Social Psychology: Self-Concept (2015) PDF

THE SELF SELF-CONCEPT SELF-ESTEEM APPRAISAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE COPING SELF-PRESENTATION SELF-EXPRESSION...

THE SELF SELF-CONCEPT SELF-ESTEEM APPRAISAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE COPING SELF-PRESENTATION SELF-EXPRESSION 4 SOCIAL COMPETITION ACCESSIBILITY SOCIAL C SOC COMPARISON CO ME MINE OMPAR SO SELF-ENHANCING SELF-REGULATION SELF-AWARENESS BIAS CHAPTER OVERVIEW SELF-MONITORING Constructing the Self- Concept: Learning Who We Are Sources of the Self-Concept Learning about Self and H ow do you rate your driving skills? Your honesty, social sensitivity, and lead- Others: The Same or ership skills? Are you about average, below average, or above average on these Different? qualities? It turns out that most people think of themselves as above average Multiple Selves on a wide range of desirable characteristics like these (Larwood & Whittaker, 1977; Putting It All Together: Svenson, 1981; Weinstein, 1987), and perhaps you do too. But think about it. When Constructing a Coherent nearly one million high school students were surveyed in one study, 89% said they were Self-Concept above average in getting along with others—and they can’t all be right. The same goes for the 70% who rated themselves above average on leadership, and the 60% who said Constructing Self- the same thing about their athletic skills (College Board, 1976–77). This self-enhancing Esteem: How We Feel tendency has been termed the “Lake Wobegon effect,” after the humorist Garrison About Ourselves Keillor’s mythical town where “all the children are above average.” How do people arrive Balancing Accuracy and Enhancement at these inflated views of themselves and then defend them in the face of inevitable Evaluating Personal negative evidence? How does our tendency to see ourselves in a highly positive light co- Experiences: Some Pain exist with our need to perceive ourselves accurately? Questions like these are important but Mainly Gain because what you think of yourself, how you feel about yourself, and the ways you choose Social Comparisons: Better to express yourself influence virtually all aspects of your life. One indication of the impor- or Worse Than Others? tance of the self to almost everyone is that a Google search for the term “self” in 2013 Why Self-Enhance? turned up almost a billion hits. What is this “self” anyway? Since ancient times philosophers have admonished: Effects of the Self: Self- “Know thyself,” for the self is an object of knowledge. What we call the self has two Regulation components: the self-concept, what we know about ourselves, and self-esteem, how we The Self and Thoughts feel about ourselves. You may be confident that you are shy or honest or intelligent or about Ourselves and attractive. You may feel that, all things considered, you are a pretty decent human being. Others Although these parts of our self seem as familiar and comfortable as a favorite pair of The Self and Emotions The Self in Action: jeans, both develop and change as our experiences, life circumstances, and social Regulating Behavior surroundings do. So how do you come to know what you are like? The first part of this Temptations that May chapter looks at the way we form our impressions of the self, how we come to know what Derail Self-Regulation qualities and characteristics we have. In many ways, forming impressions of the self is very similar to the way we perceive other people. However, as you will see in the second part of the chapter, where we discuss how we feel about ourselves, we bring more biases 96 4 THE SELF to the process of self-perception. For most of us, although the self-portraits we paint are Defending the Self: Coping with Stresses, accurate in a general way, they are also colored by powerful motivational pressures to Inconsistencies, and think well of ourselves. Failures Why do we need to know who we are? The reason is that self-knowledge is crucial Threats to the Well-Being in directing and regulating our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Self-knowledge lets of the Self us seek out situations that match our capabilities: Knowing ourselves to be good at tennis, Defending Against Threat: we welcome the opportunity to compete on the court. Goals that are important in Emotion-Focused Coping defining who we are dictate our emotional responses to events. For example, valued Attacking Threat Head-On: accomplishments arouse pride and joy, whereas events that threaten or thwart us evoke Problem-Focused Coping fear or anger. And when we choose to coach Little League on the weekends or volunteer How to Cope? for Habitat for Humanity, our sense of self guides our behavior as we try to show others the kind of person we are. In the third part of the chapter we see the self in action, regulating and directing our interpretations and interactions with the social world. In the final section of this chapter we consider what happens when our sense of self is challenged—when what happens is not what we planned, hoped for, or expected. Will juggling school work and a social life or failing admission to your preferred sorority be too much for you? How do people cope with sudden illness, the loss of a job, or moving away from all one’s childhood friends and family? The last part of the chapter examines our attempts to cope with stresses, failures, and inconsistencies. As you will see, the way we defend ourselves against threats and disappointments influences not only our emotional well-being but also our physical health. CONSTRUCTING THE SELF-CONCEPT: LEARNING WHO WE ARE self-concept The self-concept is the set of all an individual’s beliefs about his or her personal qualities. all of an individual’s knowledge You might think that because we are dealing with ourselves that the self-concept is about his or her personal qualities just simply or directly “known” to us. But, just as our impressions of other people are constructions based on available cues and our general knowledge, our self-concepts are also actively constructed. Indeed, if complete self-understanding were easily attained, philosophers would not have to advise us to seek the self, therapists would not spend hours helping people get in touch with themselves, and “self-help” books would not be necessary. Sources of the Self-Concept People construct the self-concept in much the same way they form impressions of others, by interpreting various types of cues. People often learn their own characteristics from their observed behaviors. They also use thoughts and feelings and other people’s reac- tions to form impressions of themselves. Finally, people compare themselves to others to learn what characteristics make them unique. If asked to describe yourself, you might report being a good organizer, talkative, just a little obsessed with being punctual, and scrupulously honest. How did you come to see yourself this way? Recall from Chapter 3 that we learn about and form impressions of others based on our interpretations of different sorts of cues. It turns out that we engage CONSTRUCTING THE SELF-CONCEPT: LEARNING WHO WE ARE 97 in a similar process when learning about and forming an impression of ourselves. That is, we piece together our self-concept over time from interpretations of many different kinds of cues. Some important cues originate from the self: we can interpret our own behaviors, thoughts, and feelings to learn who we are. But cues to our self-concept also come from others, as we can learn who we are by considering how other people react to us or by comparing ourselves to them. Learning Who We Are from Our Own Behavior. British author E. M. Forster quipped, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” This tongue-in-cheek comment conveys the key idea of Daryl Bem’s (1967) self-perception theory: We can learn things self-perception theory about ourselves by observing our own behavior. For example, when we star in a com- the theory that we make inferences about our personal characteristics munity theater production and decide we are extroverted, self-perception is at work on the basis of our overt behaviors (Rhodewalt & Agustsdottir, 1986; Salancik & Conway, 1975). According to the theory, when internal cues are weak or people rely on their behavior to draw inferences about themselves, and this is especially ambiguous true when we are first developing a self-concept or when we do not have a good sense of who we are in a particular domain. In addition, people are especially likely to draw self-inferences from behaviors that they see as having freely chosen. These behaviors are driven by intrinsic motivation: We are doing what we want to do rather than what we have to do. In contrast, when a behav- ior is performed as a means to some external end, it is governed by extrinsic motivation. Not only does such a behavior reveal less about our inner qualities, but we often lose pleasure in performing it (Deci, 1971; Harackiewicz, 1979). Accordingly, providing external rewards often undermines intrinsic motivation, as Mark Lepper and his colleagues (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973) have demonstrated. They introduced children to an attractive new activity: drawing with colorful markers. After drawing for a while, some children received a previously promised “Good Player” certificate, others unexpectedly received the same certificate, and still others received nothing. One to two weeks later, the markers were placed in the children’s regular classroom. The amount of free time each child spent playing with the markers was recorded as a measure of their intrinsic motivation. The children who had not been rewarded and those who had received the unexpected reward retained their motivation, drawing for about 16% of the time. In contrast, children who expected and received an award used the markers for an average of only 8.6% of their free time. Self-perception processes explain this drop in motivation. Children who saw them- selves drawing pictures when a reward had been promised must have concluded that they drew for the reward, not just for the pleasure of creating the picture. In contrast, drawing with no anticipation of reward allowed other youngsters to infer that the activity must be interesting and enjoyable. Even imagined behaviors can be input for self-perception processes. Take a moment to picture yourself doing various things to preserve the environment, perhaps recycling aluminum cans. Do you now see yourself as a more environmentally aware person? Self- perception processes again suggest that you will (C. A. Anderson & Godfrey, 1987). Thinking about actual or imagined behavior increases the accessibility of related personal characteristics. You might imagine solving a puzzle and then reflect on your good spatial memory, recalling that you loved playing with puzzles as a child. As thoughts like these come to mind, they become the basis for a self-inference: “I am very good at solving 98 4 THE SELF puzzles.” Seeing the self as possessing relevant traits may improve not only your con- fidence, persistence, and effort, but also your actual performance on the task (Campbell & Fairey, 1985). Athletes and sports psychologists have put such findings to work. For example, in one study, some junior gymnasts were assigned to physically practice a new balance-beam move, and others to imagine doing the same move, trying to form a realistic image of every detail (D. Smith and others, 2007). After practicing these tasks three times a week for six weeks, the imagery group performed just as well as those who physically practiced, and both of these groups performed better than control gymnasts who just did stretching exercises. Learning Who We Are from Thoughts and Feelings. Another important cue to learning who we are comes from an interpretation of our own thoughts and feelings. In fact, when it comes to knowing who we are, our own thoughts and feelings might have more impact than our behaviors. After all, we are often aware of the gap between what we think and feel and how we have to behave in the world. Attending your best friend’s wedding may prompt you to act like the life of the party, but your inner feelings of envy and loss tell you more about yourself. One study underlines the importance of thoughts and feelings for self-knowledge (Andersen, 1984). Some observers in the study heard participants talk about their thoughts and feelings in various everyday situations, whereas others heard participants describe only their behaviors in those situations. The observers then wrote down their impressions. Observers who listened to descriptions of thoughts and feelings formed impressions that matched the participants’ own self-concept more accurately than the impressions recorded by observers who heard only about behaviors. This finding suggests that our thoughts and feelings can play a bigger role than behaviors in our inferences about what we are like. Learning Who We Are from Other People’s Reactions. Other people’s views of us also serve as a cue in the development of the self-concept. In 1902, the sociologist Charles H. Cooley coined the phrase the “looking-glass self” to indicate that one source of our self-knowledge is other people’s reactions to us. These reactions serve as a kind of mirror, reflecting our image so that we, too, can see it (Felson, 1989). Parents coo over us. Peers belittle us. Relatives note with pleasure that we remind them of devout Aunt Agatha. These reactions tell us we are cute, clumsy, or religious. One study supported the concept of the looking-glass self when it compared the behaviors of three groups of schoolchildren. Teachers and others repeatedly told some of the children that they were tidy. Children in another group were repeatedly instructed that they should be tidy, and the third group was not told anything special. The researchers then observed how much litter each group spread around. The tidiest youngsters were those in the first group. Labeled as tidy, they behaved accordingly, reflecting their new self-concept (R. L. Miller, Brickman, & Bolen, 1975). Being explicitly labeled with a trait, like tidy, may shape your self-concept. But, others need not explicitly announce “you are tidy” to produce the same result. Indeed, other people’s more subtle reactions may do the trick. For example, when your parents consistently enlist you, and not your sister, to run important errands, they are implicitly communicating that you are more helpful and reliable. You may then begin to see yourself in these ways. CONSTRUCTING THE SELF-CONCEPT: LEARNING WHO WE ARE 99 Other people’s reactions have the largest effects on people whose self-concepts are uncertain or are still developing (as with the “tidy” children in the study just described). For most adults, in contrast, self-views rely more on other types of evidence, such as comparisons with other people, as we will see next. Like the self-fulfilling prophecy (discussed Learning Who We Are from Social Comparison. If you, as a moderately skilled chess in Chapter 3), the player, want to know how good you really are, your best approach is not to listen to looking-glass self involves what other people tell you about your playing skills, but to play a lot of games and see an observer’s reactions how many you win. This is the idea behind social comparison theory, which states that that influence someone the self-concept is often shaped by comparisons between ourselves and others. This else’s behavior and theory was initially proposed by Leon Festinger (1954), who assumed that people would self-concept (D. T. Miller gain the most accurate information about themselves by seeking out similar others for & Turnbull, 1986). comparison. According to this view, you learn more by comparing your chess game with Chapter 3 noted that that of opponents with similar skills than by judging yourself against either world chess self-fulfilling prophecies champion Viswanathan Anand or a rank beginner. mainly affect people who are uncertain of their It might be intuitively obvious that comparing your own average chess abilities to actual self-concept, and one of the most skilled players of all time or to a beginner could lead to inaccurate self- the same is true with the views. Indeed, research has shown that when we compare our own average skills to those looking-glass self. who are extremely good or bad, we often see ourselves in the opposite way, termed a contrast effect (Mussweiler, Ruter, & Epstude, 2004). Thus, when comparing yourself to Anand, you might conclude that you are lousy, but when comparing yourself to a social comparison theory beginner, you might surmise that you are a chess wizard. Perhaps for this reason, the theory that people learn about Festinger contended that comparisons with similar others should lead to fairly accurate and evaluate their personal qualities self-knowledge. Although this seems quite sensible, it turns out that comparisons to by comparing themselves to others similar others may also bias self-views. Even if you compared your average chess-playing self with someone who is only moderately good or moderately bad at chess, your self- contrast effect an effect of a comparison standard views will move slightly in that same direction, termed an assimilation effect (Mussweiler or prime that makes the perceiver’s and others, 2004). That is, you will see your own chess skills as a little bit better when judgment more different from the comparing to someone who is slightly more skilled than you, and a little bit worse when standard comparing to someone who is slightly less skilled. assimilation effect an effect of a comparison standard or prime that makes the perceiver’s judgment more similar to the standard Photo 4.1 Social comparisons and the self. The male tennis player may infer that he is very unskilled if he watches the female tennis player perform extremely well during drills. Indeed, we often learn who we are by comparing ourselves to others. 100 4 THE SELF Source of Behavior Thoughts and feelings Others’ reactions Social comparisons self-knowledge I often go out with I sometimes feel shy People tell me I am Having to give a speech groups of friends. with strangers. the life of the party. makes me more anxious than most people. Resulting I am outgoing. I am shy. I am outgoing. I am shy. inference What am I really like? (To be continued) Figure 4.1 Sources of self-knowledge Because no one is totally consistent all the time, multiple sources of information about ourselves may lead to potentially conflicting inferences, which will eventually have to be integrated. Of course, people have multiple motives for comparing themselves to others (Suls, Martin, & Wheeler, 2002), and these spring from our fundamental motivational prin- ciples. As just described, people may seek accurate self-knowledge (mastery), but they might also make comparisons to show solidarity with others (connectedness), or to feel better about themselves (valuing me and mine; Helgeson & Mickelson, 1995). Besides affording shifts in our self-views, social comparisons are important in help- ing us shape our sense of uniqueness. The attributes that distinguish us from most others Chapter 6 will deal often become defining features of the self. Children writing self-descriptions are likely with the aspects of to mention characteristics, such as being left-handed or having red hair, that mark them self-knowledge, such as as unusual in their family or classroom (W. J. McGuire & McGuire, 1981; W. J. McGuire our membership in social & Padawer-Singer, 1978). By summarizing the ways in which we differ from others, groups, that we share in social comparison permits us to construct a self-concept that gives each of us a strong common with other sense of being unique and distinctive. people. Figure 4.1 shows the many sources of the self-concept. Note that social influences are pervasive even as we are constructing the self and learning what makes us unique. Learning about Self and Others: The Same or Different? Despite the general similarity between the ways people learn about themselves and others, self-knowledge is richer and more detailed than knowledge about others. People can observe themselves in more situations and have better access to private thoughts and feelings. People also tend to explain their own and other people’s behaviors differently. However, these differences do not guarantee that our self views are more insightful than others’ views of us. CONSTRUCTING THE SELF-CONCEPT: LEARNING WHO WE ARE 101 Most of the time, the cues we use to learn about ourselves are the same sorts of cues we use to learn about others. Our reliance on similar sorts of cues creates important simi- larities between our knowledge about the self and about others, but there are differences as well, particularly in the number of cues we have and in the type of knowledge we draw from them. Differences in Cues and Knowledge. We usually have a greater quantity and variety of cues about ourselves than we have about others. For example, we see ourselves in a wider range of situations and for more time than we do anyone else. This fact probably explains why we view ourselves as quite variable and flexible, whereas we view other people as more set in their ways (T. L. Baxter & Goldberg, 1987). Asked to state whether they are serious or carefree, for example, most people will describe themselves by saying, “In-between” or “It depends.” But they freely characterize strangers as closer to the extremes (Prentice, 1990; Sande, Goethals, & Radloff, 1988). Interestingly, the number of cues and type of knowledge we have about close others fall somewhere between the richness of self-knowledge and the paucity of stranger knowledge. A best friend, a long- time romantic partner, a sibling, or a parent is a person who, like ourselves, we have observed over a long period of time across many contexts. Thus, like the self, we may characterize close others as variable and flexible. In addition to observing ourselves across more situations than we observe others, we also have special access to one type of cue about ourselves that we rarely, if ever, have about others: inner thoughts. This simple fact can lead to a host of inferences that differ for the self compared to other people (Pronin, 2008). For instance, we may see ourselves, relative to others, as less conformist because we are aware of our thoughts like “Isn’t this silly?” even as we go along with the latest fashion trend. However, we typically do not know the inner thoughts of others and thus may make judgments of them based on their outward conformity (Pronin, Berger, & Molouki, 2007). Of course, sometimes other people, especially close others, divulge their inner thoughts to us. In these cases, we may have good access to this information, making self and other perceptions quite similar. Just because we lack direct access to others’ inner thoughts does not stop us from trying to surmise what they might be. But, as we shall see, these efforts can lead to erroneous conclusions. One common strategy we employ to infer others’ thoughts is to consider our own thoughts, assume that others have similar thoughts, and then adjust them, if necessary, to reflect specific information we know about that other person (Epley, 2008). For example, if trying to guess what a co-worker thinks of a new television comedy, you may start with your own positive reaction to the show. You then assume your co-worker also likes the show, but may guess that her evaluation may be slightly less favorable than yours, as you believe her humor style differs somewhat from yours. If your co-worker had a completely different reaction to the show than you did, this strategy will obviously fail. Thus, our efforts to determine others’ inner thoughts may lead us astray. Differences in Inferences. Because we have greater access to our own reactions, we are more aware of the impact people, places, and events have on us than of the impact they have on others. As a result, we may draw different inferences about the causes of 102 4 THE SELF behaviors. Recall for a moment the last time you became really angry and yelled at someone. Why did you act the way you did? Try to answer the same question about the last person who became irate at you. Why did he or she do that? You may have answered these similar questions in very different ways. In explaining your own aggressive actions, you may have pointed to external factors, perhaps saying that the person you became angry with had been really annoying and provocative. Answering the same question about someone else, you may have cited that person’s personal characteristics: He or she is just an aggressive type who boils over easily. These actor-observer effect different answers reflect an actor-observer effect, the idea that people tend to attribute the idea that we attribute our own their own choices and actions to situational factors but to attribute others’ choices and behaviors to situational causes actions to internal characteristics. E. E. Jones and Richard Nisbett proposed this idea in while seeing others’ acts as due to their inner characteristics 1972, and there are a few reasons that these actor–observer differences could occur. First, when we witness another person’s behavior, that person is salient: He or she is the focus of attention and stands out against the background (Heider, 1958; Storms, 1973). In contrast, when we act, we literally look out at the world, so the stimulus or trigger for our action is the salient factor. You see the snake in the grass as causing your sudden jump, whereas a passerby focuses mainly on your startle response and may conclude that you are an easily frightened person. Second, when asked why something occurred, people consider alternative causes, but they consider different alternatives for the self and for others (Kahneman & Miller, 1986; McGill, 1989). For example, if some- one asks you why you liked the latest John Grisham thriller, you will probably assume that the questioner means why you liked it as compared to other books you’ve read. Obviously, then, it would be reasonable to cite the aspects of the novel that distinguish it from others, providing a situational cause for your behavior. But if someone asks why a friend of yours liked the same book, you might assume that the questioner seeks to learn why this friend among all other people liked the book, and so you might cite some of your friend’s unique personal characteristics, leading you to provide internal causes for your friend’s behavior (McGill, 1989; Wells & Gavanski, 1989). At one time, the actor-observer effect was considered a robust and pervasive phe- nomenon (e.g., Watson, 1982), but recent insights suggest this effect is much smaller than once assumed and occurs in much more limited circumstances (Malle, 2006). For example, actor-observer effects may operate differently depending on whether the to- be-explained action is positive or negative (Malle, 2006). The classic actor-observer effect emerges reliably for negative actions (for example, an academic failure), but it may reverse for positive behaviors (for example, an academic success)—partly to boost self-esteem, people like to take personal credit for their successes. Moreover, the actor- observer effect is more likely when a behavior is seen as deviating widely from what most others do in a particular circumstance, compared to behaviors that seem more typical. Malle (1999) suggests that the most fundamental difference between actors and observers is that actors usually explain their behaviors by their own beliefs and goals, whereas observers more often cite more remote causes of those beliefs or goals. Thus, you might say you tried out for the track team because you wanted an activity that would help you stay fit (your goal) and believed you would be able to make the team. In contrast, a friend might explain your behavior by noting that one of your close relatives was overweight and died of heart disease: a potential cause that presumably contributed to your goal of keeping fit. CONSTRUCTING THE SELF-CONCEPT: LEARNING WHO WE ARE 103 Similar Shortcomings: More Is Not Always Better. When considering other people, we sometimes devote a great deal of careful thought to forming our impressions of them. As discussed in Chapter 3, thinking more about others does not always lead to better or more insightful impressions. Similarly, although we know a great deal more about ourselves than we do about others, having all this extra knowledge does not necessarily mean we have better or more insightful self impressions. In fact, being the leading authority on the topic does not guarantee that we are always aware of why we think, feel, and act the way we do (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Consider the efforts of 50 students who for 5 weeks kept diaries of their positive and negative moods and tried to identify the sources of those moods. They recorded many potential causes, such as whether the weather was sunny or wet and whether it was a Monday or a weekend day. Another group of students was simply asked to describe how these factors generally affect people’s moods. Despite their efforts at self-analysis, the diary keepers’ reports about the causes of their own moods were no different than the blind guesses of people who did not know them (Wilson, Laser, & Stone, 1982). Apparently, all the participants relied on gen- eral causal theories, like the idea that rainy days and Mondays cause blue moods, even if they were explaining their own moods. Thus, the vast wealth of self-knowledge we possess does not guarantee that we can generate unique insights into our own behavior, beyond what strangers may be able to guess. Sometimes people’s judgments about the self are influenced not by the content of self-knowledge but by motives that will increase or decrease their accuracy in making those judgments (like the motive to value me and mine), a subject we will turn to later. Multiple Selves Because people see themselves in a wide range of situations and roles, self-knowledge is organized around multiple roles, activities, and relationships. People vary in the number and diversity of “selves” that they believe they possess. As information about the self accumulates from all these different sources, we become aware that we have many different “selves.” We begin to see that some of our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings depend on what we are doing and who our companions are (Markus & Wurf, 1987). For instance, most of us probably act and feel differently when we are working with our office mates—perhaps more responsibly and less playfully— than we do when we are with family and close friends. Social comparisons also vary from situation to situation. Someone who is one of the least polite people at work may be the most polite family member at home. Others’ reactions also differ. Older relatives may view a 40-year-old physician as a youngster, but his co-workers may see him as a mature leader in the field of transplant surgery. How do we deal with all this varying and potentially confusing information? We organize it according to our various roles, activities, and relationships (Carver & Scheier, 1981; T. B. Rogers, 1981). Thus, a woman might consider herself studious in academic self-aspects situations, hard-working at the office, and fun-loving when relaxing with a group of Summaries of a person’s beliefs friends. Each of these different self-aspects summarizes what she believes she is like in about the self in specific domains, a particular domain, role, or activity (McConnell, 2011). Other self-aspects may reflect roles, or activities 104 4 THE SELF additional roles and activities such as sister, lover, chess player, or jogger (Hoelter, 1985). Distinct self-aspects in our mental representation of the self are the inner reflection of the fact that we actually do think, feel, and behave differently when we are in different social roles, groups, and relationships. Putting It All Together: Constructing a Coherent Self-Concept People try to fit the diverse elements of the self-concept together in a way that seems coherent and stable. Coherence can be attained by focusing on a few central traits, making accessible only limited aspects of the self at any given time, and by selectively remembering past acts. Self-knowledge is assembled from disparate pieces of self-knowledge derived from our multiple roles and social interactions, and the pieces may not fit together very well. You may be an eager participant in one class but unmotivated in another. You may be a vociferous team leader but reserved off the field. And yet, individuals come to have a sense of unity and constancy about themselves. People typically feel that they have always been a certain way. Indeed, few people describe themselves as chameleon-like, constantly changing. People achieve this coherence through various strategies (Baumeister, 1998), and, as we shall see, culture strongly affects their choice of strategies. First, people can construct a unified and enduring sense of self by noting a few core attributes they believe characterize them uniquely among people and consistently across self-schema situations. These personal characteristics form the self-schema (Markus, 1977). Once a core characteristics that a person particular characteristic is incorporated into the self-schema, people notice and process believes characterize him or her information about it very efficiently. For example, people whose self-schema includes a across situations trait like helpful can answer questions like “Are you helpful?” more quickly than other individuals (Markus, 1977). People tend to see evidence for these core traits even in their most mundane behaviors, thereby reinforcing their sense of a stable and unitary self (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987). Thus, you might see confirmation for your view of yourself as helpful even in a trivial interaction like giving directions to a stranger on campus. Though people may view themselves as variable in some ways, the key traits that comprise the self-schema are seen as stable, contributing to our sense of a coherent self. Second, self-coherence can be achieved by making accessible at any one time only a subset of our self-knowledge and self-aspects. Your loud and fun self at your roommate’s party may seem quite inconsistent with your quiet and serious self in the classroom. But, if only one of these selves is accessible at a particular moment, you may not experience or notice this contradiction. In one study, researchers asked biased questions to induce stu- dents to reflect on either their past introverted or extraverted behaviors (Fazio, Effrein, & Falender, 1981). Increasing the accessibility of a biased subset of the self-concept in this way not only caused the students to rate themselves as more introverted or extraverted (depending on their experimental condition), but even made them behave accordingly. As this experiment demonstrates, different self-aspects will be accessible in different situations, so at any given time you will rarely be uncomfortably aware of potential inconsistencies. Finally, self-coherence can be created and maintained through selective memory. As people think about their past, they reconstruct an autobiography or life story (e.g., CONSTRUCTING THE SELF-CONCEPT: LEARNING WHO WE ARE 105 McAdams, 2001) that integrates their various self-aspects and characteristics. For exam- ple, people whose behavior has changed from shy to outgoing may retrieve a biased set of autobiographical memories in which they were always outgoing (M. Ross & Conway, 1986). Reconstruction may shape the basic materials drawn from memory in a way that suits the person’s current goals (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000), as inconvenient or inconsistent bits of information are simply forgotten (Greenwald, 1980). This strategy gives the person a sense of self that feels coherent over time, even if it fails to accurately record the facts of personal history. As we saw earlier, different sources often provide mixed information about the self. But Figure 4.2 illustrates the several ways that people can construct a self-concept that is coherent and meaningful. Across all cultures the primary function of the self-concept is the same. For people to survive and flourish, they must adapt successfully to their environment, particularly the social environment consisting of other people. The self-concept is a crucial aid in that adaptation. Knowing our unique configuration of personal talents and social ties allows us to choose goals that we can reasonably attain, avoid situations that make us miserable, and act in ways that play up our strong points while compensating for our shortcomings (Higgins, 1996b). One might intuitively expect that the self-concept is most helpful in Source of Behavior Thoughts and feelings Others’ reactions Social comparisons self-knowledge I often go out with I sometimes feel shy People tell me I am Having to give a speech groups of friends. with strangers. the life of the party. makes me more anxious than most people. Resulting I am outgoing. I am shy. I am outgoing. I am shy. inference What am I really like? Way of Accessibility Selective memory Focus on key trait achieving coherence With family, my I only recall times Being outgoing is feelings of being when I was shy. central and important outgoing are most to me. accessible. Resulting Outgoing Shy Outgoing self-concept self-concept self-concept self-concept Figure 4.2 Reconciling inconsistencies: Forming a coherent self-concept We have several ways to reconcile inconsistencies in the process of forming a stable and coherent self-concept. Different people select different strategies from among these alternatives. 106 4 THE SELF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND CULTURE: CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN THE SELF-CONCEPT Imagine two stubborn 4-year-olds, each steadfastly refusing to taste the carrots. “Just try them,” coaxes one mother, “vegetables help you grow up big and strong. You want to be big and strong, don’t you?” The other caregiver tries a different tactic: “Think of the farmer who grew the carrots so you could have them to eat. He will be so disappointed if you don’t like them. Just a taste, to make the farmer happy!” Perhaps you recognize one or the other of these strategies. In fact, the first “you-oriented” approach is more often used by parents in individualist cultures, whereas the second strategy reflects the “other-directed” concerns of collectivist cultures. Do cultures with such different emphases also foster different conceptions of the self? Although members of all cultures seek a coherent sense of the self, Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama (1991; Markus, Kitayama, & VandenBos, 1996) suggest that cultures emphasize different ways of constructing a coherent sense of self. In individualist cultures, typical of many of the countries of North America and Western Europe, people tend to see the self as independent, separate from other people, and revealed primarily in inner thoughts and feelings. North American students describing themselves tend to list general attributes that mark them as unique or distinctive individuals, such as “I am intelligent” or “I am musical”—the sort of characteristics that make up the self-schema. In contrast, people in collectivist cultures found in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America tend to see the self as connected with others and revealed primarily in social roles and relationships, not in unique personal characteristics. Chinese students are more likely than those from individualist cultures to define themselves in terms of relationships, roles, or attributes they share with others, such as “I am a daughter” or “I am Buddhist” (Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991). The importance of social connections is so great that in one study where Asian people were asked to recall memories from their own past, they often reported visualizing them from a “third person” perspective—as if looking at themselves from an observer’s viewpoint. Americans, in contrast, typically report experiencing such memories from their own visual perspective (Cohen & Gunz, 2002). Because relationships with others are so important in collectivist cultures, members of those cultures place relatively more emphasis on self-aspects—their social roles and relationships with others—to define the self, than they do on self-schemata (Cousins, 1989; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Because different social roles and relationships may call for quite different behaviors and traits, collectivists may have self-concepts that incorporate more variability, inconsistencies, and even contradictions than individualists do (Choi & Choi, 2002). In fact, greater contextual self-variation is seen among those from collectivist cultures, especially when considering relationship contexts (English & Chen, 2007). In one study, East Asian American and European American students were asked to rate themselves in either a pair of settings, like being at the gym or the cafeteria, or in a pair of relationships, like friends and roommates. European American students reported self-trait ratings that were quite consistent across different settings and relationships. On the other hand, the East Asian American students showed substantial trait rating variability across relationship types, but judged themselves consistently across settings. Table 4.1 shows some of the contrasts between individualist and collectivist cultural views of the self. Across all cultures, though, there are similarities in self-knowledge. First, each of us has the capacity to think of ourselves in both individualist and collectivist ways. Gardner and others (Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee, 1999) found that priming American students with individualism or collectivism caused them to display the types of values and judgments characteristic of those respective cultures. Thus, our everyday cultural surroundings or more transitory influences like priming can make one or the other more accessible. Second, though there appears to be greater variation in self-concept across relationship types in collectivist samples, those from both types of cultures appear to show similar degrees of self-concept consistency over time within a particular context (English & Chen, 2007). CONSTRUCTING SELF-ESTEEM: HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OURSELVES 107 TABLE 4.1 Some Differences Between Construction of the Self in Individualist and Collectivist Cultures Feature Individualist culture Collectivist culture Definition of the self Unique individual, separate from social Connected with others in mesh of context social roles and relationships Structure of the self Unitary and stable, constant across Fluid and variable, changing from situations and relationships one situation or relationship to another Important features Internal, private self (abilities, thoughts, External, public self (statuses, roles, feelings, traits) relationships) Significant tasks Being unique Belonging, fitting in Expressing yourself Acting appropriately Promoting your own goals Promoting group goals Being direct (saying what’s on your mind) Being indirect (reading others’ minds) Source: Adapted from “Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation,” by H. Markus and S. Kitayama, Psychological Review, 98, p. 230. Copyright © 1991 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission. guiding our adaptation if it is accurate. After all, if we held inflated ideas of our own capa- bilities, we might be tempted into situations that demanded more than we could produce, setting ourselves up for disappointment and failure. Nevertheless, accuracy is but only one important goal we pursue in constructing our self-knowledge. As we shall soon see, other goals are important as well. CONSTRUCTING SELF-ESTEEM: HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OURSELVES The self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the positive or negative eval- self-esteem uation of the self, is how we feel about it (E. E. Jones, 1990a). Trait self-esteem captures an individual’s positive or negative evaluation of himself or herself a person’s relatively chronic feelings about the self. It is reflected in people’s agreement or disagreement with statements like: “I feel I’m a person of worth,” or “On the whole, I am satisfied with myself” (M. Rosenberg, 1965). State self-esteem, on the other hand, captures a person’s relatively fleeting feelings about the self in a particular moment. It is reflected in people’s agreement or disagreement with statements like: “I feel inferior to others at this moment,” “I am pleased with my appearance right now,” and “I feel as smart as others” (Heatherton & Polivy, 1991). Thus, a person might have generally high trait self-esteem, but her state self-esteem might plummet temporarily right after failing an exam or a romantic break-up. As these examples underscore, our feelings of mastery (Baumeister and colleagues, 2003) and connectedness to others (Leary and others, 1995) play crucial roles in our self-esteem; that is, when we feel we are performing well or are included by others, our self-esteem is high. 108 4 THE SELF Balancing Accuracy and Enhancement Accurate self-knowledge regarding our capabilities and preferences is important for guiding us through our lives. But accuracy is not the only consideration in evaluating the self: We are also greatly influenced by motivational pressures to think well of the self. Self-esteem summarizes how we are doing at using our self-knowledge to navigate the social world. To see how this works, consider that to successfully regulate anything, such as your financial life, it is important to keep track of your current standing, for example, with a bank statement showing your balance at the end of each month. Like a bank statement that shows how well you are managing your income and expenses, self- esteem is a signal of how well you are doing in successfully adapting to your own social world (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995). It tracks the net result of your successes and failures, achievements and difficulties, as well as your acclaim or rejection by impor- tant other people (Baldwin & Sinclair, 1996). But to serve its proper role, self-esteem should be a relatively accurate reflection of how you are doing. What use would be an inaccurate bank statement that showed you with hundreds of dollars more than you really have? It would only encourage you to overspend and leave you with an empty account. Yet here is a puzzle. Despite the clear value of accurate knowledge, people generally tend to inflate their own abilities and accomplishments, seeking to elevate their self- esteem. For example, consider the “Lake Wobegon” effect that we discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Pick a few traits—honesty, social sensitivity, and leadership, for example—and ask some people to rate themselves on each. You will probably find few people who rate themselves below average on any one (let alone on all) of these qualities (Svenson, 1981; Weinstein, 1987). You may find a few people who show a worse-than-average effect when they think they are pretty incompetent at something (Kruger, 1999; Moore & Small, 2007), but most of the time, most people rate themselves above average on the majority of these qualities. People’s high views of themselves even extend to things they own or are attached to in some way (Beggan, 1992). In fact, if you’re like most people, you probably even pre- fer letters that occur in your name to other letters (Nuttin, 1987). The tendency to prefer the letters in our own name occurs most strongly for those with high self-esteem, suggesting that it is due to a general tendency to favorably evaluate ourselves and things linked with ourselves (Koole, Dijksterhuis, & van Knippenberg, 2001). Linking the self with other people can even make us like those others more. In an interesting demonstration of this, students in one study viewed an image of an alleged male politician whose face had (in some conditions) been digitally blended with the participant’s own face (Bailenson, Garland, Iyengar, & Yee, 2006). Results showed that male participants preferred the politician whose image resembled themselves more than the unaltered one. (Female participants showed the reverse, perhaps because the blend- ing of a female with a male face produced a less realistic or attractive face.) For male participants, making another person resemble the self resulted in better evaluations of him. Such findings reflect our desire to view ourselves in a positive light. Thus, as we will see in the next few sections, our level of self-esteem often reflects compromises CONSTRUCTING SELF-ESTEEM: HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OURSELVES 109 between accurate self-evaluation and self-enhancement. Though an objective assessment of self-relevant information could allow us to form reasonably accurate views of where we stand, self-enhancing biases sneak into the processes of gathering and interpreting self-enhancing bias such information (Kunda, 1990). any tendency to gather or interpret information concerning the self in a way that leads to overly positive evaluations Evaluating Personal Experiences: Some Pain but Mainly Gain Events that affect us positively or negatively influence our self-esteem, but we try in several ways to accumulate more positive than negative experiences. Remember how happy you felt the first time you beat your regular opponent at tennis? And how your image of yourself plunged on the day you broke up with your first love? Experiences like these can raise or lower self-esteem at a moment’s notice. However, self-enhancing biases can color the impact of our experiences on self-esteem. Almost without thinking about it, most of us stack the deck so that life produces more gain and less pain. One obvious way we do this is to choose situations in which we can shine. One of the authors of this text is a member of two choirs and regularly chooses to sing in public; the other two take care to avoid embarrassment by putting a great distance between themselves, choirs, and even occasional invitations to Karaoke nights. Most of us tend to abandon relationships that make us miserable, hobbies that we are unskilled at, and careers that do not allow us to flourish. Instead, our life choices often move us into domains that let us be all that we can be. We not only select areas of life in which we can succeed, but also tend to remember our successes more than our failures. For one thing, we inflate our own contributions to joint efforts or projects. This may stem from the unbiased workings of memory. It is easy to remember one’s own contributions to a joint project; the hours others worked are naturally less vivid. However, people inflate their own contributions to a lesser extent when a project ends in failure (M. Ross & Sicoly, 1979). If overestimating were due only to superior memory for one’s own actions, then the overestimate should occur to an equal extent when a project fails. Since it does not, we can infer the tendency occurs, in part, from a self-enhancing motive. Even when we try to retrieve memories of our past performances in an unbiased fashion, we tend to end up with a sample that is slanted in our favor. In one demon- stration of this self-enhancing bias in memory, students were led to believe that either extroversion or introversion was a desirable characteristic (Sanitioso, Kunda, & Fong, 1990). When the students then recalled relevant past behaviors, they described more memories of the sort they believed to be desirable. Success and failure do not have to be very important to bias our recall. People who were led to believe that tooth-brushing has negative effects on health remembered brushing their teeth less frequently in the past than others who thought brushing was a healthy practice (M. Ross, McFarland, & Fletcher, 1981). For reasons like these, most of us amass more positive experiences than negative ones, both in reality and in memory. On the other hand, the impact of those experiences is not the same for everyone. As described above, some people organize their self-knowledge around multiple 110 4 THE SELF self-complexity self-aspects. People who have many and diverse self-aspects have a high level of self- the extent to which a person complexity (Linville, 1985). Because a given event, such as a career success, tends to possesses many and diverse self- directly impact only one or two self-aspects (such as an employee self), it should have aspects a more dramatic positive effect overall on a person with low self-complexity. This is because the uplifting effect of the event on mood and well-being will not be diluted by many other, unaffected self-aspects. This hypothesis has been confirmed by a meta- analysis summarizing over 70 studies on the issue (Rafaeli-Mor & Steinberg, 2002). However, the meta-analysis found that negative events or failures seem to have about the same negative impact on people regardless of their level of self-complexity. This may be because negative events, overall, have more powerful effects on us than do positive events (Baumeister and others, 2001). Social Comparisons: Better or Worse Than Others? We also evaluate ourselves by making comparisons with others. These comparisons are sometimes self-enhancing, but sometimes self-deprecating. Self-esteem, like the self-concept, depends on social comparisons. Consider, for example, the plight of a young man who recently enrolled in one of our universities with a basketball scholarship. He is an athlete of above-average talent who is expected, in time, to make real contributions to the team. The problem is that his older brother, who played at the same school 2 years earlier, was a major star and is now beginning a career as a professional. It seems inevitable that the young man will be compared to his older brother. How might these comparisons influence the player’s self-esteem if his performance self-evaluation maintenance is not equal to his brother’s? Abraham Tesser’s (1988) model of self-evaluation main - a theory outlining the conditions tenance suggests two possible reactions. They both depend on the closeness of the other under which people’s self-esteem person, for example, the fact that the star player was a brother rather than a cousin, as will be maintained or will suffer well as the importance or centrality of the attribute in question for the person’s self- based on social comparisons to close or distant others concept. Suppose the young man was planning to compete in track and field instead of basketball. Then he would be likely to feel good because of the reflected glory of his brother’s impressive accomplishments. But if playing basketball is an important and central part of the younger brother’s self-concept, disappointment stemming from the comparison could overwhelm his pleasure in his brother’s success. In fact, being out- performed by a sibling or close friend may be even more painful than being beaten by a stranger, because the likelihood of social comparison is greater. Sometimes we want to bask in a loved one’s reflected glory; at other times the glare of his or her achievement is just too painfully illuminating. Chapter 6, pages 197–199, will discuss in As this example illustrates, we cannot always choose whom to compare ourselves more detail the ways with (J. V. Wood, 1989). Most of us have probably had the unfortunate experience of in which connections with performing in public, for example, at a track meet, immediately after the local superstar other people can help us turned in a superb performance. This kind of inescapable comparison can induce feelings feel good or bad about of envy and resentment and can lower self-esteem (Salovey & Rodin, 1984; Tesser & ourselves. Collins, 1988). However, forced comparisons can have positive as well as negative conse- quences. Consider the top three competitors in an Olympic event, all of whom are CONSTRUCTING SELF-ESTEEM: HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OURSELVES 111 awarded medals. The silver medalist naturally compares him- or herself to the winner, and probably doesn’t feel good about coming in second. However, for the bronze medalist, the most natural comparison is to the fourth-place competitor, who gets no medal at all! Based on these ideas about social comparison, Victoria Medvec and her colleagues (Medvec, Madey, & Gilovich, 1995) coded videotapes of Olympic Games medal winners. They found that the facial expressions of the bronze medal winners—who had performed less well in absolute terms—were happier than those of the silver medal winners. Sometimes, however, we can try to avoid comparisons that make us look bad or feel unhappy. One common tactic we employ is estab- lishing distance between ourselves and those who are successful. We do this by either downplaying our similarities to them or backing off from our relationships with them (Tesser, 1988). Another form of protection involves comparing ourselves with others who are less fortunate or less successful. For example, Bram Buunk and his colleagues (Buunk, Oldersma, & de Dreu, 2001) found that when people were asked to list aspects of their relationships that were “better than most people’s,” eliciting favorable social comparisons, they felt more positive about their relationships, compared to other people who just listed good aspects of their relationships without making social comparisons. Similarly, an average grade on the calculus final looks better in the light of the failing grades some students received. A not-so-exciting home life sure beats the misery experienced by friends with recently divorced parents. In fact, people who learn that they have some positive attribute tend to underestimate the number of others who share the same characteristic—a bias that fosters a sense of superiority (Goethals, Messick, & Allison, 1991). Even when the situation is objectively pretty grim, it can help to know that life could be worse. Interviews with breast-cancer patients, for example, found that they compared themselves with others who were worse off: people whose disease was not responding to treatments, or those who lacked social support or contracted the disease at a comparatively young age (S. E. Taylor & Lobel, 1989). Buoyed by such comparisons, most cancer patients think they are better off than their peers (S. E. Taylor, Falke, Shoptaw, & Lichtman, 1986). Why Self-Enhance? Despite the value of accurate self-knowledge, self-enhancement occurs for two primary reasons. Some actions that appear self-enhancing are aimed at actual self-improvement, reflecting the successful use of the self to guide our behavior adaptively. And high self- esteem can be an important resource that protects us against stress and threats to the self. We noted earlier that successful dealings with the social world can be aided with some degree of accurate self-knowledge. But if that is true, why are we so prone to biases that create and maintain positively biased views of ourselves? The answer has two parts. 112 4 THE SELF First, some of the ways people strive for high self-esteem really amount to efforts at self-improvement. For example, you might work hard to learn to play a musical instrument to ensure that your public performances will be successful, earning you applause and boosted self-esteem. To return to our earlier analogy of self-esteem as a statement giving your bank balance, people may try to increase their income or reduce their spending as a way to increase their balance. In fact, this is simply an example of self-regulation successful self-regulation, with self-esteem (or the bank balance) telling us how well we efforts to control one’s behavior in are doing in attaining our valued goals. line with internal standards (self- Second, self-esteem has value above and beyond its usefulness as an indicator of guides) or external standards our level of success in our commerce with the world. People prefer to feel good about themselves—to value “me and mine.” For example, high self-esteem is associated with generally positive emotions and a lower likelihood of depression (J. D. Campbell, Chew, & Scratchley, 1991; Tennen & Affleck, 1993). And, as we will see later in this chapter, high self-esteem not only feels good but has real positive effects on our lives, acting as a kind of resource that can buffer us from some of the blows of fortune. For both of these reasons, people often process information about the self in ways that favor a positive view. In other words, despite the clear usefulness of knowing one’s bank balance accu- rately, we suspect that if people guessed how much they had in the bank on any given day, more estimates would be high than low. Despite these positive points, we will see later in the chapter that high self-esteem is not an unmixed blessing. Thus, as Figure 4.3 summarizes, self-esteem reflects a compromise between the stern mirror of accurate self-assessment and some self-enhancing biases that give our image a positive tilt and a rosy glow. We often avoid situations in which we do not perform Event Received a C on exam Source of Experience Social comparison self-evaluation A C is not a great grade. Many of my friends got Ds. Outcome Low self-esteem High self-esteem Possible route to Take different kinds of Find more friends self-enhancement courses or easier courses. like that. Figure 4.3 Events, self-evaluation, and self-enhancement Many self-relevant events are neither intrinsically positive nor intrinsically negative. Instead, they must be interpreted and evaluated. The evaluation process may lead to increases or decreases in self-esteem, and it almost always leaves room for operation of self-enhancing biases. CONSTRUCTING SELF-ESTEEM: HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OURSELVES 113 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND CULTURE: SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-ENHANCEMENT IN CULTURAL CONTEXT Since so many aspects of the self differ between individualist and collectivist cultures, you may be wondering whether levels of self-esteem and biases related to self-esteem are universal or whether they vary cross-culturally. Though there is on-going debate about the answers to these questions (see Heine, 2005; Heine, Kitayama, & Hamamura, 2007; Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea, 2007), many scholars believe that people from collectivist Asian cultures show intriguing differences from those in North America and Western Europe. For example, Japanese students (whether in Japan or studying in America) score lower on self-esteem questionnaires than American students do (Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997). Japanese people may even reverse the self- enhancing bias, showing a greater tendency to accept negative rather than positive information about the self (Kitayama, Takagi, & Matsumoto, 1995). Does this mean that members of collectivist cultures are psychologically unhealthy? Kitayama and his colleagues (1997) argue otherwise. They propose that the sensitivity to negative information about the self that is found in collectivist cultures actually serves as a form of self-criticism, which is ultimately meant to improve one’s actions and ability to fit in harmoniously with others. In North America and other individualist cultures, the view of the self as autonomous and separate from others means that positive personal attributes are the fundamental source of personal worth. In this cultural setting, self-enhancement is natural. In contrast, in collectivist cultures, connectedness among individuals and groups is emphasized over personal autonomy. The value of the self is measured not by outstanding individual characteristics, but by adjustment to others’ expectations and shared ideals. Thus, in Japanese schools, it is common for classes to take time at the end of a day to reflect on the ways they have failed to meet class goals, either as individuals or as a group (Lewis, 1995). Such self-criticism is both a way of affirming one’s acceptance of shared social standards and a way of seeking to remedy deviations from those standards. From this perspective, self-criticism is just as natural a way of enhancing the value of the self in collectivist cultures as overt self-enhancement is in individualist cultures. Another reason that self-enhancement may take different forms in different cultural contexts is that people may self-enhance on the specific types of characteristics that are particularly valued in their culture. Thus, North Americans might be expected to see themselves as outstandingly intelligent, independent, and fit for leadership— the very attributes that are valued in an individualist culture (Kurman, 2001; Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003). But members of more collectivist cultures may see themselves as particularly good at fitting in with others or suiting their actions to social situations. Self-enhancement might exist in all cultures, then, but be directed at whatever traits are most culturally valued (Sedikides and others, 2003; Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea, 2005). well, refuse to compare ourselves with more successful others, and fail to notice that we are not all that we could or should be. Even if our inadequacies become obvious, however, we are not without resources. Later in the chapter you will see that failures, inconsistencies, and shortcomings set off some of the self’s best defense mechanisms. Despite cultural variations (described in the box), the function of self-esteem is the same for everyone. The ups and downs of self-esteem are not just meaningless fluc- tuations. Rather, self-esteem serves a crucial function as the self regulates our thoughts, feelings, and behavior: It signals how well we are doing in fulfilling our fundamental social motives for mastery of our environment and connectedness with others (Leary and others, 1995). People differ in their relative sensitivity to these two motives, with men’s self-esteem more influenced by successes or failures involving mastery and women’s 114 4 THE SELF self-esteem more affected by connectedness (Josephs, Markus, & Tafarodi, 1992). Cultural differences are important as well, as just described. For everyone, though, suc- cess and acceptance (that is, events that help us feel in control and connected to others) make us feel particularly good about ourselves, whereas failure, rejection, and loss can knock us to our knees. And, as you will see later, people with high and low self-esteem differ significantly in the ways they respond to and cope with all kinds of life experiences. EFFECTS OF THE SELF: SELF-REGULATION What is the fundamental purpose of having a self? The answer is that what we know about ourselves functions to regulate—to control and govern—many important aspects of our lives, including our thoughts, emotions and behavior. The Self and Thoughts about Ourselves and Others Self-knowledge serves as a framework for perceiving other people and processing social information in general. Once we have constructed a self-concept, the familiar principle of conservatism comes into operation, and we become much less open to new information about the self. A young child might begin to think of himself as tidy after noticing that he neatens up his room a few times, but once the self-concept is firmly established, people are less likely to make inferences from their behaviors to decide who they are (S. B. Klein & Loftus, 1993; Schell, Klein, & Babey, 1996). This is important in creating our sense of a stable personal identity. An established self-concept influences both the way we think about ourselves and the way we perceive and remember social information in general. For example, when we perceive others we tend to notice and use information that is important in our own self-concept (Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985; Sedikides & Skowronski, 1993). So if you think of yourself as honest, you may be particularly likely to note others’ honest or dishonest behaviors and to use that information in making judgments about them. The self-concept also affects memory. For example, if we make judgments about whether a series of traits are self-descriptive or not, we remember those traits better than we do if we make other judgments, such as whether the traits are positive or negative (Symons & Johnson, 1997). The self-concept tells us what types of social information are par- ticularly important to us, so it serves as an organizing framework for perceiving and remembering information about people in general. The Self and Emotions Emotions are sparked by interpretations of self-relevant events and their causes. Emotions signal the occurrence of significant events and motivate us to act in response, for example, to flee from danger. As they perform this self-regulation function, emotions involve the whole self, body, and mind: They involve facial expressions, physiological responses, subjective feelings, and overt behaviors. EFFECTS OF THE SELF: SELF-REGULATION 115 Emotions mark the most meaningful moments of our lives. Feelings like pride, anxiety, joy, fear, or anger signal that something important to the self is happening (Zajonc, 1998). Fear signals that a danger must be escaped; joy lets us know that a positive outcome should be celebrated. The intrusive quality of emotions forces us to pay attention to significant events, even as the positive or negative quality of the emotion indicates the nature of the event. Emotions also direct behavior toward a goal. For example, fear turns our efforts toward escaping from threat, and anger toward harming the target. Because of their intrusiveness, emotions often seem to “just happen” to us, but as we shall see, they actually depend on the perceiver’s interpretation of events. How Do Emotions Arise? Emotions are complex and multifaceted and involve the entire self, body, and mind. When you feel angry, your heart pounds and blood rushes to your face. You believe deeply that someone injured you without cause. You want to strike out at the target of your anger. Thoughts, feelings, bodily reactions, and desires for action are tied together in patterns that characterize different emotions. Which of these many components is primary in causing the emotion? Psychologists have offered different answers to this question over the years. A century ago, William James (1884) argued that sensations from the skin and muscles were the chief causes of the experience of emo- tion. A generation ago, Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (1962) identified emotion as the product of physiological arousal plus a belief concerning its cause. Event You are hungry; you open the refrigerator and find that it is empty. Situation Your housemate Oops, you were The food money has Thank goodness, Finally, all the was supposed to supposed to shop run out, and payday someone finished food is eaten, shop but did not. but forgot to. is next week. the cake. You would so you can clean have eaten it. the refrigerator. Appraisals Negative event Negative event Negative event Potential negative Positive event caused by other’s caused by own caused by un- event failed to has occurred controllable action controllable action controllable action occur Emotion Anger Guilt Sadness Relief Joy Action Hurt other person Want to disappear Withdraw Relax Feel excited tendency (yell at roommate) (quickly go to bed (do nothing) (forget about (clean refrigerator) hungry) cake; read a book) Figure 4.4 Appraisals dictate emotional reactions to events Here are examples of different emotions and action tendencies arising from different appraisals of the same event—in this case, opening the refrigerator and finding that it is empty. 116 4 THE SELF The prevailing view today is that emotions are caused by appraisals of a self-relevant object or event (Arnold, 1960; Frijda, 1986; Roseman, Spindel, & Jose, 1990; Tomaka, appraisal Blascovich, Kibler, & Ernst, 1997). An appraisal is an interpretation of an event, includ- an individual’s interpretation of a ing both the causes of the event and how the event affects the self. Different appraisals self-relevant event or situation that of the same situation can produce different emotions, as is illustrated in Figure 4.4 for directs emotional responses and behavior the everyday event of feeling hungry and finding the refrigerator empty. As illustrated in Figure 4.4, appraisals can involve a host of considerations, such as whether an action or event is positive or negative for the self, whether an event or action was caused by the self, caused by another person, or caused by circumstance, and whether the action or event is seen as controllable or uncontrollable. Various combina- tions of these can produce quite different emotions. For example, perhaps the refrigerator is empty because you decided to play basketball with your friends, rather than go shopping. In this situation, the refrigerator is empty (and you are hungry) because of your own controllable actions, which resulted in a negative outcome. In this case, you likely feel guilty. Imagine, instead, that the refrigerator is empty because your housemate failed to contribute his share of the grocery money and shopping chores. The result is the same negative outcome for you, but it was caused by another person’s controllable actions. This may lead to anger. Thus, as you can see, our emotional reactions can vary widely for the same event, depending on our appraisal of it. Understanding appraisals is important, not only because it helps us predict what one’s emotional reactions will be, but also what behaviors may spring from those emotions. As shown in Figure 4.4, when we feel respon- sible for the refrigerator being empty, and feel guilt, we may want to “hide,” but when we blame our roommate for the same outcome, and feel anger, we may want to lash out at him. Like all interpretations, appraisals are flexible, not cut and dried. As we saw in Chapter 3, many factors can influence how we appraise events, including the context, In Chapter 3, page 66, accessible thoughts, and transient moods. And, as always, other people’s reactions play we explained that our a large role in our appraisals. A toddler who trips over her feet may burst into either interpretations of others’ tears or giggles, depending on whether others gasp with concern or laugh. When other emotional expressions people seem to judge that a situation warrants calmness or dejection or goofy light- depend on context. The heartedness, we often follow suit (Schachter & Singer, 1962). same smiling facial As these examples illustrate, we can be misled about the emotions we are feeling expression might be and about their causes. Our appraisals and the labels we apply to our own inner feelings labeled as happiness or are often based on salient cues: conspicuous features, people, or events that may or may anxiety, depending not correspond to the true causes of our emotions (Reisenzein, 1983; Russell, 2003). whether you think the In many cases, of course, the salient object that we identify as the cause of our emotion— person was just given a raise or was about to give the wasp buzzing around your head and threatening to sting, for example—is truly the an important speech. cause of our fearful feelings. But in other cases the salient object may not be the real cause. As we see here, the You might believe you are angry with your child because of her annoying behavior, when interpretation of our own the true cause of your anger is your run-in with your boss earlier in the day. An experi- emotions can similarly be ment by James Olson (1990) demonstrated this point by misleading participants about influenced by context. the cause of their anxiety. Everyone in the experiment expected to be exposed to “subliminal noise” as they were videotaped while delivering a speech. Some people were told the noise would arouse them physiologically, and others were told it would relax them. Although no noise was actually played, the participants’ beliefs about it still influenced their emotions. Those who thought the noise would arouse them rated EFFECTS OF THE SELF: SELF-REGULATION 117 themselves as less anxious and made fewer speech errors than those who expected to be relaxed by the noise. Apparently those who expected arousal attributed their stage fright to the “noise,” whereas those who expected relaxation had no such excuse. Thus, like other aspects of self-knowledge, the emotions we experience and our beliefs about their causes actually reflect our interpretations. And, of course, culture can strongly affect the ways we interpret events and therefore the kinds of emotions we feel. Japanese people, for example, are more likely than Westerners to report feeling emotions like connectedness, indebtedness, and familiarity, which tie the self to important others (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Mesquita, 2001). In fact, in any culture the emotions that are most common and most intense are those that fit culturally valued types of rela- tionships. These emotions not only are favored by individuals’ patterns of appraisals, but are also reinforced by close others and by common social situations (Leersnyder, Boiger, & Mesquita, 2013). For example, in cultures that highly value politeness, peo- ple often structure their interactions to avoid angry confrontations, making polite rather than negative interactions more common. Despite such cultural differences, researchers assume that at least a few “basic” emotions are common to all human cultures, although there is not full consensus on what these emotions are (Russell, 2003; Wierzbicka, 1994; Zajonc, 1998). Findings also show not only that facial expressions of the “basic” emotions are universally (cross-culturally) understood, but even vocalizations of these same emotions are as well (Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010). Appraisals, Emotions, Bodily Responses: All Together Now. Our appraisals of events not only cause our emotions but also affect many aspects of our body and mind. People in many different cultures smile when they feel happy, frown when they feel sad, and wrinkle their brow when they feel angry (Ekman and others, 1987). Physiological sys- tems come on line, revving us up or calming us down. We are motivated to act: to strike back in anger, escape in fear, or move closer in happiness. Some of these action tenden- cies, like attack and flight, appear to be universal and biologically determined. Other emotional behaviors are, of course, learned and differ from one culture to another (Frijda, Kuipers, & ter Schure, 1989; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Emotions also affect thinking, focusing us on the content of our appraisals. Thus, in the grip of extreme rage you may be totally focused on the thought of how your antagonist mistreated you and how he deserves to have his lights punched out (Keltner, Ellsworth, & Edwards, 1993; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). Strong emotions of any sort, positive or negative, can create intense arousal that limits people’s ability to pay attention to other events (Easterbrook, 1959). These components—appraisals, bodily responses, subjective feelings, and emo- tionally driven behavior—are frequently activated together. As a result, they become associated so that any one aspect can engage all the rest. If your heart is pounding, your face is contorted in a snarl, and your fists are tightly clenched, you are likely to feel anger, just as anger provokes those same responses. Because our inner feelings and outward expressions of emotion are linked, bodily signs of emotion often intensify emo- tional feelings (Adelmann & Zajonc, 1989; Ekman, 1992). Fritz Strack and his colleagues (Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988) ingeniously demonstrated this point by having pa