (more fluctuation in mood overtime), even outside of the lab
• Spillover is sort of like the mechanism behind affect extremity

Question 33

Describe Linville (1987) study on self-complexity and stress buffering

Answer 33

• Does high self-complexity protect against the negative health effects of stress?
• Method: measured the following at baseline and again 2 weeks later:
• Self-complexity using trait sort
• Stressful events experienced by student (ex: finances, employment, accidents, living situation)
• Indicators of negative health consequences (Depression, Perceived stress, Illness symptoms)
• Results: following stressful events, people high in self-complexity (vs low in self-complexity) showed less depression, less perceived stress, fewer physical symptoms of illness (including flu)
• No difference in # of stressful events experienced between low and high self- complexity people
• Seems to be something about how they’re coping with these events because high and low SC experience similar stressful events
• Evidence that self-complexity buffers against negative effects of stress

Question 34

Describe the findings of Rafaeli-Mor & Steinberg (2002) meta-analysis on self-complexity and stress buffering

Answer 34

• Review of 24 studies examining stress buffering effects of self-complexity:
• 7 studies support stress-buffering hypothesis
• 4 found reverse (low SC has more of a stress buffering effect than high SC)
• Rest didn’t show any effect

Question 35

Why Mixed Evidence of Stress Buffering?

Answer 35

• Rafaeli-Mor & Steinberg (2002)
• There’s some sort of moderation going on
• Some circumstance where the effect is real and true and some circumstance where it’s not
  1) Differences in well-being measure (dependent variable)
• Positive effect of self-complexity on mood and emotional stability but more mixed results when measuring self-esteem or depression
  2) One part of definition of self-complexity is more important than the other (independent variable)
• # of self-aspects -> positive effect on well-being
• Degree of distinction between self-aspects -> no effect on well-being
• Across studies, researchers find that it’s the number of self-aspects that have an impact on stress buffering and wellbeing but the degree to which these are interlinked seems to have no effect on wellbeing
  3) Integration of self-aspects also matters
• Having high self-complexity (many self-aspects) may only be helpful if self-aspects are well-integrated into a clear and coherent sense of self
• If someone has many self-aspects but doesn’t know how to integrate these different self-aspects, then high self-complexity may lead to confusion about self and may result in feeling fragmented

Question 36

Describe Self-Concept Clarity (SCC)

Answer 36

• Campbell (1996)
• Extent to which the contents of the self-concept are clearly defined, consistent with each other, and stable
• Reflects the extent to which you feel like you know who you are
• High SCC = you have this sense that you know who you are as a person
• High SCC = Remi
• Low SCC = Pablo
• Sometimes he sees himself as creative, assertive and social and other times he sees himself as needy, depressed and a loner
• The way he defines himself differs from week-to-week

Question 37

Self-Complexity vs SCC

Answer 37

• Both constructs that are used to try and explain how the self-concept is organized
• SCC is independent and unrelated to self-complexity
• A person could be high in self-complexity but low in SCC (and vice versa)
• Ex: they have many different self-aspects but lacking in clarity, consistency, and coherence between these different self-aspects

Question 38

Describe SCC and Well-Being

Answer 38

• High SCC is associated with:
• More emotional stability
• Less rumination about the self
• Less loneliness
• Lower feelings of depression and perceived stress
• Higher self-esteem
• Higher perception of meaning in life
• Higher general life-satisfaction
• Suggests that SCC is important for well-being
• High SCC comes with a lot of benefits

Question 39

Describe Alessandri et al. (2021) study on SCC and COVID-19

Answer 39

• Recent study where they wanted to look at whether having SCC helps with acute stress
• They had people in Italy complete a daily diary in a study and then the pandemic hit and this was very hard on people
• Italy was affected badly with COVID
• On average, high SCC people experienced fewer negative emotions compared to low SCC people at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic
• High SCC appears to facilitate more adaptive responses during times of intense uncertainty/stress (coping better and more resilient)
• Hypothesis: when there’s lots of uncertainty going on around us, someone with high SCC can use their sense of self as a grounding force

Question 40

What factors influence SCC?

Answer 40

1) Age
* SCC varies throughout our lives and age
* Our SCC tends to lowest in early 20s and then continues to increase until your 60s and then it plateaus downward
* Explanations: retirement, death of loved ones in 60s
* Depending on how old somebody is, there are periods in life where things are more stable and there are periods in life where things are unstable
* In early 20s, this is a period of exploration and discovering yourself
* More stability in middle age
* There are many changes that occur later in life that leads to more confusion about the self
2) Changes to social roles?
* Academic/job changes
* Relationship changes
* Hobby changes
* There will be fluctuations in SCC when we’re experiencing changes in our social roles

Question 41

Describe Slotter & Walsh (2016) study on SCC and Role Transitions

Answer 41

• Do role changes lead to lower SCC?
• Methods: Collected writing samples from an online forum for new parents
• Research assistants analyzed and rated writing for:
• Degree of self-concept confusion (more self-concept confusion = lower SCC): “To what extent is the participant confused or uncertain about who they are as a person/about their identity?”
• Amount of self-concept change: “To what extent has the transition to parenthood changed the participants’ perceptions of who they are as a person – the content of their self-concept?”
• Positivity of self-change: “How positive would you rate the participant’s feelings about their experienced role transition?”
• Findings:
• SCC depends on amount of self-change and how positive the person feels about the change
• For those who felt positively about the role transition, no relationship between amount of self-change and SCC
• For those who felt less positive about the role transition, more self-change associated with less SCC (more self-concept confusion)
• Replicated this with a few other role changes and found same pattern across different role transitions (ex: new parents, newlyweds, newly divorced)

Question 42

Describe the implications of Slotter & Walsh (2016) study on the relationship between SCC and role transitions

Answer 42

• Role transitions are one factor affecting SCC
• Role entries (ex: getting married) and exits (ex: getting divorced) predict lower SCC if person doesn’t feel particularly positively about the way the new role has changed them

Question 43

The organization of the self-concept can be understood in terms of…

Answer 43

self-complexity and self-concept clarity

Question 44

Describe Intrapersonal Sources of Self-Knowledge

Answer 44

1. Self-perception: we observe our overt behaviours and use these observations to infer what we’re like
   * Similar to how we infer what other people are like
2. Introspection: we direct our attention inwards to our internal states (thoughts and feelings) and use this self-awareness to draw conclusions about what we’re like

Question 45

Give an example of Self-Perception vs Introspection

Answer 45

• Self-perception: I pursue my goals until I achieve them. Even when I fail, I keep going until I succeed. I must be determined
• Introspection: I often think about what’s right and wrong. I must have a strong conscience.

Question 46

Describe Andersen & Ross (1984) study on the prioritization of internal states

Answer 46

• Do people generally feel like their internal states are a more important source of self-knowledge or is behaviour a more important source of self-knowledge
• Asked if someone were to get to know you, which one of these was the best source?
• Having access to their internal states for a day or for several months
• Observing their behaviour for a day or for several months
• Talking to their friends + family for a day or for several months
• People report that knowing their internal states is better for understanding what they’re really like compared to knowing their behaviour or interviewing close ones
• People said that having access to their internal states was significantly more informative of who they are
• Simply having access to their thoughts and feelings for one day was significantly more informative than observing their behaviour and how they engage with their friends and family for one day and several months

Question 47

Describe Andersen’s (1984) study on having access to others’ internal states

Answer 47

• How does access to internal states vs behaviour shape others’ impressions?
• Method: 60 participants listened to interviews with strangers describing themselves and had to rate them on a personality measure
• Assigned to 1of 3 conditions:
• Cognitive/affective: Interviewee describing past thoughts and feelings
• Behavioural: Interviewee describing past behaviour
• Control: Interviewee describing mix of past thoughts, feelings, and behaviour
• The strangers/interviewees in the video had also rated themselves so the researchers could compare the impression the Ps formed with the impression the interviewees had of themselves
• More “accurate” impression = higher correlation between interviewee’s own self-ratings of personality and participant’s ratings of them
• Findings:
• Cognitive/affective: correlation of 0.52 (highest)
• Behavioural: correlation of 0.37
• Control: correlation of 0.42
• Here they’re getting more info because they’re getting both, but the correlation is still lower
• Knowing what a person’s behaviour is like as well as their internal states is sort of distracting in terms of not knowing what to base their judgement on
• Cognitive/affective interviews produced impressions that are most in line with interviewee’s self-ratings
• Suggests that knowing thoughts and feelings is most useful for knowing someone well

Question 48

Describe the implications of Andersen’s studies on internal states and knowledge about the self or others

Answer 48

• People prioritize awareness of their thoughts and feelings (vs behaviours) to construct self-knowledge and believe this is most revealing of what others are like
• Why?
• Recognize that actions can be influenced by external factors so think that thoughts and feelings are more revealing of inner self
• People can sort of intuitively recognize that behaviour is ambiguous (ex: you’re walking down the street and say hi to someone you know and they just keep walking -> you can interpret this behaviour in many different ways)
• Self-perception may be more useful for forming self-knowledge when people are unclear about their internal states
• Ex: when not sure how you feel about about parties, you can observe behaviours
• Assumption that introspection is useful source of self-knowledge is shared by much of psychology research which relies on self-report
• For someone to be engaging in self-report, they rely on introspection and we generally assume that these are accurate
• Do people accurately introspect?

Question 49

Describe Wilson et al. (1982) study on the accuracy of introspection

Answer 49

• Are people aware of what impacts their mood?
• Method: Daily diary study of undergrads for 5 weeks
• Every evening rated (1= very bad, 7 = very good) overall mood and several predictors of mood (the weather, relationships with friends, workload, sleep, exercise)
• At the end of the study Ps estimated the relationship between their mood and each predictor (ex: how do you think sleep affected your mood?)
• 22 additional observers reported on what they thought the average relationship is between mood and each predictor
• Researchers calculated actual correlation between mood and each predictor
• Compared these with participants’ and observers’ estimates
• Higher correlation = more accurate judgments about predictors of mood
• If we assume that people know themselves and can accurately introspect on their mood we would expect a more accurate correlation from Ps than observers
• Results:
• Average participant accuracy correlation = 0.42 (moderate)
• Shows that Ps made fairly accurate judgments about how various predictors influenced their mood, but also indicates that they made quite a few errors
• 49% of subjects got the direction of at least one estimate backwards (ex: thinking good sleep had a positive impact on their mood but it actually had a negative impact)
• Average accuracy correlation for observer = 0.46
• Shows that observers were just as accurate judges of predictors of mood as were the Ps themselves
• Suggests that people don’t have real, unique understanding of their mood, but instead rely on shared theories about predictors of mood

Question 50

Describe the implications of Wilson et al. (1982) study on the accuracy of introspection

Answer 50

• People don’t have a genuine understanding of why they think and feel the way they do
• Introspection may be more useful for labelling or describing internal states, but not very useful for explaining why we have these in the first place
• Wilson (2002): suggests that people should take psychology courses which educate you on why people are the way they are if they want to understand themselves rather than relying on introspection

Question 51

What are the Interpersonal Sources of Self-Knowledge?

Answer 51

1. Social Comparison
2. Looking-Glass Self
3. Social groups we belong to
4. Including close others in the self

Question 52

What’s symbolic interactionism?

Answer 52

• The self-concept depends on our social interactions
• There is no self without others/social interaction
• Because self-concept so critically depends on others in our world (extreme position)
• The idea is that the social world probably accounts for the majority of our understanding of ourselves

Question 53

Describe social comparison

Answer 53

• We compare ourselves with others (at least one other person) to form conclusions about our relative standing on attributes, abilities, opinions, etc.
• Ex: you can only conclude that you’re introverted by comparing yourself to others on introversion
• Introspection and self-perception often rely on comparison

Question 54

Describe Social Comparison and Self-Esteem

Answer 54

• We tend to engage in social comparison automatically and because of this it’s responsible for people’s fluctuations in self-esteem
• Direction of comparison influences self-esteem
• Upward: comparing ourselves to people that are better than us which leads to a decrease in self-esteem
• Downward: comparing ourselves to people that are worse than us which leads to an increase in self-esteem

Question 55

Describe the Looking-Glass Self

Answer 55

• We construct our self-concept based on how others see us
• Thought to be very fundamental to our self-concept
• Infer how others see us using their direct feedback and their behaviours towards us (ex: facial expression, sighs, etc.)
• Not just close others, but also how others generally see us
• Cyclical process:
• We observe how others react to us (direct feedback or behaviours)
• We infer others perception of us
• We internalize this into our self-concept
• This then guides our behaviour

Question 56

Describe evaluating the Looking-Glass Self

Answer 56

• Research examining looking-glass self compares (correlates):
• Participants’ self-report of their own personality/behaviour
• Observers’ reports of participants’ personality/behaviour (these are either strangers or close ones)
• If looking-glass self theory is true, would expect a high correlation between self-report and observer report

Question 57

What are the problems with the Looking-Glass Self?

Answer 57

• Literature review of looking-glass self research shows that there is no
  consistent relationship between self-reports and observer reports (some studies find a positive correlation and some find a negative correlation)
• But there is a strong positive relationship between people’s self- reports of their own personality and how they think they are perceived by others (especially for people that are important to us)
• What seems to be true is that there’s no consistent relationship between how people see themselves and how others see them but there’s a very high correlation between how we think others see us and how we see ourselves
• Why?
  1) Others rarely provide full, honest feedback to us
• Feedback is often ambiguous (ex: facial expression)
• People rarely directly tell us what they think of us
• We’re probably exposed to more honest feedback in childhood and less in
  adulthood which may be part of why self-beliefs formed in childhood endure into adulthood
• Feedback is often also contradictory (ex: in some context someone may be positively commenting on how you make jokes and another may be commenting negatively on how you make jokes)
  2) We often dismiss or rationalize away negative feedback
• Healthy that we don’t incorporate all feedback because this would lead us to constantly change our self-concept and this would be confusing

Question 58

What’s the implication of the Looking-Glass Self?

Answer 58

Looking-glass self means that the self-concept is shaped by how we think others see us, not by how they actually see us

Question 59

Describe Social identity theory

Answer 59

• We place ourselves and others into social groups and this process shapes our self-concepts and our perceptions of others (ex: race, ethnicity, gender)
• Social groups provide members with a sense of shared identity that prescribes standards for what members should be like, believe, and behave
• Self-stereotyping: we take on and conform to the shared identity of a social group in order to be accepted as part of that group by others
• More likely to do this with groups that are important to us
• Process: What are the characteristics of the social group I value? -> Self-stereotyping -> Validation by others that I’m a good member of the group (desired outcome)

Question 60

Describe Smith & Henry (1996) study on Social Identity Theory

Answer 60

• Behavioural evidence
• Method: 153 Liberal Arts and Engineering majors
• Rated ingroup and outgroup on 90 traits (1-7 scale) -> ex: domineering, sympathetic, cheerful
• 1-3 = descriptive vs 5-7 = not descriptive
• Me-Not Me reaction time (RT) task (they see a word come up on the screen (a trait or descriptor) and all the participant has to do is click “me” or “not me” and they’re calculating their reaction times to these words)
• Rated same 90 traits as self-descriptive or not
• Compared performance on RT task to ratings of ingroup
• If self-concept is based on perception of ingroup, would expect faster RTs for traits where self and ingroup are similar because cognitively linked
• Would also expect slower RTS for traits where self and ingroup are dissimilar because creates an internal conflict
• Results:
• Faster RTs for traits on which a person sees themselves as matching the ingroup than for traits in which there is a mismatch
• Both for yes/yes and no/no
• Suggests that perception of self is linked with perception of ingroup

Question 61

Describe Self-Concept as a Reaction to Outgroup

Answer 61

• Group membership is also often defined in contrast to outgroups
• Means that the formation of some self-knowledge is a rejection of elements that are associated with an outgroup
• Not only is people’s self-concept shaped by trying to be like ingroup it’s also shaped by trying to not be like an outgroup
• Trying to reject features that are characteristic of an outgroup and adopting features that are a rejection of outgroup characteristics

Question 62

Describe flexibility in Social Identity

Answer 62

• Self-description/behaviour in a social identity is determined by:
• Expectations/standards for that identity
• People’s unique strengths and preferences
• Means that people don’t just rigidly adhere to a group identity, but figure out how to make it their own

Question 63

Describe including Close Others in the Self

Answer 63

• In close relationships, we incorporate the others’ characteristics into our own self-concepts
• Ex: taking on a close others’ perspectives and characteristics
• Ex: becoming more interested in chess because your best friend loves playing chess
• Ex: close friends, family members, partners
• Rather than thinking of self and other as completely distinct, with the people you are close to, there is overlap
• Referring to you and friend or you and partner as “we”
• Ex: “We” love going to the waterpark

Question 64

Describe Aron et al. (1991) study on Including Others in the Self

Answer 64

• Do people confuse their partners’ traits for their own?
• Method: Married graduate students rated traits for how descriptive they are of self and of spouse
• Me-not me reaction time task: is the trait on the screen descriptive of you or not?
• Greater self-other confusion indicated by:
• Longer RTs for traits that are different between self and spouse (disentanglement)
• More errors for traits that are different between self and spouse (given opposite rating of what the subject originally indicated)
• Findings:
• Ps were slower and made more mistakes on traits that differed between self and spouse (for both “me” and “not-me” judgments) -> because they were confused and had to disentangle
• Mistake: if a person initially indicated they were extroverted and they pressed not me on the me-not me task
• More likely to make mistakes when descriptive of them and not of their partner or of their partner and not of them
• Suggests that close others and their characteristics become incorporated into the self-concept (to the point where we get confused)

Question 65

What are the determinants of Self-Concept change?

Answer 65

• Theories of interpersonal sources of self-knowledge point to routes to self-concept change:
  1) Social role changes
• Gains and losses of social roles trigger changes to the self-concept
• Initially comes with a period of self-concept confusion (low SCC) if perceiving a lot of change and feeling less positively about it
• Gains particularly likely in early adulthood and losses particularly likely in late adulthood
  2) Changing the looking-glass
• People can purposely initiate a change to their self-concept if they believe they are perceived by others in an undesirable way (don’t like their looking glass self)
• Ex: a person thinks that their friends don’t see them as a good friend
• Focus is on changing perception of self by behaving differently until person thinks that others see the self in the desired way
• Consistent with idea that desired reputation is most important self
  3) Changes to who one is close to
• Since self-concept is partially a result of who a person is close to, means that the self-concept will change when we become closer to new people
• Folk wisdom: “you’re the sum of the 6 closest people to you”

Question 66

Describe changes to Point of Comparison

Answer 66

• When we change our point of comparison, this should result in a change in our self-concept
• One of the ways we figure something out about ourselves is how we compare ourselves to others
• Ex: imagine someone grows up in a very adventurous family, perhaps in comparison to them, them being more cautious makes them feel like they’re more prudent
• Then if they go to school and meet way more people that are cautious, suddenly after maybe going on a hike, they may perceive themselves as adventurous after all

Question 67

What are the Self-Evaluation Motives

Answer 67

• Our search for self-knowledge is guided by a few self-evaluation motives (not a neutral process):
• Self-assessment
• Self-enhancement

Question 68

Describe the Self-Assessment Motive

Answer 68

• Motive to see ourselves accurately
• This is a very old idea ->
  Ancient greek: “know thy self”
• Leads to people seeking objective feedback about their abilities and characteristics to reduce uncertainty about the self- concept
• Pragmatic function because allows us to develop accurate and realistic goals for ourselves
• Often in competition with the self-enhancement motive

Question 69

Describe the Self-Enhancement Motive

Answer 69

• Motive to maximize how positively we see ourselves
• Functions to attain or maintain self-esteem
• Guides people toward situations in which they believe they will excel or can promote their positive qualities which will help them increase their self-esteem
• Leads us to seek self-knowledge that is enhancing and therefore often biased and unrealistic
• This self-enhancement motive leads us to have a few illusions of ourselves

Question 70

What are the Illusions About the Self

Answer 70

• Most people have illusions about the self
• Triad of illusions:
  1. Overly positive self-evaluations
  2. Illusions of control
  3. Unrealistic optimism bias (often about our futures)
• Taylor & Brown (1988) surveyed the literature at the time and concluded we all possess these 3 illusions

Question 71

Describe Overly Positive Self-Evaluations

Answer 71

• People tend to use more positive traits to describe themselves than negative traits
• People tend to include basically no negative self-aspects in their self-concepts
• We’re more likely to forget negative feedback about ourselves than positive feedback
• When people are asked to remember successes vs their failures, they remember successes more easily
• Tendency to engage in downward (vs upward) social comparisons
• Self-serving attributional bias
• Tend to see our talents as unique and weaknesses as common
• Indirect pieces of evidence that we see ourselves in a positive way (could make the argument that maybe the reason why we use more positive traits is actually because we’re great)

Question 72

What’s the Self-serving attributional bias?

Answer 72

• We claim credit for successes but blame failures on the situation or others
• Ex: getting a good grade vs a bad grade

Question 73

How do we know that Overly Positive Self-Evaluations are illusions?

Answer 73

• Direct Evidence for Illusory Self-Evaluations:
  1. Better-than-average-effect
  2. We rate ourselves better than objectively warranted

Question 74

Describe the Better-than-average-effect

Answer 74

• Most people rate their abilities as better than the average person even though it’s statistically impossible for most people to be above average
• People tend to rate themselves as better-than-average in a whole bunch of characteristics:
• Intelligence
• Attractiveness (ex: if you ask someone how attractive you think they are on a scale of 1-10, most people say 7)
• Reliability
• Loyalty
• Kindness
• Wisdom
• Interesting
• But a person may be accurate in their perception of themselves as above-average in a particular domain
• First documentation of this effect was with regards to driving (Svenson, 1980)
• About 90% of Americans said they thought they were a better than average driver
• Even when they did follow-up studies where they went to the hospital and interviewed people who were hospitalized for causing the car accident, they argued they were no worse than the norm

Question 75

Describe Ziano et al. (2021) study on the Better-Than-Average effect on more desirable traits

Answer 75

• They correlated how likely people were to say they possessed some positive trait and how socially desirable they thought that trait was
• The more desirable a trait, the more people see themselves as better than average on this trait (r = 0.77)
• The more desirable a trait, the more likely people see this trait as descriptive of themselves (r = 0.92)
• Positive correlations -> these correlations are very high for the field of psychology
• Usually only see around 0.4 correlations

Question 76

Describe Kruger & Dunning (1999) study on people rating themselves better than objectively warranted

Answer 76

• Got Ps to rate themselves on a whole bunch of abilities and then gave them objective tests on all sorts of topics (ex: logical reasoning, grammar, humour)
• People consistently over-estimate their ability in various domains, especially those that are below average in a domain
• Everyone said they were in the 50th and 70th percentile regardless of their actual test score

Question 77

To what extent are these overly positive self-evaluations universal?

Answer 77

• Limited to individualistic cultures?
• Limited to people with moderate - high self-esteem?
• Researchers have examined this in these 2 populations

Question 78

Describe Heine et al. (1999) study on whether Self-Enhancement is individualistic

Answer 78

• Hypothesis: self-enhancement is unique/ more evident in individualistic societies
• Consistent with cultural ideal of uniqueness and self-assertion
• Inconsistent with collectivistic/Eastern values of belonging and fitting in with a group
• When looking at self-esteem scores in European Canadian and Japanese sample, Western samples report higher self-esteem than Japanese samples
• 10-50 represents the possible scores that someone could get on the Rosenberg (measure -> Rosenberg Self-Esteem is the most popular test of self-esteem)
• Meaning 30 is the mid-scale
• In North American samples, it’s positively skewed
• People that score below the midpoint on self-esteem is very rare in north America
• VS Japanese sample (on the right) where the mean is closer to the midpoint
• Researchers also found acculturation in self-esteem
• Looked at a person’s self-esteem score and their exposure to North American Culture
• Found that the more exposure Japanese individuals had to North American culture, the higher their self-esteem score was (positive correlation)
• 3rd generation immigrants are indistinguishable from European Canadians in terms of self esteem scores

Question 79

Describe Sedikides et al. (2003) study on Pancultural Self-Enhancement

Answer 79

• Fundamental need for positive self-views so self-enhancement is universal, just looks different in different cultures
• Hypothesis: People will self-enhance on traits that are important and consistent with cultural values
• People in individualistic cultures will self-enhance on individualistic traits
• People in collectivistic cultures will self-enhance on collectivistic traits
• Possible explanation for graphs in Heine et al. (1999) study is because the Rosenberg Scale was developed in North America and they assess self-esteem in a North American way
• Method: recruited American and Japanese students
• Rated how well individualistic and collectivistic traits described them compared to a typical cultural group member on a scale from -5 to 5
• -5: much less than typical group member
• 0: about the same as the typical group member
• 5: much more than the typical group member
• Findings:
• The Y axis has no negative numbers -> everyone was self-enhancing on every trait (individualistic or collectivistic traits)
• Americans self-enhanced more on individualistic traits, and Japanese self-enhanced more on collectivistic traits
• Evidence for self-enhancement across cultures

Question 80

What’s the list of individualistic and collectivistic attributes that was given to participants in Sedikides et al. (2003) study?

Answer 80

• Individualistic:
• Free
• Independent
• Leader
• Original
• Self-reliant
• Separate
• Unconstrained
• Unique
• Collectivistic:
• Agreeable
• Compromising
• Cooperative
• Good listener
• Loyal
• Patient
• Respectful
• Self-sacrificing

Question 81

Is self-enhancement unique to people with moderate or high self-esteem?

Answer 81

• What about trait personality level self-esteem?
• What about low self-esteem people?
• Tice (1991) found that self-enhancement is universal, just looks different depending on a person’s self-esteem
• Moderate to high self-esteem: more likely to use self-advancement
• Low self-esteem: more likely to use self-protection

Question 82

What are the 2 Self-Enhancement strategies?

Answer 82

1) Self-advancement:
* Increasing how positively you see yourself (ex: overly positive self-evaluations)
2) Self-protection: limiting how negatively you see yourself by avoiding or deflecting threats to self-esteem
* Attributing failures to external circumstances (self-serving attribution bias)
* Avoiding situations that might lead to failure
* Downplaying the importance of negative events
* Self-handicapping

Question 83

What’s self-handicapping?

Answer 83

• Creating obstacles that can later be blamed for failure
• Ex: procrastination, lack of effort
• Form of self-protection
• And if you end up doing well, then you come up on top even more
• Self-esteem protective mechanism

Question 84

Describe illusions of personal control

Answer 84

• The idea that we have control/agency over our lives is central to most theories of self-esteem and well-being/mental health
• But, personal control beliefs tend to be greater than what’s justified (illusory):
• Ex: people believe they have more control over outcome of dice if they’re allowed to throw them than if someone else throws them
• Ex: people believe that choosing own lottery tickets will lead to better outcome, even when told, in a research setting, that the lottery tickets have better odds of winning, people still rely on choosing their own lottery tickets
• Some argue that free will is an illusion (old philosophical debate)
• Mostly rely on evidence from neuroscience

Question 85

Describe Fried et al. (2011) study on Illusions of Personal Control

Answer 85

• Typically neuroscience study that looks at this
• All the P has to do is that they’re told that when they feel like it, press this button
• They eventually press the button
• They’re then asked when they felt the urge that they were going to press the button
• It would make sense that they would make a conscious decision to press the button first and then press the button
• The Ps are wearing an EEG cap and the neural signals from their brain (motor cortex) are being recorded
• You would assume that the neurons in the motor cortex should be active when they’re moving their hand to push the button and when the person is experiencing the decision to press the button (preparatory signals before initiating a signal)
• Findings: neurons fire before they have a conscious experience/desire to push the button
• Neurons in motor area begin firing ~1500ms before decision to move (W)
• Just by examining people’s neuro signals alone, the researchers could predict when people would become consciously aware of when they wanted to move
• Based on neural firing in motor area, able to predict a person’s decision to move with 80% accuracy 700 ms before they were consciously aware of deciding to move
• Suggests that decisions to move are not made consciously even though it feels that way

Question 86

Describe Unrealistic Optimism Bias

Answer 86

• People tend to think that they are less likely than others to experience negative events and more likely to experience positive events
• Test:
• Difficult to establish whether an individual is being overly optimistic
• Easier to test by asking people to compare self to others:
• How likely is it that ____ will happen to you?
• How likely is it that ____ will happen to a peer (same age, gender, education level,
  etc.)?
• On a group level, not everyone can have a bright future
• We know it’s illusory when looking at group level data
• It’s not possible for everyone’s life to be positive and bright

Question 87

Describe Weinstein (1980) and Helweg-Shepperd et al. (2001) data on the Unrealistic Optimism Bias

Answer 87

• Compared to others, people believe that they are less likely to:
• Get into a car accident
• Be a victim of a crime
• Experience severe illness
• Experience depression
• Get divorced
• Compared to others, people believe that they are more likely to:
• Like their first job
• Have a good starting salary
• Have a gifted child
• Live past 80
• These are illusions because it’s not possible for every single person to not experience these negative events or experience all of these positive events

Question 88

Describe Weinstein et al. (2005) findings on the Unrealistic Optimism Bias

Answer 88

• Data on how smokers perceive the risk of developing lung cancer
• Smokers underestimate their risk of lung cancer compared to non-smokers, but also compared to the average smoker
• Regardless of how much people smoke, they think their actual relative risk of developing lung cancer is pretty low
• Not a rational prediction based on what the data shows

Question 89

Describe Weinstein et al. (1995) study on reducing the unrealistic optimism bias

Answer 89

• Can this bias be eliminated when confronted with own risk factors for a health problem?
• Method: 374 undergraduates reflected on their risk of developing a drinking problem
• Experimental manipulation:
• Risk-increasing: “List the risk factors that you possess that increase your chances of developing a drinking problem”
• Control: did not list own risk factors
• Then rated: own risk of developing a drinking problem and average college student’s risk of developing drinking problem
• Findings:
• Thinking about own risk factors for developing a drinking problem did not decrease optimism bias
• Regardless of if people were in the risk-increasing or the control condition, they thought that their risk of developing a drinking problem was much lower than the average student

Question 90

Describe Aspinwall & Taylor (1992) study on whether illusions about the self are adaptive

Answer 90

• Do individual differences in self-esteem, beliefs about control, and optimism about the future predict adjustment to college/university?
• Method: 2 year study of 672 1st year students assessed every quarter
• Assessed positive illusions (self-esteem, personal control, optimism)
• Outcomes:
• Psychological adjustment: mood and perceived stress
• Productive work: GPA
• Also wanted to examine mechanisms (coping strategies, social support, motivation)
• Method: 2 year study of first students’ adjustment to university
• Assessed positive illusions * Results:
• Adjustment: higher self-esteem and more optimism
  led to better adjustment
• Relationship between self-esteem and optimism and adjustment moderated by positive coping
• GPA: higher self-esteem led to higher cumulative GPA
• Relationship between self-esteem and GPA moderated by motivation
• Suggests that positive illusions lead to better outcomes

Question 91

Describe Taylor et al. (1992) study on illusions about the self and men at risk for AIDS

Answer 91

• Are illusions still adaptive and helpful in more challenging circumstances?
• Method: Investigated adaptive (vs maladaptive) consequences of unrealistic optimism
• Recruited HIV+ and HIV- men
• Measured AIDS-specific optimism
• Ex: “I feel safe from AIDS because I’ve developed an immunity”
• Ex: “I think my immune system is more capable of fighting the AIDS virus than that of other gay men”
• Results: HIV+ men showed more AIDS-specific
  optimism than HIV– men
• More AIDS-specific optimism associated with:
• Higher perceived control
• More active coping
• More healthy behaviour
• More likely to practice safe sex and exercise regularly
• Follow-up study in men who didn’t know HIV status showed no differences in AIDS-specific optimism between HIV + and HIV – groups
• Suggests that unrealistic optimism is an adaptive response and does not compromise health behavior -> the reason why HIV+ men were optimistic is because they developed this as a reaction to their diagnosis and this helped them cope with the news

Question 92

Describe Reed et al. (1994) study on Expectations & AIDS Course

Answer 92

• How does optimism affect how long people live with AIDS?
• Method: Recruited men diagnosed with AIDS for 1 year
• Assessed realistic acceptance (not unrealistic optimism) of diagnosis:
• Ex: “I tried to accept what might happen”
• Ex: “I prepare myself for the worst”
• How does acceptance vs optimism affect survival?
• Results: Estimated survival time 9 months shorter for individuals showing a high degree of acceptance
• Found that generally the people that were more optimistic tended to live longer
• At the 10 month mark it was much more likely for the men that were more optimistic to survive compared to those who were less optimistic
• Compelling evidence that optimism bias is adaptive

Question 93

Describe Illusions about the self and Mental Health

Answer 93

• Illusions appear to positively impact our adjustment to the ups and downs of life as well as challenging major life events
• Illusions are adaptive and appear to be fairly pervasive

Question 94

Describe Pronin et al. (2002) study on how knowledge on illusions and biases isn’t power

Answer 94

• In this study, they taught people about these biases
• They asked them how susceptible they thought they were to these biases
• When informed of illusions and biases, people think they are less prone to them… which is itself self-enhancing
• But on follow-up, these people demonstrated many of these biases

Question 95

Why are our self-perceptions biased to be overly positive?

Answer 95

• Self-enhancement motive: trying to gain and maintain self-esteem
• Many theories view self-esteem as a fundamental psychological need
• Cognitive Bias in Self-Perception:
• Inaccurate, overly charitable views of self (and accurate views of their others)?
• Inaccurate, overly cynical views of others? (ex: better-than-average effect)
• Cognitive biases in information processing:
• Base-rate fallacy
• Anchoring bias
• Both motivational and cognitive processes result in biased self views that serve us well (or not?)

Question 96

Describe Epley & Dunning (2000) “Daffodil Days” Study

Answer 96

• What is the source of bias for feeling holier-than-thou?
• Better than average effect applied to morality
• People often believe they are more moral and kind than the average person
• Charity event where students could buy daffodils and the money that they spent would go to a charity
• Method: 5 weeks before charity event asked Ps “Will you buy at least one daffodil and, if so, how many?”
• “Will a peer buy at least one daffodil?”
• 3 days after event asked: “How many did you buy?”
• Results:
• 83% of students thought that they would buy at least 1 flower
• Ps estimated that at least 50% (almost 60%) of their peers would buy a flower
• People themselves predicted that they would buy 2 flowers and on average their peers would buy 1 1/2 flowers
• Only 43% of students actually bought a flower
• Generally people’s predictions of what their peers would do are much closer to the reality of what people would do
• Suggests that feeling “holier-than-thou”/better-than average effect is due to errors in judgments about self, not in judgments about others
• The researchers did 3 other studies that essentially showed the same thing
• Across 4 studies, people overestimate likelihood that they would choose the kinder action by an average of 32% (but only by 4% for others)
• Means that seeing self as uniquely kind is due to having overly favourable views of self and not due to being overly cynical about others
• Strange since we have so much information about ourselves
• You would think that we should be more accurate about predicting our behaviours over other’s behaviours

Question 97

What are the types of information on which to base predictions of future behaviour?

Answer 97

• Case-based: evidence relevant to the specific case or person under consideration
• When thinking about how we would act in a situation, we’re thinking from a case-based perspective
• If we’re using case-based info then we’re probably wrong (base rate fallacy)
• Distributional/base-rate: evidence about the distribution of behaviour in similar or past situations
• People are generally pretty good at estimating the distribution of social behavior in various domains
• When we make predictions about our own behaviour, we use case-based info
• We have a clear sense of what we’re like as a person (ex: “kind”)
• When we make predictions about an average person’s behaviour, we’re more likely to use base-rate info
• Idea of “average person” is vague and abstract, so no case-based info is available, and therefore we have to rely on distributional info
• Information-processing biases can lead to overly positive self views
• We use case-based info to make judgments about the self

Question 98

What’s base rate fallacy?

Answer 98

We tend to assign greater value to case-based info
and often ignore base-rate or distributional info

Question 99

Describe Epley & Dunning (2000) study on the Base Rate Fallacy in Self-Perceptions

Answer 99

• Do we use case-based info to predict own behavior and base-rate info to predict others’ behaviour?
• Method: Participants received 5$ for participating in study
• Received info about 3 charities
• Told that future participants will have a chance of donating any or all of their study compensation to one of them
• If in this situation, how much would you and average peer donate?
• Then, learned about actual donations of 3, 7, then 13 people from earlier study and allowed to revise prediction after each new piece of info
• Initially, people thought that they on average would be willing to donate 2.75$
• They also thought that peer on average would be willing to donate 2.25$
• Then they’re given some base-rate info
• People typically donate 1.50$
• Then asked if they wanted to update their predictions based on this new info
• People said no, they didn’t want to update their predictions
• People updated their predictions to what an average peer would do to be pretty close to what the actual amount was, but they didn’t update their predictions for themselves
• This was still held for when they got the data for what an average person would do
• Evidence of base-rate fallacy in self-perceptions
• Base-rate info improved accuracy of predictions of peer’s behaviour, but didn’t improve accuracy of predictions for own behaviour
• Hung on to case-based info and rejected base-rate info
• But this doesn’t rule out self-enhancement motivation
• If really about hanging on to case-based info, and not self-enhancement, then any case-based info should prompt people to ignore distributional info

Question 100

Describe Epley & Dunning (2000) follow-up study on the Base Rate Fallacy in Self-Perceptions

Answer 100

• Study: Does presence of any case-based info prompt ignoring of distributional info?
• Method: repeated method of previous study but added 3rd prediction
• Participants read a peer’s self-description
• How much would you donate?
• How much would average peer donate?
• How much would this specific peer donate?
• Findings:
• People ignored base-rate info for self and for specific peer
• Feeling holier than thou (better-than-average) not necessarily due to self-
  enhancement motivation, but base-rate fallacy
• When people have case-based info, even if it’s about themselves or others, they tend to stick with it
• When people were making predictions about themselves or the individuated peer, they were more likely to consult personality assessment (case-based info) and when they were making predictions about others, they were more likely to consult behaviour of others (base-rate info)

Question 101

Are there cases where our self-perceptions are negatively biased?

Answer 101

Worse-Than-Average Effect

Question 102

Describe the Worse-Than-Average Effect

Answer 102

• Some better-than-average studies show that there are some domains where people tend to rate themselves as worse than others:
• Concentration
• Artistic ability
• Acting ability
• Mechanical ability
• Everyone is assuming that they’re below the 50th percentile of the average person

Question 103

[ ] is responsible for the better-than-average and worse-than-average effects

Answer 103

Anchoring bias is responsible for the better-than-average and worse-than-average effects

Question 104

Describe the anchoring bias

Answer 104

• Common human tendency to rely too heavily on the 1st piece of info that comes to mind/is offered (the anchor) when making a decision
• This 1st piece of info serves as our anchor
• Means that judgments will be biased towards anchor/info that we can easily retrieve
• Ex: in stores, they always list the initial price and then put a slash through it and show the new price (ex: from 5000 to 4500)

Question 105

Describe Anchoring Bias in Views of Self and Others

Answer 105

• When comparing self and others…
• We first think about our own abilities because they come to us automatically
  and effortlessly -> anchor
• Only think about others’ ability after -> effortful and thus we insufficiently take
  this info into account
• Causes our judgments of our ourselves to be biased by towards how we perceive our own ability in any given domain

Question 106

Describe how the anchoring bias is responsible for the better-than-average and worse-than-average effects

Answer 106

• People’s own skills serve as an anchor, but we fail to consider the skills of others
• Better-than-average effect in domains that are easy for most people
• Anchor to own experience of task feeling effortless, failing to take into account that others may feel similarly
• Worse-than-average effect in domain that are hard for most people
• Anchor to own experience of task feeling hard, failing to take into account that others may feel similarly
• Ex: pub trivia
• Kruger (1999): Ps showed better-than-average for easy tasks like ability to get along with others, written expression, spoken expression and leadership
• Ps showed worse-than-average for hard tasks like art, sales, acting, mechanics
• The more difficult a domain, the more likely we are to see ourselves as below average

Question 107

Describe Kruger’s (1999) study on the Better-Than-Average Effect and Difficulty

Answer 107

• Assessed “integrative ability” using bogus test
• Experimental manipulation: Ps either got a hard or easy test
• Ps rated own ability compared with peers’ ability (0-99 percentile)
• Predictions:
• Easy test: Ps will see own ability as above average
• Difficult test: Ps will see own ability as below average
• Findings:
• This is exactly what they found
• Difficulty of test determined whether people saw themselves as better-than or worse-than-average

Question 108

Describe the process of base rate fallacy + anchoring

Answer 108

1) How do I compare to others?
2) Base-rate fallacy (case-based info about self automatically comes to mind -> we tend to cognitively prefer case-based info and ignore distribution info)
3) Anchor to case-based info and ignore info about others/base-rates
4) If domain feels easy -> better-than-average effect OR if domain feels hard -> worse-than-average effect

Question 109

What are examples of positive illusions being good?

Answer 109

• Better adjustment to college
• More adaptive coping and survival rates in HIV/AIDS patients
• Higher subjective well-being
• Higher achievement
• More relationship satisfaction and commitment (people are more satisfied in their relationships when they see their partners through rose-coloured lenses and those who see them more realistically are less satisfied in their relationships)
• Coping with challenges
• Substantive evidence that these positive illusions are good

Question 110

What are examples of positive illusions being bad?

Answer 110

• More boasting -> consequently, alienate others (irritating when talking to someone who thinks they’re great at everything), which leads to loneliness in the long run
• Interfere with taking sensible medical precautions
• Set unrealistically high goals, leading to frequent failure and, consequently, poorer well-being
• Or, no reason to self-improve and, consequently, miss opportunities to advance skills

Question 111

Describe Dufner et al. (2018) meta-analysis on positive illusions

Answer 111

• 200 studies with more than 10,000 participants
• Positive illusions about self are good for personal adjustment: higher subjective well-being and lower feelings of depression
• Positive illusions have mixed effects for relationships:
  1. How long you know someone matters
• Self-enhancement linked with more liking by strangers, but no association for longer-term relationships
  2. Type of traits you self-enhance on matters
• Self-enhancement on collectivistic traits were seen as more likeable/warm
• Self-enhance on individualistic traits (independence, power, achievement) seen as more competent but also less likeable/warm

Question 112

Describe the implications of Dufner et al. (2018) meta-analysis on positive illusions

Answer 112

• Positive illusions are associated with people feeling good about themselves
• When interacting with strangers, it’s helpful to come across as confident
• Matters less with people one knows better
• If want to come across as likable, enhance collectivistic traits
• If want to come across as competent, enhance individualistic traits

Question 113

Describe Self-Evaluation Motives

Answer 113

• Our search for self-knowledge is guided by a few self-evaluation motives:
• Self-assessment
• Self-enhancement
• Self-verification

Question 114

What’s self-verification?

Answer 114

• Motive to confirm our existing self-views
• Leads to wanting others to view us the way we see ourselves

Question 115

What are the functions of Self-Verification?

Answer 115

• We’re looking for predictability which can be done in 2 ways
  1. Epistemic (relating to knowledge): fulfills need for coherence
• Stable self-views provide people with a powerful sense of predictability and control to experience
• Ex: religions provide clear frameworks
  2. Pragmatic: Ensures smooth social interactions
• Stable self-views foster consistent and predictable behaviour
• Predictable behaviour allows others to know what to expect from one another,
  thus fostering smooth social interactions
• Others respond to us predictably which further stabilizes behaviour

Question 116

How do people self-verify?

Answer 116

• 2 different ways:
  1) Creating social environments
• Displaying identity cues
• Selective interaction
• Interpersonal prompts

2) Cognitive biases
- Selective attention
- Selective memory
- Selective interpretation

Question 117

Describe displaying identity cues

Answer 117

• The use of symbols, appearance, or communication styles to signal to one’s self-concept to others
• Increases the likelihood of getting feedback consistent with our self-views
• Increases the chances that others will see the person the way they see themselves
• Ex: clothing or high school stereotypes of various cliques

Question 118

Describe selective interaction

Answer 118

• People prefer to interact with others that see them in a way that is consistent with the way they see themselves, even if it’s negative
• This is also the case if someone’s self-concept is negative

Question 119

Describe Swann et al. study on Selective Interaction

Answer 119

• Do people prefer to interact with people that like them or that see them the way they see themselves?
• Method: Getting acquainted study
• Participants had to choose an interaction partner for 2-3 hour conversation
• Allowed to see evaluations of them made by two potential interaction partners
• Recruited high and low self-esteem participants (this is directly hitting the self-verification and self-enhancement motives)
• High self-esteem: self-enhancement and self-verification motives align
• Low self-esteem: self-enhancement (being seen positively) and self-verification (being seen negatively) motives are in conflict
• Who do you want to interact with?
• Findings:
• Suggests that people prefer to interact with others that verify their self-views vs people that like them, but see them differently than they see themselves
• For the high self esteem people, they disproportionality chose the favourable view of them
• The majority of people with low self-esteem preferred to interact with the person that viewed them negatively
• Suggests that when these 2 motives are in conflict with each other, people prefer to interact with people who have the same views of them that they have for themselves

Question 120

Describe Real-World Evidence for Selective Interaction

Answer 120

• Evaluated what views they had of themselves and how their partners viewed them
• Spouses report greatest relationship intimacy when their partner shares their self-views, even if these self-views are negative
• People tend to withdraw from relationships where their partner doesn’t verify their self-views
• People that had a negative view of themselves felt the most satisfied and closest to their partner when the partner had a negative view of them
• Even if person has positive self-esteem, but their partner has extremely positive view of them
• Roommates also prefer roommates that share their self-views, even if negative

Question 121

Describe Interpersonal Prompts

Answer 121

• People behave in ways that elicits self-verifying feedback * Explicitly asking confirmation of self-view
• Guiding conversations that elicits self-verifying responses
• Behaviours often lead to self-fulfilling prophecies
• Ex: socially awkward -> avoiding social situations -> reinforces view of self as awkward
• Sometimes, it happens that people don’t view us the same way that we view ourselves
• This can lead people to reject others who don’t view them in that way or double down in ways to overly emphasize the way they view themselves

Question 122

Describe Symbolic Self-Completion

Answer 122

• Receiving feedback inconsistent with self-views is threatening (there’s research evidence of this)
• People compensate for this threat by using symbols and behaviors that signal this identity to others and themselves
• Intensifying behaviour consistent with this identity
• We work even harder to signal to the person who we truly are
• Becoming more confident in one’s self-view

Question 123

Describe Swann & Hill’s study on Intensifying Behaviours

Answer 123

• Method:
• Participants rated themselves on dominance vs submission
• Played a game with a confederate
• Experimental manipulation:
• Consistent feedback (ex: dominants received feedback that they’re quite dominant)
• Discrepant feedback (ex: dominants received feedback that they’re quite submissive)
• Judges rated behaviour during follow-up
  interaction with confederate
• Results: People responded to feedback that challenged their self-view by amplifying behaviour consistent with self-view
• People who were dominant amplified their dominance in response to the discrepant feedback
• And those who were submissive amplified their submissiveness in response to the discrepant feedback
• Suggests that we try to prove to others that we are a certain way rather than accept their feedback
• In the face of contradictory feedback, we double down and really try to prove what we’re like

Question 124

Describe becoming more confident in self-views

Answer 124

• What happens when important identity is threatened?
• Method: recruited heterosexual male journalism students
• Experimental manipulation:
• Confirm: “You fit the ideal profile of being a journalist”
• Threat: “You don’t fit the ideal profile of being a journalist”
• Met attractive female undergraduate “Debbie”
• Experimental manipulation:
• Debbie likes “modest guys” or
• Debbie likes “guys who think they’re great”
• Described themselves to Debbie: “How capable do you think you are in journalism in comparison to other students?”
• Ideal condition guys (you fit ideal) could adapt according to Debbie’s interests
• Evidence that people try to reinforce threatened identity by becoming more confident in self-view, even if they know that this behaviour will be seen negatively
  *Those who were told that they don’t fit the ideal completely abandoned their goal of wooing Debbie and instead tried to reaffirm their view of themselves as ideal journalism candidates

Question 125

Describe the cognitive biases in self-verification

Answer 125

• Selective attention: We pay more attention to feedback that confirms our self-views
• Selective memory: We tend to have a better memory for feedback that confirms self-views
• Likeable people more likely to remember feedback that they were likeable
• Dislikeable people more likely to remember feedback that they were dislikeable
• Selective interpretation: We are likely to interpret ambiguous feedback as consistent with self-views
• High self-esteem people tend to remember feedback as more positive than it was and low self-esteem people tend to remember feedback as more negative than it was

Question 126

Describe the Universality of Self-Verification

Answer 126

• Men and women equally engage in self-verification
• Self-verification appears to be present cross-culturally, but the specific ways in which it manifests may be different
• Ex: East Asians are more likely to seek verification on contextualized self-views (self-views specific to one situation or relationship) and less inclined to seek verification of more global attributes
• Ex: if they perceive themselves as kind in relationship with person A then they care more about being perceived as kind by person A

Question 127

Describe the Implications of Self-Verification

Answer 127

• Self-views are resistant to change
• Cognitive biases may explain why people’s self-perceptions don’t line up with the perceptions that others have of them (looking glass)
• It’s not enough to give people evidence that what they think of themselves is not true
• Generally, self-verification is adaptive because it makes perceptions of the world predictable, thus increasing psychological comfort
• Self-verification is helpful interpersonally (facilitates social interactions)
• Research with spouses
• In the workplace, people feel more connected to colleagues that verify their self-views and tend to be more productive
• But, if people have unrealistically, negative self-views, self-verification may be harmful
• Often results in choosing relationship partners that treat the person badly, thus reinforcing their negative self-views
• Helps explain why people with low self-esteem tend to stay with relationship partners that treat them badly

Question 128

Self-verification vs Self-assessment vs Self-enhancement

Answer 128

1) Self-verification
- Focus: consistency and stability
- Preferred feedback: feedback that confirm self- views, even if negative
2) Self-assessment
- Focus: accuracy
- Preferred feedback: feedback that is objective, even if it contradicts self-views
3) Self-enhancement
- Focus: positivity and esteem
- Preferred feedback: feedback that makes the self look good, even if inaccurate
* In most circumstances, people prioritize self-enhancement (#1 self-enhancement, #2 self-verification, #3 self-assessment)
* Most of the time we prefer to see ourselves positively and want others to see us positively
* Self-assessment is only prioritized when the stakes are low (ex: buzzfeed quiz) or when accurate information is critical for decision-making (ex: career-aptitude test)

Question 129

Self-Verification vs. Self-Enhancement

Answer 129

• The circumstances under which self-verification vs self-enhancement is preferred depends on:
  1) The kind of information that is accessible
• Self-verification: relies on controlled, cognitive processing
• Self-enhancement: relies on more automatic, emotional processing
• Thus, people prefer self-enhancement:
• Under conditions of cognitive load
• When in a hurry
• Sometimes results in a cognitive-affective crossfire (low self-esteem people who chose to interact with negative evaluator are suggested to be torn and ambivalent about who to choose and want a perceptive evaluator)
  2) Centrality of self-view
• For central, firmly held self-views, people tend to reject feedback that contradicts self-view, even if the feedback is positive
• Ex: Low self-esteem people choosing negative evaluator * Ex: Journalism students study
• For less central, uncertain self-views, people are more accepting of feedback from others that is in contrast with self-view
  3) Length of relationship
• People tend to seek more self-verifying (vs self-enhancing) feedback in long term relationships
• In short-term social interactions, people tend to prefer self-enhancement
• But evidence of strategic self-verification
• Even people with negative self-views seek more positive feedback on relationship relevant qualities (ex: attractiveness)
• But tend to seek self-verifying information on non-relationship relevant qualities (ex: intelligence, artistic ability)

Question 130

Describe the Cognitive-Affective Crossfire

Answer 130

• Conflict between cognition and emotion
• Cognitively, people seek self-verifying feedback to maintain a consistent sense
  of self
• Emotionally, people seek self-enhancing feedback to boost mood and self-esteem
• Ex: Love bombing: when you’re first dating someone they’re showering you with lots of affection and praise and it feels good
• However, cognitively people are realizing this person is going too quick
• Generally, people will try to avoid this crossfire, but when it happens, will tend to choose self-verification

Question 131

Describe multicultural identity

Answer 131

• Sense of belonging to at least 2 or more cultural groups (ex: Polish Canadian)
• Often experienced by:
• Immigrants (and children of immigrants)
• Ethnic minorities
• Indigenous peoples

Question 132

Describe acculturation

Answer 132

• Very common to a multicultural identity
• Process of learning and cultural change that stems from balancing two cultures while adapting to the prevailing culture of the society
• Evidence of acculturation on a psychological level
• Ex: Emotional acculturation (researchers have observed this at an emotional level)

Question 133

Describe Consedine et al. (2014) study on Individual Emotional Acculturation

Answer 133

• Study of 915 immigrant women from Eastern Europe and Caribbean living in USA compared to USA-born non-immigrant women
• They compared what their emotional and psychological experience was compared to women born in the USA
• Eastern Europe: has more ethos of emotional suppression
• Results: Longer amount of time they had spent in USA, the more they fit mainstream American emotional norms (r = 0.11)
• More expressivity and less inhibition of emotions

Question 134

Describe de Leersnyder et al. (2020) study on Generational Emotional Acculturation

Answer 134

• How well does each immigrant generations’ emotional experience fit with characteristic majority culture pattern?
• Compared emotional fit between Turks and Belgians
• This study was done in both Turkey and Belgium (primarily in Belgium)
• Turkish people in Turkey (“Turkish majority”)
• 1st generation Turkish immigrants (they themselves had immigrated) in Belgium
• 2nd generation Turkish immigrants (their parents immigrated) in Belgium
• Belgians in Belgium (“Belgian majority”)
• Assessed “emotional fit” (how much does that group’s emotional experience fit the Belgian norms) by:
• Self-report on typical Belgian emotional experiences questionnaire
• Average Belgian emotional experiences for each group
• Compare Turkish majority and immigrants’ scores to Belgian majority
• They were able to calculate 4 group averages
• Results: More contact a generation has with Belgian culture, more emotional acculturation
• The Belgian majority fit the Belgian norm most
• Turkish majority least like Belgians emotionally
• 2nd generation Turkish immigrants statistically indistinguishable
  from Belgians
• With each successive generation (each group that had more and more contact with Belgian culture) the more they fit the Belgian norm -> the more contact the person has with the culture, the more likely they are to adapt to it
• Evidence of emotional acculturation from one generation to the next

Question 135

Describe the Implications of Acculturation Findings

Answer 135

• Minority individuals seem to become more psychologically similar to majority culture individuals
• Can new culture and heritage culture co-exist?

Question 136

Describe Cultural Frame Switching

Answer 136

• Multicultural individuals’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioural reactions are context specific
• Depend on which cultural identity is activated by the situation
• It seems that we can maintain both cultures

Question 137

Describe de Leersnyder et al. (2020) study on Cultural Frame Switching in Emotion

Answer 137

• Examined 2nd generation Turkish immigrants’ emotional experience in Belgium
• Results:
• Work/school: emotions statistically more consistent with characteristic Belgian pattern
• Home: emotions fit characteristic Belgian and Turkish patterns equally well
• Suggests that multicultural individuals flexibly shift behaviour to fit culture that’s most salient in a situation

Question 138

Describe Ross et al. (2016) study on Cultural Frame Switching in Self-Concept

Answer 138

• Do multicultural individuals engage in cultural frame-switching in their self-descriptions?
• Method: Recruited European-Canadian and Chinese born students at a Canadian university
• Wrote open-ended self-description: “Describe what you’re like as a person”
• Coded writing for references to others and collective self-statement
• Questionnaire assessing agreement with Chinese cultural views
• Experimental manipulation for Chinese students:
• Study done in Chinese or study done in English (randomly assigned Chinese students to either do the study in English or in Chinese)
• Language acting as a cultural prime
• European Canadians all did study in English
• Findings:
• Chinese participants’ self-descriptions are more characteristically Chinese when answering in Chinese than in English
• For those completing the study in Chinese, they’re more likely to endorse Chinese views, reference others, and make collective statements
• This indicates that being exposed to Euro-Canadian culture and completing the study in English had enough of an effect on Chinese participants to have more individualistic views

Question 139

Describe the Implications of Cultural Frame Switching

Answer 139

• Even though multicultural individuals undergo acculturation, their heritage cultural identity and mainstream cultural identity can co-exist
• Can flexibly shift between cultural selves depending on which is most salient
• This is often not done strategically and is instead much more automatic
• Cultural frame switching is an example of the working self-concept

Question 140

Describe Navigating Multicultural Identity and the 4 different multicultural degree strategies that a person can adopt

Answer 140

1) Integration: participate in mainstream culture and hold onto heritage identity
- High in maintaining heritage cultural identity and participation and identification with mainstream culture
2) Separation: hold onto heritage identity, avoid mainstream culture
- High in maintaining heritage cultural identity
- Low in participation and identification with mainstream culture
3) Assimilation: participate in mainstream culture, give up heritage identity
- Low in maintaining heritage cultural identity
- High in participation and identification with mainstream culture
4) Marginalization: not participating in mainstream or heritage culture
- Low in maintaining heritage cultural identity and participation and identification with mainstream culture

Question 141

What are some factors affecting Multicultural Identity Strategy?

Answer 141

• Which multicultural identity strategy a person adopts depends on:
• To what extent are they encouraged to hang on to heritage identity by larger
  society and/or family
• How much exposure do they have to the mainstream culture (ex: where do they live? -> Italian immigrant moving to little Italy may not have as much exposure to the mainstream culture)
• How similar is the heritage identity to the mainstream identity
• These multicultural identities may not feel as much as a choice as there are all sorts of factors that’ll influence whether someone identifies with the mainstream culture or their cultural heritage

Question 142

Describe Berry et al. (2006) study on Multicultural Identity and Well-Being

Answer 142

• Method: study of immigrant youth from 26 different cultural backgrounds and living in 13 different countries
• Assessed multicultural identity strategy
• Psychological adaptation: degree of life satisfaction, self-esteem, and mental
  health issues
• Sociocultural adaptation: school and behaviour problems (ex: dropping out of school, substance use)
• Findings:
• Integration strategy most common (Integration = 36%, separation = 23%, marginalization = 22%, assimilation = 19%)
• Integration strategy more common the longer a person lives in the mainstream/“new” culture
• People born in or who had lived 12+ years in new culture showed integration strategy 2x more than people who had lived in new culture for less than 6 years
• Integration associated with best psychological and sociocultural adaptation, marginalization associated with the worst adaptation
• Separation associated with better psychological adjustment than assimilation, but similar sociological adaptation

Question 143

Describe the implications of Berry et al. (2006) study on Multicultural Identity and Well-Being

Answer 143

• People are more reluctant to give up heritage cultural identity
• Choose separation (23%) over assimilation (19%)
• Giving up heritage identity (assimilation or marginalization) associated with poorer psychological adjustment than not identifying with mainstream culture (separation)
• Suggests that multicultural individuals should be encouraged to retain their heritage cultural identity as well as establish close ties with new culture (integration)

Question 144

Describe the updated understanding of cultural groups

Answer 144

• Cultural groups extend beyond ethnicity, nationality, and race
• Independence: West, Global North, men, high SES, businesses, liberal religious groups, and coasts
• Interdependence: East, Global South, women, low SES, governments, conservative religious groups, and heartlands (center of countries)
• Means that there are a lot of individual differences in a person’s social orientation even within a country
• A person’s social orientation towards independent or interdependence will depend on:
• Their mix of cultures
• What is salient in a given context

Question 145

Describe Santos et al. (2017) study on Individualism being on the rise

Answer 145

• Method: examined 51 years of data on individualistic values and practices across 78 countries
• Results: found that individualism is on the rise in most countries (seems to be globally on the rise)
• Overtime across these countries, people were more likely to live alone, less likely to personally take care of elderly relatives, less emphasis on family, increased importance of teaching children independence, increased preference for self-expression, also more likely to get divorced overtime
• Canada became more individualistic overtime and China became less individualistic overtime (outlier)
• Socioeconomic development was the biggest predictor of increased individualism (mediator for the relationship between time and individualism)
• There was a positive association between time and socioeconomic development
• As time went on, countries tended to move in a more socioeconomic development sense

Question 146

What’s culture?

Answer 146

• “Culture is a loosely integrated system of ideas, practices, and social institutions that enable coordination of behaviour in a population”
• Often when we talk about culture, we’re talking about ethnicities and nationalities

Question 147

Individualistic cultures vs collectivistic cultures

Answer 147

Individualistic Cultures:
* Common in Western countries
* Prioritizing the individual via self-interest and self-expression
* Driver of behaviour are internal states (own thoughts, feelings, desires)

Collectivistic Cultures:
* Common in East Asian countries
* Prioritizing the group and group harmony via suspension of self-interest
* Drivers of behaviour are external factors (duties, responsibilities, norms, others’ expectations)

Question 148

How do individualistic vs collectivistic cultures shape self-concept?

Answer 148

Individualistic Cultures:
* Fosters an independent self-concept
* Distinguishing self from others by focusing on what makes one unique from others
* Focus on personal identity (ex: traits, abilities, interests)
* Ex: extroverted (non-relational term)
* The characteristics for ingroup or outgroup will be more fluid

Collectivistic Cultures
* Fosters an interdependent self-concept
* Fitting self with others by focusing on aspects of identity that make one similar to close others and collective
* Focus on social roles and the self in relation to others
* Ex: daughter (relational term)
* The characteristics that define an ingroup and outgroup will be more clear due to higher overlap in attributes

Question 149

How Does Culture Shape the Individual?

Answer 149

• Important function of culture is to provide guidance (a set of guidelines and norms) for what is normal and how to be a person
• Provides a recipe
• This is transmitted by institutions (ex: school, government) which shape how people interact with each other which then shape individuals
• We internalize this guidance and in doing so, this shapes our self-concept
• What are the characteristics of the social group I value? -> Self- stereotyping -> Validation by others that I’m a good member of the group

Question 150

Describe Parenting Across Cultures

Answer 150

Individualistic Culture:
* Mothers teach infants early on to spend time on their own (toys, pacifiers and blankets are common objects for babies to learn how to soothe themselves)
* Babies are expected to start sleeping alone without parents starting at 3 months
* Emotional self-expression is encouraged
* Babies are encouraged to smile and to make positive vocalizations

Collectivistic Culture:
* Mothers teach infants early on that obedience and respect are important
* Co-sleeping for the first couple years of life (in a crib or maybe even in own room)
* Conversations with children are directive and instructional and obedience is praised

Question 151

Describe Subsistence theory

Answer 151

• The way people in a culture historically made a living influences culture
• Farming cultures are more interdependent
• Many people have to work on one field because farming is extremely labour intensive and covers lots of ground
• To be a successful farmer, you can’t do it by yourself
• You have to learn to collaborate
• People have to share the harvest of farming for the rest of the year as they all worked on it together
• Eastern cultures = traditionally farming culture
• Herding and fishing cultures are more independent
• Food is more consistent and less reliant on the weather so have to negotiate and cooperate with others less
• Herders rely on working with others less
• Can move if conflict arises
• Western cultures = traditionally herding culture

Question 152

Describe Cultural Differences in Cognition

Answer 152

• People from different cultures may be thinking about the world and perceiving the world differently
  Individualistic Cultures
• Analytic thinking:
• Focus on individual components of a situation/object
• Attention directed at specific details rather than context
• Reasoning relies on categorization and logic
• Ex: American children put the chicken and cow together because focus on category

Collectivistic Cultures
Holistic thinking:
* Focus on the whole and the relationship between parts
* Attention to broader patterns and the context
* Reasoning relies on experience and detecting patterns
* Chinese children put the cow and grass together because focus on relationship

Question 153

Describe the Rod and Frame Test

Answer 153

• People sit in front of this tube and down the tube they see this white line which is moving and rotating, as well as the structure (square)
• P has to tell experimenter stop when they think the white line is vertical
• Degree to which a person’s perception is affected by the context or surrounding environment (“field”)
• Field dependent: more affected by context/environment
• Field independent: less affected by context/environment
• East Asians are more field dependent

Question 154

Describe study on cultural differences in causal attribution

Answer 154

• Causal attribution: Why did this happen? Who (what) is responsible?
• Hypothesis: North Americans and East Asians should attribute responsibility differently
• North Americans should be more likely to attribute responsibility to the individual
• East Asians should be more likely to attribute responsibility to the social collective or situation
• Studied Attribution of responsibility in newspapers
• Analyzed articles about “rogue trader” scandals reported in American
  vs. Japanese newspapers
• Counted # references to individual (disposition) vs. organization (situation) as responsible for scandal
• Findings:
• American newspapers more likely to attribute responsibility to individuals (disposition)
• Japanese newspapers more likely to attribute responsibility to organizations (situation)

Question 155

Describe Cultural Differences in Emotion

Answer 155

Western Cultures
* More emotionally expressive
* Value maximizing positive experiences
and minimizing negative experiences
* Emphasis on socially disengaging emotions :
* Emotions that focus on self and distinctiveness (ex: pride, feeling superior, frustration, self-esteem)
* More important for happiness (vs socially engaging emotions)
* Suppressing emotions is distressing and can lead to negative mental and physical health outcomes
* Personal expression is valued

Eastern Cultures
* More emotionally restrained
* Value a balance of positive and negative emotional states
* Emphasis on socially engaging emotions:
* Emotions related to fitting in and connecting with others (ex: wanting to feel close, respect for others, guilt, shame)
* More important for happiness (vs socially disengaging emotions)
* Suppressing emotions may not lead to negative mental and physical health outcomes
* Emotional restraint is valued