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
