Self and Identity Flashcards
What is the self?
Awareness that we exist as an individual, separate from other individuals
What is self-awareness?
A psychological state in which people are aware of their traits, feelings and behaviours
Lewis & Brooks (1978)
- Put a spot of red on the nose of babies and put them in front of a mirror
- 9 - 18 months treated mirror images as another child
- 18 months children recognised that the reflection was themselves
Why do children develop self-awareness around 18 months?
- Children show a rapid growth of spindle cells in the anterior cingulate, thought to be responsible for monitoring and controlling intentional behaviour (Allman & Hasenstaub, 1999)
- Same area is activated when adults are self aware (Kjaer, Nowak & Lou, 2002)
Types of self-awareness
- Private self-awareness
- Public self-awareness
Private self-awareness
‘I’m aware of me’
Looking in a mirror, reflection on emotional state
Public self-awareness
‘I know others are aware of me’
Being photographed, giving a presentation
Consequences of private self-awareness
- Intensified emotional response
- Clarification of knowledge
- Adherence to personal standards of behaviour
Intensified emotional response
Positive feelings get more positive/negative feelings get more negative
Scheier & Carver (1977)
- Participants read aloud positive or negative statements
- Participants who looked in the mirror during this task (private self-awareness) became more extreme in their responses
Clarification of knowledge
- Focus on internal events means we can report them with greater accuracy
Gibbons et al. (1979)
- Ppts given a placebo which would increase arousal
- Those in front of a mirror were less fooled, less arousal and less side effects
Adherence to personal standards of behaviour
People are more aware of their true beliefs, and will act in line with those beliefs, rather than being influenced by normative pressures
Scheier & Carver (1980)
- Counter-attitudinal essay study
- Cognitive dissonance is usually experienced when people’s behaviour is inconsistent with their attitudes
- People then change attitudes to reduce cognitive dissonance
- People in front of a mirror during this task changed their attitudes less than no mirror condition
Consequences of public self-awareness
- Evaluation apprehension
- Adherence to social standards of behaviour
Evaluation apprehension
When people are the focus of other people’s attention, they realise that they are being appraised by those observing
Leads to nervousness and reduced self-esteem
Adherence to social standards
Group norms affect people’s behaviour, even if these don’t match privately held standards
Self-consciousness types
- Privately self-conscious
- Publicly self-conscious
Privately self-conscious
- Experience more intense emotions
- Less likely to suffer ill-health due to attending to physiology and attending to problems earlier
- Greater tendency to suffer from depression and neuroticism, due to rumination on feelings of unhappiness/discomfort
Publicly self-conscious
- Concerned with others’ perceptions of them, and so adhere to group norms
- Avoid embarrassing situations
- More concerned with their appearance and more likely to judge others according to their appearance
Theories of self-concept maintenance
- Theories of self comparison
- Theories of individual comparison
- Theories of group comparison
Theories of self comparison
- Control theory of self-regulation
- Self-discrepancy theory
Theories of individual comparison
- Social comparison theory
- Self-evaluation maintenance model
Theories of group comparison
- Social identity theory
- Self-categorisation theory
Control theory of self-regulation
- Carver & Scheier (1981)
- Through self-awareness we are able to assess whether we are on track to meet our goals
- Allows us to monitor whether we are on track to meet our goals
- If we aren’t, we then take goal directed action
- We then monitor again, resulting in a feedback loop (test, operate, test, exit)
Baumeister et al (1998)
- Hungry participants were split into eat only radishes and eat only chocolate cookies
- Participants who had to exert self-control (eat radishes) were less able to persist on an impossible problem solving task
- Suggests limited cognitive resources at our disposal to self-regulate
Self-discrepancy theory
- Higgins (1987)
- The actual self (how we are)
- The ideal self (how we want to be)
- The ought self (how we think we should be)
Higgins et al (1986)
- Participants thought about the discrepancy between their actual and ideal self, vs their actual and ought self and reported on their emotions
- Actual-ideal discrepancy = dejection
- Actual-ought = agitation
- Low discrepancies = no change in either emotion
Social comparison theory
- Festinger (1954)
- Social comparisons can be defined as evaluations of your own attributes, through a comparison with others
- Two types of social comparison; upwards comparison, downwards comparison
Upwards comparison
Comparisons made to individuals perceived as better (feel worse)
Downwards comparison
Comparisons made to individuals perceived as worse (feel better)
Self-evaluation maintenance model
- Tesser (1988)
When someone is more successful than us, we deal with it by…
1) Exaggerating the ability of the successful target
2) Change the target of the comparison
3) Distance the self from the successful target
4) Devalue the dimension of comparison
Social identity theory
- Tajfel & Turner (1979)
- Two important aspects of the self
- Personal identity
- Social identity
Self categorisation theory
- Turner et al. (1987)
- Group norms define collective identities
- When an individual’s social identity is made salient, they perceive themselves more in terms of the shared group features and adhere more to group norms
Jetten, Spears and Manstead (1996)
- Participants were told they were going to be assigned to one of two groups
- Asked to distribute money between members of their own group and members of another group
- Fairness or discrimination strategy manipulated
- Participants were strongly influenced by the norm of their own group
Self-esteem
The evaluative component of the self concept
Sedikides & Gregg (2003)
A person’s subjective appraisal of himself or herself as intrinsically positive or negative to some degree
Baumrind (1991)
- How positive our self-concept is in later life appears to be dependent on parenting styles
- Authoritative - reasoned arguments, child as person in their own rights, boundaries
- Authoritarian - overly strict, controlling, absolute obedience
- Permissive - no restriction/boundaries, indulge child’s every desire
Robins et al (2002)
- Meta-analysis of 50 studies has found that tendencies to have high/low self-esteem can vary over time
- Children aged 6-11 had fairly unstable self-esteem, because their concept is still developing
- Greatest stability found in people in 20s-adulthood
- By 60, self-esteem stability declines, perhaps due to later life changes (retirement, loss)
Consequences of low self-esteem
- Level of self-esteem someone has impacts on the way they regulate their mood
Wood et al (2003)
People with low self-esteem actively dampen their positive feelings
Brown & Dutton (1995)
People with low-self esteem tend to feel worse after a negative event than those with high self-esteem
Heimpel et al (2002)
Following failure, people with low self esteem make less goals and plans to improve their mood
Consequences of high self-esteem
- Narcissism
- Extremely high self-esteem
- Unstable and fragile
- Reliant on validation from others
Positive characteristics of narcissism
- Initially likeable
- Extraverted
- Unlikely to suffer from depression
- Perform well in public
Negative characteristics of narcissism
- Crave attention
- Overconfident
- Lack empathy
Bushman & Baumeister (1998)
- High self-esteem is associated with aggression
- Participants wrote an essay marked by another ‘participant’
- Praise vs threat conditions
- Competitive reaction task where loser receives a blast of noise
- Positive relationship between narcissism and aggression
Self-motives
- Self assessment - desire to know ourselves
- Self verification - desire to confirm what we already believe to be true
- Self enhancement - a desire to seek information that allows us to see ourselves in the best possible light
Self-affirmation theory
- Steele (1975)
- We respond to threatened self-esteem by publicly affirming
Self-serving attribution bias
- We interpret events in a manner that is favourable to our view of ourselves
- Success attributed to internal characteristics
- Failures attributed to external characteristics
What part of the brain is involved in self-awareness?
Anterior cingulate nucleus
What part of the brain is activated when making mental inferences about people?
Prefrontal cortex
Self-schematic
If…
- A particular aspect of the self is important
- A person thinks they are extreme on the aspect
- They are certain that the opposite is not true
Social identity approach
- Tajifel & Turner (1979)
- When people’s social self is salient, they incorporate in their self-concept any traits that are thought to be part of the group, regardless of whether those traits are positive or negative
Trafimow, Triandis & Goto (1991)
- North American and Chinese ppts
- Write down 20 self-descriptions
- North American students wrote down significantly more individual self-descriptions than Chinese students
- Chinese students significantly more collective self-descriptions
