Week 2 - The Self in a Social World PDF

THE SELF IN A SOCIAL WORLD THE SELF CHAPTER 2: THE SELF IN A SOCIAL WORLD Fill in the blank – “I am ______________” Do this 10 times This exercise essentially gives you your self-concept – who you believe yourself to be Related terms – What is a schema? What is a self-s...

THE SELF IN A SOCIAL WORLD THE SELF CHAPTER 2: THE SELF IN A SOCIAL WORLD Fill in the blank – “I am ______________” Do this 10 times This exercise essentially gives you your self-concept – who you believe yourself to be Related terms – What is a schema? What is a self-schema then? What is the self-reference effect? SELF-CONCEPT CONTINUED… Our self-concept not only includes self-schemas, but also possible selves Another important idea before we move on – self-esteem SELF-AWARENESS How we see ourselves at a given time depends on how much attention we have focused on ourselves. Seeing ourselves in a mirror or on video can do what? This theory is known as the self-awareness theory (Duval & Wicklund, 1972 ). While we have our attention turned inward, we compare and evaluate our behaviour against our standards and values of what our behaviour should be – what happens when our behaviour doesn’t match up with our standards and values? SELF-KNOWLEDGE Social Comparison (upward and downward) Temporal Comparison Social Identity (vs personal identity) Other people’s judgements (looking glass self) Explaining our behaviour Predicting our behaviour Predicting our feelings  SELF AND CULTURE Individualism Independent self Self-concept as stable Self-esteem as personal Collectivism Interdependent self Self-concept as malleable Self-esteem as relational SELF AND CULTURE Source: Markus and Kitayama (1991)  CULTURE AND THE SELF Self-Concept: Independent or interdependent Independent interdependent Identity is Personal, defined by individual Social, defined by connections traits and goals with others What Matters Me—personal achievement We—group goals and solidarity; and fulfillment; my rights our social responsibilities and and liberties relationships Disapproves of Conformity Egotism Illustrative “To thine own self be true” “No one is an island” motto Cultures that Individualistic Western Collectivistic Asian and support developing world SELF-SERVING BIAS What is the self-serving bias? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjfSuOq6ReA How do ‘self-servers’ explain positive and negative events? Situations that combine both skill and chance especially likely to expose such tendencies The majority of people do it SELF-SERVING BIAS II Also occurs when people compare themselves to others most people see themselves as better than average when it comes to anything that is subjective and desirable People often assign more importance to things they are good at and ‘downplay’ things they are not good at  this makes them feel better about themselves SELF-SERVING BIAS III Unrealistic optimism  how is this bad? How is it good? False consensus and False Uniqueness  We often make ourselves feel better by either overestimating or underestimating the commonality of our behaviours EXPLAINING SELF- SERVING BIAS Source: Data from Lockwood, P. & Kunda, Z. (1997). Superstars and me: Predicting the impact of role models on the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 93–103. SELF-PRESENTATION Do people actually believe these self- enhancing remarks? False modesty  research has provided evidence that people may present a different self than they feel – clearest example is with “false modesty” E.g. – “I look so awful today” – “no, you don’t, you look great!” Other examples of false modesty SELF-PRESENTATION II Impression Management Continually managing the impressions we create – by: Self-presentation Self-monitoring Self-handicapping Protecting one’s self-image with behaviours that create a handy excuse for later failure What are some examples? Why do people do it?  THINKING ABOUT THE SELF There are different ways we see the self Self-complexity How an individual’s self-concept is organized For those high in complexity, important aspects of the self are distinct from one another For those low in complexity, there is greater overlap in different components of the self Identity interference Occurs when two important social identities are perceived as being in conflict, such that acting on the basis of one identity interferes with performing well based on the other INFERRING WHO WE ARE FROM HOW WE BEHAVE: SELF-PERCEPTION THEORY Self-perception theory (Bem, 1972): When our attitudes and feelings are uncertain, we infer how we think/feel by observing our own behaviour and the situation Unsure if you like classical music? Think of how often you listen to classical Do you hum along in elevators? SELF-ESTEEM What is self-esteem? Measurement of self-esteem Rosenberg self-esteem scale is most common Explicit measure Unlike explicit measures, subtle measures attempt to use nonconscious assessment procedures e.g., IAT ROSENBERG SELF-ESTEEM SCALE REVISITING SOCIAL COMPARISON Depending on how we categorize the self in relation to the other, we can achieve a positive self-perception 1. Self-evaluation maintenance model (Tesser, 1988) The perspective that suggests that to maintain a positive view of the self, we distance ourselves from others who perform better than we do on valued dimensions, but move closer to others SOCIAL COMPARISON REVISITED II 2. Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) Our response when our group identity is salient Suggests that we will move closer to positive others with whom we share an identity but distance ourselves from other in-group members who perform poorly or otherwise make our social identity negative READINGS Markus and Kitayama (1991) - https://web.stanford.edu/~ hazelm/publications/1991%20Markus%20Kita yama%20Culture%20and%20the%20self.pdf