Week 7 - The Two Selves

Question 1

The ABCs of the Self

Answer 1

1. Affect: How do we evaluate ourselves, enhance our self-images, and defend against threats to our self-esteem;
2. Behavior: How do we come to know ourselves, develop a self-concept, and maintain a stable sense of identity
3. Cognition: How do we come to know ourselves, develop a self-concept, and maintain a stable sense of identity

Question 2

Cognitive Basis of ‘The Self’

Answer 2

Self-concept
* The cognitive representation that we have of ourselves

Working self-concept (dynamic self)
* Part of the self that is activated in a context

Self-schema
* Knowledge of a certain domain that is important for the self

Question 3

Cultural differences in Self-Definition

Answer 3

Individual: unique individual
Relational: relationship with significant other
Social Identity: Group Membership

Individualistic cultures: People strive for personal achievement

Collectivist cultures: People derive more satisfaction from the status of the valued group

Question 4

Self-Focus (Self-Awareness)

Answer 4

• The extent to which we focus on ourselves vs the context

Question 5

Public self-awareness

Answer 5

Mirror: private self-awareness

Camera: public self-awareness
* More socially desirable behavior
* Can for instance influence the rather robus Bystander effect

Question 6

Social Identity Theory

Answer 6

1. People base their identity on group membership
2. Compare groups with other groups to guage our ‘value’ or worth
3. Strife towards obtaining or keeping a positive social identity
4. Strong tendency to protect social identity

Question 7

Zajonc’s kakkerlakken onderzoek

Answer 7

Situation A:
* Control: A glass tube with at the end a sandwich
* Experimental: same as control but with cockroaches outside the tube who are looking

Situation B:
* Control: two glass tubes that make a cross, with at the end of one tube a sandwhich
* Experimental: same as control but with cockroaches

Results:
* In situation A the cockroach was as fast as 33 seconds in getting through the tube when other cockroaches were looking (control: 41 seconds)
* In situation B the cockroach took longer (130 secs) to get through the tube because it had to make a decision while other cockroaches were looking

Question 8

*

What do Zajonc’s findings say about individuals and audiences

Answer 8

Social facilitation:
* Sometimes the presence of others improves performance (usually easy task)
* Sometimes the presence of others impairs performance (usually difficult task)

Question 9

Ostracism

Answer 9

Buitensluiten

Question 10

**

What are consequences of ostracism

Answer 10

• Stress, pain
• Strong emotions (anger, sadness)
• Fight (agression) vs Freeze (numbness) vs. Reconnect (OCB)
• Lower temperature
• Threatens fundamental needs
  1. Control
  2. Meaningful existence
  3. Self-esteem
  4. The need to belong

Question 11

Experiencing self

Answer 11

• Lives in present
• “does it hurt now”

Question 12

Remembering self

Answer 12

• Keeps score
• Maintains story of life
• “how have you been feeling lately

Question 13

What is the importance of self-esteem and autobiographical memory?

Answer 13

• Essential for a coherent self-concept
• Typically report more events from the recent than the distant past
• Exceptions are:
  1. Reminiscence peak
  2. Tendency to remember transitional “firsts”

Question 14

Autobiographical memory

Answer 14

• They serve as prominent landmarks in our autobiographics
• Autobiographical memory is a vital part of, and can be shaped by, our identity, often motivated to distort the past in ways that are self-inflated.

Question 15

James Dean Effect

Answer 15

Respondents rated a wonderful life that ended abruptly as better than a life with 5 additional mildy pleasent/negative years

Question 16

Alexander Solzhenitsyn Effect

Answer 16

Respondents rated a negative life that ended aprubptly as worse than a life with 5 additional pleasant years

Question 17

Focusing illusion

Answer 17

How much pleasure do you get from your bicycle?
* Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it (WYSIATI)

A bias for goods that are exciting and fancy. We always want a fancy new thing and are few times happy with the bike that we already have

1. Time is neglected
2. Experiences that will retain their value over the long term are underappreciated

Question 18

Hot-Cold-Empathy gap

Answer 18

Cognitive bias in which people underestimate the influences of visceral drives on their own attitudes, preferences, and behaviors.

People are unable to relate to feelings they are not currently experiencing
* Calm or cold is hard to imagine in hot states

Question 19

What can affect the results of ice-water studies?

Answer 19

The peak end rule. At the end your hand becomes very warm. Consequently, people report less pain because they relate to their peak state (the warm hand).

Question 20

How to measure well-being?

Answer 20

There should be a focus on retrospectiv problems –> ask the remembering self
* Unreliable eyewitness: would underestimate experiences of experiencing self

Day Reconstruction Method (DRM)
1. List intensity of several feelings
2. Positive and negative can exist at the same time!
* Negative experience if negative feelings are more intense thann any of the positive
3. Calculate U-index (percentage negative of waking day)

Question 21

What did the Gallup-Data say (company Maurice de Hond)

Answer 21

No correlation between ‘how happy are you’ and the general well-being of people.

Higher educated people reported their live as more positive but their well-being

Question 22

What is the general percentage people report negative episodes over an entire day

Answer 22

50% no negative episode over an entire day

Minority of people experienced emotional distress for much of the day
* Small fraction of the population seems to do most of the suffering
1. Mental illness
2. Unhappy temperament
3. Personal tragedies

Lower in te weekend

Question 23

How does poverty amplify negative events?

Answer 23

Illness:
* Rich people (top 2/3): headache brings sadness and worry 19 > 38%
* Poor people (low 10%): headache brings sadness and worry 38 -> 70%

Weekend effect on U-index diminishes for poor people

Question 24

Money and Hapiness

Answer 24

Law of diminshing returns

No correlation between hapiness and money above € 75.000

It allows for more purchases, improved living:
* But it doesn’t elevate emotional experience
* It seems to reduce the ability to enjoy small pleasures

Question 25

Goals and Money

Answer 25

Money can help achieve a goal

If the goal is important, there is a high correlation with money

If the goal is less important, the correlation with money is lower

Question 26

What did they find in the experiment of Loveland et al. ‘The need to belong and preference for nostalgic products’

Answer 26

Participants with ‘the need to belong’ as active goal, experience a significantly stronger preference for nostalgic products

This need to belong can be partially satisfied through consumption of nostalgic products

Question 27

Why is our memory not great?

Answer 27

1. We think that the present experience should count for a lot
   * We forget the majority of it
   * Somehow the remembering self handles time differently
   * We remember it wrongly
2. We only consume our memories very little
3. 1 great week vs 2 great weeks

Question 28

Memories can be wrong

Answer 28

Tastes and decisions are shaped by memories, and the memories can be wrong
1. Due to duration neglect and peak-end-rule
2. But also due to:
* Outside factors such as framing
* Inside pressures such as self-esteem