Social and Personality Psychology: The Social Self PDF

The social self vs personality Personality: relatively stable intrinsic characteristics, which influence behaviour across different situations Social self: how individuals perceive themselves based on their social interactions and the roles they play – the answer to who am I? It changes dep...

The social self vs personality Personality: relatively stable intrinsic characteristics, which influence behaviour across different situations Social self: how individuals perceive themselves based on their social interactions and the roles they play – the answer to who am I? It changes depending on the context, (e.g., people around us, social norms) Comprises ○ Self concept, what we know about ourselves ○ Self esteem, how we feel about ourselves The social self The social self, is shaped in part by what we imagine others think of us – reflected self-appraisal ○ When we make an insightful comment in a group discussion, we believe that others notice and remember it (improves self-esteem) ○ When we stumble, we feel embarrassed because we believe that others are judging us (lowers self-esteem) We are so concerned about what others think of us that our perceptions are often exaggerated How much do people notice us? Spotlight effect: We tend to be self-conscious and think others overly pay attention top our appearance and behaviour (e.g., bad haircuts) Illusion of transparency: We also think others can easily read our concealed emotions (e.g., when lying) The spotlight effect (Gilovich et al., 2000) Procedure: ○ 2-6 observers seated at table facing the door & filling-out questionnaires ○ Target arrives 5 mins late & asked to “put on this T-shirt” before joining the rest ○ Joins group and is seated facing them ○ E says the others are too far ahead in the task and directs target to wait outside ○ Then target was told that this is an incidental memory study and asked: How many of the people in the room you were just in would be able to tell me who is on your t-shirt? What we agnoiser over, others soon forget Prosocial implications We are supersensitive to what others think of us We experience painful social emotions when we deviate (e.g., shame, embarrassment, guilt) We experience positive emotions when we feel admired and accepted Adaptive (group cohesion, cooperation, reputation management) The good news: Just knowing about the illusion of transparency (others reading our concealed emotions) reduces it E.g., increases perceived and actual confidence in public speakikng (Savitsky & Gilovich, 2003) Self-schema The vast amount of knowledge that we have about ourselves from past experience is organised into self-schemas Represents a person’s belief and feelings about themselves (E.g., im a kind and helpful person)  In both general, and in specific situations (E.g., I feel compassion towards those in need; I can recall specific instances where I gave to charity or helped someone) We also use this knowledge store about the self to make sense of the world (E.g., I see an elderly person having difficulty crossing the street – I’ll help them) In this way, our sense of self impacts how we perceive, remember, and evaluate our social world (cognitions & motivations) Self-reference effect: we are quicker processing information that is relevant to the self, and we remember it better (symons, & johnson, 1997)