perceiving oneself

Question 1

self-perception theory

Answer 1

• “Individuals come to ‘know’ their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their overt behaviour and/or the circumstances in which this behaviour occurs”
• Bem, 1972, p.2

Question 2

embodied social cognition

Answer 2

• Self-perception can be subtle, automatic and implicit, rather than conscious.
• Body language and facial expressions might not be aware of doing them and understanding ourselves from them - feeling more happy just from smiling.
• Studies of “embodied social cognition”:
  
  • Changing facial expressions - changing emotions (Laird, 1974; Lewis, 2012)
  • Making a fist - feeling assertive and powerful (Schubert and Koole, 2009 - but only among men)
    
    • Open posture - feelings of power (Carney, Cuddy and Yap, 2010 - but hormones and risk tolerance not replicated).

Question 3

so how accurate are we?

Answer 3

• Generally, people are not very accurate
• Self-evaluations of ability correlate “moderately” with performance outcomes - mean r = .29 (Zell and Krizan, 2014)
• Self-perceptions share 8.4% of variance with objective measures.
• For many dimensions, accuracy cannot be defined.

Question 4

self-perception effects

Answer 4

• Effects on self-concept strongest:
  
  • When behaviour interpreted as freely chosen
  • When prior self-concept weak or uncertain
  • When behaviour observed by an audience
    
    • When one expects to meet the audience again

Question 5

self-serving attributions

Answer 5

• Heider (1958) claimed that people selectively tend to attribute their successes internally and their failures externally (=”self-serving bias”)
  
  • Campbell and Sedikides (1999) meta-analysed 70 experiments and reported a ‘small-to-moderate’ average effect size (d=.467)
    
    • Effects significantly larger in situations of “self-threat”

Question 6

better than average effect

Answer 6

• “One of social psychology’s chestnuts - a finding that will never let you down when running a class demonstration” (Alicke and Govorun, 2005)
  
  • 88% of US and 77% of Swedish college students rated selves above 50th percentile on driving safety (Svenson, 1981).
  • 85% of 1m US students rated selves above median in “ability to get along well with others” (College Board, 1976-1977)
  • 94% of University of Nebraska faculty rated selves above average in teaching ability (Cross, 1977)
  • Research participants in three studies even rated themselves as less biased than average (Pronin et al, 2002)
• Recent meta-analysis by Zell et al (2020) shows ‘large’ overall effect size across 291 studies
  
  • Weaker among East Asians than among European/Americans but only for individualistic traits
• NB some people are above average
  
  • Group-level definition of inaccuracy
  • Impossible to know which individuals are inaccurate
• NB negative connotation of “average”
  
  • E.g., UK government wants all schools to be “above average”
    
    • But not all studies use this word.

Question 7

basking in reflected glory

Answer 7

• “Three (football) field studies”:
• Study 1 - introductory psychology students at 7 large universities were “covertly monitored” in lectures over 5-8 weeks during college football season.
• 40% more students wore “school apparel” on Mondays after a football win than after a loss or draw.
• Studies 2 and 3 tested students’ use of language to describe wins and losses by the college team
• General pattern - “we won” but “they lost” - especially in situations of “public image threat”
• Cialdini et al, 1976

Question 8

positive group distinctiveness

Answer 8

• Social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979)
  
  • People strive for positive group distinctiveness
  • i.e., perceiving your group as better than relevant out-groups, similar to downward comparison
• Routes to positive group distinctiveness include:
  
  • Individual mobility - move to a better group
  • Social competition - try to improve group’s status
    
    • Social creativity - look at things differently

Question 9

memory for self-relevant info

Answer 9

• “One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory” - Rita Mae Brown (US author)
• Mnemic neglect - selectively worse memory for negative self-relevant feedback
  
  • Threatening feedback processed more shallowly
  • Seemingly linked to experiential avoidance
  • Effects are weaker when traits are modifiable or one is focused on self-improvement
• Sedikides et al, 2016

Question 10

self-enhancement strategies

Answer 10

• self-promotion function - greater among high SE people
• self-protection function - especially when SE is threatened
• subject to plausibility constraints - ‘strategic’ self-enhancement
• Sedikides and Gregg, 2003

Question 11

is it all about self-enhancement?

Answer 11

• self-enhancement
• self-consistency
• self-assessment
• self-improvement
• may be elicited under different circumstances
• satisfied by different information sources
• Taylor, Neter, and Wayment, 1995

Question 12

self-enhancement vs self-consistency

Answer 12

• Self-enhancement - predicts people will prefer positive feedback regardless of their self-views.
• Self-consistency - predicts people with negative self-views will prefer negative feedback.
  
  • Experiments with 2 (self-view: positive/negative) x 2 (feedback: positive/negative) design
  • Predictions diverge for negative self-views
• Swann et al, 1987

Question 13

cognitive affective crossfire

Answer 13

• positivity of feedback predicts - affective reactions: depressive feelings, hostility, anxiety, attraction to evaluator
• consistency with self-concept predicts - cognitive reactions: perceived accuracy of feedback, competence of evaluator, suitability of evaluation technique, attributions about feedback
• Swann et al, 1987

Question 14

self-enhancement vs self-assessment

Answer 14

• as noted earlier, we are not usually very accurate in evaluating ourselves
• self-assessment rarely beats self-enhancement of self-consistency when pitted against each other e.g., Sedikides, 1993
• some exceptions where trait is modifiable
• self-assessment - self-improvement
• or temporary flaws are just less threatening

Question 15

self concept enhancing technician

Answer 15

• Self-enhancement:
• Tactical self-enhancement:
  
  • Self-improvement
  • Self-assessment
  • Self-consistency
• Sedikides and Strube, 1997

Question 16

culture and self-enhancement

Answer 16

• Heine et al (1999) review paper: is there a universal need for positive self-regard?
• evidence for self-criticism rather than self-enhancement effects among East Asian
• populations
• East Asians populations show lower levels of self-esteem than do North-Americans

Question 17

pancultural self-enhancement

Answer 17

• Sedikides, Gaertner and Toguchi (2003) studied self-enhancement (better than average effect) for probability valued traits among American and Japanese in the US
• two separate types of traits:
• individualistic traits
• collective traits

Question 18

indirect self-enhancement

Answer 18

• Muramoto (2003) studied attributions for success and failure among 118 Japanese undergraduates
• Rather than self-serving bias, participants typically made self-effacing attributions
• Expected close others (family and close friends) to make supportive attributions
• Believed close others understood them well
• Belief others understood them correlated with expecting supportive attributions.

Question 19

modesty in Chinese culture

Answer 19

• Studies 1 & 2:
  
  • Self-rated modesty correlated negatively with explicit self-esteem in China and US
  • Self-rated modesty correlated positively with implicit self-esteem in China, but not in US
• Study 3:
  
  • After describing selves modestly, Chinese (but not Americans) showed increased implicit self-esteem
  • After describing selves immodestly, Chinese (but not Americans) showed reduced implicit self-esteem
• Cai et al (2011)

Question 20

self-evaluation across cultures

Answer 20

• Existing data do not support the claim that people from “Eastern” cultures no need for positive self-regard
• Culture moderates self-evaluation
• Culture affects what is positively valued
• Culture prescribes appropriate ways of maintaining and enhancing self-esteem
• Evidence still lacking from most of the worlds cultural groups

Question 21

the actor

Answer 21

• characteristic ‘residing in the individual’
• domain of personality psychology
• single trait theories
• multiple trait theories
• hereditary and environmental influences

Question 22

the observer

Answer 22

• how person is perceived/judged by others
• domain of social psychology
• person perception
• attribution theories
• impression formation

Question 23

the self-observer

Answer 23

• person’s beliefs about own characteristics
• domain of social and clinical psychology
• self-perception
• self-concept
• identity
• self-evaluation

Question 24

behavioural confirmation

Answer 24

• Replicated with many dimensions
  
  • Extraversion (Fazio et al, 1981)
  • Gender stereotypes (Skrypnek and Snyder, 1982)
  • Age and task difficulty (Musser and Graziano, 1991)
  • Ethnic stereotypes (Chen and Bargh, 1997)
  • Basketball ability (Weaver et al, 2016)
• Effects sometimes but not always persist:
  
  • When behaviour attributed to disposition
    
    • When target alters self-concept

Question 25

self-verification theory

Answer 25

• Swann (2005) describes how we work hard to verify existing self-conceptions:
• Cognitive strategies: self-consistent feedback - more attention, better memory and more trusted
• Selective interaction: spending time with others who see us as we see ourselves, even negatively
• Identity cues: clothing choices, possessions, e-mail signatures, bodily alterations (> if identity insecure)
• Interpersonal prompts: emphasise self-consistent behaviour (> after inconsistent feedback)

Question 26

identity negotiation

Answer 26

• Self-verification - stable self-concept
• Might conflict “in the moment” with behavioural confirmation and self-perception
  
  • Self-verification if self- conception certain and central
  • Behavioural confirmation if no prior self-conception
  • We negotiate our identities with each other
• Over life-span, there might be less conflict
  
  • Others’ expectations help us form self-conceptions
    
    • Self-verification helps us to maintain them

Question 27

sociocultural context

Answer 27

• Societal discourse both enables and constrains identity formation
• What kinds of people exist in the world? - identity categories
• What are they like? - stereotypes, interpersonal expectancies
• What identity choices are available? - identity compatibility, possible future selves

Question 28

discourse and identity change

Answer 28

• Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson (1995)
• Interviews with 80 lesbian women who had previously lived > 10 years in heterosexual relationships
• Discursive analysis looking at processes of identity transition from heterosexual to lesbian.
• How did individual participants construct and experience their identities in a particular ‘discursive climate’?

Question 29

barriers to identity change

Answer 29

• I can’t be a lesbian because I … have children/enjoy cooking/have long hair/can’t fix my own car.
• “I read [ …] some psychology textbooks. They told me that lesbians were aggressive, jealous, doomed, masculine, perverted, and sick. I was tremendously reassured. I knew that I couldn’t possibly be one of those!”
• “I began to try on the word lesbian: me? No! I would look funny in a crew cut. Certainly I could never learn to smoke cigars! My own stereotypes interfered with the unfolding of my new identity. Lesbians aren’t mothers, I thought to myself; they probably don’t like to cook or weave or do any of the things I like.”

Question 30

making the transition

Answer 30

• “I was looking at myself in the mirror, and I thought ‘that woman is a lesbian,’ and then I allowed myself to notice that it was me I was talking about. And when that happened, I felt whole for the first time, and also absolutely terrified.”
• One woman described how, 2 weeks after first saying to herself (and her husband of 15 years) “I am a lesbian,” she sat for hours staring at the family photograph albums “trying to work out which one was me.”
• Another woman described how she stood in the aisle of a supermarket with an empty trolley, staring at the shelves in total bafflement “because I was a lesbian now, and I didn’t know what kind of groceries lesbians bought.”

Question 31

adjusting to a new identity

Answer 31

• “I did have a brief holiday relationship with a girl when I was 14, but I’d completely forgotten about it. I’d pushed it to the back of my mind as not being significant. In fact, it was very significant, but until recently that experience seemed very separate from my adult life.”
• “I had no idea how difficult it was going to be […] what it means and continues to mean to be a lesbian in this world—the weight and force of being “wrong,” “bad,” “wicked,” “perverted,” outside and ultimately apart from the codes and concepts of everyone else—vulnerable in the extreme. I had no idea how good it was going to be. Not only the warmth, the feeling of being on the same side, the sensuality, friendship, renewed energy, but the freedom to begin to think and act in new ways.”

Question 32

a threat in the air

Answer 32

• “From an observer’s standpoint, the situations of a boy and a girl in a math classroom or of a Black student and a White student in any classroom are essentially the same. The teacher is the same; the textbooks are the same; and in better classrooms, these students are treated the same.
• Is it possible, then, that they could still experience the classroom differently, so differently in fact as to significantly affect their performance and achievement there?”
• Steele, 1997, p.613

Question 33

stereotype threat and performance

Answer 33

• Participants:
  
  • White and African Americans taking verbal tests
• Manipulations of stereotype threat:
  
  • Study 1: told participants test was strongly diagnostic of ability (threat) or non-diagnostic (control)
  • Study 2: participants stated ‘race’ on demographic questionnaire before test (threat) or not (control).
• Control: no ethnic differences in test scores
• Threat: African Americans < White Americans
• Steele and Aronson, 1995

Question 34

stereotype threat and performance 2

Answer 34

• Participants:
  
  • Women and men taking maths tests
  • All strong in maths, saw themselves as strong maths students, saw this as important to self-definition.
• Manipulation of stereotype threat:
  
  • Participants told that test normally showed gender differences (threat) or not (control)
• Control condition: scores of women = men
• Stereotype threat: scores of women < men
• Spencer, Steele and Quinn, 1999

Question 35

group differences in IQ

Answer 35

• 15 point IQ gap between White and African Americans
• Similar gap appears for minorities in other cultures:
  
  • Maoris in NZ
  • Baraku in Japan
  • Harijans in India
  • Oriental Jews in Israel
  • West Indians in GB
• Including where minority has no genetic difference from majority (Ogbu, 1986, cited by Steele, 1997)
• Suggests explanation in terms of stereotyping processes rather than genetic differences (Steele, 1997)

Question 36

stereotype threat mechanisms

Answer 36

• Effects do not depend on belief in stereotype - people who care most are worst affected
• Several mechanisms:
  
  • Extra pressure - working memory depletion, self consciousness interferes with automatic processes.
  • Threats to self-integrity and belonging - lower aspirations, reduced effort/engagement
• Reviewed by Spencer et al, 2016

Question 37

self-theories and mindset

Answer 37

• People have implicit theories about the nature of personality, intelligence, morality and other individual differences
• These theories, when applied to the self, have important consequences, especially for people’s motivation and performance (Dweck, 1999)

Question 38

entity theories

Answer 38

• “Everyone is a certain kind of person, and there is not much that can be done to really change that”
• “Your intelligence is something about you that you cant change very much”
• “Someone’s personality is a part of them that they cant change very much”

Question 39

incremental theories

Answer 39

• “Everyone, no matter who they are, can significantly change their basic characteristics”
• “No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit”
• “No matter who somebody is and how they act, they can always change their ways”

Question 40

performance and learning goals

Answer 40

• Which of these tasks would you prefer?
  
  1. “easy enough so you wont make mistakes”
  2. “something you’re good at, but hard enough to show you’re smart”
  3. “hard, new different - you might get confused and make mistakes, but you might learn something new and useful”
• 1 & 2 = 2 performance goals
• 3 = learning goal

Question 41

implicit theories and goals

Answer 41

• School children divided into entity theorists and incremental theorists, based on questionnaire
  
  • Entity theorists preferred performance goals
  • Incremental theorists preferred learning goal
• Subsequently replicated with manipulation of entity bs incremental theories
• Reviewed by Dweck, 1999

Question 42

implicit theories and achievement

Answer 42

• Students followed over transition from grade school to junior high school - harder work, stricter grading, more ‘challenging’
• Separated into entity and incremental theorists:
  
  • No differences in confidence before transition
  • No differences in achievement before transition
  • Entity theorists declined in class standing
  • Incremental theorists increased in class standing
• Reviewed by Dweck, 1999

Question 43

reducing stereotype threat

Answer 43

• White and African American students shown a film with ‘scientific’ arguments for either entity theory or incremental theory of intelligence
• Ethnic gap in GPA achievement significantly in ‘incremental’ condition
• African American students in this condition also reported more enjoyment of academic process and greater academic engagement
• Aronson, Fried and Good, 2002

Question 44

effects of praising intelligence

Answer 44

• After succeeding on a task, students were praised for intelligence (experimental condition) or for effort (control condition)
• Intelligence praise led to:
  
  • Greater endorsement of entity theory of intelligence
  • Preference for performance rather than learning goals
  • Poorer coping responses to subsequent failure:
  • Less task persistence, less task enjoyment, more low-ability attributions, worse task performance
• Mueller and Dweck, 1998

Question 45

implicit theories and relationships

Answer 45

• Entity theorists seek self-validation
  
  • “someone who thinks I’m perfect”
  • “someone who makes me look good”
• Incremental theorists seek self-growth
  
  • “someone who challenges me to grow”
  • “someone who gives me experience understanding others”
• Reviewed by Dweck, 1999

Question 46

implicit theories and judging others

Answer 46

• Entity theorists are more likely to:
  
  • Make faster dispositional attributions about people based on their behaviour
  • Believe in ‘punishment’ as social justice
  • Believe in the truth of stereotypes
• Incremental theorists are more likely to:
  
  • Be more cautious about inferring dispositions
  • Believe in ‘education’ as social justice
  • Question the truth of stereotypes
• Reviewed by Dweck, 1999

Question 47

self-theories - some implications

Answer 47

• Common beliefs:
• Students with high ability are more likely you display mastery-oriented qualities
• Success in school directly fosters mastery-orientated qualities
• Praise, particularly praising a student’s intelligence, encourages mastery-oriented qualities
• Students’ confidence in their intelligence is the key to mastery-oriented qualities.
• All of these beliefs are FALSE (Dweck, 1999)

Question 48

conclusions

Answer 48

• Identity construction is a social process
  
  • We are actors, observers and self-observers, constructing our own and others’ identities.
  • Identity maintenance requires work
  • So does identity change
• This happens within broader societal contexts
  
  • Repertoire of available identity categories enables and constrains our identity choices
• Our identity work can reproduce or change society.