The self, other and intersubjectivity

Question 1

What is the self?

Answer 1

The individual as an object of its own conscious reflections

Question 2

What do we need to understand the self?

Answer 2

Self-awareness

Question 3

What is self-awareness?

Answer 3

The understanding that we are a separate entity from other people and objects in the world

Question 4

How did Darwin (1872) first explore self-awareness of orangutans? What did he find?

Answer 4

placed looking glass between 2 young orangutans. They approached close and protruded their lips towards the image (as if to kiss it) as they had done with each other - did not exhibit awareness was themselves, not another orangutan

Question 5

What did Darwin’s (1872) research lead to the development of?

Answer 5

The mirror self-recognition test (Gallup, 1968)

Question 6

What is the mirror self-recognition test? (Gallup, 1968)

Answer 6

Mark placed on animal’s forehead and animal placed in front of mirror.
Self awareness assumed if animal touches mark on own forehead.
Chimps, Asian elephants, killer whales, dolphins and magpies all pass this test.
This is only a test of physical awareness, NOT psychological sense of self.

Question 7

What does self-awareness require?

Answer 7

Self-concept

Question 8

What is self-concept?

Answer 8

The socially derived (from interactions with others) personal summary of who we are.

Question 9

Where does self-knowledge come from?

Answer 9

Introspection

Question 10

What is introspection?

Answer 10

The process by which we observe and examine our internal states (mental and emotional) for behaving in certain ways.
- Valuable data source and analytical process

Question 11

What is the issue of inaccurate reflections with introspection? (eg. Wilson and Nisbett, 1978)

Answer 11

There is a potential for inaccurate reflections because people are not conscious of all reasons for doing things.
Wilson and Nisbett, 1978 asked female shoppers to rate quality of nylon stockings displayed on a rack. They were all the same, however, shoppers claimed to have picked based on softness and workmanship when in truth they tended to pick the one they saw last.
- Therefore, people can make up reasons on the spot without realising so.

Question 12

What is the issue of the potential to repress unwanted thoughts and experiences with introspection? (eg. Macrae et al., 1994)

Answer 12

We have limited self-insight about aspects of ourselves we wish were not true.
Macrae et al., 1994 asked ppts to avoid stereotypical thinking while writing about skinheads yet when expecting to meet with them, ppts in suppression condition sat significantly further away from them.

Question 13

What is the issue of potentially overestimating own positive aspects in introspection?

Answer 13

Most people think they are better than average on attractiveness, personality traits, skill, competence etc…
Can be good for coping mechanisms but can get in the way when more accurate views would be helpful.

Question 14

In what way do pragmatic forces advance the use of introspection?

Answer 14

Pragmatic = practical
- Social psychologists may have differing aims for research from measuring stable constructs to developing rich meaning (qual vs quant)
- Introspection is hard to make robust BUT is an alternative way of understanding the self compared to triangulating multiple abstract measures

Question 15

What is the dynamic self? How is it formed?

Answer 15

Highly variable and socially contextualised
- Developed through social interactions eg. how do others react and respond to you?
- We actively interpret and create social feedback rather than passively absorbing it - eg. choosing our friends, behaviours, and clothes.

Question 16

How did Morf and Koole (2015) define self-construal (active)?

Answer 16

A person’s views and knowledge about themselves is shaped through an active construal (interpretation) process in interaction with the social environment.

Question 17

How is self-construal motivated?

Answer 17

By how we would like to see ourselves eg. fun/smart/generous

Question 18

What are a key part of self-construal?

Answer 18

Motivation biases eg. does your social media reflect who you are or how you would like to be seen?)

Question 19

What does the story of Anna Sorokin provide evidence for?

Answer 19

There is no limit to the selves you can construct (agentic)

Question 20

Other than doing as an agent in control of how we see ourselves, what else can the self involve?

Answer 20

Being - describing and understanding our thoughts and feelings.

Question 21

Due to involving being and doing, what does this mean for the self’s structure?

Answer 21

It has an elaborate knowledge and feeling structure which can both guide and constrain our behaviour.

Question 22

In what way are the doing and being self intertwined?

Answer 22

Our behaviour is shaped by perceptions of both of these - the self is a social construct formed through our interactions with others.

Question 23

What are the 3 models for understanding the self?

Answer 23

1. Self-perception theory (Bem, 1972)
2. Social comparison (Festinger, 1958)
3. Self-expansion model (Aaron et al., 2013)

Question 24

What does Bem’s (1972) self-perception theory suggest?

Answer 24

That people can infer states by observing their own behaviour in the same way that they observe others.
Behaviour -> attitudes

Question 25

What are attributions and what are the two types of motivational attributions according to Bem’s (1972) self-perception theory?

Answer 25

Attributions - explaining the process of behaviour we observe in others and ourselves.
1. Intrinsic motivations
2. Extrinsic motivations

Question 26

What is the justification effect?

Answer 26

Where an intrinsic motivation becomes undermined by an external reward. eg. being motivated to write an essay because you enjoy it vs getting a good grade for the essay

Question 27

What is Festinger’s social comparison theory (1954)?

Answer 27

When people are uncertain of their abilities or opinions, they evaluate themselves through comparison with others.
- We often feel the need to benchmark ourselves against others even when there is objective info available
- eg. if you get an objectively high grade, you still compare yourself to others to see if you did better/worse

Question 28

What is the motivation principle of self-expansion model?

Answer 28

Basic human motive to explore, self-improve and broaden perspectives

Question 29

What is the inclusion-of-other-in-self principle of self-expansion model?

Answer 29

Expanding self through relationships, because the other’s resources, perspectives, identities are experienced as your own.

Question 30

What did Aaron et al., 1995 study in relation to self-expansion?

Answer 30

Asked 329 1st and 2nd year UG students 5 times over 10 weeks to indicate if they had fallen in love.
- At each testing point, ppts had to make an open-ended list of self-descriptive items.
- Students who had recently fallen in love increased descriptors to include features of new partner in self-concepts

Question 31

Who created the concept of the generalised other?

Answer 31

George Herbert Mead (1934)

Question 32

How did George Herbert Mead (1934) form an understanding of the generalised other?

Answer 32

• Interested in children’s play. - all games involve a position exchange (taking the role of others) and so to be good at games, you have to form a structured and organised idea of a generalised other and how to respond to the challenges it presents

Question 33

What is the generalised other?

Answer 33

A guiding concept in knowing what to do in certain situations

Question 34

What is the Sally-Anne test?

Answer 34

A false belief test of theory of mind
- The study involved showing the children a story involving two dolls called Sally and Anne. They were shown Sally putting her ball in a basket and leaving the room. While she was out of the room, Anne moved the ball from the basket to her box. When Sally came back, the child was asked where Sally would look for her ball and if they had developed theory of mind, they would say in the basket because that is where Sally left it and she did not know it has been moved.

Question 35

What is Laing’s (1966) interpersonal perception method?

Answer 35

Mapping direct perspectives and meta perspectives within a relationship can reveal important constructs related to agreement, disagreement and perspective taking

Question 36

What are direct perspectives according to Laing’s (1966) interpersonal perception method?

Answer 36

what self and other think about x

Question 37

What are meta perspectives according to Laing’s (1966) interpersonal perception method?

Answer 37

Each party’s estimation about what other thinks about x

Question 38

What did Heasman and Gillespie (2018) study show?

Answer 38

• we only ever develop an approximate model of what we think others are thinking (not a true model), and seek to constantly update this model with new information
  This describes a phenomenon that has been called anchoring and adjustment (Epley et al., 2004)

Question 39

What is Komeda’s (2015) similarity hypothesis? How does this apply to autism?

Answer 39

Similarities between target and perceiver can facilitate cognitive processing and empathy
- Autistic individuals are able to remember stories more accurately and have greater empathy for characters with similar traits to them

Question 40

What is Milton’s (2012) double empathy problem?

Answer 40

A disjuncture in reciprocity between two differently disposed social actors - a relational problem between people of different neurotypes

Question 41

How did Rommetveit (1976) define intersubjectivity?

Answer 41

Communication aims at the transcendence (existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level) of the private worlds of ppts. Sets up what we might call states of intersubjectivity

Question 42

What is intersubjectivity?

Answer 42

A shared psychological space we create when we communicate.
- Through dialogue we can co-create new social realities
- Shaped by social situations, groups, norms, cultures and imaginations.
- Differs from coordination because coordination focuses on consensus whereas intersubjectivity focuses on how people create shared understanding

Question 43

What is conversation analysis?

Answer 43

A method for gathering data involving naturalistic interactions and systematically analysing its structural organisation

Question 44

Why focus on naturalistic interactions in conversation analysis?

Answer 44

• Meaning is constructed through interactions with others, the environment and context
• minute details can be important depending on context

Question 45

Why is conversation analysis structurally organised?

Answer 45

• There are so many implicit rules that enable communication to take place
• Understanding structure of dialogue can tell us how psychologically relevant meaning is shared and understood

Question 46

What 4 schools does conversation analysis come from?

Answer 46

• Linguistics
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Anthropology

Question 47

What 4 things can be studied in conversation analysis?

Answer 47

• Power (who is speaking, how long, how often)
• Co-constructed meaning (how is shared meaning constructed? How are people and activities organised?)
• Norms (Social norms, what is said/not allowed to be said/cultural norms)
• Institutions (Used extensively in healthcare settings)

Question 48

What are 4 features to look out for in conversation analysis?

Answer 48

1. Turn taking organisation
2. The adjacency pair
3. Repairs and third-turn sequences
4. Gaps and lapses

Question 49

What are turn-constructional units?

Answer 49

Pieces of conversation that comprise an entire turn

Question 50

What are transition relevant places?

Answer 50

the end of a turn-constructional unit where we may go to another speaker or the same speaker may continue

Question 51

What are adjacency pairs?

Answer 51

The cooperative aspects of language mean that many statements we make are intimately linked together eg. greeting-greeting response/question-answer

Question 52

What are repairs in conversation analysis?

Answer 52

Mechanism through which a speaker recognises a misalignment of perspective and attempts to correct it
- usually occurs within structured units of 3 turns
- foundation of meaning-making dialogue

Question 53

What are the 3 types of repairs?

Answer 53

1. other-initiated repair
2. self-initiated repair
3. third-turn repair