week 2 - self, other, and inter-subjectivity Flashcards
what is the self?
- where an individual becomes the object of its own conscious reflections
- the self is a social construct, formed through its interactions with other individuals and groups within the social world, which also contains cultural rules and norms
How do we understand the self?
- to understand the self, we need self-awareness
- this is the understanding that we are a separate entity from other people and objects in the world
Who first explored self-awareness?
- Darwin (1872) explored self-awareness in orangutans
- orangutans did not exhibit awareness that the mirror image was themselves
Darwin’s study of orangutans led to the development of what test?
Mirror self-recognition test (Gallup, 1968)
- a mark is placed on an animals forehead, and then the animal is placed in front of a mirror.
self-awareness is assumed if the animal touches the mark on its own forehead - chimpanzees touched the mark, showing self-awareness
- only a test of physical awareness not psychological sense of self
What is self-concept?
- The personal summary of who we are, including our positive and negative qualities, relationships to others, group memberships, and beliefs
- thus, our sense of self is inherently socially derived - it comes from our interactions with others
Where does self-knowledge come from?
Introspection: the process by which one observes and examines one’s internal states (mental and emotional) for behaving a certain way
Why is introspection less popular in social psychology?
- Because of the potential for inaccurate reflections as people are not conscious of their reasons for doing things
- Because of the potential to **repress* unwanted thoughts and experiences
- Because of the potential to overestimate their positive aspects
What was Wilson & Nisbett (1978)s study on introspection and inaccurate reflections?
- female shoppers asked to rate quality of nylon stockings displayed on a rack
- all stockings actually the same, however some shoppers claimed to have picked based on softness and workmanship
- in truth, tended to pick the one they saw last
- Therefore, people can make up reasons on the spot without realising so
What was Macrae et al’s (1994) study on introspection and repression of experiences?
- asked participants to avoid stereotypical thinking when writing about ‘skinheads’
- yet when expecting to meet such an individual, participants in the suppression condition sat significantly further away from the ‘skinhead’
we therefore have very limited self-insight about those aspects of ourselves we wish were not true about us
What is an example of introspection and overestimating positive aspects?
- most people think they are better than average on attractiveness, personality traits, skill, competence etc
- this can be good in terms of coping mechanisms however can get in the way when a more accurate view would be helpful (e.g. learning, choosing a job)
Why should we not fully discount introspection?
- because of paradigmatic forces
- social psychologists may have differing aims for research, from measuring stable constructs (e.g. IQ) to developing rich meanings (e.g. qualitative interview)
- introspection, although hard to make robust, is an alternative way to understand the self compared with triangulating multiple abstract measures
What is the dynamic self?
- the self that is expressed is highly variable and socially contextualised
- you develop a sense of who you are through your interactions with others (e.g. how they react and respond to you, your values, and the meanings you ascribe to these reactions)
- we do not passively absorb social feedback - we actively interpret/create it (e.g. choosing friends, behaviours, clothes)
What is active self-construal?
- (Morf & Koole, 2015): a person’s views and knowledge about themself is shaped through an active construal process that plays out in interaction with the social environment
- process is motivated by how one would like to see themself (e.g. want to be seen as smart, funny etc)
What are motivation biases in terms of self-construal?
- motivation biases are a key part of self-construal (e.g. does your social media reflect who you are or how you would like to be seen?)
What is the self in terms of ‘being’?
- the self goes beyond ‘doing’ as an agent in controlling how we see ourselves
- it can also involve ‘being’, that is describing and understanding our thoughts and feelings
- the ‘self’ therefore has an elaborate knowledge and feeling structure which can both guide and constrain our behaviour
What is Bem’s (1972) self-perception theory
- suggests that people can infer states by observing their own behaviour (in the same way they observe others)
- while social psych suggests that attitudes create behaviours, self-perception suggests that behaviours influence/create attitudes (observe other’s behaviours or our own to infer attitudes)
What are attributions and how do we explain them?
- attributions: explaining the process of behaviour we observe in others (and ourselves)
we observe two different motivations for behaviour:
- intrinsic motivation (e.g. interest, challenge, enjoyment)
- extrinsic motivation (e.g. praise, esteem, money)
What is the danger of justification effect?
where an intrinsic motivation becomes undermined by an external reward
- e.g. being motivated to write an essay because you enjoy it vs receiving praise for the essay from a lecturer
What is Festinger’s (1958) social comparison theory?
When people are uncertain of their abilities or opinions (i.e. when objective standards are missing) they then evaluate themselves through comparison with others
- we often need to benchmark ourselves against others even when there is objective information available
- e.g. Klein, 1997: we are happier with a low score that is above average then a high score that is below average
What is the main finding of Aaron et al’s (2013) self-expansion model?
people seek to expand their sense of self
What are the 2 principles of Aaron et al’s (2013) self-expansion model?
motivation principle: basic human motive to explore, self-improve, broaden perspective
inclusion-of-other-in-self principle: expanding self through relationships, because the other’s resources, perspectives, and identities are experienced as one’s own
What is the method of Aaron et al’s (2013) self-expansion model?
- asked 1st and 2nd year undergraduate students (n=329) five times over ten weeks to indicate to indicate if they have fallen in love
- at each testing point participants also had to make an open-ended list of self-descriptive terms (e.g. athletic, outgoing, studious)
- students who had recently fallen in love increased descriptors to include features of their new partner in their own self-concepts
What is the ‘other’ in social psychology?
- social psych is full of theories and evidence about how we perceive the role of ‘others’ in our decision making and behaviour
- e.g. conformity, intergroup behaviour, prejudice
- but it is also true that the ‘other’ is an integral part of our self-concept
**what is Mead’s (1934) ‘generalised other’ experiment?”
- mead was interested in how children play games
- all games involve ‘position changes’ (taking the role of others)
- to be good at the games you have to understand the role of others
- understanding each individual role is exhausting, children must form a structured and organised idea of a generalised other and how to respond to the challenges it presents
- the generalised other is a guiding concept in knowing what to do yourself in such situations
- children’s game playing is therefore vital in the formation of self concept
What is the Sally-Anne test?
Baron-Cohen et al., (1985) developed the test to measure a persons ability to understand false beliefs in others
- the test involves a story about 2 dolls, sally and anne, and a hidden object
- sally puts the object in a basket, then leaves the room
- while sally is gone, anne moves the object to a box
- the child participant is asked where sally will look for the object when she returns
What is Laing’s (1966) interpersonal perception method?
- social relationships comprise a myriad of simultaneous perspectives
- direct perspectives: what self and other think about X
-
meta perspectives: each party’s estimation of what ‘others’ think about X
mapping these together within a relationship can reveal important constructions related to agreement, disagreement, and perspective-taking
Describe the findings of Heasman & Gillespie’s (2018) study on meta-perspectives in autistic individuals
- study investigated meta-perspectives (how they believe others view them)
- Participants with ASD accurately predicted that family members would score them low, even though they disagree with those views
- study highlights that we only develop approximate models of what we think others are thinking (not a true model), and seek to constantly update this model with new information
- the way we view others is affected by confirmity bias which is when people see evidence that fits their idea, they stop looking for further evidence
What is Epley et al., (2004)’s theory of anchoring and adjusting?
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
What is confirmatory bias?
when people see evidence that fits their idea, they stop looking for further evidence
What is Komeda’s (2015) similarity hypothesis?
- 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 who have similar traits to themselves
According to Milton (2012), what is double empathy?
- “a disjuncture in reciprocity between two differently disposed social actors”
- what has been previously understood as a one-way problem of social interaction in autism is actually relational between people of different neurotypes
What is the double empathy problem? (Crompton et al., 2020)
autistic and allistic people may struggle to understand each other’s thoughts, feelings, behaviours and differences
e.g.
autistic individuals may struggle to:
- read between the lines
- overcome other peoples’ misconceptions about autism
- manage sensory distractions
allistic individuals may struggle to:
- form positive first impressions
- recognise and understand autism
- imagine autistic sensory difficulties
What is intersubjectivity and why is it useful?
intersubjectivity has been used across many disciplines:
- mutual awareness of agreement and disagreement
- attribution of intentionality
- automatic behaviour orientation (e.g. eye-gaze)
Intersubjectivity is the shared psychological space we create when we communicate
- through dialogue we can **co-create new social realities
- instead of analysing individual cognitions, we can analyse how multiple communicate to establish meaning
a social psychological view of intersubjectivity is: “the variety of possible relations between people’s perspectives” (Gillespie & Cornish, 2010)
What are some important theoretical considerations when discussing intersubjectivity?
- intersubjectivity is shaped by social situations, groups, norms, cultures, and imaginations
- intersubjectivity differs from coordination, because coordination focuses on consensus, whereas intersubjectivity focuses on how people create shared understanding (Heasman & Gillespie, 2019)
What is conversation analysis?
CA is a method for gathering data involving naturalistic interactions and systematically analysing its structural organisation
Why is Conversation Analysis naturalistic, and what does naturalistic mean?
- meaning is constructed through interactions with others, the environment and context
- minute details can be extremely important depending on the context (e.g. a judge pausing when delivering a verdict)
Why does Conversation Analysis analyse the structural organisation of interactions?
- there are so many implicit rules that enable communication to take place
- understanding the structure of dialogue can tell us how psychologically relevant meaning is shared and understood
What can be studied using Conversation Analysis?
power:
- who is speaking, how long, how often
- e.g. interruptions, corrections
co-constructed meaning:
- how is shared meaning constructed?
- how are people and activities organised?
norms:
- social norms
- what is said or not allowed to be said
- cultural norms
institutions:
- used extensively in healthcare settings
- e.g. patient physician interactions
When do we use conversation analysis (CA)?
- useful for empirical research on interaction in naturalistic settings where established theories may be lacking or under revision
- this is because CA looks for detailed qualitative evidence of how participants work to organise their interactions sequentially in each specific situation
- popular in healthcare settings as it can investigate interactions to make changes to institutional practice
- particularly conducive to methods such as participant observation/ethnography and focus groups
What does Conversation Analysis document?
we use transcription conventions to tell us:
- who is speaking
- the order in which things are said
- potentially relevant nonverbal features (e.g. pauses)
- the way things are said (e.g. rising intonation, emphasis, speed)
What features should you look out for when using Conversation Analysis?
- turn taking organisation
- the adjacency pair
- repairs and third-turn sequences
- gaps and lapses
What are turn-constructional units?
TCU: pieces of a conversation that comprise an entire turn
- the end of a TCU results in a transition relevant place (TRP) where we may go to another speaker, or the same speaker may continue
- CA organises dialogue in terms of TCU’s, and it is the sequential ordering of TCUs that allow it to analyse how meaning is created
What are adjacency pairs in terms of conversation analysis?
The cooperative aspects of language mean that many statements we make are intimately linked together. For example:
- greeting-greeting response (“hi” -> “oh, hi!”)
- question-answer (“are you okay?” -> “yes”)
- compliment-acceptance
- beckon response (“waiter” -> “yes, sir?”)
these are the linguistic building blocks of interaction and coordination
What are repairs in terms of Conversation Analysis?
- the mechanism through which a speaker recognises a misalignment of perspective and attempts to correct it
- the foundation of meaning-making in dialogue
- usually occurs within structured units of 3 turns
repairs begin with a trouble source (e.g. person makes a statement that is misunderstood), followed by a question or demonstration (e.g. other person does not understand and requests a repair OR demonstrated misunderstanding), followed by other-initiated OR self-initiated repair (e.g. person repairs in response to the other’s request OR person repairs due to failed understanding from the other)
How does intersubjectivity link to neurodivergence?
norms guide us in interactions as to what to say and how. e.g. Grice’s (1989) co-operative principles:
- quality: what you say should be true
- quantity: contribution should be as informative as required
- relation: contribution is relevant to what has been said
- manner: contribution is clear and easy to understand
violating these norms can create fundamental communicative barriers, however…
- what abt cultural differences?
- what about those with communicative differences (e.g. ASD)
neurodiversity: people who have different social abilities are not “deficient”
- rather they are a natural part of human variation
- neurodivergence related to individual variation in cognitive profile
- understanding how neurodivergent people interact with each other could reveal new and creative forms of interaction potential
what is neurodivergence?
individual variations in cognitive profiles
What is Heasman & Gillespie’s (2019) study of neurodivergence and interaction?
- interested in understanding naturally occuring interactions between autistic people
- studied video-gaming at a charity supporting autistic adults
- used CA to map out dyadic dialogue between 2 players
- scored each ‘turn’ in a conversation according to three common properties of intersubjectivity
coherence: how much did the turn relate to the previous turn?
affect: how positive/negative was the turn emotionally?
symmetry: how was a turn said in comparison to the previous turn? (e.g. volume, length) - No one type of coordination prevailed-they could all vary independently of each other
