Self-Esteem and Self-Knowledge Flashcards
1
Q
Rosenberg self-esteem scale
A
- Ranges from 0-30
- 15-25 = normal, below 15 is abnormal
2
Q
low self-esteem associated with
A
- Getting bad grades in high school
- Being an unwed mother, a drug addict, a criminal
3
Q
high self-esteem associated with
A
- Popularity (self-reported)
- Physical attractiveness (self-reported)
4
Q
critical looks at self-esteem claims
A
- Remember: correlation doesn’t equal causation
- Attempts to boost self-esteem don’t always work (ex. poor students who got weekly booster messages did worse on exam)
- Lack of objective measures (ie. Reliance of self-report)
- People who feel good about themselves see themselves as sexy and socially skilled
- Objective measures -> correlations shrink
5
Q
benefits of self-esteem
A
- Promotes persistence in the face of failure
- Reducing bulimia
- Happiness
- But does not fix everything
- Better to see it as a reward for doing well than as a cause of doing well (ex. Boosting self-esteem for someone who did well on an exam rather than trying to boost it before they write it)
6
Q
self-knowledge (and its barriers)
A
- understanding yourself and your motives
- motivational and cognitive barriers
7
Q
motivational barriers
A
- our self-knowledge can be distorted by the desire to see ourselves in a positive light
- ex. Daffodil Day study -> we want to see ourselves as good people who support cancer research, so we overestimate that we’ll buy a daffodil
8
Q
cognitive barriers
A
- our self-knowledge can be limited when we don’t have access to the information we need to make an accurate judgment
- ex. Being sick on daffodil day and not coming to school – you had no way of predicting that
- People lack introspective access to the reasons underlying their preferences (ex. Pantyhose study) -> because of this, it’s hard to evaluate our own abilities
9
Q
other defecits in self-knowledge
A
- not always due to desire to see ourselves in a positive light! (motivational barriers)
- Top performers are pretty accurate or slightly underestimate performance
- The most incompetent people are the worst at recognizing their own incompetence
- The same skills needed to perform well are needed to assess performance (ie. Singing, French)
10
Q
motivational and cognitive barriers example: racist guy study
A
- 1 real participant, 2 confederates (1 black, 1 white)
- black guy bumps white guy, white guy says either extreme slur, moderate slur, or nothing
- people predict that participant will be super distressed and won’t want to work with racist dude, but participants actually didn’t really care
- WHY?
- motivational barriers: we want to see ourselves as good, non-racist people, but when we’re put in situations were we could act in a positive way, we don’t always do it
- cognitive barriers: situation may tap into unconscious racial bias
11
Q
Recognizing Incompetence Study (Dunning): what did they do?
A
- asked college students to estimate performance on an exam after they wrote it
- did similar thing, but this time gave half participants info on how to solve the problems, giving them skills they needed to distinguish accurate from inaccurate
12
Q
Recognizing Incompetence Study (Dunning): what did they find?
A
- students who did the worst greatly overestimated how well they did
- ones given skills provided much more accurate self-ratings than before
- top performers also are a bit inaccurate, but they underestimate themselves
13
Q
Recognizing Incompetence Study (Dunning): Why did they find what they did?
A
- inability to recognize incompetence due to double-curse: skills needed for correct responses are the same as ones needed to estimate accuracy of responses (ex. ability to produce logical argument needed to know when a logical argument has been made)
- therefore, can’t complete metacognition (evaluating responses as correct or incorrect)
- estimates of performance arise from top-down approach (start with beliefs about their skills, using those to estimate how well they’ll do on a task… however people often overestimate their skills)
