Week 4 Exam Notes PDF

**Week 4** 1. **Introspection** 2. **Observing our Own Behaviour** 3. **Comparing ourselves to others** 1. **Introspection:** - Looking inward to examine inside information that you have about your thoughts, feelings and motives - Thinking about ourselves is rare **Study 1** **CSI...

**Week 4** 1. **Introspection** 2. **Observing our Own Behaviour** 3. **Comparing ourselves to others** 1. **Introspection:** - Looking inward to examine inside information that you have about your thoughts, feelings and motives - Thinking about ourselves is rare **Study 1** **CSIKSZENTMIHALYI & FIGURSKI (1982) PAGER** - People had lower affect when thinking about themselves - When we are doing a voluntary activity ( watching TV) we have a negative self-affect **Self-Awareness Theory of Introspection:** - When we think about ourselves it causes us to evaluate and compare our current behaviour to our internal standards and values ( guilt ) - We become judgemental and objective observers - We remember the kind of person we want to be and think we should do something productive because we feel bad we are not. - Self-awareness is positive when we exceed our internal standards we feel good but only temporarily. We feel like we must do better next time. - But if you do well, but don't feel you can do it again or do it even better you have a negative effect. - Every time you exceed your expectations your standards get raised and you must do even better next time to feel good - Self-awareness causes us to evaluate and compare our current behaviour with our internal standards and values - Act more in accordance with own ideals - **Am I meeting my expectations below** **DIENER & WALLBOM (1976): Introspection and Behaviour Cheating on timed 5 minute test** - Participants seated with a mirror in front of themselves were less likely to cheat and follow their internal values - Participants with low self-awareness and introspection will cheat **SOHN ET AL. (2019): TROLLING ON FACEBOOK BULLYING SOCIAL NORMS AND INTROSPECTION** - When people have introspection because they see their face on the video screen on FACEBOOK they are less likely to write abusive comments. - Greater introspection Social norms have less impact on our behaviours - Less introspection more likely to bully others or join in on online bullying - Less introspection more likely we are to follow any social norm and join in on bad behaviours **2: Self-Awareness Observing Our Own Behaviour** **Self-Perception Theory** - Using our body reactions and behaviours to tell how you feel rather than expressing how you feel - We infer our attitudes and feelings by observing our behaviour and the situation it occurs - Anxiety Vs Exicitment: meaning changes - When someone asks about who we are: 1. We use introspection to see if we know it already 2. Observe our behaviours In the situation to infer 2a. Check if behaviour is voluntary: and a part of who we are 2b. If not voluntary behaviour we take a guess that is often wrong **NISBETT & WILSON (1977):** 1. **Panty Hose Selection Why?** 2. **Warm or Cold teacher Experiments** - We are not good at determining or knowing why we think or feel a certain way. - We aren't good at knowing what influences our behaviours and choices - We rate nicer people more attractive - Our physiological reactions influence our emotions and it changes how we perceive things, others and ourselves **DUTTON & ARON (1974): People can misattribute feelings of arousal.** - Bridge Solid Vs Hanging and Fear Vs Sexual Attraction - We can't tell the difference - Behaviour can have multiple possible explanations - The inference we make about attitudes and feelings depends on the explanation we choose *eg fast heart rate fear or excitement* **COSTA ET AL. (2018, Study 1): SKYPE relationships changing the angry persons voice** - People act calmer when their voice sounds calmer. - When the voice is calmer people feel calmer and less reactive - Speaking calmer in conflict impacts our own and others behaviour - Heart rate: lowers when the voice is calmer - A calm voice influences the perception and changes how we and others feel. 3. **Using Other People For Self-Reflection** **Social Comparison** - Social comparison is the process of thinking about information about one or more other people in relation to the self - We notice similarities and differences between self and others - **We compare:** - Behaviour - Ability - Opinions - Life circumstances - Jobs - Things we own **Social Comparison Theory** - We learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to others **4 QUESTIONS OF SOCIAL COMPARISON THEORY** 1. When do we do this? 2. Who do we compare ourselves to? 3. Why do we compare ourselves to others? 4. What is the impact of social comparison? 1. **When do we do this?** - We compare ourselves to others when we have no objective standard to measure ourselves against - We compare ourselves to others when we care about our performance in the domain 2. **Who do we compare ourselves to?** 1. **Upward social comparison** ( doing better than us) 2. **Downward social comparison** ( doing worse than us or past self) 3. **Lateral social comparisons** ( at the same skill level) **Downward Comparison Theory** - Compared to those doing worse than us - Because threats hurt our self-esteem - Restores self-esteem - Prone to people with low self-esteem to make themselves feel better - Boosts self-evaluations - We **contrast** ourselves because we are sensitive to the differences between ourselves and others **Upward Social Comparisons Construal Theory** - Compare to others doing better than us - To improve self-esteem by identifying like them - To make ourselves feel better - Not comparing but identifying with better people - Feel successful - Boosts self-evaluation - Aim to **assimilate with successful people** - We are sensitive to similarities between self and others **GERBER et al 2018 Contrast and Assimilation with Others** **The Positive effects of Comparing To others** - Upward comparison gives us hope and inspiration - Downward comparisons gratitude - Contrasting ourselves to others in the dominant social comparison response **The Negative Effects of Comparing to Others** - Upward effects: Regret, envy of others' success - Downward effects: We feel worry about ourselves **Helgeson and Mickelson 1995 MOTIVATION** - Culture influences motivation 1. **Self-enhancement**: makes us feel better 2. **Self-destruction:** to confirm my fear of getting worse 3. **Self-evaluation:** To see how we are doing 4. **Self-improvement**: I can get better 5. **Altruism**: To help others 6. **Common Bond:** For empathy and support **SONG ET AL. (2019): Culture and Motivation by Comparisons FACEBOOK FATIGUE**  - Different cultures may have different motivations for engaging in social comparisons **JOHNSON (2012): How we respond to Upward social comparison** **People more successful than us:** **THREATS TO SELF-ESTEEM** **Positive** 1\. When individuals think they can improve themselves: a. They perform better and/or engage in more self-improvement behaviour b. When you expect to get a promotion but don't get one perform better because you feel envy towards the person who got it **Negative Threats** 1. When individuals **can't improve**, they **act to harm** the other person by: c. Interfering with performance d. Creating coalitions against the other person e. Being ''nasty'' to them f. Withholding or reducing the quality of relevant work information - Sabotaging the other person's reputation - Increase social loafing **Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory/ Model** **Comparing yourself to a friend** - Only matters if we care about the comparison - When we care we can reduce the threat to our self-evaluation by 1. **Reducing closeness to the friend** 2. **Stop caring about the thing itself** 3. **Sabotage to stop the friend from being good at it** **Tesser & Smith 1980 Bring a good friend to the experiment** - When we feel under threat by others in a task we care about we sabotage the other person - We will sabotage a friend when there is a chance they could out perform us - Being outperformed by a friend is worse than by a stranger - Being out performed by a friend in something we care about is bad **NICHOLLS & STUKAS (2011): Narcissistic Personality and Competitiveness** - The higher the narcissism the more likely you are to reduce closeness to a friend if they do better than you - Narcists like friends who they can beat