The Self: Social Psychology

The Self: What Is It?

• Self Concept refers to the overall beliefs you have about your qualities, including physical traits, psychological characteristics, and social connections.
• Western cultures emphasize independent aspects of the self, like creativity
• Other cultures emphasize interdependent aspects of the self, such as kindness.

Why Study Self?

• Studying Self is important to understand self-knowledge which is how one understands who they are and processes this understanding.
• To understand how one regulates themselves through self-control.
• To understand how one presents themselves to others, influencing their perceptions, through self-management.

Relevance of Self in Social Psychology

• Social factors influence self-understanding.
• Social context necessitates self-control.
• Public image is manipulated due to social influences

Self-Knowledge

• Focuses on how individuals understand themselves with three sources of information:
• Introspection, or internal self-observation.
• Observation of one's own behavior.
• Observation of how others respond.

Introspection

• Self-Awareness Theory involves evaluating and comparing your behavior against internal standards and values when focus is on yourself.
• A cue/trigger may cause you to become self-aware.
• Meeting internal standards through thoughts and actions leads to positive feelings.
• Failure to meet standards can lead to negative feelings and potential behavior changes or escapism like indulgence.
• Escapism from failure to meet internal standards can be negative (drinking, binge eating) or positive (artistic expression, seeking religious counsel).
• Changing internal standards is another possible reaction to failure to meed those standards.
• Becoming more self-aware leads to better behavior and avoidance of unethical actions.
• Introspection inaccuracies may occur in determining who we are, what causes feelings or behavior and causal theories to describe behavior.
• Inaccuracies in introspection may result from inaccurately describing oneself, identifying the wrong causes for feelings, or creating incorrect theories about feelings.
• In a study by Wilson et al. in 1982, students rated their daily moods and potential predictors over 5 weeks, analyses revealed students poor at determing actual causes
• Students incorrectly believed sleep affected their mood, but analysis did not prove such an effect.
• People may not know what influences them, and use explanations or theories that seem relevant but are actually false.
• People's self-assessments can be accurate when evaluating current feelings vs. past feelings; having clear vs. vague predictors, possessing strong vs. weak attitudes, and having high vs. low motivation.

Observing One's Behavior: Self-Perception Theory

• When uncertain about attitudes or feelings, Self-Perception Theory posits that one observes their own behavior within its context to infer those feelings.
• Attributional principles are used to conclude one's feelings/attitudes.
• Clear feelings mean no need to evaluate behavior.
• Unclear feelings cause individuals to examine their behavior.
• Behavior is attributed to free choice, situation or because of the situation it occurs in.
• Freely chosen behaviors reflect actual feelings, leading to conclusions like "I must like running early".
• Situationally driven behavior suggests a lack of internal motivation; "I don't like morning runs, I run to impress"

Observing One's Behavior: Two-Factor Theory

• The Two-Factor Theory of Emotion, though influential, is not well-supported.
• Schachter (1964) applied self-perception logic, asking "what is our emotions about something?"
• Emotions are inferred by observing bodily reactions and seeking explanations.
• First, the body reacts in an unexplained way, prompting a search for understanding.
• Individuals try to understand their arousal, using context for an explanation like realizing the feeling is excitement at USS's Minionland.
• Schachter and Singer (1962) classic epinephrine study illustrates.
• Participants were injected with epinephrine causing increased bodily arousal and were not informed of the effects of the injection
• Participants were paired with either an angry or happy confederate
• Participants paired with the angry confederate reported being angier and less happy than those paired with the happy confederate.

Schachter and Singer (1962) argued

• Emotions are subjective.

• Emotions are determined by interpreting arousal.

• This theory relies on the concept of 'misattribution of arousal'.

• Misattribution of arousal involves incorrectly inferring the cause of feelings.

• Interpreting feelings in a new context is influenced by arousal from another source.

Criticism of the Two-Factor Theory

• Emotions are not always hard to explain.
• Consultation of the environment in the manner showed in the Schachter and Singer experiment does not always occur.

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation

• Intrinsic motivation involves performing behaviors based on internal satisfaction
• Extrinsic motivation involves performing behaviors due to external rewards or pressures.
• When external factors overshadow internal desires, over-justification effect may occur.
• Over-justification causes people to view behavior as caused by compelling external reasons, which underestimates internal reasons for the behavior.
• Rewards danger reward programs which is reading for rewards, not because it's actually enjoyable.

Observing Other People

• Individuals often compare themselves to others to evaluate their own behaviors and beliefs.
• Social Comparison Theory explains that one can understand their abilities and attitudes by comparing themselves to others. If you donate $50 and your friend donates $10, you feel generou.
• If you donate $50 and your friend donates $100, you may not feel generous.

Engaging in Social Comparison

• Social comparison is engaged when no objective standard exists or during uncertainty: such as being unsure if a 75/100 is a good grade for a painting.

Choosing Comparison Targets

• The initial impulse for target comparison: whoever is nearby.
• The choice depends on goals.
• Accurate self-assessment is achieved by comparing to similar backgrounds
• Upward social comparison involves comparing to those with higher abilities for aspiration
• Downward social comparision involves comparing to those with lower abilities to feel better about oneself.

People's Views

• Under some circumstances, people adopt other's views, which is known "Looking glass self" (Cooley, 1902).
• Other's views of us can shape how we view ourselves, and adopting others' views can enable us to get along with them.

Self-Control

• Self-control is subduing immediate desires for long-term goals.

Strategies To Improve Self-Control

• Implementation intentions which are specific plans to action
• Arranging environments to avoid temptations
• Ensuring being well-rested to counter the depletion effect

Self-Management

• Impression Management is attempting for others to see them as they want to be seen.
• Includes ingratiation and self-handicapping.

Impression Management: Ingratiation

• Ingratiation is flattering, praising, and aiming to gain favor, often with superiors.
• Ingratiation can be powerful, as being nice is valuable
• Insincerity can cause ingratiation to backfire, especially when the recipient is perceptive.

Impression Management: Self-Handicapping

• Self-handicapping creates obstacles or excuses for potential failures.
• Reported self-handicapping involves preparing excuses.
• An example of reported self-handicapping is complaining about feeling unwell before a test.
• Behavioral self-handicapping reduces success chances to blame failure on obstacles, like eating spicy food to get a stomachache before a test.