Self 5 Flashcards
Self verification Culture: experiment 1
Heine and Lehman
- Japanese vs. Canadians (independent/interdependent)
whats the Self verification theory
Swann
- we don’t always want to self-enhance
- Sometimes we wanna be correct about ourselves, Even negative ones!
- We want other people to see us how we see ourselves
Self-verification: The motivation to confirm what we already know about ourselves
- hard to differentiate self-verification from self-enhancement
- Evidence in support of self-verification= comes from people who have negative self views
- Socrates— not agrandising self— ACTUALLY understand yourself even if its negative– not how great you are
why self-verify?
- to stabilise self-views
- maintain a sense of coherence of yourself— that I’m not delusional, this is who i am – self-unity
- can make better predictions about the world— expect what people are gonna do
- guide behaviour— how to interact with people
- Self-verifying information= fosters positive affect
how do you self-verify?
Strategies:
- Seek self-verifying partners— honest partners
- Communicate self-views to others: show identity cues, show behaviours that will bring others to see you as you see yourself
- “See” self-verifying evidence: Biased attention and recall
evidence for self-verification: seeking self-verifying partners
Swann
- Completed questionnaires in pre-testing= whether they see themselves negatively or positively
- ps indicated whether they would prefer to interact with a positive evaluator or a negative evaluator
- asked to “think aloud” into a tape recorder as they chose an evaluator
- results:
- positive view holders didn’t rly want to interact with negative evaluator
- but negative view holders rly wanted to interact with negative evaluator
- people wanted to interact with partners who made them feel they knew themselves= becasue you feel like you are on the same page as experimenter
- prefer to interact with partners who evaluate us in the same way as we see ourselves
Evidence for Self-verification: Communicating Self-views
SWann
- ps interacted with someone who either: viewed them similarly or differently to how they see themselves= Led to believe that the partner (female) saw them favourably or unfavourably
- F and M interacted= this interaction was judged
- results:
- ps behaved in ways that confirmed their existing self-views— but there was an interaction between what the F thought of p (incongruent or congruent to self view)
- if F had incongruent views about you, you are more likely to show who you are
- if F had correct views of who you think you are= you don’t feel like you have to express yourself
- SO= we communicate our self-views to others
Evidence for Self-verification: Biased attention
Swann
- ps told that another person evaluated them– 5 evaluations and there is 1 that is inline with your self view— put all these evaluations up on board)
- testing if they pay more attention to feedback that were inline with their self view
- ps spent longer reading the evaluations if it was consistent with their self-view
- SO= we pay more attention to self-verifying information
Why would you choose negative evaluators?
Flawed personalities
Perceived similarity
Winning converts
Flawed personalities
- more likely to Think aloud— they know me better
- Depressive individuals— have tendency— if negative about self= seek feedback from others that sustain negative view about self
- so they seek for interaction
Perceived similarity
- Think aloud suggests narrow focus— seems to know who I am, they might help me understand myself more
- very narrow focus, not desire to interact
Winning converts
- interact with those who have negative view of them= wanna convince them that they are wrong
- you wanna convert them— why don’t you like me
Self-verification: Cultural Differences: experiment
Seih
- Indians and North Americans
- Completed questionnaire on self-views (sociability)
- Imagined that two people had evaluated them
Positive: “I’d say this person probably feels comfortable and at ease around other people”
Negative: “I get the feeling that this person doesn’t seem socially confident”
- DV: Rated how accurate they thought the evaluation was
- Results:
- Both Americans and Indians showed evidence of self-verification
- but this effect was stronger among Americans= Americans= self-verification more pronounced than Indian
Is Self-verification Adaptive?— how useful is it
- Swann= argues that non self-verifying information can be costly even if positive
- People who have negative self-views:
- feel weird about compliment, more likely to get sick after positive life events (Shimizu & Pelham)
- Swann= promote survival:
- can predict other groups’ behaviours
- being on the same page with your relationship partner= successful child-rearing
- higher self-verifiaction= allwos Highly qualified job candidates to receive job offers
difference between self-v and self-e??
- Recall Taylor and Brown’s– argument that self-enhancing biases (“positive illusions”)= beneficial for psychological adjustment
BUT - Swann= argues that non self-verifying information can be costly even if positive
- People who have negative self-views:
- feel weird about compliment, more likely to get sick after positive life events (Shimizu & Pelham)
similarities between self-v and self-e??
- self-enhancement can promote survival
- self-verification also promotes survival
