Social Psych & Self identity

Question 1

Self and Identity

Answer 1

Self is viewed as a reflection of individuality

Question 2

The individual Self

Answer 2

“Their unique traits… by differentiating from others… relies on interpersonal comparison”
Brewer & Gardner (1996)

Question 3

The relational self

Answer 3

“their dyadic relationships… based on personalized bonds of attachment”
Brewer & Gardner (1996)

Question 4

The collective self

Answer 4

• “in terms of group membership… the collective self contains those aspects of the self-
• concept that differentiate in-group members from members of relevant out-
• groups”
• Brewer & Gardner (1996)

Question 5

What are theories of self-concept maintenance? Self-comparisons

Answer 5

(e.g. self-discrepancy theory; Higgins, 1987)
self-schema:

• Actual self - how we currently see ourselves
• Ideal self - how we would like to see ourselves
• Ought self - how we think we should be (based on duty and responsibility)

Discrepancies between the actual and ideal/ought self can harm self-esteem and wellbeing

Question 6

Increased Self-comparisons

Answer 6

female students with high-discrepancy were more likely to compare themselves with thin models, increasing the discrepancy between their ideal and ought self–> negative emotions–> Low self esteem (Bessenoff, 2006)

Question 7

Decreased Self-comparisons

Answer 7

More often, though, we are motivated to reduce self-discrepancies, using self-regulation which may be changing our behaviour by exercising self control

Question 8

Individual comparisons

Answer 8

Social comparison theory; Festinger, 1954)

‒ When things cannot be measured objectively, we look to others for cues.

‒ Learn about ourselves by comparing ourselves with other people

‒ E.g. “good” or “bad” depends on whether we are “better” or “worse

‒ tend to prefer downward social comparisons – comparing ourselves to someone
who seems worse

Question 9

The Dunning-Kruger effect

Answer 9

Low-skilled people systematically over-rate their skill

students in the bottom 12% of test-scores believed they outperformed 62% of their peers

Cons: isn’t always practical to compare downwards, and so we sometimes have to make upwards social comparisons—-> harm our self-esteem

Question 10

Self-regulation strategies

Answer 10

• Exaggerate the ability of the better person (so comparison is meaningless)
• Balance with downward social comparisons
• Avoid the source of comparison
• Devalue the dimension of comparison (e.g. if someone is better at cooking then decide cooking is unimportant)
  • (Tesser, 1988)

Question 11

Group comparisons

Answer 11

Social identity theory; Tajfel & Turner, 1979

Question 12

The Social Identity approach

Answer 12

Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner et al., 1987

provide us a sense of identity, group membership becomes salient, our self-perception
becomes depersonalized.

Question 13

Gleibs et al. (2013)

Answer 13

Asked people to rate their life satisfaction at different times

­People’s income predicted their life satisfaction when they were travelling home from work
on their way to work, people’s income was unrelated to their happiness