Understanding Self-Concept and Social Interactions

Overview of Self-Concept

• Self-concept encompasses feedback from others, social comparison, culture/socialization, introspection via implicit theories, self-perception, cognitive dissonance processes, and social roles.

Looking Glass Self

• Individuals perceive themselves through the eyes of others, incorporating others' views into their self-concept.
• This concept is related to "reflected appraisals" and "metaperceptions."

Sociometer Theory

• Self-esteem acts as a gauge of acceptance or rejection by others, according to Leary & Downs (1995).
• Self-esteem has affective and cognitive components and it monitors the environment for disapproval, rejection, or exclusion cues.
• It alerts individuals via negative affective reactions when such cues are detected.

Sociometer Hypothesis Evidence

• Social exclusion lowers state self-esteem
• Perceived exclusion is linked to low trait self-esteem where people commonly perceiving rejection have low self-esteem.
• Threats to self-esteem drive approval-seeking behavior with an emphasis on exclusion avoidance.

Inhibition Detracts from Clear Feedback

• People generally avoid communicating interpersonal evaluations, especially negative ones.
• The avoidance of constructive feedback, even when helpful, stems from worries about awkwardness, harm to relationships, and underappreciation.
• A study involved participants imagining social scenarios (Abi-Esber et al., 2022).
• Feedback givers estimated how much a colleague wants feedback about something like sweat stains on their shirt (0 = definitely doesn't want to be told, 10 = definitely wants to be told).
• Feedback receivers reported how much they want their colleague to provide feedback.
• Feedback-givers' estimates were driven by how uncomfortable they anticipated feeling.

Insufficiently Complimentary Study (Zhao & Epley, 2021)

• People hesitate to give compliments, worrying about competent expression, while recipients focus on conveyed warmth.
• Compliment-givers felt they were viewed as less competent.

Metaperception Biases

• Metaperceptions refer to individuals' perceptions of how they are viewed by others.
• "Liking Gap" (Boothby et al., 2018): People underestimate how much interaction partners like them, driven by more negative thoughts about one's performance than the other person's.
• Spotlight effect: People overestimate how much others notice their actions and appearance (Gilovich et al., 2000).
• Transparency Overestimation: People exaggerate how clear their thoughts, feelings, traits, and goals are to others.

Overarching Theme and Egocentrism

• People assume what stands out to them also stands out to others.
• Egocentrism contributes through focus on oneself and assuming shared perspectives.

Self-Verification Theory (Swann, 1987)

• People need to seek confirmation of their self-concept (positive or negative).
• This can conflict with the desire to uphold a favorable self-view.
• Self-verification occurs for reasons such as accuracy, predictability, and security.
• It involves behavioral strategies such as selective interaction and cognitive processes like preferential attention.

Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954)

• People learn about their abilities and attitudes by comparing themselves with others.
• People have a drive to evaluate their opinions and abilities, which is supported by research on “automatic” social comparisons.
• People often seek accurate self-evaluation, exhibiting self-enhancement and self-improvement motivations.
• While objective standards are best for evaluating abilities, social comparison is commonly used.
• People prefer comparison with similar others, where similarity is important.

Forced Comparisons

• "Mr. Clean & Mr. Dirty" Study (Morse & Gergen, 1970) showed that individuals’ self-esteem was affected by comparison with others.
• "Frog pond effect": Individuals who perform well in an unsuccessful group have more favorable self-evaluations than capable individuals in a successful one.
• Social comparisons on social media are also relevant (Midgley et al., 2021).

Effects on Content of Self-Concept

• Distinctiveness Theory: People define themselves by what differentiates them.
• Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory: People define themselves on dimensions where they outperform close others.

Closeness of Others

• Outperforming a close other results in painful comparison if the dimension is self-relevant, but allows basking in reflected glory if self-irrelevant.
• Comparison with a distant other is less impactful.
• Strategies when confronted with a close other's excellent performance include decreasing relevance of the performance domain to your self-concept, decreasing the performance differential, and decreasing closeness to the other.

Independent View of Self vs. Interdependent View of Self

• Independent View: Defining oneself by internal thoughts, feelings, and actions, not those of others.
• Interdependent View: Defining oneself by relationships to others, recognizing behavior is determined by others' thoughts, feelings, and actions.
• Cultural differences exist in social comparison, self-enhancement, self-regulation, and egocentric biases.

Introspection: Implicit Theories

• According to Nisbett & Wilson (1977), people often cannot accurately report the effects of particular stimuli on their responses.
• People may not interrogate a memory of cognitive processes and they instead rely on implicit theories about the causal connection between stimulus and response.
• Subjective reports are sometimes correct, but not due to direct introspective awareness, rather incidental use of a priori causal theories.
• Examples of lacking introspective awareness include misattributions of arousal and feelings of familiarity.

Disruptive Effects of Introspection

• Individuals aim to appear reasonable.
• Reasons for feelings are not always known.
• The search for plausible-sounding reasons is emphasized and attitudes are adopted based on biased reasons.

Self-Perception Theory

• Individuals "know" their attitudes, emotions, and other internal states by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and circumstances.
• Internal cues are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual relies on external cues to infer internal states (Bem, 1972).

Self-Presentation Study (Dunn et al., 2007)

• Participants aim to make a good first impression in a regular conversation.
• Focus is on putting one's best foot forward, not role-playing.

Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger, 1957)

• This is a feeling of discomfort when behavior is inconsistent with attitudes.
• Motivation to reduce dissonance arises with attitude or behavior change, seeking new information, or minimizing the conflict's importance.
• Insufficient Justification Effect: Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying behavior when external justification is insufficient.
• Insufficient Punishment: Dissonance arises when there's insufficient external justification for resisting a desired object/activity, leading to devaluing it.
• Post-Decision Dissonance: Dissonance occurs after making a decision; it's reduced by enhancing the chosen alternative and devaluing rejected ones.
• Justification of Effort: Liking increases for things attained through hard work.
• Self-perception theory applies when attitudes are ambiguous, whereas dissonance theory applies when attitudes are clear/strong.

Self-Affirmation Theory

• This theory suggests people reduce the impact of dissonance by affirming their competence in a dimension unrelated to the threat.