The Self - Test #2 Flashcards
Self as Object - “Me”
consists of:
- self-concept
- self-esteem
- autobiographical memory
- prospection
Self-concept
cognitive evaluation of one’s identity.
Self-esteem
affective evaluation of one’s self-worth.
Autobiographical memory
personal life narrative that people construct based on their memories of the past.
Prospection
expectations one has for their future.
Self as the Subject - “I”
the subjective center of experience that we each hold and the powerful feeling of being an agent in the world.
Subject of experience
we feel as though the various experiences that unfold at any given moment refer back to a single entity located somewhere in the body.
Agent/actor
we feel as if we are the creator of different thoughts/actions.
- (is psychologically constructed).
How do we come to know the self?
1) introspection
2) self-perception theory
Introspection
process of turning attention “inward” in an attempt to identify one’s feelings, thoughts, and motives.
Limitations of Introspection
- people overestimate how much they really know about themselves.
- emotional cues presented subliminally can alter people’s preferences for ambiguous items shown shortly after.
Introspection experiment
shows that people are trying to look inward and identify their motives, but they don’t know the true motives of their actions.
- have people come into a mall, near the entrance there are 4 identical items positioned from left to right.
- people tend to pick right most items. If you ask them why, they give you “made up” answers, i.e “it had the best texture”.
Self-perception theory
we figure out internal motives by looking at outward behaviour.
Over-justification effect
intrinsic motivation is undermined because one’s behaviour is attributed to extrinsic motivation.
How is the self-concept stored in the brain?
- medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) becomes active when people make judgments about themselves.
Individualistic cultures
mPFC is uniquely actively by self-judgments.
Collectivist cultures
mPFC is active for both self-judgments and close-other judgments (i.e mother).
Rubber-Hand Illusion
- shows constructed nature of self as subject.
- participants come to subjectively and involuntarily feel that an external rubber hand belongs to their own body.
- can predict how likely/intensely someone will feel rubber hand illusion by how much premotor cortex is activated.
Benjamin Libet
research shows that individuals subjective feeling of consciously willing an action emerges after (not before) the rising of neural signals that reliably predict that action well ahead of time.
Galvanic skin response (GSR)
a physiological response that indicates the change in the skin’s resistance to an electrical current.
Research on self esteem
- people would value a self-esteem boost more than eating their favourite food and engaging in their favourite sexual activity.
Defensive Self-esteem
highly dependent on external events.
- consists of high explicit, low implicit self-esteem.
Secure Self-esteem
does not fluctuate easily according to external events.
- consists of high explicit & implicit self-esteem.
Self-disclosure
speaking about oneself to another person is pleasurable.
- activates nucleus accumbens.
How to measure implicit self-esteem
- get people to categorize self-words into positive or negative categories.
- faster they put words in positive bin = positive implicit self-esteem.
Explicit self-esteem
entails more conscious and reflective self-evaluation.
Implicit self-esteem
refers to a person’s disposition to evaluate themselves in an automatic/unconscious manner.
Better-than-average-effect
people generally believe that they are above the median on various positive abilities.
-ex: students writing SATS, professors and teaching ability, drivers, etc.
Optimism bias
people believe that they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to experience negative events.
Moderating Factors - B-T-A effect
- ) Type of measurement.
- ) Nature of judgment.
- ) Nature of comparison target.
- ) Characteristic of judgment.
Type of Measurement
direct vs. indirect
- direct (compared to average student at Ryerson).
- indirect (place self on one scale, and on another scale place average Ryerson student).
- direct comparison leads to stronger BTA effect.
Nature of Judgment
deals with ambiguity & controllability.
Nature of Comparison Target
individuated vs statistics.
- ex: compare yourself to the person next to you, or random Ryerson student.
- weaker BTA effect when we compare ourselves to individual person.
Characteristic of Judgment
self-esteem vs depression
- depressed people have more accurate self-measurement.
Does the self exist?
- it is not clear.
- people lose their self consciousness when engaging in behaviours that create flow.
Psychedelics
Psilocybin (magic mushrooms) & other psychedelics can cause a loss of self, ego loss & feelings of bliss.
Default Mode Network (DMN)
brain area that is active when no tasks are being done.
Three Areas of DMN
- ) Medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC).
- ) Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC).
- ) Posterior Cingulate Cortex (PCC).
DMN & Psychedelics
- ingesting psychedelics decouples activity between the mPFC and PCC, so that they act independently in contrast to working together.
- can predict how strong a person’s trip which will be based on how much deactivation in DMN areas.
End-of-history illusion experiment
people believe that traits such as value, personality, and preferences are stable and will change less than they actually do at every stage of life.
- (this is wrong).
