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The Social Self

• The medial prefrontal cortex is responsible for stitching together the sense of self.

Self-Concept: Who am I?

• Self-concept entails what one knows and believes about themselves.
• Self-schemas are components of the self-concept (e.g., “I am ____”).
• Possible selves include what one wishes to become and what one fears becoming.
• Factors influencing the self-concept include genetics, social roles, social comparisons, and culture.
• Self-schema are beliefs that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information
• Schemas are the mental templates used to organize the world.
• Possible selves provide images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future.
• Social comparisons involve evaluating abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others.
• Types of social comparisons include upward and downward comparison.
• New roles commence as playacting and evolve into reality through role play.
• Self-esteem involves a person's overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth.
• Collectivist cultures foster an interdependent self, where self-identity is defined by group membership
• Examples of collectivist cultures are those in Asia, Africa, Central and South America
• Collectivism places group goals over self-goals.
• Cross-cultural research reveals the rise of a relational and interdependent self.
• "Selves" are overlapping, and boundaries are fluid within collectivist cultures
• The focus is on roles, harmony, and belongingness.
• Individualist cultures tend to cause people to perceive what stands out and arrange items by category.
• Individualistic cultures are slanted toward individual choices which leads to language for self-expression.
• Cross-cultural research has shown that individualism results in a separated and independent self.
• “Selves” are self-contained, with distinct boundaries.
• Focus on self-expression and uniqueness.
• Development processes influencing the self-concept are:
• Success and failure
• Daily experiences that lead to empowerment or low self-esteem
• Other people's judgments
• Looking-glass self: how we think others perceive us is as a way of perceiving ourselves

Linking Self-Concept with Self-Knowledge

• Biases in self-perception include:
• Spotlight effect: the belief that others notice one's appearance and behavior more than is actually the case.
• Illusion of transparency: The illusion that concealed emotions leak out and are easily read by others, but generally, fewer people notice than one presumes.
• People overestimate the visibility of their blunders
• Most people are usually preoccupied with their own overestimations, unless they have self-interest
• Social context influences self-awareness and when one is different you become hyper interested in it.
• Self-interest colors social judgment
• Fundamental Attribution Error

Self-Knowledge

• Self-concern motivates social behavior through making a positive surface-level impression.
• Social relationships define our sense of self
• How we present ourselves depends on who we are with at the moment
• How we think about ourselves relies on who we are relating to.
• Changing relationships causes changes in us.
• Self-knowledge is often flawed and limited through:
• Misattributions
• Logical fallacies (e.g., planning fallacy)
• Close friends being more accurate
• Inaccurate affective forecasts
• One's emotions are skewed by factors like low/non arousal.
• Hunger and actual exposure to emotional triggers, and extremity of event also influence emotions.
• Impact bias: Overestimating how long serious life events will effect them lastingly
• Immune neglect: Underestimating the capacity to be resistant/cope/solve.
• Mental processes for control are not necessarily mental processes for describing, explaining, and predicting:
• Verbal factors are often not the reasons for behavior.
• The dual attitude system is made up of implicit and explicit attitudes.
• Implicit attitudes provide behavioral control.
• Explicit attitudes offer behavioral explanation.

Self-Esteem: Am I Worthy?

• Self-esteem is an overall evaluation of oneself, theorized as a gauge for social rejection.
• High self-esteem leads to increased initiative and resilience as well as positive effect, but is not strongly connected to morality or to academic success.
• Low self-esteem causes decreased life and relationship satisfaction and often comes from childhoods
• Self-esteem can be stable or unstable.
• Terror management theory is managing self-esteem as a means to manage our fear of death.
• Narcissism is about not having self-esteem, or not having a 'caring' component
• Narcissists are often concerned with superiority, dominance, and/or justification of self-evaluations
• Narcissism can exist on a collective level
• Collectivist cultures can cause lower self-esteem and narcissism because its related to what the social groups think
• Upward Social Comparison motivates self-improvement and the desire to persist amid failure.
• Individualist cultures have higher self-esteem and narcissism because they are defined personally by personal values
• Comparisons that foster self-esteem as well as the desire to persist through success.

Social Self: What is Expected of Me

• Perceptions of Self-Control are are your sense of competence and effectness
• Self-Efficacy helps demonstrate ones beliefs regarding source of contropl (locus of control)
• Self-Determination: the extent to which one believes he can/can't exert his free will.
• Self-serving biases is the tendency that one see's themselves in a favorable pattern
• Self-serving attributions have postivie outcomes, negative outcomes = situation
• Unrealistic optimisim shows a bias of how good someones future will comparatively be
• Defensive pessimism causes anticipatory problems/anxiety and may motivate proactive action in the face of one's shortcomings.
• False consensus: Seeing one's shortcomings and opinions as commonplace or (normal, acceptable).
• False uniqueness: seeing achievements or abilities that are distinct.
• Impression Management demonstrates managing behaviours to project them in an audience
• Self-Presentation, Self-Monitoring- (to tailor behaviour towards what an audience wants to see.
• Self-Handicapping: creating and doing behaviours that serve as excuses in the case of failure.
• Self-control: How people consciously control behaviour or social expectations from them.
• This requires cognitive and physical resources.
• Can be treated or exercised similar to a muscle, through strengthening, rest, transferability.