Motivated Self - Week 7_1 Flashcards
In a study on self-serving biases, married couples rated how much they and their spouse took responsibility for 20 household tasks and the researchers found that, on average, subjects thought they were more responsible for 16
out of the 20 tasks than their spouse. What cognitive explanation should we rely on to understand this result?
Subjects could remember more instances of their own behavior
- Cognitive explanation: we only remember what we do and correlate it with an estimate of the total responsibility
- This is correlated with one’s estimate of responsibility
In a study on the accessibility of positive and negative cognitions after failure, researchers found among subjects with high self-esteem, subjects in the failure condition named their strengths ___________ and named their weaknesses _______, compared to the non-failure condition
More quickly; more slowly
- Bc they have a high self-esteem, failing didn’t make them think their intelligence was worse, they saw it as a growing opportunity
- High self-esteem makes strengths salient and weaknesses
- Low self esteem makes weakness more accessible
Why do we ever choose to receive negative feedback from others, considering that it may make us feel bad about ourselves?
- We want to improve ourselves
- We want to feel known by others
(It will make you feel bad (but you dont want to feel phony/inauthentic)
(We want to accurately be known by others)
(We mostly have positive self-views, so we don’t choose to receive negative feedback very often)
I have performed as a singer for many years and it is how I earn my living. According to self-evaluation maintenance theory, would I be happier watching a weak social tie or a strong social tie excel at singing, and why?
Weak social tie, because this is a self-relevant domain
-Self-Evaluation Maintenance theory (Abe Tesser): focuses on self-relevant domains and not self esteem
- We should (or tend to) choose friends whom we outperform in domains relevant to our self-concept - OR friends who are talented in domains that are not relevant to the self
Self Evaluation Maintenence Theory
Affects views of the self
Abe Tesser Results on Self-evaluation maintence theory
Low Happy if Strong social tie -> in Self-related domain
High happy if Strong social tie -> in not self-related domain
Med happy if weak social tie -> in Self-related domain
higher Med happy if weak social tie -> in Not self -related domain
When we see someone we know doing good in something we do, we are usually not genuinely happy for them because it poses some kind of threat to us
Baskin in reflected glory (Cialdini, 1976)
- Sometimes we want our friends to succeed and do well
BUT, sometimes we feel bad if our friends do well bc it affects implication social comparisons about us - We’re happy for our friend if they do well in something we DONT CARE about, but if they do well in something we do care about, then it doesnt make us happy
Balance Theory
You need to have a postive result in the triad and that comes from mulitplying the sides to each other
(-) (-) (+) = +
(+)(+)(+) = +
Cognitive mechanism for giving biased answers (on what a good friend is)
- Growing up we usually dont hear negative feedback
- Friends usually see us in a positive light, so we think of how they think of us
- You know times when you have been a good friend, (so you have insights to you being a good friend)
Motivational Mechanisms on why we give biased answers
- We usually protect ourselves from bad situations (self-protective mechanisms
- We tend to have an unreasonably high self-esteem and think we’re great at everything
- We choose how to define comparison dimension ( we rate the importance of characteristics our friends should have based on the qualities we think we possess and change it if we actually don’t have them)
Self-serving bias - (Epley & Whitchurch, 2008)
unattractive female target - actual - attractive female target
-study where your face is merged to be either attractive or unattractive
- People tend to “recognize” themselves on the scale closer to the attrative face than what they actually are (20% better)
What is the only possible explanation for the type of illusion as the Epley & Whitchurch study ?
Motivational illusion - we want to have a higher respect and are motivated to do so
Sociometer hypothesis (Mark Leary)
- We want to meet societies standards to be accepted (generalized other)
- But we actually cant know if were esteemable to others
- We become aware that we’re an object for other ppls judgement
Self-Esteem Brown & Dutton (1995)
- testing the idea to threaten ego and see how it affects people
- FOUND ppl with low self-esteem feel A LOT worse after hearing negative feedback than ppl with a high self-esteem
Why do High self-esteem folks feel better than Low Self-esteem folks after failure? - Dodgson & Wood (1998)
- HSE folks focus on their strengths
(Dont let 1 test determine their worth, they focus on their strengths) - LSE folks focus on their weaknesses (weaknesses come to mind easier after failure)
- HSE also more likely to laugh at comedy after failure. LSE doesnt, they let the failure ruin their mood
- HSE also more likley to help others after failing than LSE
