Psychology Study Notes PDF

Personality: "The more or less STABLE, INTERNAL factors that make one person's behaviour CONSISTENT from one time to another and DIFFERENT from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations" Individualistic cultures vs Collectivistic cultures Individual: Tend to conceive of p...

Personality: "The more or less STABLE, INTERNAL factors that make one person's behaviour CONSISTENT from one time to another and DIFFERENT from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations" Individualistic cultures vs Collectivistic cultures Individual: Tend to conceive of people as self-directed and autonomous, and they tend to prioritize independence and uniqueness as cultural values (Personality is stable and people focus more on the self and on personality characteristics, ( I am an introvert, I am open to new experiences) Collectivistic cultures- Tend to see people as connected with others and embedded in a broader social context- as such, they tend to emphasize interdepended, family, relationships, and social conformity. ­( Personality is flexible and described according to social expectations, people describe themselves in terms of social roles ( I am a brother, I am a nurse ) Reliability vs Validity Reliability: Refers to the extent to which the personality assessment produces consistent results across various situations over time Validity: Refers to which a test is truly assessing particular aspects of personality Advantages Vs Disadvantages Advantage: It is assumed that you are the expert about your own life, thoughts, behaviors and feelings Disadvantages: very often we want to come across as social desirable individuals to appear in a better light either intentionally and unintentionally Bogus pipeline: technique, participants who thought that they were attached to a lie detector, described themselves less defensively whilst answering a personality questionnaire then during a normal condition Theories of Personality - Freud's psychoanalytic approach - Trait theories - Social cognitive theory Freud's Psychoanalytic approach The **unconscious** in Freud's view is like a reservoir of thoughts, wishes, feelings, memories, that are hidden from awareness because they feel unacceptable **Personality** develops from the efforts of our **ego,** our rational self, to resolve tension between out **id** based in biological drives and the Freud's psychoanalytic approach Trait theories Social cognitive the **superego**, society's rules and constraints. The mind is mostly below the surface of conscious awareness; it is mostly unconscious. Although Freud's psychoanalytic theory places a lot of importance on nature and human beings' innate instincts, it also highlights the importance of the environment (nurture), particularly the impact of the relationship with one's parents. » He believed that events that occur in our childhood, especially with our parents, and the way we interpret them will have a significant impact on who we become as adults: they form our personality. Significant experiences and our interpretations of them will be stored in our consciousness. The unconscious is the biggest part of our consciousness which, like a cauldron attempts to relieve that energy when the material inside is 'bubbling up'. This usually leads a person to experience anxiety. ID THE EGO AND THE SUPEREGO The id is the part of our personality, driven to satisfy basic biological drives. The sexual or biological energy resulting from the id is called the libido. The more 'gratified' the libido is, the more pleasure the person feels; the more frustrated the libido is, the more tension, the person experiences (Greem, Lewis & Willerton, 2015). The id is driven by the pleasure principle. It is the oldest part of our personality, with us since birth. Example: A test is coming up. The id may say something like: "You've been wanting to watch the new season of this series for a long time. Watch it! Don't study now". The superego The superego develops around the ages of 4 or 5. It is like a conscience, making us feel bad when we think of or actually disobey social rules. It develops as a result of rules that parents and significant people teach us, which we later unconsciously adopt as our own. It also predicts a rigid ideal of our 'self' in terms of good behaviour and punishes us with bad thoughts and feelings when we neglect this ideal. It follows the morality principle. Example: The superego would say "you must study all night. You cannot watch anything until the test it over. Only bad students would waste time" The Ego The ego develops when we are about 2-years old and we realise that, although we are autonomous, we have to fit in a social context. This means that we cannot always get what gives us pleasure. In this way, the ego mediates between the demands of the id and the pressures of external reality (later becoming the superego). It follows the reality principle. Example: The ego would say 'study now, whilst you have enough energy. Then you watch an episode whilst you have a break' Does the ego always manage to strike a balance between the ego and the superego? No. Sometimes, the ego and superego are too strong for the ego. According to Freud, when this happens, people experience defense mechanisms. Defense Mechanisms » Defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies, used by the ego, to defend against the anxiety that someone experiences when the ego does not manage to mediate successfully between the id and the superego. According to Freud, in such cases, the individual's ego develops these strategies that stop him or her from becoming consciously aware of any thoughts or feelings related to the traumatic situation (Cardwell & Flanagan, 2015). Psychosexual stages » According to Freud, psychological development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed stages, which he calls the psychosexual stages: as a person grows physically certain areas of their body become important sources of potential frustration, pleasure or both. » Each stage represents the fixation of libido (sexual drives or instincts) on a different area of the body. » People feel shame about these needs and can get fixated at one stage, remaining stuck in that phase and never resolving the dilemmas of a particular stage. » Freud considered the first 3 to be crucial for the development of personality. » If children receive too much or too little gratification in any of these stages, they are at risk of fixation (arrest in development). Therefore, they may need help Oral stage: (0-18 months) » In the first stage of personality development, gratification is hypothesised to be achieved primarily through oral activities (the libido is centered in a baby's mouth). » At this stage in life everything is oral, or mouth orientated, such as sucking, biting and breast-feeding. » The baby is believed to get a lot of satisfaction (gratification) from putting all sorts of things in its mouth to satisfy libido, and thus the demands of the id. » Freud believed that fixation at the oral stage can stem from weaning that is too early or too late and that this may result in adult characteristics ranging from overeating or childlike dependence (late weaning) to the use of "biting" sarcasm (early weaning). The Anal Stage ( 18 months to 3.5 years) » The second stage of psychosexual development -- the child's ego develops to cope with parental demands for socially appropriate behaviour. » Freud believed that this type of conflict tends to come to full force in potty training. » The child is now fully aware that they are a person in their own right and that their wishes can bring them into conflict with the demands of the outside world (i.e. their ego has developed). » The nature of this first conflict with authority can determine the child\'s future relationship with all forms of authority. » Early or harsh potty training can lead to the child becoming an anal-retentive personality who hates mess, is obsessively tidy, punctual and respectful of authority. This is all related to pleasure derived from holding on to their feces when toddlers. » The anal expulsive, on the other hand, underwent a liberal toilet-training regime during the anal stage. In adulthood the anal expulsive is the person who is disorganized, messy, careless and rebellious. The Phallic Stage ( 3.5 years- 6 years) » Both boys and girls begin by loving their mother, because she satisfies their needs, and by seeing their father as a rival for the mother's affections. » Sensitivity now becomes concentrated in the genitals: the child becomes aware of anatomical sex differences, which sets in motion the Oedipus complex (in boys) and the Electra complex (in girls) The Oedipus Complex § According to Freud, between the ages of 2 and 5 a boy wants to possess his mother exclusively and as a result get rid of his father. The boy imagines that if his father had to find out about all this, he would cut off the boy's genitals as punishment for desiring the mother. Thus the boy develops castration anxiety. The boy sets out to resolve his anxiety by imitating, copying and joining in masculine dad-type behaviours. This is called identification. Identification means internally adopting the values, attitudes and behaviours of another person. By identifying with his father, the boy gets vicarious satisfaction of his sexual impulses toward the mother. At the same time he represses his dangerous feeling for her and converts it into tender affection. The consequence of this is that the boy takes on the male gender role and the boy's Oedipus complex is then said to have been resolved. The Electra Complex § According to Freud during the phallic stage the girl desires the father, but realizes that she does not have a penis. She believes that her lack of a penis is her mother's fault. As a ppresult, her love towards her mother turns to anger and she chooses her father as a sexual object because he has the penis she wants. This leads to the development of penis envy and the wish to be a boy. The girl then represses her feelings (to remove the tension) and identifies with the mother to take on the female gender role and displaces her feelings for her father onto other men. The Phallic Stage » Therefore, the phallic stage is resolved through the process of identification, which involves the child adopting the characteristics of the same sex parent. Freud believed that unresolved conflicts from the phallic stage can lead to many problems in adulthood, including difficulties in dealing with authority figures and an inability to maintain a stable love relationship. As the phallic stage draws to a close and its conflicts are dealt with by the ego, an interval of psychological peace occurs - the Latency Period. The Latency stage ( 6/7 years-puberty) » Latent means hidden. In this stage the libido is dormant. During this period, which lasts through childhood, sexual impulses stay in the background as the child focuses on education, same sex play and the development of social skills. Freud thought that most sexual impulses are repressed during the latency stage and sexual energy can be sublimated (defense mechanism) towards school work, hobbies and friendships. Much of the child\'s energies are channelled into developing new hobbies and acquiring new knowledge and play becomes largely confined to other children of the same sex. The Phallic Stage ( from puberty onward) In the genital stage, which begins at about age 12, people begin to love others for altruistic motives. The driving forces of previous stages are self-oriented. » Latency is a time of adolescent sexual experimentation, the successful resolution of which is settling down in a loving one-to-one relationship. Sexual instinct is directed to heterosexual pleasure, rather than self pleasure during the phallic stage. Gradually as people participate in group activities and prepare for work and marriage they change into socialised adults For Freud, the proper outlet of the sexual instinct in adults was through heterosexual intercourse. **p** The Self and its Development - Carl Rogers viewed personality structure in terms of just one construct. He called this construct the self, although it is more widely known today as the **self-concept**. - **A self-concept is a collection of beliefs about one's own nature, unique qualities, and typical behaviour.** - Your self-concept is your mental picture of yourself. It is a collection of self-perceptions. For example, a self-concept might include such beliefs as "I am easy-going" or "I am intelligent" or "I am hardworking". The Nature of the self-concept - Although we usually talk about the self-concept as a single entity, it is actually a multifaceted structure. - **The self-concept is an organised collection of beliefs about the self.** - These beliefs, also known as **self-schemas**, are developed from past experience and are concerned with one's personality traits, abilities, physical features, values, goals, and social roles. - People have self-schemas on dimensions that are important to them, including both strengths and weaknesses. Each of these schemas is characterised by relatively distinct thoughts and feelings Hazel Markus and the Working Self-Concept - Contemporary psychologists argue that only a portion of the total self-concept operates at any one time. - The self-concept that is currently accessible has been termed the **working self-concept** by Hazel Markus. - Self-schemas have a dynamic quality and play an important role in processing self-relevant information. - Ex, when a particular self-schema is operating, its attendant thoughts and feelings strongly influence the way individuals process information about that aspect of the self. Markus: Possible Selves - Not only do beliefs about the self influence current behaviour, they also influence future behaviour. - Markus uses the term **possible selves to refer to one's conceptions about the kind of person she or he might become in the future.** - If you have narrowed your career choices to personnel manager and psychologist, these represent two possible selves in the career realm. - Possible selves are developed from past experiences, current behaviour, and future expectations. - They make people attentive to goal-related information and role models and mindful of the need to practice goal-related skills. As such, they help individuals not only to envision desired future goals but also to achieve them. Negative/Positive Selves - Interestingly, it has been found that, for individuals who have experienced traumatic events, psychological adjustment is best among those who are able to envision a variety of positive selves. - Sometimes, possible selves are negative and represent what one fears one might become -- such an alcoholic like your uncle or an adult without an intimate relationship. - In this case, possible selves function as images to be avoided. How fixed are our beliefs about ourselves? E.Tory Higgins: Self-Discrepancy Theory - Some people perceive themselves pretty much the way they would like to see themselves. - Others experience a gap between what they actually see and what they would like to see. - Example a person who describes his/her actual self as shy, but his/her ideal self as outgoing. - **This mismatching of self-perceptions is termed self-discrepancy.** Self-Discrepancy - Individuals have several sets of self-perceptions: - **The actual self** are qualities that you or others believe you actually possess; - **The ideal self** are characteristics that you or others would like you to have; - **The ought self** are traits that you or others believe you should possess. - Although self-discrepancy theory is concerned with both self-perceptions and how significant others see one. In this lesson we will focus only on self-discrepancies emanating from one's own self-perceptions. Self-Discrepancies and their Effects - According to Higgins, when people live up to their personal standards (ideal or ought selves), they experience high self-esteem. - When they don't meet their own expectations, their self-esteem suffers. - In addition, he says, certain types of self-discrepancies are associated with specific emotions. - One type of self-discrepancy occurs when the **actual self is at odds with the ideal self**. - These instances trigger dejection-related emotions (sadness, disappointment). Example - Tiffany knows that she is attractive, but she is also overweight and would like to be thinner. - Self-discrepancy theory would predict that she would feel dissatisfied and dejected. - Research has shown an association between discrepant actual/ideal views of the body shape and eating disorders. Self-Discrepancies and their Effect - Specific discrepancies do not always produce their predicted emotions. - The expected outcomes are most likely to result when self-discrepancies are large, when the person is aware of them, when they matter, and when they are actually experienced rather than just imagined. Everyone experiences as self-discrepancies, yet most people manage to feel reasonably good about themselves. How is this possible? Three factors seem to be important: 1. The amount of discrepancy you experience, 1. Your awareness of the discrepancy, 1. And whether the discrepancy is actually important to you. -So the medical student who gets a c in in math will probably feel a lot worse than a humanities student who gets a C in the same course. Coping with Self-Discrepancy - Can individuals do anything to blunt the negative emotions and blows to self-esteem associated with self-discrepancies? - People can **change their behaviour to bring it more in line with their personal standards** (ideal or ought selves). - Example, if your ideal self is a person who gets above-average grades and your actual self just got a D on a test, you can study more effectively for the next test to improve your grade. - But what about the times you can't match your ideal standards? - Perhaps you had your heart set on playing football with your national team, but you did not make the cut. - One way to ease the discomfort associated with such discrepancies is to **bring your ideal self a bit more in line with your actual abilities**. - Another option is to **blunt your self-awareness**. You can do so by avoiding situations that increase your self-awareness -- you don't go to a party if you expect to spend a miserable evening talking to yourself. Example of Self-discrepancy - Some people use alcohol to blunt self-awareness. - In one study, college students were first put into either a high or a low self-awareness group based on test scores. Then, both groups were given a brief version of an intelligence test as well as false feedback on their test performance. Half of the high self-awareness group were told that they had done quite well on the test and the other half were told that they had done quite poorly. - Next, supposedly as part of a separate study, these participants were asked to taste and evaluate various wines for 15 minutes. The experimenters predicted that the high self-awareness participants who had been told that they had done poorly on the IQ test would drink more than the other groups, and this is precisely what the study found. Those who could not escape negative information about themselves drank more alcohol to reduce their self-awareness. - Similarly, in the real world, it has been found that alcoholics who have high self-awareness and who experience negative or painful life events relapse more quickly and completely. Coping with self-Discrepancy - Heightened self-awareness does not always make people focus on self-discrepancies and negative aspects of the self. - If that were true, most people would feel a lot worse about themselves than they actually do! - Self-concepts are made up of numerous self-beliefs -- many of them positive, some negative. - Because individuals have a need to feel good about themselves, they tend to focus on their positive features rather than their negative ones. Factors shaping the self-concept A variety of sources influence one's self-concept. Chief among them are one's own observations, feedback from others and cultural views. Factors Shaping the self-Concept: Your own Observations - Your observations of your own behaviour are obviously a major source of information about what you are like. - Individuals begin observing their own behaviour and drawing conclusions about themselves early in life. - Young children will make statements about who is the tallest, who can run fastest, or who can swing the highest. - Leon Festinger's **social comparison theory proposes that individuals compare themselves with others in order to assess their abilities and opinions.** - Although Festinger's original theory claimed that people engage in social comparison for the purpose of accurately assessing their abilities, recent research suggests that they also engage in social comparison to maintain their self-image and to improve their skills. - The reasons people engage in social comparison determine whom they choose for a point of comparison. - **A reference group is a set of people against whom individuals compare themselves.** - For example, what is the first thing you do if you want to know how you did on your first test of psychology? - Ask your classmates. - Your reference group in this case is the entire class. - On the other hand, if you want to improve your tennis game, your reference group will probably be limited to those of superior ability, because their skills give you something to strive for. - And if your self-esteem needs a boost, you will probably compare yourself to those whom you perceive to be worse off than you so you can feel better about yourself. Example - The potential impact of such social comparisons was dramatically demonstrated in a study known as **Mr Clean/Mr Dirty** study. - Subjects thought they were being interviewed for a job. - Half the subjects met another applicant who was neatly dressed and who appeared to be very competent. - The other half were exposed to a competitor who was unkempt and disorganised. - All subjects filled out measures of self-esteem both before and after the fake job interviews. - The results indicated that subjects who encountered the impressive competitor showed a decrease in self-esteem after the interview while those who met the unimpressive competitor showed increases in self-esteem. - Thus, comparisons with others can have immediate effects on one's self-concept. Subjectivity - People's observations of their own behaviour are not entirely objective. The general tendency is to distort reality in a positive direction. - In other words, most people tend to evaluate themselves in a more positive light than they really merit. - The strength of this tendency was highlighted in a large survey conducted as part of the Scholastic Aptitude Test of some 829,000 high school seniors. In this survey, 70% of the students rated themselves above average in 'leadership ability'. Only 2% rated themselves below average. By definition, only 50% must be above average and 50% below. Nonetheless, with regard to 'ability to get along with others' 100% of students saw themselves as above average! Moreover, 25% of the respondents thought that they belonged in the top 1%. **Negative Distortions about the self** - Although the general tendency is to distort reality in a positive direction, most people tend to make both negative and positive distortions. - Example: you might overrate your social skill, emotional stability, and intellectual ability while underrating your physical attractiveness. - A minority of people consistently evaluate themselves in an unrealistically negative way. - Thus, the tendency to see oneself in an overly favourable light is strong but not universal. Feedback from others - Your self-concept is shaped significantly by the feedback you get from other people about your behaviour. - Of course, not everyone has equal influence in your life. Early on, your parents and other family members played a dominant role in providing you with feedback. - As you grew older, the number of significant others who gave you feedback increased. - Parents give their children a great deal of direct feedback. They constantly express approval or disapproval, saying such things as "I am so proud of you" or "you are a lazy bum, just like your Uncle". - Most people, especially when they are young, take this sort of feedback very seriously. - Thus, it comes as no surprise that studies find an association between parents' views of a child and the child's self-concept. There is a strong link about children's perceptions of their parents' attitudes toward them and their own self-perceptions. - Feedback from others is filtered through one's social perception systems. As a consequence, it may be as distorted as one's own self-observations. How accurate are we in perceiving how others Evaluate Us? - Interestingly, people are not necessarily accurate when perceiving how specific people evaluate them. - People are better at guessing how other people in general view them. - When individuals have access to "objective" information (course grades), their perceptions of others' judgements carry less weighting than when they are evaluating themselves in areas such as physical attractiveness, where they must rely solely on socially defined standards. Cultural Values - Your self-concept is also shaped by cultural values. The society in which you are brought up defines what is desirable and undesirable in personality and behaviour. - Example: American culture puts a lot of emphasis on individuality, competitive success, strength, and skill. When individuals meet cultural expectations, they feel good about themselves and experience increases in self-esteem and vice versa. - Cross-cultural studies have shown how different cultures shape different conceptions of the self. An important way in which cultures differ is on the dimension of individualism vs. collectivism. - **Individualism** involves putting personal goals ahead of group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group memberships. Children are taught to be independent, self-reliant and have high self-esteem. - **In contrast, collectivism** involves putting group goals ahead of personal goals and defining one's identity in terms of the groups one belongs to. Higher value on shared values and resources, cooperation, and concern for how one's actions will affect other group members. Children taught to be obedient, reliable, and adopt proper behaviour. Individualistic vs Collective cultures Self-Esteem Self esteem refers to one's overall assessment of one's worth as a person, it is the evaluative component of the self-concept If you feel basically good about yourself, you probably have a high self-esteem How stable is Self-esteem? - The baseline self-esteem is relatively stable; however, the ups and downs of daily life can produce short-term fluctuations in self-esteem - People seem to vary in the degree to which self-esteem is experienced as stable. And those whose self-esteem fluctuates in response to daily experiences are highly responsive to feedback from others -- they are more moved by praise and more sensitive to criticism. Investigating Self-Esteem - **Investigating self-esteem is difficult for several reasons.** - **Firstly, It is difficult to obtain accurate measures of self-esteem. The problem is that researchers tend to rely on self-reports from subjects, which obviously may be biased since most individuals typically hold unrealistically positive views about themselves. Moreover, some people may choose not to disclose their actual self-esteem on a questionnaire.** - **Secondly, in evaluating self-esteem it is often quite difficult to separate cause from effect. A large volume of correlational data tell us that certain behavioural characteristics are associated with positive or negative self-esteem. Example: although self-esteem is a good predictor of happiness, it is hard to tell whether high self-esteem causes happiness or vice versa.** Low self-esteem and self-fulfilling prophecy - People with low self-esteem are thought to hold strong negative views about themselves; however, some psychologists argue that people with low self-esteem are simply more confused and not more negative. - They are confused on what they are able to achieve -- their self-concept is not very clear. They are socially awkward and can be resentful. They can feel better by putting others down. - Self-esteem effects our expectations, therefore low self-esteem may lead us to expect ourselves to perform badly. As a result (of the expectation of performing badly) people can feel anxious and not be able to fully prepare as well as they could (due to anxiety). This might in turn result in failure, which would inflict a further blow to the already depleted self-esteem. - The opposite works for high self-esteem. Higj self-esteem and the danger of Narcissim - Although high self-esteem is generally a good thing to have, it can also lead to problems when people's self-views are inflated and unrealistic. - **Narcissism is the tendency to regard oneself as grandiosely self-important**. - Narcissistic individuals passionately want to think positively of themselves. They are concerned with fantasies of success, believe that they deserve special treatment, and react aggressively when they experience threats to their self-views called **ego threats**. - People who have high self-esteem but are realistic about their qualities are not susceptible to ego threats and are less likely to resort to hostility and aggression when faced with disagreement about themselves. - Study has shown that narcissists who experience ego threats are likely to engage in aggression such as partner abuse, rape, gang violence, individual and group hate crimes, and political terrorism. Determinants of Self-esteem - The foundations for high or low self-esteem appear to be laid very early in life. Therefore, psychologists have focused a lot on parenting in self-esteem development. - There is ample evidence that parental involvement, acceptance, support, and exposure to clearly defined limits have marked influence on children's self-esteem. - As children grow older, their peers begin to rival parents as a source of self-esteem. And by college age, peers have much more impact on self-esteem than parents. - Children also make their own judgements about themselves in relation to others. A study showed that self-esteem is boosted by being a 'big fish in a small pond'. - Individuals compare themselves to others in their specific reference group (other students in their school), not to a general reference group (other students in the country). - The fact that individuals with similar talents may vary in self-esteem, depending on their reference group, demonstrates the immense importance of social comparison in the development of self-esteem. Ethnicity and Self-Esteem - Because prejudice and discrimination are still pervasive in our societies, it has generally been assumed that members of minority groups have lower self-esteem than members of the dominant majority group. - In fact, there is a good deal of evidence to the contrary. - How is it that minority group members often have high self-esteem when it seems that they should not? Minority group members use a number of strategies to protect their self-esteem from the effects of being stigmatised. - These include attributing negative appraisals to prejudice against their group in stead of to themselves, and devaluing those qualities on which their group fares poorly and valuing those attributes on which their group excels. - In addition, minority group members use their own group as their dominant reference group, not the relatively advantaged majority group. Gender and Self-Esteem - Although females are not a minority group, they resemble ethnic minorities in that they tend to have lower status and less power than males. - Thus, it comes as no surprise that even here there is the assumption that females generally have lower self-esteem than males. - Studies showed that, in fact, in general males score higher on self-esteem tests than females, although the differences were small for the most part. The largest difference occurred in 15-18 year-old age group. - Factors that could easily contribute to gender differences in self-esteem include relatively few societal messages that support esteem building in girls, the overemphasis on physical appearance in girls and women, violence against girls and women, and low rates of athletic participation among girls. - However, we should not undermine the high price boys and men pay for adhering to traditional male gender expectations. Males are always expected to be assertive, successful, ready to take on any opportunity, they need to be strong and show no weaknesses. Therefore, they are also less likely to report lower self-esteem. Basic Principles of Self-Perception: Cognitive Processes - People are faced with a large number of decisions on a daily basis. - How do they keep from being overwhelmed? - The key lies in how people process information. - According to Shelly Taylor, people are 'cognitive misers'. According to this model, cognitive resources (attention, memory) are limited, so the mind works to 'hoard' them by taking cognitive shortcuts. - Example: you probably have the same morning routine: shower, drink coffee, read the newspaper while having breakfast, check e-mail etc... - Because you do these things without a lot of thought, you can conserve your attentional, decision-making and memory capacity for important cognitive tasks. - This example illustrates the default mode of handling information: automatic processing. Cognitive Processes - Ellen Langer describes these two states as mindlessness and mindfulness respectively. - In addition to guiding the processing of self-relevant information, these two modes of information processing operate in a variety of social situations. - Another way that cognitive resources are protected is through selective attention, with high priority given to information pertaining to the self. - Example: a phenomenon known as the 'cocktail party effect' -- the ability to pick out one's name in a roomful of chattering people. - Another principle of self-cognition is that people strive to understand themselves. One way they do so, is by comparing themselves to others. Self-Attributions - Another way of understanding oneself is to engage in attributional thinking. - Example: you win a critical match for your school's tennis team. To what do you attribute your success? Did you have the home court advantage? Perhaps your opponent was playing with a minor injury? - This example from every day life shows the nature of the self-attribution process. - Self-attributions are inferences that people draw about the causes of their own behaviour. - People routinely make attributions to make sense out of their experiences. - These attributions involve inferences that ultimately represent guesswork on each person's part. Self-Attributions - Fritz Heider was the first to argue that people tend to locate the cause of a behaviour either within a person, attributing it to personal factors, or outside of a person, attributing it to environmental factors. - He therefore established one of the crucial dimensions along which attributions are made. Internal/external attributions - Internal or External: explanations of behaviour and events can be categorised as internal or external attributions. - Internal attributions ascribe the causes of behaviour to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and feelings. - External attributions ascribe the causes of behaviour to situational demands and environmental constraints. - Whether one's self-attributions are internal or external can have a tremendous impact on one's personal adjustment. - Lonely people tend to attribute the cause of their loneliness to stable, internal causes (I'm unlovable). - Similarly, studies suggest that people who attribute their set backs to internal, personal causes while discounting external, situational explanations may be more prone to depression than people who display opposite tendencies. Stable/unstable - A second dimension people use in making causal attributions is the stability of the causes underlying behaviour. - A stable cause is one that is more or less permanent and unlikely to change over time. - A sense of humour and intelligence are stable internal causes of behaviour. - Stable external causes of behaviour include such things as laws and rules (speed limits, no smoking areas). - An unstable cause of behaviour is one that is variable or subject to change. - Unstable internal causes of behaviour include such things as mood (good or bad) and motivation (strong or weak). - Unstable external causes of behaviour could be the weather and the presence or absence of other people. Controllable/Uncontrollable - A third dimension in the attribution process concerns the controllability of the causes underlying one's actions. - Example: the amount of effort you dedicate to a task is typically perceived as something under your control, whereas an aptitude for music is viewed as something you are born with (beyond your control). - This dimension acknowledges the fact that sometimes events are under one's control and sometimes they are not. - Controllability can vary with each of the other two factors. - These three dimensions appear to be the central ones in the attribution process. - Research has documented that self-attributions can influence future expectations (success or failure) and emotions (pride, hopelessness, guilt), and these combine to influence subsequent performance. Attributional Style - Attributional style refers to the tendency to use similar causal explanations for a wide variety of events in one's life. - People tend to exhibit, to varying degrees, one of two attributional styles: an optimistic explanatory style or a pessimistic explanatory style. - The person with an optimistic explanatory style usually attributes setbacks to external, unstable, and specific factors. - Example a person who failed to get a desired job might attribute this misfortune to bad luck in the interview rather than to personal shortcomings. - This style can help people discount their setbacks and thus maintain positive expectations for the future and a favourable self-image. - In contrast, people with a pessimistic explanatory style tend to attribute their setbacks to internal, stable, and global (or pervasive) factors. - These attributions make them feel bad about themselves and pessimistic about their ability to handle challenges in the future. - Such a style can foster passive behaviour and make people more vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression. - Thankfully, several approaches to therapy appear to be successful in helping depressed individuals change a self-defeating attributional style. - With these approaches, individuals learn to stop always blaming themselves for negative outcomes (especially when they cannot be avoided) and to take personal credit for positive outcomes. Motives Guiding Self-understanding - Whether people go about evaluating themselves by social comparisons, attributional thinking, or other means, they are highly motivated to pursue self-understanding. - In seeking self-understanding, people are driven by 3 main motives: accuracy, consistency and self-enhancement. Accuracy - The accuracy motive is reflected in people's desire for truthful information about themselves. - Individuals seek accurate feedback about many types of information -- their personal qualities, abilities, physical features, and so forth. - It is obvious why people seek out accurate information. It helps them set realistic goals and behave in appropriate ways. - Still the bald truth is not always welcome. Accordingly, people are also motivated by other concerns. Consistency - The consistency motive drives people toward information that matches what they already know about themselves. - This tendency to strive for a consistent self-image ensures that individuals' self-concepts are relatively stable. - Individuals maintain consistent self-perceptions in a number of subtle ways and are often unaware of doing so. Example: people maintain consistency between their past and present behaviour by erasing past memories that conflict with present ones. People who were once shy and who later became outgoing have been shown to recall memories about themselves that indicate that they perceive themselves as always having been outgoing - Another way people maintain self-consistency is by seeking out feedback and situations that will confirm their existing self-perceptions and avoiding potentially disconfirming situations or feedback. - **Self-verification theory refers to people that prefer to receive feedback from others that is consistent with their own self-views.** - This follows that those with positive self-concepts should prefer positive feedback from others and those with negative self-concepts should prefer negative feedback. Research found this to be the case. Self-Enhancement - People are motivated by **self-enhancement, or the tendency to maintain positive feelings about the self.** - Evidence of self-enhancement is widespread. Example: individuals exaggerate their control over life events, predict they will have a brighter future than others, and view themselves better than others. - While self-enhancement is quite common, it is not universal. - Individuals who have low self-esteem or who are depressed are less prone to self-enhancement than others. - There are also cross-cultural differences in self-enhancement. Example: self-enhancement has been more pronounced in Western than in Eastern Cultures. Methods of self-Enhancement Donward Comparisons Self Striving Basking in Reflected Glory - **Basking in reflected glory is the tendency to enhance one's image by publicly announcing one's association with those who are successful.** Self-Handicapping - When people fail at an important task, they need to save face. - Example someone failed to get a job they wanted or did poorly on a big exam. - In such instances, individuals can usually come up with a face-saving excuse, example, I had a terrible stomach ache during the interview/exam. - Some people actually behave in a way that sets them up to fail so that they have a ready-made excuse for failure, should it occur. - Self-handicapping is the tendency to sabotage one's performance to provide an excuse for possible failure. - Example: when there is a big test coming up and you put off studying until the last minute, or go out drinking the night before the test. If, as is likely, you don't do well on the exam, you explain your poor performance by saying you did not prepare. People prefer that others believe their poor performance is attributed to lack of preparation than lack of ability. Which motive is most used to make self-evaluations ? - The motives of accuracy, consistency, and self-enhancement permit flexibility in making self-evaluations. - Although you would think that accurate information would be the most useful to people, that doesn't seem to be the case. - In a series of studies that pitted the three motives against each other, the self-enhancement motive was found to be the strongest, the consistency motive a distant second, and the accuracy motive an even more distant third. Self-regulation - People are all the time trying to resist impulses and make themselves do things they do not want to do. - They also determine the various goals they want to pursue and how to reach them. - This work of directing and controlling one's behaviour is termed self-regulation. - Clearly, the ability to manage and direct what you think how you feel, and how you behave is tied to success at work, in relationships, and in mental and physical health. - Where would people be without the ability to delay gratification and focus their behaviour toward important personal goals? - Self-regulation develops early in life and remains relatively stable. - Self-efficacy is a key aspect of self-regulation, as well as self-defeating behaviour, a case of self-control failure. Self-efficacy - As already mentioned in theories of personality topic, self-efficacy refers to people's conviction that they can achieve specific goals. - According to Albert Bandura, efficacy beliefs vary according to the person's skills. - You may have high efficacy when it comes to making friends but low self-efficacy about speaking in front of a group. - However, simply having a skill does not guarantee that you will be able to put it into practice; you must also believe that you are capable of doing so. - Therefore, self-efficacy is concerned not with the skills you have, but with your beliefs about what you can do with these skills. Correlates of Self-Efficacy - Studies show that self-efficacy affects individuals' commitments to goals, their performance on tasks, and their persistence toward goals in the face of obstacles. - In addition, people with high self-efficacy anticipate success in future outcomes and can tune out negative thoughts that can lead to failure. - Self-efficacy is related to academic success, career choice, health habits, and responses to stress. - Self-efficacy is learned and can be changed. (Remember we did Bandura in behavioural approaches). - Research shows that increasing self-efficacy is an effective way for treating psychological problems such as test anxiety, fear of sexual assault, PTSD, and drug addiction. Developing Self-efficacy - Self-efficacy plays a key role in the ability to make commitments to goals and the ability to meet those goals. - How do people acquire this characteristic? - Bandura argues that there are four sources of self-efficacy: 1. Mastery experiences 1. Vicarious experiences 1. Persuasion and encouragement 1. Interpretation of emotional arousal Mastery Experiences - The most effective path to self-efficacy is through mastering new skills. - Sometimes new skills come easily, like learning how to use the copy machine in the library. Some skills are harder to masters such as learning how to play the piano. - In acquiring more difficult skills, people usually make mistakes. How they handle these failure experiences is the key to learning self-efficacy. - If you give up when you make mistakes, your failure to succeed instils self-doubts or low self-efficacy. If you persist through failure experiences to eventual success, you learn the lesson of self-efficacy: I can do it! - This approach to learn from mistakes and persevere until they succeed provides people with mastery experiences needed to build self-efficacy and approach future challenges with confidence. Vicarious Experiences - Another way to improve self-efficacy is by watching others perform a skill you want to learn. - It is important that you choose a model who is competent at the task, and it helps if they are similar to you (in age, gender, and ethnicity). - Example: if you are shy about speaking up for yourself, observing someone who is skilled at doing so can help you develop the confidence to do it yourself. - It is important to pick successful role models -- watching unsuccessful ones can undermine self-efficacy (if they did not succeed neither will I). Persuasion and Encouragement - Although it is less effective than the first two approaches, a third way to develop self-efficacy is through the encouragement of others. - Example: if you are having a hard time asking someone for a date, a friend's encouragement might give you just the push you need. - Persuasion does not always work. And unless encouragement is accompanied by specific and concrete suggestions, this tactic is unlikely to be successful. Interpretation of Emotional Arousal - The physiological responses that accompany feelings and one's interpretations of these responses are another source of self-efficacy. - Example: you are sitting in class waiting for the instructor to distribute an exam. You notice that your palms are moist and your heart is pounding. If you attribute these behaviours to fear, you can temporarily harm your self-efficacy, thus decreasing your chances of doing well. Alternatively, if you interpret your sweaty palms and racing heart to the arousal everyone needs to perform well, you may be able to boost your self-efficacy and increase your chances of doing well. Self Defeating Behavior - Self-regulation does not always succeed. That is the case in self-defeating behaviour. - It is reasonable for people to act in their own self-interest, and typically they do. But sometimes people knowingly do things that are bad for them, like completing important assignments at the last minute. - **Self-defeating behaviours are seemingly intentional actions that goes against a person's self-interest.** - There are three categories of self-defeating behaviour: 1. **Deliberate self-destruction** 1. **Trade-offs** 1. **Counterproductive strategies** Deliberate Self-Destruction - In deliberate self-destruction, people want to harm themselves and they choose courses of action that will foreseeably lead to that result. - Although this type of behaviour may occur in individuals with psychological disorders, deliberate self-destruction appears to be not very common in general. Trade-offs - In trade-offs, people foresee the possibility of harming themselves but accept it as a necessary accompaniment to achieving a desirable goal. - Overeating, smoking, and drinking to excess are examples that come readily to mind. - Other examples include the failure to follow prescribed health care advice (t's easier now to slack off but doing so leads to future problems), shyness (avoiding social situations protects against anxiety but makes loneliness more likely), and self-handicapping (getting drunk before an example explains poor performance but increases chances of failure). - One common factor in self-defeating trad-offs is poor judgement. I.e. people choose immediate benefits (pleasant sensations, escape from painful thoughts or feelings) over long-term costs (heart disease, lung cancer, few intimate relationships). - To bolster their choices, people usually ignore or downplay the long-term risks of their behaviour. - Two other factors that are most likely to play a key role in trade-offs are emotional distress (anxiety) and high self-awareness. Because negative emotions are distressing, people want a quick escape. - Thus, they light a cigarette or have a drink to bring immediate relief, and they tune out the long-term negative consequences of their actions. - In short, people engage in trade-offs because they bring immediate, positive, and reliable outcomes, not because they want to kill themselves. Counterproductive Strategies - In counterproductive strategies, a person pursues a desirable outcome but misguidedly uses an approach that is bound to fail. - Of course, you cannot always know in advance if a strategy will pay off, so people must habitually use this strategy for it to qualify as self-defeating. - Example: some people tend to persist in unproductive endeavours, such as pursuing an unreachable career goal or unrequited love. Such behaviour costs valuable time, generates painful emotions, and blocks the discovery of productive approaches. - The key cause of counterproductive behaviour seems to be errors in judgement, such as misjudging one's abilities or the actions required to produce a desired result. - People persist in these behaviours because they believe they will be successful, not because they are intent on self-defeat. Self-Presentation - While your self-concept involves how you see yourself, your public self involves how you want others to see you. - **A public self is an image presented to others in social interactions**. - This presentation of a public self may sound deceitful, but it is perfectly normal, and everyone does it. - Many self-presentations (ritual greetings, for example) take place automatically and without awareness. - But when it really counts (job interviews, for example), people consciously strive to make the best possible impression. - Typically, people have a number of public selves that are tied to certain situations and certain people. - Example having one public self for your parents and another one for your peers. Do you remove your piercings or lengthen the skirt when you go home? Impression Management - In presenting themselves to others, people normally strive to make a positive impression to be liked, respected, hired, and so forth. - **Impression management refers to usually conscious efforts by people to influence how others think of them.** - People are highly attentive to making a good impression in a job interview. - Impression management also operates in everyday interactions, although individuals may be less aware of it. - One reason people engage in impression management is to claim a particular identity. - Thus, you select a type of dress, hairstyle, and manner of speech to present a certain image of yourself. - Tattoos and body piercings also serve this purpose. - A second motive for impression management is to gain liking and approval from others -- by editing what you say about yourself and by using various nonverbal cues such as smiles, gestures, and eye contact. - Because self-presentation is practiced so often, people usually do it automatically. - At other times, however, impression management may be used intentionally -- to get a job, a date, a promotion, and so forth. Management Strategies Strategies include the following: - **Ingratiation is behaving in ways to make oneself likeable to others.** This is the most fundamental and most frequently used. - Example giving compliments is effective, as long as you are sincere (people can sense if you are being dishonest). Doing favours for others, expressing liking for others, going along with others are other common tactics. - **Self-promotion**: the motive behind self-promotion is to gain respect. You do so by playing up your strong points so you are perceived as competent. For instance, in a job interview, you find ways to mention that you earned high grades at school. But it is important not to overdo it otherwise you seem like you are bragging - **Exemplification**: most people try to project an honest image, therefore, they have to demonstrate exemplary behaviour to claim special credit for integrity or character. - Working in the military, for example, provides obvious opportunities to exemplify moral virtue. Behaving consistently according to high ethical standards is another way of exemplification. - **Intimidation**: this strategy sends the message, "don't mess with me". Intimidation usually works only in nonvoluntary relationships -- example, when it is hard for workers to find another employer or for an economically dependent spouse to leave a relationship. Intimidation tactics include threats or withholding of valuable resources ex salary increases, promotion. - **Usually self-presentation strategies work by creating a favourable impression; intimidation usually generates dislike. Nonetheless it can work.** - **Supplication**: this is usually the tactic of last resort. To get favours from others, individuals try to present themselves as weak and dependent. Perspectives on impression management - Almost all research on self-presentation has been conducted on first meetings between strangers, yet the vast majority of actual social interactions take place between people who already know each other. - Noting the gap between reality and research, Dianne Tice and her colleague investigated whether self-presentation varied in these two situations. They found that people strive to make positive impressions when they interact with strangers but shift toward modesty and neutral self-presentations when they are with friends. - Why the difference? Because strangers do not know you, you want to give them positive information so they will form a good impression of you. Besides strangers have no way of knowing if you are bending the truth. - On the other hand, your friends already know your positive qualities and it is not necessary to emphasise them. - Sometimes the need to project a positive public image can lead to dangerous practices. - For instance, to avoid the embarrassment of buying condoms or talking with their sex partners, people practice unprotected sex and heighten their risk of contracting AIDS. - In pursuit of an attractive tan, people spend hours in the sun, and increase their chances of getting skin cancer. - To keep thin, many (especially women) use strong diet medications and develop full-blown eating disorders. - To impress their peers, some adolescents take up drinking and smoking and even drug abuse. - Finally, out of the desire to appear brave and daring, some people engage in reckless behaviour that ends in accidents and death. Self-Monitoring - According to Mark Snyder, people vary in their awareness of how they are perceived by others. - **Self-monitoring refers to the degree to which people attend to and control the impressions they make on others.** - People who are high self-monitors are very sensitive to their impact on others. - Low self-monitors are less concerned about impression management and behave more spontaneously. - Compared to low self-monitors, high self-monitors actively seek information about how they are expected to behave and try to tailor their actions accordingly. They are sensitive to situational cues and skilled at deciphering what others wat to see, and they tend to act more in accordance with situational expectations than with their true feelings or attitudes. - These two personality types view themselves differently. - Low self-monitors see themselves as having strong principles and behave in line with them. - High self-monitors perceive themselves as flexible and pragmatic. - Because high self-monitors do not see a necessary connection between their private belies and their public actions, they are not troubled by discrepancies between beliefs and behaviour.