Untitled Quiz

What is the 'Self'?

• Benjamin Franklin said, "There are three things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to know one's self."
• Self is a collection of cognitively held beliefs a person possesses about themselves.
• The self extends beyond the physical self (body) and includes psychologically meaningful possessions and personal space.
• Traditionally, the self was seen as stable and genetically determined "character" or "personality".
• More recently, self is understood to evolve throughout life, being partly stable and partly changing.
• The self is dynamic, changeable, and composed of multiple, plural selves, influenced situationally and cognitively.
• The self is multifaceted/multi-dimensional and culturally constructed.
• The self includes attitudes, cognitions, emotions, group memberships (social identity), ideal/imagined selves, memories, possessions, self-beliefs, self-concepts, self-images, and social roles.

Diagnostic Clues

• To understand "What is self?", identify diagnostic clues:
  • Who am I?
  • What are you prepared to defend?

Fluctuating Image(s) of Self

• Phenomenal Self (Working Self-Concept):
  • Unusual aspects of oneself become prominent.
  • Being the lone member of a category.
  • This raises self-awareness but may impair performance.

What is the "Social Self"?

• Humans are gregarious, group-based creatures.
• A significant portion of our self and its behavior is socially directed and influenced.
• Some argue the self is entirely a function of the environment.

Purpose of the Self

• Gain social acceptance
• Play social roles
  • Society creates and defines roles.
  • Individuals seek and adopt those roles.
• Self-constructs (operationalization): Self-esteem, Self-concept, Self-efficacy, Self-congruence

The Self-Concept

• Self-schema: Beliefs about oneself that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information.
• These self-schemas shape self-concepts, which help organize and retrieve experiences.
• Cognitive representation of the self.
• Commonly seen as a set of multi-dimensional and hierarchically organized domains of self-concept (e.g., Physical, Academic, Social, Same-Sex Relations, Opposite-Sex Relations, Parent Relations).
• Self-reference: Processing information efficiently about oneself and remembering it better.
• Possible Selves: Images of what one dreams of or dreads becoming in the future.

Development of the Social Self

• The roles one plays.
• The social identities one forms.
• Comparisons with others.
• Successes and failures.
• How others judge one.
• The surrounding culture.

The Roles We Play

• While playing roles, we may support something we haven't really thought much about.

Social Identity

• Defined by race, religion, gender, academic major, and so forth. Includes what one is not.

Social Comparisons

• Evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others.
• Social comparison can diminish one's satisfaction.

Success and Failure

• Overcoming challenges and succeeding increases feelings of competence.
• Success feeds self-esteem. Feelings follow reality.
• Problems and failures can cause low self-esteem.

Other People's Judgment (The Looking-Glass Self)

• How we think others perceive us mirrors how we perceive ourselves (Cooley, 1902).
• What matters for self-concept isn't how others actually see us, but how we imagine they see us (Mead, 1934).

Self and Culture

• Individualism: Prioritizes one's own goals over group goals and defines identity by personal attributes.
• Collectivism: Prioritizes group goals and defines identity accordingly.

Independent Self

• Acknowledges relationships with others.
• Self-esteem is more personal and less relational.

Interdependent Self

• More deeply embedded in others.
• Greater sense of belonging.
• Many selves.

Self-Concept: Independent or Interdependent

• Compares independent self to interdependent self on identity, what matters, disapproval of, illustrative motto, and cultures that support.

Self-Knowledge

• How can one explain and predict oneself?

Explaining and Predicting Behavior

• We have reasons for our choices and actions, but explanations can sometimes be wrong, especially when the underlying causes are subtle.
• To improve self-prediction, consider past behavior; past is key to future predictions.

Predicting Feelings

• Feelings are complex, sometimes difficult to predict.
• What felt strongly at the time may fade.
• Recognizing and processing emotions is key to understanding and predicting how we feel.

Impact Bias and Immune Neglect

• Impact bias: Overestimating the enduring impact of emotional events.
• Immune neglect (psychological immune system): Strategies to rationalize, dismiss, forgive and constrain emotional trauma. We often adapt to life difficulties (disabilities, breakups, failures) more quickly than expected.

Self-Esteem

• Global feelings of self-worth.
• Value placed on oneself.
• Often based on social comparisons, like comparing to others' thinness or fatness.
• People are motivated to see themselves as worthy.
• Healthy to have a slightly inflated sense of self-value.
• A sociometer, reflecting our standing within a group.

High/Low Self-Esteem

• High Self-Esteem: Positive views.
• Low Self-Esteem: Absence of strong positive views.

Basking and Blasting

• Group membership may enhance positive feelings (Cialdini et al., 1976).
• Basking: Linking to winners.
• Blasting: Criticizing rival groups.
• Loyal fans often have their confidence level affected by team success/failure.

Low Self-Esteem Research

• Do not want to fail.
• Self-concept confusion.
• Focus on self-protection. -Prone to emotional extremes.

Distorted Perceptions of Non-Depressed

• Positive illusions
  • Overestimate good qualities and underestimate faults.
  • Overestimate control over events.
  • Unrealistically optimistic.

Self-Deception Strategies

• Self-serving bias: More skeptical of bad feedback.
• Junk mail theory of self-deception : People are more suspicious of bad news than good news, sometimes attributing the bad news to something external or temporary.
• Comparisons with slightly worse others.
• Skewing impressions of others to highlight one's own good traits as unusual.

Benefits of High Self-Esteem

• Initiative (confidence and adventurousness).
• Feels good.
• Helps one overcome bad feelings; if they fail, more likely to try again.

Why Do We Care About Self-Esteem?

• Sociometer theory: Self-esteem is a measure of social acceptability.
• Self-esteem feels good.
• Terror management theory: Coping with the awareness of mortality.

Negative Aspects of High Self-Esteem

• Narcissism: Aggressive and violent subsets of high self-esteem
• Higher Prejudice: Tending to think their group is better.

Pursuit of Self-Esteem

• Can have harmful consequences (compromising competence, impairing autonomy, weakening intrinsic motivation, damaging relationships, and impacting health).

Self-Presentation

• Behaviors that convey an image to others.
• Public esteem is often more important than private self-esteem.

Functions of Self-Presentation

• Social acceptance (increasing acceptance and maintaining group standing).
• Claiming identity (social validation of claims to identity).

Good Self-Presentation

• Demonstrate positive traits.
• Behave with consideration for the audience.
• Tradeoff: Tendency toward favorable presentation.
• Modesty: More prevalent in long-term relationships.
• Risky behaviors.

Self-Efficacy

• Belief in one's capacity to succeed at a given task (like public speaking).
• Bandura recommended specific (rather than general) measures.

Social Self-Efficacy for Relating to Teachers

• Statements about ability to relate well with teachers.
• A positive relationship with teachers as a source of help and support.

Rogers: Self-Congruence

• Incongruence → Anxiety → Defense

Self has Evolutionary Functions

• Self-bias to resources. Self-organization/self-complexity. Self-promotion. Social comparison. Social control.

Self has Adaptational Functions

• Allows people to regulate their own behavior, an advantage for both self and group.
• Having a self helps in social interactions, extends beyond where one's skin ends. Self helps to navigate in groups.

Self-Complexity

• People generally see themselves as more complex and others less complex.
• Self-complexity has advantageous aspects: Less depression and better stress management.
• Includes having multiple possible selves.

Social Comparison

• Understanding how one is doing (through comparison with similar others).
• Feeling better (through downward comparison).
• Improving (through upward comparison).

Social Feedback

• Symbolic interactionism: All self-perceptions are based on one's social interaction history.
• Reflected appraisal: One's sense of self is based on how one perceives others perceive them.
• Spotlight effect: People think others notice them and evaluate them more than they actually do.
• Transparency effect: One's inner self seems more obvious than it really is.

Self Discrepancies

• Actual-Ideal Discrepancy: Promotion focus, (failure - depression).
• Ideal-Ought Discrepancy: Prevention focus, (failure - anxiety).
• Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory: The more relevant a comparison, and the closer the person being compared to, the more intense the emotional reaction to the comparison.

Strategic Self Presentation

• Ingratiation (being liked): Sycophancy, conformity, obsequiousness etc
• Self-Promotion (being competent): Fraudulent, conceited, defensiveness etc
• Intimidation (being in control): Blusterer, wishy-washy etc
• Exemplification (worthy, saintly): Hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness etc
• Supplication (helpless): Stigmatized, lazy, demeaning etc

Self-Monitoring

• High Self-Monitoring: Adapts behavior to situation; monitors situation.
• Low Self-Monitoring: Principled attitudes guide behavior.

Self-Regulation

• Monitoring and controlling self-presentation and behavior uses up valuable self-regulatory resources.

Self-Awareness

• Attention directed at the self (private and public self-awareness).
• Usually involves an evaluative comparison.
• Certain situations increase self-awareness (mirrors, audiences, etc.).
• Individual differences in self-consciousness.
• Purpose of self-awareness: Self-regulation, adopting perspectives of others, managing behavior in pursuit of goals.
• Causes self-discrepancies and temporary reductions in self-esteem.
• Coping mechanisms: Adjust behavior to meet standards or withdraw from self-focusing situations. (e.g., TV, sports, alcohol, suicide)

Why People Seek Self-Knowledge

• Appraisal motive: Looking for the truth about oneself.
• Self-enhancement motive: Looking for flattering things about oneself.
• Consistency motive: Looking for confirmation of one's beliefs.

When Motives Compete

• Appraisal motive: Weakest motive.
• Self-enhancement motive: Strongest motive (emotional appeal).
• Consistency motive: Second preference (cognitive appeal).

Self-Knowledge and the Duplex Mind

• Automatic egotism: Self-enhancing (automatic).
• Modesty: Deliberate control of self-enhancement.

Self Information Processing

• Self-reference effect: Information relevant to the self is processed more deeply and remembered better.
• Endowment effect: Items gain in value to the person who owns them.

Can Self-Concept Change?

• Consistency across selves (people expect consistency).
• Influence of changing social environment on inner self.
• Convincing others of change.
• Memory shifts accommodating changed self-concept.

Summary of Figures

• Diagrams showing the relationship between environment, culture, the self, and groups.