Self-Concept: Influences and Sociometer Theory

Overview of Self-Concept

• Self-concept can be influenced by feedback from others, social comparisons, culture/socialization, introspection, self-perception, cognitive dissonance, and social roles.

Feedback from Others

• Looking Glass Self: Individuals see themselves through the eyes of others and incorporate these views into their self-concept.
• Related terms include "reflected appraisals" and "metaperceptions."
• Sociometer Theory: Self-esteem acts as a gauge that monitors the extent to which individuals are accepted or rejected by others (Leary & Downs, 1995).
• Self-esteem has both affective and cognitive components.
• Self-esteem functions as a sociometer which:
• Monitors the environment for cues indicating disapproval, rejection, or exclusion.
• Alerts the individual via negative affective reactions when such cues are detected.

Evidence for the Sociometer Hypothesis

• Social exclusion lowers state self-esteem; being excluded reduces feelings of self-esteem.
• Perceived exclusion is associated with low trait self-esteem.
• People who generally perceive rejection tend to have low self-esteem.
• Threats to self-esteem motivate approval-seeking and emphasize exclusion avoidance.

Inhibition Detracts from Clear Feedback

• People generally shy away from communicating interpersonal evaluations, especially negative ones.
• Constructive Feedback Study (Abi-Esber et al., 2022)
• People avoid giving feedback to others, even when it would help them, because they are worried about awkwardness, harming the relationship, and they don't appreciate how much others value feedback.
• In a study, participants imagined scenarios at work.
• Feedback givers estimated how much their colleague would want to be told they have sweat stains on their shirt (0 = definitely does not want to be told, 10 = definitely wants to be told).
• Feedback receivers were asked how much they would want their colleague to tell them (0 = definitely does not want to be told, 10 = definitely want to be told).
• Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.
• Feedback-givers' estimates were driven by how uncomfortable they would feel and how much they thought it would harm their relationship.
• The effect was stronger for more consequential issues and was the same for strangers, acquaintances, and close friends.
• Givers underestimated how much receivers valued the feedback they got.

Insufficiently Complimentary Study (Zhao & Epley, 2021)

• People are overly hesitant to express compliments because they are worried about competently expressing them.
• The recipient is more focused on the warmth conveyed.
• Compliment-givers perceived that they were viewed as less competent than they actually were.

Metaperception Biases

• Metaperceptions: People's perceptions of how they are viewed by others.
• "Liking Gap" (Boothby et al., 2018): People underestimate how much they are liked by interaction partners.
• Driven by having more negative thoughts about one's own performance in conversation than about the other person's.
• Spotlight effect: The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noticed by others (Gilovich et al., 2000).
• Transparency Overestimation: Exaggerating how clear or obvious one's thoughts, feelings, traits, and goals are to others.
• Overarching Theme: Individuals assume what stands out to them also stands out to others.

Egocentrism

• Being focused on ourselves and assuming others share our perspective Numerous motivations can contribute

Self-Verification Theory (Swann, 1987)

• People have a need to seek confirmation of their self-concept, whether the self-concept is positive or negative.
• This tendency can conflict with the desire to uphold a favorable view of oneself.
• Self-Verification happens because of:
• Sense of accuracy, predictability, and security
• Behavior: Selective interaction, identity cues, interaction strategies
• Cognitive processes: Preferential attention, selective encoding and retrieval, selective interpretation

Social Comparison

• Social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954): We learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves with other people.
• People have a drive to evaluate their opinions and abilities.
• People seek accurate self-evaluation, self-enhancement, and self-improvement.
• Individuals prefer to compare with similar others and similarity on related attributes is important.

Forced Comparisons

• "Mr. Clean & Mr. Dirty" Study (Morse & Gergen, 1970): Individuals' self-esteem was affected by who else was in the room.
• "Frog pond effect": Individuals who perform well within an unsuccessful group have more favorable self-evaluations than equally capable individuals who perform poorly within a successful group.
• Social Comparisons on Social Media (Midgley et al., 2021)
• Distinctiveness Theory: People define themselves in terms of what makes them different from those around them.
• Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory: People define themselves in terms of dimensions on which they outperform close others.
• Closeness of others (similarity or emotional bond) is key, outperformed by CLOSE other on self-relevant dimension.
• Painful comparison
• Outperformed by CLOSE other on self-irrelevant dimension
• Bask in reflected glory
• DISTANT other: less impactful
• When confronted with a close other's excellent performance, one may:
• Decrease relevance of the performance domain to their self-concept.
• Decrease the performance differential. Decrease closeness to the other

Independent vs Interdependent View of Self

• Independent View of Self: Defining oneself in terms of one's own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions, and not in terms of the thoughts, feelings, and actions of other people.
• Interdependent View of Self: Defining oneself in terms of one's relationships to other people, recognizing that one's behavior is often determined by the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others.

Cultural differences are found in:

• Social comparison
• Self-enhancement
• Self-regulation
• Some egocentric biases

Introspection: Implicit Theories

• People often cannot report accurately on the effects of particular stimuli on their responses.
• When reporting on the effects of stimuli, people may not interrogate a memory.
• Subjective reports about mental processes are sometimes correct, but even these are not due to direct introspective awareness.
• Instead, they are due to the incidentally correct employment of a priori causal theories.
• Examples of lack of introspective awareness:
• Misattributions of arousal and feelings of familiarity
• Misattributions of Arousal: Dutton & Aron (1974) Bridge Study

Disruptive Effects of Introspection

• Want to sound reasonable
• But do not always know reasons for feelings
• Search for plausible-sounding reasons
• Adopt the attitude implied by the biased reasons, effects specific to giving reasons for feelings

Self-Perception and Cognitive and Dissonance Processes

• Self-Perception Theory: Individuals come to "know" their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from the observation of their own overt behavior and/or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs.
• Self-Presentation Study (Dunn et al., 2007): In a regular conversation, try to make a good impression.
• Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger, 1957): A feeling of discomfort caused by the realization that one's behavior is inconsistent with one's attitudes or that one holds two conflicting attitudes.
• When we experience dissonance, we are motivated to reduce it by:
• Change attitude or behavior
• Seek new information
• Minimize importance of the conflict
• Insufficient Justification Effect: Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one's behavior when external justification is insufficient.
• Insufficient Punishment: The dissonance aroused when individuals lack sufficient external justification for having resisted a desired activity or object, resulting in people devaluing the forbidden activity or object.
• Post-Decision Dissonance: Dissonance aroused after a person makes a decision; reduced by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluing the rejected alternatives.
• Justification of Effort: Increase liking for something they have worked hard to attain
• Integration:
• self-perception theory applicable for weaker, more ambiguous attitudes
• dissonance theory applicable when attitudes are clearer and stronger
• Self-Affirmation Theory: People reduce the impact of a dissonance-arousing threat to their self-concept by focusing on and affirming their competence in some dimension unrelated to the threat.