Week 3

Question 1

Naturalistic Observation

Answer 1

Observe people unobtrusively in their natural environment.

Allows one to see patterns in the real world.

Pro: Observation cannot effect outcome
Con: If people notice you watching them this could effect the outcome

Question 2

Case Studies

Answer 2

Focus on a single interesting case in detail

Pro: Allows depth
Con: Can’t generalize with a sample size of one

Question 3

Surveys

Answer 3

Questions posed to participants about themselves

Pro: Easy, get a lot of data in a short amount of time
Con: People lie

Question 4

Correlational Research

Answer 4

Attempt to determine the relationship between 2 variables.

Pro: Can suggest avenues for further research
Con: Can lead to false conclusions, correlation is not causation.

Question 5

Typically a child’s self concept is concrete, what do we mean by this?

Answer 5

They describe themselves in terms of clear-cut, easily observable characteristics related to appearance and skills. As we mature we place less emphasis on physical characteristics.

Question 6

Self-concept

Answer 6

An organized collection of beliefs about who you are.

Influences what information you look for and how you process it.

Question 7

Self-schemas

Answer 7

Mental boxes

Mental structures that people use to organize their knowledge about themselves and influence what they notice, think about, and remember about themselves.

Based on past experiences.

Question 8

Peripheral self-conceptions

Answer 8

Event we don’t feel is relevant to how we conceptualize ourselves.

Question 9

Actual Self

Answer 9

Who you think you are

Question 10

Ideal Self

Answer 10

How people would ideally like to be

Question 11

Ought Self

Answer 11

How people think they ought to be

Question 12

Self discrepancy theory

Answer 12

A theory for when self views conflict. This can predict depressive symptomology.

Question 13

Upward social comparison

Answer 13

Compare ourselves to someone who is better off than we are in a given dimension.

Question 14

Downward social comparison

Answer 14

Compare ourselves to someone who is worse off than we are in a given dimension.

Question 15

How do social networking sites effect our self-concept?

Answer 15

People are posting to sites either their ideal self or ought self, this is impression management. This gives us a distorted view of reality, we believe other people have it better than us.

Question 16

What shapes the self concept?

Answer 16

Social comparison
Feedback from others
Social context
Cultural values

Question 17

Self Attributions

Answer 17

When trying to decide what cause our own and others behaviour we can make one of two attributions:
Internal: Dispositional, something to do with who we are.
External: Situational.

Question 18

Internal and external attributions may differ in stability and controllability. External attributions are general uncontrollable. Using the test example, what are controllable, uncontrollable, stable, and unstable internal attributions like??

Answer 18

Stable and uncontrollable: Grade reflected intelligence

Unstable and controllable: Grade reflected study strategies

Question 19

2 kinds of cognitive processing:

Answer 19

Automatic processing:

• Occur outside of consciousness awareness and with little effort
• Low effort thinking
• We are cognitive misers
• Adaptive, fast, and efficient, but we are more likely to make an error

Controlled processing:

• systematic processing
• Deliberate, intentional and effortful
• Can get better answers but it takes time

Question 20

Motives guiding self-understanding

Answer 20

Self assessment: We want to know the truth about ourselves

Self verification: We want people to confirm what we already believe about ourselves

Self improvement: We want to understand ourselves to make ourselves better

Self enhancement: We want to feel good about ourselves. This is the strongest motive for self understanding.

Question 21

Illusory Superiority

Answer 21

A tendency to feel better than average