the self Flashcards
self concept
everything we can claim as ‘me’ or ‘mine’
a knowledge representation that contains knowledge about us - our beliefs about things like our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals
distinctiveness theory
our unique, distinctive, characteristics are more salient to us than the characteristics we have in common with others
multiple selves
we see ourselves differently in different situations - context influences what spontaneously comes to mind when we describe ourselves
dynamic self concept
multiple selves are evidence of the dynamic nature of self concept - representations of the the self change in response to the environment
working self concept
the subset of self knowledge that is accessible at any one moment
where does the working self concept come from?
the parts of our associative network of the self that have been most recently activated
associative networks
metaphorical networks of cognitive concepts that store and organize our knowledge about things - like our self concept
spreading activation
when one piece of knowledge is activated, other concepts that are linked with it are also activated - concepts that are strongly linked will be activated more quickly
what is accessibility of self knowledge a function of?
frequency of activation and recency of activation
working self concept and core self
working self concept depends on recency of activation and core self depends on frequency of activation
evidence for situational activation - questionnaire study
one of these tricky studies that pretend to be what they’re not -
used a fake questionnaire to manipulate whether people saw themselves as introverted or extroverted - found that simple priming was enough to influence how ps described themselves and how they behaved with a confederate
evidence for situational activation - scrambled sentence
ps were primed with being rude or polite through a scrambled sentence task - then told to wait while the experimenter finished up with another p (confederate) - measured amount of time it took for p to interrupt them - ps in rude condition were 3 minutes faster to interrupt than the polite condition and 65% of rude ps interrupted compared to 15% of polite ps
self schemata
aspects of the self that are more central that then guide how we process new information about the self
schematic traits
traits that a person is extreme on/are very important to them
aschematic traits
traits that don’t apply to a person - they don’t feel strongly either way about them
self schemata testing
had ps identify which traits described them and which were important to them - then categorized ps as schematic or aschematic for certain traits
- a few weeks later ps did a me/not me task where they responded to traits presented to them - was found that ps had faster reaction times for schematic traits, meaning these traits were more accessible for them
what explains consistency in self descriptions and behaviour across situations
self schemata
where does our self concept come from?
- self perception
- looking glass self
- social comparison
- social identity
self perception theory
we come to learn about ourselves through observing our own behaviour
looking glass self
how we see ourselves comes from how others see us, or, more often than not, how we think others see us
social comparison
we compare ourselves with others to form conclusions about our relative standing on attributes, abilities, opinions, etc
social identity theory
the social groups we belong to play an important role in how we see ourselves
