The Self Flashcards
What is the self-schema?
a cognitive structure, derived from past experience, that represents a person’s beliefs and feelings about the self, both in general and in specific situations.
What is reflected Self-appraisal?
A belief about what others think of oneself
What is the working self-concept?
A subset of self-knowledge that is brought to mind in an particular context.
Example: You may want to be more outgoing when with your friends but not so much when you’re with people you don’t know.
What is the social comparison theory?
The idea that people compare themselves to other people to obtain an accurate assessment of their own opinions, abilities, and internal states/
What is self-esteem?
The overall positive or negative evaluation people have of themselves
People with truly low self-esteem are found within…
clinical settings, such as people with severe depression.
What is trait self-esteem?
The overall positive or negative evaluation people have of themselves.
What is state self-esteem?
The dynamic, changeable self-evaluations a person experiences as momentary feelings about the self.
What are the sources of self-esteem?
- One’s social environment
- One’s looks (particularly for women)
- One’s socialization within and across cultures.
Sociometer theory
Self-esteem is not a reflection of how much we like ourselves, it is a marker of how much others like us, the degree to which we are currently accepted/ included.
Self-enhancement motive
The desire to maintain, increase, or protect the positive views you have of yourself.
What are the self-enhancement strategies?
- The Self- serving attributional bias
- Self-affirmation
- Downward social comparison
What is the self-serving attributional theory?
To take credit for success and deny credit for failure
The self-affirmation theory?
You affirm yourself in an unrelated domain after a failure/threat.
Example: “ Sure I failed my math test, but at least I’m still good at crochet.
Downward social comparison
To compare yourself to people you perceive as worse off than you.
