Week 4 Exam Notes PDF

**Week 4** 1. **Introspection** 2. **Observing our Own Behaviour** 3. **Comparing ourselves to others** 1. **Introspection:** - Looking inward to examine inside information that you have about your thoughts, feelings and motives - Thinking about ourselves is rare **Study 1** **CSI...

**Week 4** 1. **Introspection** 2. **Observing our Own Behaviour** 3. **Comparing ourselves to others** 1. **Introspection:** - Looking inward to examine inside information that you have about your thoughts, feelings and motives - Thinking about ourselves is rare **Study 1** **CSIKSZENTMIHALYI & FIGURSKI (1982) PAGER** - People had lower affect when thinking about themselves - When we are doing a voluntary activity ( watching TV) we have a negative self-affect - **Strengths**: A strength of this research method might be that you get more accurate reports of how people are feeling and what they\'re doing at a particular point in time, compared to asking someone to think back to what they were doing at 11.17AM last Tuesday or asking them how many times they thought about themselves in a 24 hour period. I know my memory would fail me with a retrospective question like that! **Limitation:** A limitation might be that certain kinds of participants are more likely to cooperate with this kind of methodology than others, because it\'s so demanding. Would you sign up for a study where you would be paged at random times of day, multiple times per day, to stop whatever you\'re doing and answer some questions? The results from a study like that might be more reflective of the kinds of people willing to participate than all kinds of people. **Self-Awareness Theory of Introspection:** - **Ways to know oneself:** 1. Looking inward 2. Comparing the self with others 3. Observing own behaviour - The self-awarness theory says that when we become aware of the self, it causes us to evaluate ourselves against our own standards and values, and the result is usually negative affect - When we think about ourselves it causes us to evaluate and compare our current behaviour to our internal standards and values ( guilt ) - We become judgemental and objective observers - We remember the kind of person we want to be and think we should do something productive because we feel bad we are not. - Self-awareness is positive when we exceed our internal standards we feel good but only temporarily. We feel like we must do better next time. - But if you do well, but don't feel you can do it again or do it even better you have a negative effect. - Every time you exceed your expectations your standards get raised and you must do even better next time to feel good - Self-awareness causes us to evaluate and compare our current behaviour with our internal standards and values - Act more in accordance with own ideals - **Am I meeting my expectations below** **DIENER & WALLBOM (1976): Introspection and Behaviour Cheating on timed 5 minute test** - Participants seated with a mirror in front of themselves were less likely to cheat and follow their internal values - Participants with low self-awareness and introspection will cheat -  Participants in the self-aware condition knew the mirror was a two-way mirror which the researcher was watching them through, so they were less likely to cheat. **SOHN ET AL. (2019): TROLLING ON FACEBOOK BULLYING SOCIAL NORMS AND INTROSPECTION** - When people have introspection because they see their face on the video screen on FACEBOOK they are less likely to write abusive comments. - Greater introspection Social norms have less impact on our behaviours - Less introspection more likely to bully others or join in on online bullying - Less introspection more likely we are to follow any social norm and join in on bad behaviours - Individuals are often incorrect about the factors in their environment which influence their feelings and behaviours. **2: Self-Awareness Observing Our Own Behaviour** **Self-Perception Theory** - Using our body reactions and behaviours to tell how you feel rather than expressing how you feel - We infer our attitudes and feelings by observing our behaviour and the situation it occurs - Anxiety Vs Exicitment: meaning changes - When someone asks about who we are: 1. We use introspection to see if we know it already 2. Observe our behaviours In the situation to infer 2a. Check if behaviour is voluntary: and a part of who we are 2b. If not voluntary behaviour we take a guess that is often wrong **NISBETT & WILSON (1977):** 1. **Panty Hose Selection Why?** 2. **Warm or Cold teacher Experiments** - We are not good at determining or knowing why we think or feel a certain way. - We aren't good at knowing what influences our behaviours and choices - We rate nicer people more attractive - Our physiological reactions influence our emotions and it changes how we perceive things, others and ourselves **DUTTON & ARON (1974): People can misattribute feelings of arousal.** - Bridge Solid Vs Hanging and Fear Vs Sexual Attraction - We can't tell the difference - Behaviour can have multiple possible explanations - The inference we make about attitudes and feelings depends on the explanation we choose *eg fast heart rate fear or excitement* - The participants in Dutton and Aron's (1974) study who phoned the female interviewer and included more sexual imagery in their short story: because Misinterpreted their physiological signs of fear at being on the scary bridge as attraction to the interviewer **COSTA ET AL. (2018, Study 1): SKYPE relationships changing the angry persons voice** - People act calmer when their voice sounds calmer. - When the voice is calmer people feel calmer and less reactive - Speaking calmer in conflict impacts our own and others behaviour - Heart rate: lowers when the voice is calmer - A calm voice influences the perception and changes how we and others feel. 3. **Using Other People For Self-Reflection** **Social Comparison** - Social comparison is the process of thinking about information about one or more other people in relation to the self - We notice similarities and differences between self and others - **We compare:** - Behaviour - Ability - Opinions - Life circumstances - Jobs - Things we own **Social Comparison Theory** - We learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to others **4 QUESTIONS OF SOCIAL COMPARISON THEORY** 1. When do we do this? 2. Who do we compare ourselves to? 3. Why do we compare ourselves to others? 4. What is the impact of social comparison? 1. **When do we do this?** - We compare ourselves to others when we have no objective standard to measure ourselves against - We compare ourselves to others when we care about our performance in the domain 2. **Who do we compare ourselves to?** 1. **Upward social comparison** ( doing better than us) 2. **Downward social comparison** ( doing worse than us or past self) 3. **Lateral social comparisons** ( at the same skill level) **Downward Comparison Theory** - Compared to those doing worse than us - Because threats hurt our self-esteem - Restores self-esteem - Prone to people with low self-esteem to make themselves feel better - Boosts self-evaluations - We **contrast** ourselves because we are sensitive to the differences between ourselves and others **Upward Social Comparisons Construal Theory** - Compare to others doing better than us - To improve self-esteem by identifying like them - To make ourselves feel better - Not comparing but identifying with better people - Feel successful - Boosts self-evaluation - Aim to **assimilate with successful people** - We are sensitive to similarities between self and others **GERBER et al 2018 Contrast and Assimilation with Others** **The Positive effects of Comparing To others** - Upward comparison gives us hope and inspiration - Downward comparisons gratitude - Contrasting ourselves to others in the dominant social comparison response **The Negative Effects of Comparing to Others** - Upward effects: Regret, envy of others' success - Downward effects: We feel worry about ourselves **Helgeson and Mickelson 1995 MOTIVATION** **Motives for Social Comparison** - Culture influences motivation 1. **Self-enhancement**: makes us feel better 2. **Self-destruction:** to confirm my fear of getting worse 3. **Self-evaluation:** To see how we are doing 4. **Self-improvement**: I can get better 5. **Altruism**: To help others 6. **Common Bond:** For empathy and support **SONG ET AL. (2019): Culture and Motivation by Comparisons FACEBOOK FATIGUE**  - Different cultures may have different motivations for engaging in social comparisons **JOHNSON (2012): How we respond to Upward social comparison** **People more successful than us:** **THREATS TO SELF-ESTEEM** **Positive** 1\. When individuals think they can improve themselves: a. They perform better and/or engage in more self-improvement behaviour b. When you expect to get a promotion but don't get one perform better because you feel envy towards the person who got it **Negative Threats** 1. When individuals **can't improve**, they **act to harm** the other person by: c. Interfering with performance d. Creating coalitions against the other person e. Being ''nasty'' to them f. Withholding or reducing the quality of relevant work information - Sabotaging the other person's reputation - Increase social loafing **Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory/ Model** **Comparing yourself to a friend** - Only matters if we care about the comparison - When we care we can reduce the threat to our self-evaluation by 1. **Reducing closeness to the friend** 2. **Stop caring about the thing itself** 3. **Sabotage to stop the friend from being good at it** **Tesser & Smith 1980 Bring a good friend to the experiment** - In Tesser and Smith's (1980) study, when participants thought the task was of high importance, they gave more difficult clues to **their friend** When they thought the task was not important, they gave more difficult clues to the stranger - When we feel under threat by others in a task we care about we sabotage the other person - We will sabotage a friend when there is a chance they could out perform us - Being outperformed by a friend is worse than by a stranger - Being out performed by a friend in something we care about is bad **NICHOLLS & STUKAS (2011): Narcissistic Personality and Competitiveness** - The higher the narcissism the more likely you are to reduce closeness to a friend if they do better than you - Narcists like friends who they can beat