The Social Self Flashcards
What is the accuracy of self-knowledge?
People often lack much self-insight. Sometimes this is self-protective. There are things we would rather not know about ourselves
Most of the time this comes from our lack of access to certain mental processes (nonconscious) Study shows that the reports of close others are as accurate at our own anticipating our actual behaviour. Others can judge our external traits and we can judge our own internal traits
What is a Self-schema?
A cognitive structure derived from past experience, that represents a person’s beliefs and feelings about the self, in both general and specific situations
Everyone has this stored in memory. Organizing function to helping us navigate daily living
How do we learn our attitudes and behaviour?
We learn attitude and behaviour norms from socialization agents (parents, siblings, peers)
Reflected self-appraisal: a belief of what others think of one’s self
The way we view ourselves often affects the perceptions of other people, who then reflect those views back to us in kind of an echo chamber
Gender and the Social Self
Parents raise girls and boys differently
Gender roles are portrayed in the media
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
We want to feel superior so we search for targets that are similar to us but slightly inferior
What are social identities?
the parts of a person’s sense of self that are derived from group memberships
People choose which social group they see as part of their sense of self
What is self-stereotyping?
the phenomenon whereby people come to define themselves in terms of traits, norms, and values that they associate with a social group when their identity as a member of that group is salient
What is self-esteem?
the overall positive or negative evaluation people have of themselves
What is trait self-esteem?
persons enduring level of self-esteem across time
What is state self-esteem?
dynamic, changeable self-evaluations a person experiences as momentary feelings about the self
What are Contingencies of self-worth?
the thesis that peoples self-esteem is contingent on their successes and failures in domains they deem important to their self-worth
What is the Sociometer hypothesis?
the idea that self-esteem is an internal, subjective index or marker of the extent to which a person in included or looked on favorably by others
How likely we are to be included or excluded by others
What is Self-Enhancement?
the desire to maintain, increase, or protect one‘s positive self-views
What is the better-than-average effect?
the finding that most people think they’re above average on various personality trait and ability dimensions
What is the Self-affirmation theory?
the idea that people can maintain an overall sense of self-worth after being exposed to psychologically threatening information by affirming a valued aspect of themselves unrelated to the threat
