Social Self Flashcards
What are the 3 bases of the self (ABC)?
Affect, behaviour, and cognition
What is affect (emotion)?
How people evaluate themselves, enhance their self-images, and defend against threats to their self-esteem.
What is behaviour?
How people regulate their own actions and present themselves to others according to interpersonal demands.
What is cognition?
How people come to know themselves, develop a self-concept, and maintain a stable sense of identity.
What is the difference between a self-concept and a self-schema?
A self-concept is the total sum of beliefs that people have about themselves and a self-schema is the beliefs one has about oneself that the processing of self-relevant information.
What is a schematic trait? An aschematic trait?
A schematic trait is relevant to who you are while an aschematic trait is not relevant to who you are.
What is the age at which self-recognition usually begins?
1-2 years.
What are the two steps to the development of a self-concept?
Recognizing yourself as an entity and seeing your own traits in others
What is affective forecasting?
The process of predicting how one would feel in response to future emotional events (we are usually wrong about this)
What is impact bias?
People dramatize predictions of emotional reactions.
What is the self-perception theory?
The theory that when internal cues are difficult to interpret, people gain self-insight by observing their own behaviour.
What is vicarious self-perception?
Learning about ourselves through the perception of the behaviour of people similar to us.
What is the facial-feedback hypothesis?
The hypothesis that changes in facial expression can lead to corresponding changes in emotion. This is related to the self-perception theory. Some psychologists believe that facial expressions can cause physiological changes in the brain.
What is intrinsic motivation?
Motivation that comes from internal factors like self-interest and joy.
What is extrinsic motivation?
Motivation that comes from external factors like rewards or means to an end. This helps us ern verbal praise and recognition.
What is the overjustification effect?
The tendency for intrinsic motivation to diminish for activities that have become associated with rewards or other extrinsic factors.
What is the social comparison theory?
The theory that people evaluate their own abilities and opinions by comparing themselves to others.
What is the two-factor theory of emotion?
This is also known as the Schachter-Singer theory.
This is the theory that the experience of emotion is based on two factors: physiological arousal and a cognitive interpretation of that arousal.
What are flashbulb memories?
Detailed, high resolution recollections that are useful evolutionarily for survival.
What is dialecticism?
An Eastern system of thought that accepts the coexistence of contradictory characteristics within a single person.
What is the sociometer theory?
The theory that self-esteem is a gauge that monitors our social interactions and sends us signals as to whether our behaviour is acceptable to others. The name was coined by Baumeister.
What is the terror management theory?
The theory that humans cope with the fear of their own death by constructing worldviews that help to preserve their self-esteem.
What is the self-awareness theory?
The theory that self-focused attention leads people to notice self-discrepancies, thereby motivating either an escape from self-awareness or a change in behaviour. It states that people try to reduce inward negativity/self-discrepancy, and if they fail, resort to escaping self-awareness altogether through alcoholism, drug abuse, masochism, etc.
What is implicit egotism?
A nonconscious form of self-enhancement.
What are some self-serving beliefs?
- People blame personal errors on external factors
- We think that the future will work in our favour
- We think we are more in control of our lives than we actually are
What is self-handicapping?
Behaviours that are designed to sabotage one’s own performance in order to provide a subsequent excuse for failure. Self-handicapping makes failure more likely.
What is BIRG (basking in reflected glory)?
Increasing self-esteem by associating yourself with those who are successful.
What is temporal social comparison?
Comparisons to others that include one’s past or future self.
What is social affiliation?
We connect to people in similar predicaments because it makes us feel joined together.
What is the spotlight effect?
People think that others focus more on them than they actually do.
What is ingratiation?
Engaging in acts motivated by the desire to get along with others.
What is self-promotion?
Acts with the intention of getting ahead and being respected.
What is self-verification?
The desire for others to perceive us the same way we perceive ourselves.
What is self-monitering?
The tendency to change behaviour in response to the self-presentation concerns of the situation.
What are the three types of social comparisons?
Upwards - comparing ourselves with someone judged to be better than we are with the goal to improve ourselves
Downwards - comparing ourselves with someone judged to be not as good as we are with the goal to make ourselves feel better
Lateral - comparing ourselves with someone who is considered to be more or less equal or similar to us with the goal of being accurate
What is the recency effect?
We remember more recent things more easily.
What is the Dunning-Kruger effect?
Everyone tends to overestimate their own abilities, but some do it more than others.
