Chapter 2: The Self in a Social World PDF

**Chapter 2** **THE SELF IN A SOCIAL WORLD** ***[SPOTLIGHTS AND ILLUSIONS]*** *SPOTLIGHT EFFECT* **--** is the belief that others are paying more attention to one\`s appearance and behavior than they really are. It means that we tend to see ourselves at center stage, we intuitively overestimate t...

**Chapter 2** **THE SELF IN A SOCIAL WORLD** ***[SPOTLIGHTS AND ILLUSIONS]*** *SPOTLIGHT EFFECT* **--** is the belief that others are paying more attention to one\`s appearance and behavior than they really are. It means that we tend to see ourselves at center stage, we intuitively overestimate the extent to which other\`s attention is aimed at us. *ILLUSION OF TRANSPARENCY* **--** It is the illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others. The spotlight effect and the related illusion of transparency are but two of many examples of the interplay between our sense of self and our social worlds. Here are more examples: - *Social surroundings affect our self-awareness*. When we are the only members of our race, gender, or nationality in a group, we notice how we differ and how others are reacting to our differences. - *Self-interest colors our social judgment*. When problems arise in a close relationship such as marriage, we usually attribute more responsibility to our partners than to ourselves. - *Self-concern motivates our social behavior*. In hopes of making a positive impression, we agonize about our appearance. We also monitor others' behavior and expectations and adjust our behavior accordingly. - *Social relationships help define our self*. In our varied relationships, we have varying selves, note Susan Andersen and Serena Chen (2002). We may be one with Mom, another with friends, and another with teachers. How we think of ourselves is linked to the person we're with at the moment. *note*: The self can sometimes be an impediment to a satisfying life. **I. SELF--CONCEPT: The Cognitive Component of Self** - The sum total of an individual belief about his or her personal attributes. It is generally thought of as our individual perceptions of our behavior, abilities, and unique characteristics - It is the image that we have of ourselves. - Self-concept is not innate but develops over time from a variety of sources which include our genetics (temperament), and the feedback we receive from society, coaches, parents, family members, teachers, and our cultural heritage - **The Sense of Self** - The most essential aspect of yourself is yourself. - the way a person thinks about and views his or her traits, beliefs, and purpose within the world. - To discover where this sense of self arises, neuroscientists are exploring the brain activity that underlies our constant sense of being oneself. - The "medial prefrontal cortex," a neuron path located in the cleft between your brain hemispheres just behind your eyes, seemingly helps stitch together your sense of self. - **Self-schema** - The elements of your self-concept, the specific beliefs by which you define yourself, are your self-schemas (Markus & Wurf, 1987) - Beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information. - Each person has very different self-schemas that are influenced heavily by past experiences, relationships, upbringing, society, and culture. - The self-schema becomes self-perpetuating when the individual chooses activities based on expectations instead of desires - **Possible Self** - Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future - Possible selves include our visions of the self we dream of becoming---the rich self, the thin self, the passionately loved and loving self (who a person would like to be) - This can be like daydreaming about being a perfect and successful person, thinking about how to make the best of existing circumstances and opportunities, and a fear of what a person might become if they give in to negative desires and fantasies. - **Development of Social Self** - The social self refers to how we are regarded and recognized by others. - Our Sense of Self Is Influenced by the Groups We Belong To. - The social self is produced through the earliest childhood interactions. - **The Role We Play** - As we enact a new role---college student, parent, salesperson---we initially feel self-conscious. Gradually, however, what begins as playacting in the theater of life is absorbed into our sense of self. Gradually, however, what begins as play acting in the theater of life is absorbed into our sense of self - Our sense of self and identity also derives from our position in society. This involves what we might call social characteristics. - **Social Comparisons** - How do we decide if we are rich, smart, or short? One way is through social comparisons - Evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others. - Social comparison explains why students tend to have a higher academic self-concept if they attend a high school with primarily average students (Marsh & others, 2000), and how that self-concept can be threatened after graduation when a student who excels in an average high school goes on to an academically selective university. - The social comparison process involves people coming to know themselves by evaluating their own attitudes, abilities, and traits in comparison with others. - **Two Kinds of Social Comparison** 1. *Upward Social Comparison* - This takes place when we compare ourselves with those who we believe are *[better than us]*. 2. *Downward Social Comparison* - This takes place when we compare ourselves to others who are *[worse off than us]*. - **Success and Failure** - Self-concept is fed not only by our roles, our social identity, and our comparisons but also by our daily experiences - To do one's best and achieve is to feel more confident and empowered - Self-esteem comes not only from telling children how wonderful they are but also from hard-earned achievements. Feelings follow reality. - Problems and failures can cause low self-esteem. - **Other People's Judgments** - When people think well of us, it helps us think well of ourselves - Within modern social psychology, this notion is articulated in the generally accepted principle that social judgment is determined both by the features of the stimulus being judged and by the characteristics of the perceiver (Heider, 1958). - ***Looking-glass self*** - how we think others perceive us as a mirror for perceiving ourselves. - ***Self and Culture*** - how we see ourselves shapes our lives and is shaped by our **cultural** context. - *Individualism* is the concept of giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications. - *Collectivism* is a social psychological term that relates to the manner in which humans identify themselves and prioritize their goals. - *Interdependent Self* **-** construing one's identity in relation to others. - **Growing Individual** - Cultures can also change over time, and many seem to be growing more individualistic. - Did the culture focus on uniqueness first and cause the parents' name choices, or did individual parents decide they wanted their children to be unique, thus creating the culture? The answer, though not yet fully understood, is probably both. - Personal growth can help in growing emotionally and mentally and becoming a more considerate, loving, and positive person. - **Culture and Cognition** - Even within one culture, personal history can influence self-views. - Your self becomes your constant companion (echoing the nonsensical but correct statement "Wherever you go, there you are"). - Culture and social cognition are the relationship between human culture and human cognitive capabilities. (Tomasello, 1999). - The independent self acknowledges relationships with others. However, the interdependent self is more deeply embedded in others (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). - **Independent the i**dentity is **Personal**, defined by individual traits and goals. **Me**---personal achievement and fulfillment; my rights and liberties - **Interdependent identity is Social**, defined by connections with others. **We**---group goals and solidarity; our social responsibilities and relationships. - **Culture and Self-Esteem** - Self-esteem in collectivist cultures correlates closely with "what others think of me and my group. - For those in individualistic cultures, self-esteem is more personal and less relational. - Self-esteem is, however, constructed differently across cultures. How should we *be* (personality characteristics), how should we act (behavioral prescriptions) with my fellow humans in ways that bring positive outcomes and avoid danger? - **Self-Knowledge** - "Know thyself," admonished an ancient Greek oracle. - There is one thing, and only one in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation," noted C. S. Lewis (1952, pp. 18--19). - That one thing is \[ourselves\] - **Explaining our Behavior** - Self-explanation is often wrong. - Misattribution can happen, or think that media affects others but themselves. - Recording environment factors that can affect mood. - Weather, day of the week, etc. - No effect actually. - **Predicting our Behavior** - People also errors when predicting their behavior. - Dating couples predict relationship longevity incorrectly. - Others seem to predict better than ourselves - Close friends have better estimates - Planning fallacy. - The tendency to underestimate to how long it will take to complete a task. - Others predict your project time better than you. - Automatically add more time to the project. - Be more realistic about how long tasks took in the past - Many underestimate the time. - Also affect money spent. - **Predicting our Feelings** - Many of life's big decisions involve predicting our future feelings. - Sometimes we know how we feel, sometimes we don\'t. - Affective forecasting - Difficulty predicting the intensity and duration of future emotions. - Men mispredict their behavior during love situations. - Hungry shoppers mispredict their impulse buying behavior. - In speed dating, women predict better when others clue them rather than the profile, but women still think they take from the profile. - Sadness is the same in natural disasters no matter the number of people killed. - Overestimation of the effect of good or bad events on well-being. - Impact bias - Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events. - Tend to evaporate over time. - Overestimation can lead to ill-advised investment in those things. - Focusing on negative events makes us forget the positive things. - Immune neglect - The human tendency to underestimate the speed and the strength of the \"psychological immune system\" which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen. - ***Psychological immune system*** - includes the strategies for rationalizing, discounting, forgiving, and limiting emotional trauma. - ***Immune neglect -*** The human tendency to underestimate the speed and the strength of the "psychological immune system," which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen. - **THE WISDOM AND ILLUSIONS OF SELF-ANALYSIS** - We are more aware of the results of our thinking than the process. - Wilson: Mental processes controlling our behavior are different from the processes we use to explain it. - We are often strangers to ourselves. - Dual attitude system - Different implicit (automatic) and explicit (consciously controlled) attitudes toward the same object. Verbalized explicit attitudes may change with education and persuasion; implicit attitudes change slowly, with a practice that forms new habits. - Self-reports are often untrustworthy. - Personal testimonies may be wrong. **II. SELF--ESTEEM: The Affective Component of Self** - How do you feel about yourself? - Self-esteem is a person's overall self-evaluation, self - assessment and sense of self-worth that includes both self-belief and emotional states (victory, depression, pride, and shame). - Consisting of a person's positive and negative self-evaluation - Self-discrepancy theory \> the theory linking the perception of discrepancies between a person's self-concept and various self-guides to specific negative emotional states. - Self-awareness theory \> it states that self-focused attention leads people to notice self-discrepancies, thereby motivating either an escape from self-awareness or a change in behavior. - Self -- Focusing Persons - Private self -- self-consciousness\> a personality characteristic of individuals who are introspective, often attending to their own inner states (the tendency to introspect on our inner thoughts and feelings) - Public self -- self-consciousness\> a personality characteristic of individuals who focus on themselves as social objects as seen by others (the tendency to be aware of our outer public image). - **TYPES OF SELF-ESTEEM**: 1. **Lower self-esteem** - Individuals are unable to see themselves as capable, sufficient, and worthy and they don't believe to their own self. They often compare their self to other people and tend to focus on their weaknesses instead of their own strengths 2. **High self esteem** - Individuals who have healthy feelings and believe in themselves also have their own weaknesses but they are focused on their strengths which really shape who they really are. - **SELF-ESTEEM AS MOTIVATION** - **IMPROVE YOUR SELF-ESTEEM** 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. - **THE DARK SIDE OF SELF-ESTEEM** - **The complication if people have too much self-esteem** - **PERCEIVED SELF-CONTROL** - **The Self's Energy** - People who exert self-control on certain things may end up quitting faster. - People who have tried to control emotional responses have decreased physical stamina. - People spending willpower on controlling emotion may become more aggressive and less restrained. - Depletes willpower reserves - Brain consumes blood sugar. - Like muscular exercise, weaker, then replenished, then strengthened with more. - **Self-Efficacy** - It refers to an individual\'s belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments. - A sense that one is competent and effective, distinguished from self-esteem, which is one\'s sense of self-worth. A sharpshooter in the military might feel high self-efficacy and low self-esteem. - Children and adults with strong feelings of self-efficacy are more persistent, less anxious, less depressed. - Stay calm and seek solutions rather than ruminate on inadequacy. - Still depends on control. - Think you are a good driver (high self-efficacy) but afraid of drunk drivers (low control) - Self-efficacy is not self-esteem. - Self-efficacy = belief you can do something. - Self-esteem = general view of self. - Self-efficacy feedback is better. - You tried really hard vs. You are really smart. - **Locus of control** - Locus of control is an individual's belief system regarding the causes of his or her experiences and the factors to which that person attributes success or failure. - **Locus of control** - The extent to which people perceive outcomes as internally controllable by their own efforts or as externally controlled by chance or outside forces. - 2 categories of Locus of control: 1. Internal Locus of control- the person attributes success to his or her own efforts and abilities. A person who expects to succeed will be more motivated and more likely to learn. - Believe you control your own destiny - Internal locus is more likely to do better 2. External Locus of control- attributes his or her success to luck or fate, will be less likely to make the effort needed to learn. People with an external locus of control are also more likely to experience anxiety since they believe that they are not in control of their lives. - Outside forces determine your fate. - May end up blaming much of their failures on other factors. - To put self-efficacy in other terms, you might say that those with high self-efficacy have an internal locus of control. - The locus of control refers to where you believe the power to alter your life events resides: within you (internal locus of control) or outside of you (external locus of control). - **SELF-ESTEEM vs SELF-EFFICACY** - Self-esteem is conceptualized as a sort of general or overall feeling of one's worth or value. While self-esteem is focused more on "being". Self-efficacy is more focused on "doing". - High self-worth can definitely improve one's sense of self-efficacy, just as high self-efficacy can contribute to one's sense of overall value or worth, but the two stand as separate constructs. - **LEARNED HELPLESSNESS VS. SELF-DETERMINATION** - Learned helplessness. - The sense of hopelessness and resignation learned when a human or animal perceives no control over repeated bad events (Seligman) - Feel helpless = more passive - Controllable bad events -\> Perceived lack of control -\> Learned helplessness. - Self-control helps with performance - Focus on improving self-control. - The cost of excess choice - Too many choices can be paralyzing; less satisfied choice. - Tiring for people. - Choice may enhance regret due to opportunity costs. - Greater satisfaction with irrevocable choices. - Also applies to marriages - Self-control is generally good - Mastery experiences - **[SELF-SERVING BIAS ]** - It is the tendency to perceive oneself favorably. - As we process self-relevant information, a potent bias intrudes. We readily *excuse our failures, accept credit for our successes*, and in many ways see ourselves as better than average. Such self-enhancing perceptions enable most people to enjoy the bright side of high self-esteem, while occasionally suffering the dark side. - **EXPLAINING POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EVENTS** - They attribute success to their ability and effort, but they attribute failure to external factors such as bad luck or the problem's inherent "impossibility" (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999). - An example: explaining their victories - athletes commonly credit themselves, but they attribute losses -to something else: bad breaks, bad referee calls, or the other team's super effort or dirty play (Grove & others, 1991; Lalonde, 1992; Mullen & Riordan, 1988). - ***Self-serving attributions*** - A form of self-serving bias; the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other factors. - We help maintain our positive self-images by associating ourselves with success and distancing ourselves from failure. - Blaming failure or rejection on something external, even another's prejudice, is less depressing than seeing oneself as undeserving (Major & others, 2003). - We will, however, acknowledge our distant past failings---those by our "former" self, note Anne Wilson and Michael Ross (2001). - Ironically, we are even biased against seeing our own bias. People claim they avoid self-serving bias themselves, but readily acknowledge that others commit this bias (Pronin & others, 2002). - This "bias blind spot" can have serious consequences during conflicts. - **CAN WE BE BETTER THAN AVERAGE?** - For on subjective, socially desirable, and common dimensions, most *people see themselves as better than the average person*. - Compared with people in general, *most people see themselves as more ethical, more competent at their job, friendlier, more intelligent, better looking, less prejudiced, healthier, and even more insightful and less biased* in their self-assessments. - **UNREALISTIC OPTIMISM** - The optimist," notes H. Jackson Brown (1990, p. 79), "goes to the window every morning and says, 'Good morning, God.' The pessimist goes to the window and says, 'good God, morning.' - **defensive pessimism** - the adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one's anxiety to motivate effective action. - **Illusory optimism** increases our vulnerability. Believing ourselves immune to misfortune, we do not take sensible precautions - **Ideas from unrealistic optimism - v**iewing things in a more immediate, realistic way often helps. - Believing you're great when nothing can prove you wrong is one thing, but with an evaluation fast approaching, best not to look like a bragging fool. - It's also important to be able to listen to criticism. - According to David Dunning (2006), "if two people independently give them the same piece of negative feedback, they should at least consider the possibility that it might be true." - **FALSE CONSENSUS AND UNIQUENESS** - **False consensus effect** - The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one\'s opinions and one\'s undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors. - Believing people agree when they actually don\'t. - When we do badly, we assure ourselves that these things are common. - May happen because we generalize from a limited sample. - also, we more likely to spend time with people like us - **False uniqueness effect** - The tendency to underestimate the commonality of one\'s abilities and one\'s desirable or successful behaviors. - Seeing our own virtues as exceptional. - **group-serving bias - e**xplaining away outgroup members' positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions (while excusing such behavior by one's own group). - Self-serving pride in group settings can become especially dangerous. **III. SELF-PRESENTATION: The Behavioral Component of Self** - Strategies people use to shape what others think of them**.** - The act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one's ideals - **SELF-HANDICAPPING** "*I'm really not a failure---I would have done well except for this problem*." - Protecting one's self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure. - Reduce their preparation for important individual athletic events (Rhodewalt & others, 1984). - Give their opponent an advantage (Shepperd & Arkin, 1991). - Perform poorly at the beginning of a task in order not to create unreachable expectations (Baumgardner & Brownlee, 1987) - Not try as hard as they could during a tough, ego-involving task (Hormuth, 1986; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987; Riggs, 1992; Turner & Pratkanis, 1993). **B. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT** - Self-serving bias, false modesty, and self-handicapping reveal the depth of our concern for self-image. To varying degrees, we are continually managing the impressions we create. Whether we wish to impress, intimidate, or seem helpless, we are social animals, playing to an audience. - Self-presentation refers to our wanting to present a desired image both to an external audience (other people) and to an internal audience (ourselves). - We work at managing the impressions we create. We excuse, justify, or apologize as necessary to shore up our self-esteem and verify our self-images (Schlenker & Weigold, 1992). Just as we preserve our self-esteem, we also must make sure not to brag too much and risk the disapproval of others (Anderson & others, 2006). - Social interaction is a careful balance of looking good while not looking too good. - People felt significantly better than they thought they would after doing their best to "put their best face forward" and concentrate on making a positive impression. - For some people, conscious self-presentation is a way of life. They continually monitor their own behavior and note how others react, then adjust their social performance to gain a desired effect. - Two faces of self-presentation 1. Strategic self -- presentation consists of our effort to shape others' impressions in specific ways in order to gain influence, power, sympathy, or approval. Specific goals vary from one person and situation to another - 2 types of goals a. Ingratiation (seek to please somebody) -- acts that are motivated by the desire to "get along and be liked" b. Self-promotion -- acts that are motivated by the desire to "get ahead and be respected for one's competence 2. Self - verification is the desire to have others perceive us as we genuinely perceive ourselves. - Self -- Monitoring \> the tendency to change behavior in response to the self-presentation concern of the situation (the tendency to regulate our behavior to meet the demand of social situation).