The self Flashcards
what is the self?
the individual as a whole, including all characteristics, attributes, mentality, and consciousness
majority of the self is automatic
What purpose does the self serve?
- Long road towards social acceptance
- Keeping yourselves on track (self-satnav)
- Play social roles – society creates and defines roles, individual seeks and adopts them
What is the biological basis of self awareness?
- Anterior cingulate cortex responsible for controlling and monitoring intentional behaviour
- Activated when people become self-aware
What is self awareness?
- Attention directed at the self (private self-awareness, public self-awareness)
- Usually involves evaluative comparison
- Focusing on the self is a predominantly negative feeling
What is private self awareness?
- Awareness of the private aspects of oneself
- Can have positive consequences if people focus on positive aspects of the self
- But can lead to depression if people focus on the negatives
e.g., study asked PPs to read positive or negative statements about the self, and they became more extreme in their emotional responses when looking in a mirror
What are some studies that show the benefits of private self awareness?
- Improves behaviour, e.g. reduces cheating behaviour, improves eating behaviour (e.g., Diener 1979)
- Makes us more moral (Diener and Wallborn, 1976)
What is self awareness theory?
- Proposed by Duval and Wicklund (1972)
- Suggests that some situations, such as looking in a mirror, lead to self awareness
- Self aware people feel bad because they notice discrepancies between standards
- They can either shape up by matching the behaviour to the standard, or ship out by trying to escape the self-aware state
What is the purpose of self awareness?
- Self regulation
- Endure pain
- Adopt perspective of other people
- Manage behaviour in pursuit of goal
- Functions as a kind of personal achievement (am I still on the right track?)
Are animals self aware?
- Mirror test – dot placed on crow’s beak; recognised difference
- But is self-awareness possible without language?
What did Cooley (1902) propose?
Looking glass self
- You imagine how you appear to others
- You imagine how others will judge you
- You develop an emotional response as a result of imagining how others will judge you
What is symbolic interactionism?
e.g., Mead 1934
- Seeing oneself from the outside
- Seeing ourselves as others see us
- Being aware of ourselves is a crucial part of being able to control ourselves
- Adhering to social norms
- Learning how to change
What is the self concept?
- Complete set of beliefs people have about themselves
- Made up of self schemas, which are different dimensions of the self
- Some schemas are more important to people than others
- E.g., someone can be self-schematic on the dimension of extraversion (this trait is important to them) and self-aschematic on the dimension of generosity (this trait is not important to them)
- Self schemas determine our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour in specific contexts
What are self schemas
beliefs about oneself that help people process self relevant information
What was the study by Markus (1977)
- Pps who were self-schematic on independence or dependence more quickly associated with words associated with their schemas
- Also more able to recall experiences that demonstrated their schema
What is the multiple role theory?
asserts that it is beneficial for a person’s health and wellbeing to have multiple self identities
- Complexity of the self is important
- Beneficial to health and wellbeing to have multiple self identities (opens up new experiences, but also has risk of failure and frustration
- Self schemas that are too extreme can have negative effects
- Quality vs quantity of roles is important
what is priming?
exposure to stimuli that activate a mental representation of a particular concept, value, goal or object
What is self concept clarity?
- Extent to which self-schemas are clearly and confidently defined, consistent with each other and stable across time (Campbell et al, 1996)
- Important to have strong, unified sense of self, but with many facets
- Bolsters psychological wellbeing and self-esteem (Nardonne & Raines, 2010)
Nezlek and Plesko (2001) - Diary study
- Had over 100 pps complete the self concept clarity scale twice a week for up to 10 weeks
- Some days self concept clearer than others
How accurate is our self knowledge?
- People appear not to notice when, or why, their attitudes change (Bem & McConnell, 1970)
- People appear not to understand how situational factors affect their behaviour (Latane & Darley (1970)
- People appear to not understand why they like things (Nisbett & Wilson (1977)
- People believe their behaviour is influenced by factors that, in fact, do not influence it (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977)
What are the theories of self?
Self perception theory
Self discrepancy theory
Regulatory focus theory
Control theory of self regulation
Social comparison theory
Self evaluation maintenance model
What is the self perception theory?
- Bem 1967
- People learn about the self by examining their own behaviours
- E.g., if you go to church, you come to see yourself as religious
- These effects can occur just by imagining our behaviour (Gyn et al, 1990)
What is the self discrepancy theory?
- Focus on people’s awareness if discrepancies between the actual self and their perceived and ought self
- Actual self: how a person sees the self at the present time
- Ideal self: how a person would like to see the self
- Ought self: how a person thinks they ought to be
Psychological discomfort from these discrepancies:
- Sadness/disappointment from discrepancies between actual and ideal self
- Annoyance and frustration from discrepancy between actual self and ought self
What is self regulation?
an attempt to match behaviour with an ideal/ought standard of the self
What is the regulatory focus theory?
- Higgins (1997, 1998)
- Builds on self discrepancy theory
- People and animals have two distinct regulatory systems:
1) Promotion (approach orientated in constructing the self)
2) Prevention (cautious and avoidant in doing so) - Individual differences, mood and context can affect which system people take
1) Confronted with loss = prevention
2) Confronted with win = promotion - Promotion approach increases creativity (Friedman & Forster, 2001)
What is the control theory of self regulation?
- People test the self against public and private standards and change behaviour if there is a discrepancy (Carver and Scheier, 1981, 1998)
- Cognitive feedback loop
What is social comparison theory?
- To learn about and define the self, people compare themselves with others
- Upward social comparison can have negative effect on social esteem
- Downward social comparison can have positive effects on self concept
- Temporal comparisons: comparing oneself with a self from the past or with an anticipated future self
What is the self evaluation maintenance model?
- People are able to maintain their self esteem when making upward comparisons
- Exaggerate the ability of the better person
- Engage in downward social comparison with another
- Avoid the comparison person
- Devalue the dimension on which the other person is better (e.g., chess is meaningless anyway)
What is self esteem?
- A persons subjective appraisal of the self as intrinsically positive or negative
- Influenced by upbringing: authoritarian, permissive parenting styles
- Chronic individual differences – genetics?
- All research agrees that self-esteem fluctuates throughout life
What is the sociometer theory? (relating to self esteem)
- Self esteem acts as internal thermometer of social inclusion
- Sign of exclusion = lower self esteem and negative emotions
- People change their behaviour to be included
What is contingent self esteem?
- People can base their self esteem on outside factors
- If SE is based on larger range of factors, more likely to have higher SE
- The opposite is true for a narrow set of factors (e.g., appearance, attractiveness)
Why does self esteem matter?
- Mood regulation, protection from the terror of death
- Aggression (lower self esteem more likely to be aggressive)
- However, vast amount of research suggests high SE associated with aggression
- Narcissism – high levels of SE – some research suggest insecure high SE, but more research suggests that narcissists just have high SE
- Narcissists can become aggressive in the face of criticism
What is symbolic interactionism?
- Perspective from which researchers investigate how people can create meaning through social interaction, how they construct and represent the self and how they define situations when they are with others
- Symbolic interactionists such as Cooley (1902), Blumer (1969) and Mead (1934), a basic task of human life is to see ourselves from the outside, so that a person’s sense of ‘me’ is attuned to the beliefs and needs of others
- When we evaluate ourselves, we adopt the perspective of a generalised other, which helps us to be guided by social norms and avoid being punished
what is ego depletion?
notion that self control and willpower are a finite resource that can be used up
what is the strength model of self control?
theory arguing that self control cannot be maintained for an unlimited period of time and needs to be replenished
what is publication bias?
research is more likely to be published if its results are significant than when they are not
what is temporal comparison?
act of comparing oneself with the way one was in the past
what is social reflection?
the ability to derive self esteem from the successes and achievements of close others, without thinking about one’s own achievement
