TO STUDY The Cognitive Self.docx

The Cognitive Self: The Self-Concept E. Fagon Objectives At the end of this lecture participants will be able to: {a}Define and {b}describe the self-concept and its influence on information processing. Describe the concept of self-complexity, and {b}explain how it influences social cognition and beh...

The Cognitive Self: The Self-Concept E. Fagon Objectives At the end of this lecture participants will be able to: {a}Define and {b}describe the self-concept and its influence on information processing. Describe the concept of self-complexity, and {b}explain how it influences social cognition and behavior Review the measures that are used to assess the self-concept. Self-consciousness. Overview of Self Concept At the foundation of all human behavior is the Self, our sense of personal identity and of who we are as individuals. Because an understanding of the self is so important, it has been studied for many years by psychologists and is still one of the most important and most researched topics in social psychology. Social psychologists conceptualize the self-using the basic principles of social psychology that is, the relationship between individual persons and the people around them, (the person-situation interaction) and the ABCs of social psychology, the affective, behavioral, and cognitive components of the self. The self-concept begins to develop early in life. Infants recognize themselves in a mirror by about 18 months of age. The child's knowledge about the self continues to develop as the child grows. By two years of age, the infant becomes aware of his or her gender as a boy or a girl. At age four, the child's self-descriptions are likely to be based on physical features, such as hair color, and by about age six, the child is able to understand basic emotions and the concepts of traits, being able to make statements such as "I am a nice person" By the time children are in grade school, they have learned that they are unique individuals, and they can think about and analyze their own behavior. They also begin to show awareness of the social situation, they understand that other people are looking at and judging them the same way that they are looking at and judging others. Development and Characteristics of the Self-Concept Part of what is developing in children as they grow is the fundamental cognitive part of the self, known as the self-concept. The self-concept is a knowledge representation that contains knowledge about us, including our beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals. Throughout childhood and adolescence, the self-concept becomes more abstract and complex and is organized into a variety of different cognitive aspects of the self, known as self-schemas. Children have self-schemas about their progress in school, their appearance, their skills at sports and other activities, and many other aspects. Definition of Schema A schema is a mental concept that informs a person about what to expect from a variety of experiences and situations. Schemas are developed based on information provided by life experiences and are then stored in memory. Our brains create and use schemas as a short cut to make future encounters with similar situations easier to navigate. In turn, these self-schemas direct and inform their processing of self-relevant information, much as we saw schemas in general affecting our social cognition. These self- schemas can be studied using the methods that we would use to study any other schema. Another approach to studying the self is to investigate how we attend to and remember things that relate to the self. Indeed, because the self-concept is the most important of all our schemas, it has an extraordinary degree of influence on our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. People are able to hear their names being called even where there is a lot of noise. Because our own name is such an important part of our self- concept, and because we value it highly, it is highly accessible. We are very alert for, and react quickly to, the mention of our own name. These self-schemas direct and inform their processing of self-relevant information by the time we are adults; our sense of self has grown dramatically. In addition to possessing a wide variety of self-schemas, we can analyze our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and we can see that other people may have different thoughts than we do. We become aware of our own mortality. We plan for the future and consider the potential outcomes of our actions. At times, having a sense of self may seem unpleasant-when we are not proud of our appearance, actions, or relationships with others, or when we think about and become afraid of the possibility of our own death. On the other hand, the ability to think about the self is very useful. Being aware of our past and able to speculate about the future is adaptive-it allows us to modify our behavior on the basis of our mistakes and to plan for future activities. When we do poorly on an exam, for instance, we may study harder for the next one or even consider changing our major if we continue to have problems in the major, we have chosen. Self-Report Measures One way to learn about a person's self- concept and the many self-schemas that it contains is by using self-report measures. One of these is a deceptively simple fill-in- the-blank measure that has been used by many scientists to get a picture of the self- concept All of the 20 items in the measure are exactly the same, but the person is asked to fill in a different response for each statement. This self-report measure, known as the Twenty Statements Test, can reveal a lot about a person because it is designed to measure the most accessible-and thus the most important-parts of one's self-concept Fill in the Blanks I am (please fill in the blank) I am (please fill in the blank) etc. Studying the Self-Concept Because the self-concept is a schema, it can be studied using the methods that we would use to study any other schema. As we have seen, one approach is to use self- report-for instance, by asking people to list the things that come to mind when they think about themselves. Still another approach to studying the self is to investigate how we attend to and remember things that relate to the self. Indeed, because the self-concept is the most important of all our schemas, it has extraordinary influence on our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Have you ever been at a meeting where there was a lot of noise and bustle, and yet you were surprised to discover that you could easily hear your own name being mentioned in the background? Because our own name is such an important part of our self- concept, and because we value it highly, it is highly accessible. We are very alert for, and react quickly to, the mention of our own name. Self-Concept Although each person has a unique self- concept, we can identify some characteristics that are common across the responses given by different people on the measure. memberships in the social groups that we belong to and care about. Common responses in this regard include such ones as "I am an artist," "I am Jewish," and "I am a student at X or Y College. Our group memberships form an important part of the self-concept because they provide us with our social identity-the sense of our self that involves our memberships in social groups. The remainder of the self-concept is normally made up of Physical characteristics are an important component of the self-concept, and they are mentioned by many people when they describe themselves. If you've been concerned lately that you've been gaining weight, you might write, "I am overweight." If you think you're particularly good looking ("I am attractive"), or if you think you're too short ("I am too short"), those things might have been reflected in your responses. Our physical characteristics are important to our self-concept because we realize that other people use them to judge us. People often list the physical characteristics that make them different from others in either positive or negative ways ("I am blond," "I am short"), in part because they understand that these characteristics are salient and thus likely to be used by others when judging them. A second characteristic of the self- concept reflects us personality traits- the specific and stable personality characteristics that describe an individual ("I am friendly," "I am shy," "I am persistent"). These individual differences (the person part of the person-situation interaction) are important determinants of our behavior, and this aspect of the self- concept reflects this variation across people. Self-Complexity The self-concept is a rich and complex social representation. In addition to our thoughts about who we are right now, the self-concept includes thoughts about our past self-our experiences, accomplishments, and failures- and about our future self-our hopes, plans, goals, and possibilities. The self-concept also includes thoughts about our relationships with others. You no doubt have thoughts about your family and close friends that have become part of yourself. Indeed, if you don't see the people, you really care about for a while, or if you should lose them in one way or another, you will naturally feel sad because you are in essence missing part of yourself. Although every human being has a complex self-concept, there are nevertheless individual differences in self- complexity, the extent to which individuals have many different and relatively independent ways of thinking about themselves. Some selves are more complex than others, and these individual differences can be important in determining psychological outcomes. Having a complex self means that we have a lot of different ways of thinking about ourselves. For example, imagine a woman whose self- concept contains the social identities of student, girlfriend, daughter, psychology major, and tennis player and who has encountered a wide variety of life experiences. Social psychologists would say that she has high self-complexity. On the other hand, a man who perceives himself solely as a student or solely as a member of the hockey team and who has had a relatively narrow range of life experiences would be said to have low self- complexity. For those with high self-complexity, the various self-aspects of the self are separate, such that the positive and negative thoughts about a particular self- aspect do not spill over into thoughts about other aspects. Research has found that compared with people low in self-complexity, those higher in self- complexity experience more positive outcomes. People with more complex self-concepts have been found to have lower levels of stress and illness, a greater tolerance for frustration and more positive and less negative reactions to events that they experience. The benefits of self-complexity occur because the various domains of the self-help to buffer us against negative events and help us to enjoy the positive events that we experience. For people low in self-complexity, negative outcomes on one aspect of the self tend to have a big impact on their self-esteem. If the only thing that Maria cares about is getting into medical school, she may be devastated if she fails to make it. On the other hand, Marty, who is also passionate about medical school but who has a more complex self-concept, may be better able to adjust to such a blow by turning to other interests. People with high self-complexity can also take advantage of the positive outcomes that occur on any of the dimensions that are important to them. Having a high self- complexity seems useful overall to persons who qualify for this categorization. People with high self-complexity seem to react more positively to the good things that happen to them but not necessarily less negatively to the bad things. And the positive effects of self-complexity are stronger for people who have other positive aspects of the self as well. This buffering effect is stronger for people with high self-esteem, whose self- complexity involves positive rather than negative characteristics, and for people who feel that they have control over their outcomes. Self-Awareness Like any other schema, the self-concept can vary in its current cognitive accessibility. Self-awareness refers to the extent to which we are currently fixing our attention on our own self-concept. When the self-concept becomes highly accessible because of our concerns about being observed and potentially judged by others, we experience the publicly induced self-awareness known as self-consciousness. You can remember times when your self- awareness was increased and you became self-conscious-for instance, when you were giving a class presentation and you were perhaps painfully aware that everyone was looking at you, or when you did something in public that embarrassed you. Emotions Emotions such as anxiety and embarrassment occur in large part because the self-concept becomes highly accessible, and they serve as a signal to monitor and perhaps change our behavior. Self-Awareness Not all aspects of our self-concepts are equally accessible at all times, and these long-term differences in the accessibility of the different self-schemas help create individual differences, for instance, ins terms of our current concerns and interests. You may know some people for whom the physical appearance component of the self-concept is highly accessible. They check their hair every time they see a mirror, worry whether their clothes are making them look good, and do a lot of shopping-for themselves. Other people are more focused on their social group memberships; they tend to think about things in terms of their role as Christians or as members of the tennis team. In addition to variation in long-term accessibility, the self and its various components may also be made temporarily more accessible through priming. We become more self-aware when we are in front of a mirror, when a TV camera is focused on us, when we are speaking in front of an audience or when we are listening to our own tape- recorded voice. When the knowledge contained in the self-schema becomes more accessible, it also becomes more likely to be used in information processing and more likely to influence our behavior. Social psychologists are interested in studying self-awareness because it has such an important influence on behavior. People lose their self- awareness and become more likely to violate acceptable social norms when, for example, they put on a Halloween mask or engage in other behaviors that hide their identities. The members of the militant White supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan wear white robes and hats when they meet and when they engage in their racist behavior. And when people are in large crowds, such as in a mass demonstration or a riot, they may become so much a part of the group that they lose their individual self- awareness and experience deindividuation; the loss of self- awareness and individual accountability in groups Two particulars types of individual differences in self-awareness have been found to be important, and they relate to self-concern and other-concern, respectively Private self-consciousness refers to the tendency to introspect about our inner thoughts and feelings. People who are high in private self-consciousness tend to think about themselves a lot and agree with statements such as "I'm always trying to figure myself out" and, “I am generally attentive to my inner feelings." People who are high on private self- consciousness are likely to base their behavior on their own inner beliefs and values; they let their inner thoughts and feelings guide their actions and, they may be particularly likely to strive to succeed on dimensions that allow them to demonstrate their own personal accomplishments. Public self-consciousness, in contrast, refers to the tendency to focus on our outer public image and to be particularly aware of the extent to which we are meeting the standards set by others. Those high in public self-consciousness agree with statements such as "I'm concerned about what other people think of me," "Before I leave my house, I check how I look," and "I care a lot about how I present myself to others." These are the people who check their hair in a mirror they pass and spend a lot of time getting ready in the morning; they are more likely to let the opinions of others (rather than their own opinions) guide their behaviors and are particularly concerned with making good impressions on others. Research has found cultural differences in public self-consciousness, such that people from East Asian collectivistic cultures have higher public self-consciousness than do people from Western individualistic cultures.