SLK 220 Semester Test 1 PDF

1 c h a p t e r 2 – culture and nature 2.1 nature, nurture, and social behaviour: (def) psyche – a broad term for mind, including emotions, desires, perceptions and all 222222222 psychological processes.  in order to understand somethi...

1 c h a p t e r 2 – culture and nature 2.1 nature, nurture, and social behaviour: (def) psyche – a broad term for mind, including emotions, desires, perceptions and all 222222222 psychological processes.  in order to understand something, you have to know what it is designed to do. why are people the way they are? – the answers lie in nature and culture: nature culture the nature explanations say that people are the cultural explanations focus on what born a certain way: people learn from: people’s genes, hormones, brain structure their parents. & other processes dictate how people will from society. choose and act. from their own experiences.  nature and culture have shaped each other.  nature has prepared human beings specifically for culture (the characteristics that set humans apart from other animals which include language, a flexible self that can hold multiple roles, and an advanced ability to understand each other’s mental states.  these characteristics are mainly there to enable people to create & sustain culture.  the interaction between nature & culture is the key to understanding how people think, act, and feel. (def) nature – the physical world around us, including its laws & processes.  nature includes the entire world that would be there even if no human beings existed.  nature can help explain human behaviour – genes, hormones, brain structure and other innate processes dictate one’s choices and actions. (def) innate – refers to something you are born with (as opposed to something you learned 222222 or acquired during life)  those who explain human behaviour using nature invoke the sorts of processes that natural sciences have shown – for example, neuroscientists look for explanations in terms of what happens inside the brain (chemical reactions, electrical activity).  behaviour geneticist seeks to understand behaviour as the result of genes and show that people are born with tendencies to feel and act in certain ways. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  2 the theory of evolution, proposed by the British biologist Charles Darwin in the 1800’s, focused on how change occurs in nature.  change is a common trait of living things – each living thing changes as it grows older & forms of change occur from one generation to the next generation.  nature produces changes that are essentially random.  the complicated processes that mix the genes of two parents to produce a unique set of genes in the baby sometimes produce novel outcomes in the forms of new traits.  powerful forces react to these random changes and as a result, some random changes will disappear, whereas other will endure. the process of natural selection decides which traits will disappear and which will continue. (in other words, species that survive and reproduce most effectively are the ones that will pass genes to future generations) (def) natural selection – the process whereby those members of a species that survive and 22222222222222222 reproduce most effectively are the ones that pass along their genes 222222222222222 to future generations.  natural selection has two criteria: survival & reproduction.  survival and reproduction are the two ways of prolonging life.  a trait that improves survival or reproduction will tend to last for many generations and become more common whereas a trait that reduces survival and reproduction will not become common. example an unusual trait that makes someone happier or gives the person a high sense of self-esteem will not necessarily be passed on to future generations, unless those changes can translate into better survival or better reproduction.  Darwin’s contemporary, Herbert Spencer, created the phrase “survival of the fittest” to describe natural selection – survival meaning living longer. (def) survival – living long enough to reproduce.  survival depends on the circumstances in your environment.  gradually, biologists have shifted their emphasis from survival to reproduction as the single most important factor in natural selection.  survival is important mainly as a means to achieve reproduction. (def) reproduction – producing babies that survive long enough to also reproduce.  reproductive success consists of creating many offspring who will in turn create many offspring. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  3 how exactly does biological evolution produce changes? the casual processes depend entirely on random changes to physical elements, such as genes – the person (or other creature) is programmed to respond a certain way. crucially, nothing has to be thought, understood, or said in order for these changes to occur & meaning has nothing to do with it. molecules, chemicals, electrical impulses in the body and other physical mechanisms produce the results – behavior changes because the physical makeup of the newborn individual is different.  being social provides benefits and being social is a strategy that enables some species to survive & reproduce effectively.  that is the biological starting point of social psychology: being social improves survival and reproduction. disadvantage of being social: it is more difficult to achieve a social life than solitary life. (meaning being, living, or going alone or without companions)  social animals have to have something inside them that makes the recognize each other and want to be together – they must have something that prompts them to work together, such as automatic impulses to copy what the others are doing.  social animals must have ways to resolve the conflicts that always arise in social life and need something similar to self-control to enable them to adjust to group life.  social animals need complex, powerful brains.  social animals require brains with additional, flexible capabilities.  the evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar compared the brain sizes of many different species to see what behavioural differences went with bigger brains.  Dunbar found that bigger brains were mainly linked to having larger and more complex social groups. small-brained animals tend to live alone or in small, simple groups, whereas bigger-brained, presumably smarter animals have more relationships with each other and more complicated groups (such as those with dominance hierarchies and competing allies).  more recent work has extended this to human beings:  people with bigger social networks have been found to be bigger in some key brain parts, notably the orbital prefrontal cortex. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  4 the human brain evolved mainly to enable human beings to have rich, complex social lives. the brain is not for understanding the physical world around us so much as it is for understanding each other. it is not so much a calculating brain or a problem-solving brain as it is a social brain. what aspects of social life are crucial for survival? one article divided challenges into four types and tried to 22222222222 estimate their effect on the evolution of the big human brain: 1. me vs you the traditional emphasis is individual competition (me vs you) perhaps surprisingly, they found no evidence that this kind of competition had much effect. 2. me vs nature in contrast, dealing with challenges in the environment (me vs nature) was the biggest factor – though they thought much of the brain size came from learning from culture how to deal with nature (for example, making a fire) 3. us vs nature the next largest challenge was for cooperation (us vs nature) – people work together to get food and shelter. 4. us vs them competition between groups (us vs. them) was a significant but small contributor. (these researchers focused specifically on human females, and so they may have underestimated group vs. group competition, because in prehistory it was probably mainly males that banded together to fight other groups.)  humans cooperate far more effectively and extensively than other animals, who hardly ever engage in true cooperation with non-relatives.  cooperation is one reason humans live much longer than other apes despite sharing most of their DNA – adult apes feed themselves, which is fine as long as they are able to. but if an ape suffers an injury, such as a broken leg, it cannot get food and may starve to death. in contrast, when humans have such injuries, other group members feed them until they can recover.  what is inside enables the creature to satisfy its needs and to survive & reproduce.  social animals (including humans) accomplish those things by means of social interaction. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  5  much of what goes on inside the human mind is designed to help the person relate to others. social psychologists spend much time studying people's inner processes, including their thoughts and feelings and, recently, how their brains work.  they study those things because inner processes serve interpersonal functions. 2.2 culture & human social life  the “social animal” is often used to describe human nature – meaning, people seek connections to others and prefer to live, work, and play together with other people. (def) social animal – animals that seek connections to others and prefer to live, work and 22222222222 play with other members of their species.  being social animals is not what is most special about human beings.  what is special is being cultural animals, also referred to as cultural animal theory. (def) cultural animal theory – the view that evolution shaped the human psyche so as to 22222222222222 enable humans to create and take part in culture. human beings have culture everywhere. culture in animals is a bonus or luxury (something they can live as well without) all humans use culture every day & depend on it for their survival. culture is the essence of what makes us human. (def) culture – social scientists use this term to refer to what a large group of people have in 22222222222 common.  the important thing about culture is that it is a kind of social system.  culture is an advanced way of being social. important features of culture: 1. shared ideas culture is the world of shared ideas and enables you to interact with people you have never met before: just because you belong to the same culture you have enough in common that you can do things together. to say culture consist of “shared ideas” is to say that no single person has culture by themselves. for example: people may argue about many beliefs and practices, but the arguments occur on the basis of shared underlying beliefs. social psychology has provided evidence of how the human brain is aware of shared ideas. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  6 for example: emotions seem to be intensified just by seeing something and knowing that another member of your group is sharing the experience. thus, simultaneous sharing causes the mind to react more strangely to the same information. people learn more quickly and pick up norms for behavior faster when they know another group member is viewing the same information then when they view it alone – if the other person is not a fellow group member, learning is slower. it is also slower if one fellow group member is viewing something else. the brain puts special priority on information that is directly experienced as shared with someone else. this concept is illustrated by the isiZulu proverb “umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu” which means that a person is a person because of other persons – it reveals fundamental truths about what it actually means to be a human in an African context. 2. culture as a culture exists as a network linking many different people. social the idea of a network is useful because it captures the essential point system that culture connects many people together and exists in what they share. the problem is the idea of a network is that it doesn't sufficiently capture the dynamic (changing) aspect of culture. instead of a network, it is useful to think of culture as a system consisting of many moving parts that work together. human survival and success depend more on how we deal with each other than on how we deal with the natural world around us. 3. culture as anthropologists now argue among themselves as to whether culture praxis should be understood more on the basis of shared beliefs and values or shared ways of doing things (also referred as praxis) (def) praxis – practical ways of doing things. almost certainly the answer is both. shared culture involves some shared values, such as the value of money, democracy, preferences for some kinds of food, dislike of crime & support for their local sports teams. AND shared ways of doing things include driving on the same roads, using the same hospitals, buying food at the local supermarkets, borrowing money from the same banks, and reading the same newspaper. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  7 often the praxis depends on shared ideas. money provides a good example – certain round bits of metal and strips of colored paper are inherently worthless, but we have shared ideas about them, so they acquire value and can be exchanged for all sorts of things. (the value depends on shared social understandings) 4. culture, culture is based on meaningful information. information all cultures use language to encode and share information. & meaning. people act as they do because they processed this information. people change their behavior based on information they get from the culture, such as laws and rules, religious teachings and moral principles, historical events, symbols, what they read in books or see on television, and what they learned in school. as cultural animals, humans find meaning through connecting with others. for example, people seem to get more pleasure and value from spending money on experiences (going out to dinner or the movies) then on objects (buying a new jacket or power tool). Summary: what is culture? culture is an information-based system, involving both shared understandings and praxis, that enables groups of people to live together in an organized fashion and you get what they need. culture can have a significant influence on basic human needs such as food & sex.  taking sport as an example: sport in general is a combination of nature (innate physical abilities) and culture (practice, training, and arbitrary rules). so professional athletes are neither made nor born; they need both the gifts of nature and the benefits of culture.  READ THE STORY ON LITTLE BRENDA (PAGE 33) – the failure to raise the boy as a girl suggests that being male has some elements of nature that are not easily overcome by culture, yet manhood also has strong aspects of culture.  research on manhood has shown some cultural differences in beliefs about being a man versus a woman: many cultures require boys to prove themselves before they can claim to be men, whereas all girls grow up to be women.  thus, in a sense, society regards womanhood as a biological achievement, whereas manhood requires a cultural achievement (both are cultural opinions however)  the need for men to prove themselves is relevant to many genders.  studies found that threats for a man’s masculinity caused him to feel aggressive and anxious whereas parallel threats to a woman’s femininity produced no such response. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  8 a) nature and culture shaping each other:  nature shapes culture & culture shapes nature.  the influence of nature on culture starts with very basic and simple insights: one function of culture is to help people satisfy their biological needs.  people need food, water, shelter and often a good environment to raise children, and cultures that fail to provide these do not last long.  many researchers classify cultures along a spectrum from individualism (everyone takes care of themselves and is free to choose how to act) to collectivism (maintaining relationships and getting along with others is more important than doing what you want) might culture influence nature?  the human capacity for speech (nature), for example, probably evolved together with the emergence of spoken language among humans (culture).  some theorists have begun to speak of “co-evolution.” (def) co-evolution – referring to nature and culture that changed together and have shaped 222222222222222 each other.  once the social environment began to include more and more culture, the humans with greater competence for functioning in culture would survive and reproduce better than others = that is the basic idea of seeing humans as cultural animals.  the human being is a product of both nature and culture.  a traditional way of thinking has been that nature provides the foundation, and then culture builds on top of that = meaning nature is first and culture second.  many animals have a little bit of culture – it is likely that culture existed on earth before humans evolved and if culture was already in the environment, then it could have guided natural selection to give humans the traits that promoted culture. why is culture so rare or basic in non-human animals?  the answer lies certainly in their advanced psychological requirements for culture.  animals need more inner processes to be social than to be solitary and in the same way, they need more inner processes to be cultural than to be merely social.  most animals don't have enough brain power to sustain culture. what are some of the main differences between being social and being cultural? (or more precisely, between being merely social and being both social and cultural) Social animals Cultural animals social animals may act together. cultural animals often have elaborate division (like when a swarm of bees or a troop of of labor, in which each individual performs a baboons all move together) – this mass action unique function. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  9 is social because the animals know what the for example, although different bees have others are doing, and they coordinate their different roles, the rules are far simpler, less own behavior with it. flexible, and fewer than roles in human society. social animals may figure out good ways of cultural animals (human beings) deliberately doing things and might possibly copy share their knowledge throughout the group so something they see another doing. that it can be preserved and passed on to the next generation. (the preservation of knowledge allows for progress) among animals without culture, each problem has to be solved as if for the first time by each generation, and in some cases by each individual. social creatures can often communicate, such cultural animals use language, which enables as with grunts and barks – their them to communicate about many things that communication refers mainly to events or are far removed from the here and now. entities that are present at the moment. (for example, human children often study history in which they learn about events that occurred centuries before they were born & such communication is impossible for just social animals) social animals may help each other, but in cultural animals have a broader sense of general helping is limited to relatives. community and sometimes help total strangers. it is quite rare for any non-human animal to for example, some people donate large sums of make some sacrifice (such as willingly giving money to help stop hunger or sickness among away food) in order to benefit another, even if people they have never met, and others help the two animals are related (and especially if people even when it involves great danger to they aren’t) themselves. when animals live together, some degree of in contrast, culture offers many alternative conflict is probably inevitable. means of resolving disputes. some social animals have few ways of these include: resolving these disputes other than aggression. moral principles compromise if two animals (not related to each other) want going before a judge in a court of the same piece of food, the bigger and law. stronger one is most likely to get it, by force if most social animals do not have the luxury and necessary. most cultures strongly discourage people from settling their disputes by resorting to violence. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  10  people are products of both nature and culture.  nature has given humans certain traits and abilities because over time those enabled some people to survive and reproduce better than others.  humans survive and reproduce by means of their culture.  natural selection has shaped the human mind to “do” culture – and in that sense, it is natural for humans: a) to share information. b) to want to be together. c) to form groups with multiple roles. d) to communicate with each other about their inner thought processes.  culture is a better way of being social.  being social, and thus being cultural, is a biological strategy.  biology measures success in terms of survival and reproduction.  by those measures, human culture has been remarkably successful, even despite its problems such as war, pollution, social inequality, and oppression.  survival has improved remarkably.  people speak different languages, read different books and magazines, and eat very different foods = these differences reflect the influence of culture. example there are important cultural differences in how people sleep. in South Africa, most people sleep only at night and wake up with an alarm clock and many consume coffee or another substance the caffeine in it to wake them up WHEREAS in Mexico, it is customary for adults to take a nap (a siesta) in the middle of the day, and as a result might not sleep as much at night, and some cultures and religions disapprove of consuming coffee and similar drugs, so people must wake up naturally.  people are different, both within and between cultures, but in other ways people are much more similar. for example, nearly everywhere, people love their children search, try to get enough to eat, talk about the weather, make distinctions between right and wrong, help each other and drive their cars on the same side of the road.  the quest is for underlying similarities.  for example, languages are very different from each other, but underneath they have great similarities, and all known human cultures have and use language. the use of language is part of human nature.  evolution helped install the necessary equipment (vocal cords, ears that can tell thousands of words apart, and brains that can use grammar) for people to use language. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  11  much of social psychology can be understood by assuming that the human psyche was designed by nature (via natural selection) for culture.  this means that culture is in our genes, even though cultural differences may not be.  culture is a large and important part of the human psyche, that is the human mind, including its emotions, which is designed to enable it to take part in the advanced kinds of social lives that humans have. 2.3 Important features of human social life.  the human mind has two main systems.  this is what Freud said when he distinguished between the conscious ego and the unconscious – most experts no longer accept Freud’s account of how the mind is laid out, but there is a new and exciting version of the theory that the mind has two parts.  this is known as the duplex mind and suggests that each individual person contains two somewhat separate parts to their mind. (def) duplex mind – the idea that the mind has two different processing systems (automatic 22222222222222 system and deliberate system) a) two systems: we can call the two systems the automatic system and the deliberate system: automatic system deliberate system (def) automatic system – the part of the (def) deliberate system – the part of the mind outside of the consciousness that mind that performs complex operations. performs simple operations. the automatic system operates mainly the deliberate system is the other “half” of outside of consciousness. the duplex mind (half not referring to precise comparison of size as the automatic it is not a Freudian kind of unconscious full system is probably much bigger than the of repressed urges and thoughts you are deliberate system) afraid to think. the deliberate system mostly operates in it is like a team of little robots doing lots of consciousness, so it can also be called a simple jobs to make your life easier, but you conscious system. are not aware of the robots and the work they are doing. though people sometimes think they are conscious of everything in their minds, in Freud thought that the unconscious often reality they are conscious of only one part trips you up by making you say or do the (but that is a very important part) wrong thing, but the automatic system is usually very helpful. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  12 the automatic system handles the endless the deliberate system is what seems to turn mundane tasks, such as interpreting, on when you wake up and turn off when organizing, and categorizing all the you go to sleep WHEREAS the automatic information that comes in through your system continues to operate during sleep, eyes and ears. sorting information and making simple judgments. the automatic system continues to operate during sleep, sorting information and making simple judgments. it processes information too: for example, you will wake up to the sound of your own name spoken more softly than almost any other word, which means that your mind can tell the difference in the meanings of words even when you're asleep. telling the difference is the job of the automatic system.  the two systems have also been referred to as “impulsive” & “reflective.”  the automatic system operates by impulses – you feel something and then do it.  the reflective system generally involves conscious deliberation about what would be the best thing to do. b) what is consciousness for?  most people think that their conscience minds are in charge of everything they do BUT the automatic system generally runs almost everything. example consider walking, which is something that most people do over and over all day long. you don't consciously control the movements of your legs and feet. if you watch a small child who is just learning to walk, you may see what happens when the conscious mind tries to figure out how to make the legs walk. but after walking has been learned, the person almost never thinks about it again. walking is done automatically, not deliberately or reflectively.  much of behavior is driven & directed by automatic responses that occur outside of awareness – the automatic system can: learn, think, choose, and respond. it has ideas and emotions, or at least simple versions of them. it knows your “self” and other people. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  13 even when people believe they are deciding something, often it can be shown that the automatic system has already decided - their decisions are swayed by subliminal cues or other bits of information of which the person is unaware that have been processed automatically.  many experts believe that consciousness doesn't really do much of anything. one psychologist worked with people whose brains had been surgically split in half (usually to control epilepsy) and concluded that consciousness is just a side effect of other processes and of thinking about the future, and that it doesn't serve any important function. some psychologists think consciousness is simply a kind of emotional signal to call attention to our own actions, so we don't confuse them with what other people have done.  according to the textbook, they believe that the deliberate system was difficult & expensive (in terms of biological requirements) for nature to give us, so most likely some profound advantages make consciousness worth the trouble.  that automatic system does most of the work of the psyche.  it is most likely that these special jobs involve complex kinds of thought that combined information and follow explicit rules, as in logical reasoning. c) differences between the systems: fast. slow. outside of conscious control. controllable. unintentional. guided by intention. flexible. flexible. poor at combining information. good at combining information. estimates. precise, rule-based calculations. can perform simple operations. can be formed complex operations. can do many things at once. does one thing at a time. intuition. reasoning. effortless. effortful. features quick feelings of like and dislike, features full blown emotions. good and bad. can be independent of conscious depends on automatic system. processing. “go with your gut feeling.” “figure it out.”  first, there is a difference in how much each system can do at the same time: 1. the automatic system is like many different little machines doing many unrelated or loosely related things at once. 2. the deliberate system does one thing at a time. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  14  your automatic system converts the visual images of letters into words, converts the words into meanings, and links the information with all sorts of things that are already stored in memory. meanwhile, you consciously have only one thought at a time. example studies showed that people are less aware of the taste of food if they are distracted. thus, if they ate foods while mentally rehearsing a phone number, they rated the food as having less taste – and ate more of it.  the automatic system is quick and efficient – it performs tasks effectively and with relatively little effort and the deliberate system is slow and takes more effort.  the deliberate system often requires effort, whereas the automatic system doesn't require effort: you have to deliberately start to think consciously about something, but the automatic system starts by itself and often cannot be stopped.  all the differences mentioned favour the automatic system, but the deliberate system does have some advantages: 1. the deliberate system is much more flexible than the automatic system: the automatic system is like a well-programmed robot or computer – it performs standard, familiar tasks according to the program, and it does them very reliably, quickly, and efficiently. but when the automatic system confronts something novel and unfamiliar, it doesn't know how to deal with it. the conscious mind, slow and less efficient as it is, is much better at confronting new, unfamiliar circumstances and deciding how to react. the advantage of the deliberate system in dealing with new circumstances is one vital reason that human beings, as cultural animals, developed consciousness. 2. the deliberate system is able to combine information in complex, rule-driven ways: an automatic system that has been well trained can estimate that 6 times 53 is a few hundred. but only the deliberate system can calculate that it is precisely 318. only the deliberate system can perform complex logical reasoning. the influential social psychologists Daniel Kahneman prefers to describe the thinking styles of the two systems as reasoning versus intuition. the automatic system is intuitive, in the sense that it is guided by gut reactions and quick feelings rather than a process of carefully thinking through all the implications of a problem. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  15 when you face a decision and someone advises you to “go with your gut feeling”, that person is essentially telling you to rely on your automatic 222222222 system (and its intuitions) rather than trying to reason through the 22222222222 problems logically, as the deliberate system will do.  often that is good advice because the automatic system does produce quick and usually good answers, but the highest achievements and advances of culture depend on the application of careful reasoning, which is the province of the deliberate system and conscious thought. d) how the two parts of the mind work together: the two parts of the duplex mind often work together: 1. the automatic system serves 2. the automatic system also the deliberate system, in the works like an alarm system that sense that it operates behind the signals to the deliberate system scenes to make conscious that something is wrong and that thought possible stop come. careful, conscious thinking is needed. for example – you may think consciously that something you for example – you heard on the news heard on the radio is illogical, but someone was injured at a college party & the before that can happen, the head of the college recommends all parties to automatic system has processed be cancelled. the stream of sounds into your automatic system understands the comprehensible language, reasoning: the party caused an injury, injuries understood the main point of the are bad, so parties are bad. the automatic message, and activated various system also connects this news to your other ideas in your memory that feelings. were associated with the central idea. this is about as far as the automatic system can process, but it sends out an alarm to the deliberate system and now one can reason through the situation consciously. in that way, the two mental systems work together. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  16 e) conscious override:  sometimes the two systems work against each other, however, one important case is when the deliberate system overrides the automatic impulse.  you feel like doing something, but you restrain yourself.  people restraining themselves is an important key to the psychology of aggression. many factors cause aggression: violent films. hot temperatures. frustrations. insults.  in reality people are not usually aggressive or violent.  BECAUSE even though people may have angry impulses, they are able to restrain them.  the conscious mind is vital for overriding the impulses that the automatic system produces – this pattern is found in many aspects of social behavior.  conscious overriding is vital to life in culture.  culture is full of rules about how to behave – norms, guidelines, laws, morals & expectations. with that being said, many situations can be complicated and have hidden implications, so it is necessary to stop and think before acting & to let your conscious mind override certain impulses.  people have to do many things to gain social acceptance.  people need to acquire skills and credentials, gain the discipline to hold down a job, attract and hold relationship partners etc.  the long road that humans travel to social acceptance means that people have to do a great deal of work to get along with others – to do that, people must develop many skills and capabilities.  one thing that sets humans apart from other animals is how many inner, psychological traits they have that help them get along. these traits include: the understanding that other humans have inner states like theirs. the capacity for language. the ability to imagine how others perceive them.  the psychological traits are designed to enable humans to connect with each other. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  17 to understand human nature, it is important to recognize that evolution created humans with their capacity for language and the emotional capabilities for love and affection because these traits have improved people's ability to connect with others. suggested that evolution made intelligent brains not for understanding the physical environment but rather to increase the capability for having social relations. the intelligent brain is one of the defining traits of human beings – this was the first example of the pattern of inner processes survey interpersonal functions: the inner processes and structures (in this case, the intelligent brain) evolved for the sake of improving interpersonal relations.  evidence confirms that emotions also serve social functions.  the discovery that people have similar emotional reactions creates a bond between them – this contributes to a feeling of bonding and even to a willingness to trust each other with money.  people's motivation to do well and achieve is also deeply social.  people work harder when a social bond is present, even if the bond is irrelevant to the task.  automatic processes also serve interpersonal functions.  when signals make people automatically think about a group of others, they respond in ways that suggest that they are preparing to interact with that group. for example: hunger and thirst are clearly there to prompt the animal or person to get enough food and water to sustain life. hunger and thirst are inner processes that do not serve interpersonal functions. many of the more advanced, complex, and interesting psychological phenomena do promote social interaction. a social psychology approach to human nature will emphasize that many (though not all) inner processes exist for the sake of interpersonal interaction. humans were designed by nature to develop relationships and to share information with each other. the human psyche is designed for social purposes, and especially for cultural ones, in that culture is a better way of being social.  people seem naturally to have impulses, wishes and other automatic reactions that make them seem to act in certain ways BUT culture does not create new wishes and desires but rather teaches or preaches self-control and restraint. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  18  people may naturally feel sexual desires and aggressive urges at many points, but they do not seem to need to be told by culture to have those feelings. in that sense, sex and aggression are natural, but culture does not have considerable influence on both sex and aggression.  this influence mainly takes the form of restraining behaviors.  culture works by ideas – many of those ideas tell people what NOT to do.  most laws & moral principles say what not to do rather then what one should do.  the most famous list of moral rules in western culture is basically a list of ideas (rules) about what not to do – this is probably because people naturally sometimes feel urges to precisely do those things, but their culture (including its religion) disapproves. it would be a gross oversimplification to say that the role of nature is always to create a positive desire and impulses or that culture only says what not to do: an example of “culture says go and nature says stop: people might start eating because official policy and the clock (representing culture) say it is lunchtime, and they may stop eating because their inner sensations (representing nature) signal then that their stomachs are full.  “still nature says go and culture says stop” is probably right more often than it is wrong.  it provides a helpful way to understand a lot of the interplay between nature and culture.  nature made us full of desires and impulses, and culture teaches us to restrain them for the sake of being able to live together in peace and harmony. self-control is an important psychological process that enables people to live in culture and follow cultural rule. most acts of self-control involve stopping oneself from thinking, feeling, or doing something. with regard to spending money, eating, and dieting, engaging in sexual behavior, drinking alcohol, or taking drugs and many similar behaviors, having good self-control means holding oneself back instead of acting on every impulse.  selfishness is an important instance of the principle that nature says go, culture says stop – nature has made us selfish, but culture needs us to resist & overcome selfish impulses.  selfishness is natural and is probably rooted in the biological processes of evolution.  natural selection favors traits that promote the survival and reproduction of the individual.  some biologists have occasionally proposed “group selection” suggesting that natural selection will promote traits that sacrifice the individual for the sake of the group, but some experts think group selection may occur when the individual and group interests are aligned. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  19 each animal looks out for its own welfare culture demands that what is best for and perhaps that of its children so the society should take precedence over the natural tendency, reinforced by countless individuals once and needs. centuries of evolution, is to want what is best for oneself. in order to get along with others, people must take turns, respect each other’s animals that live in social groups make property, and restrain their anger or at only minimal sacrifices for the sake of the least express it constructively. group (compared to humans)  culture often imposes far greater requirements in terms of restraining selfishness.  all cultures have systems of morality, and one of the main drivers of morality is to do what is best for the community rather than what is best for the self. morality is effective in small groups. law begins to take the place of morality in larger groups (but it has the same overall goal of restraining selfish actions in favor of what is best for the community) morality relies on a network of social the more that social life involves contacts relationships and so it works based on between strangers, the more laws are people who know each other. needed instead of just morals.  even in modern societies, small groups such as families rely on morals and informal rules because these or enough in the context of the relationship.  far more people or willing to cheat, betray or exploit a stranger than they are willing to treat a member of their own immediate family in the same way.  guilt – an important emotion that pushes people to behave morally instead of selfishly – is commonly felt in connection with friends and relatives than strangers.  self-interest is a major battleground between nature and culture.  the self is filled with selfish impulses and with the means to restrain them, and many inner conflicts come down to that basic friction.  that conflict between selfish impulses and self-control, is the most basic conflict in the human psyche. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  20 example one place to understand this conflict is in how people react 2222222 to someone who has a stigma. stigma – a trade that others perceive as highly undesirable and 22222222222222222 that makes them want to avoid the person. 222222222222 many people have an automatic reaction of wanting to avoid someone 222222222 who has aids or tb, or who is blind or paralyzed, even if the person is 22222222 not personally responsible for their problem. researchers have found that the impulse to avoid such people may be rooted in a natural fear being contaminated by them. the automatic system does not necessarily adjust for whether the person stigma is contagious or not, so people might irrationally and unfairly avoid people whose presence does not offer them any danger. however, many people recognize consciously that these people do not deserve to be avoided, so the social conscience may motivate them to overcome their initial tendency to avoid the stigmatized person. the automatic response does not disappear, but given a moment, people can act on more socially desirable feelings, such as the wish to treat the stigmatized person as a normal human being. the capacity for consciously overriding impulses, is often used in connection with the battle over self-interest. the natural and selfish impulses arise automatically. morality, conscience, legal obedience, and other pathways to proper behavior often depend on conscious efforts to know and do the right thing.  when there is no clear best option, choices have trade-offs. (def) trade-offs – a choice in which taking or maximizing one benefit requires either 22222222222222 accepting a cost or sacrificing another benefit.  trade-offs are an important feature of human social life.  many decisions and dilemmas involve trade-offs, so that no one right answer will suit everyone (in this way, trade-offs also preserve diversity because there is more than one way to be, with none being the best) one very important set of trade-offs concerns time:  most commonly, the trade-off requires choosing between something that has benefits right now versus something that has benefits in the future.  the short-hand term for this sort of trade-off is Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  21  in a typical study, a child is offered a choice between having one marshmallow right now or three marshmallows if the child can wait for 20 minutes.  natural selection has not favored caring about the distant future.  our sensory organs tell us what is here right now.  our feelings and desires focus on their immediate present.  the idea of sacrificing praise and joy for the sake of greater joy in the future would be foreign, difficult, and even incomprehensible to most animals.  the conscious human mind can form ideas about the distant future, and current behavior can be changed on the basis of those ideas.  the future is more important to cultural beings than to other animals, so the capacity to orient oneself towards the future rather than the present is probably a crucial skill for any cultural being to have.  dogs can hear better than humans, but dogs cannot distinguish between similar sounds BECAUSE there is a basic trade-off in perceptual systems.  most sense organs (even artificial ones such as cameras) have a trade-off between (how much they can see) and (how clearly they see it)  for most animals, detection is emphasized over resolution – they perceive something & respond long before they can tell precisely what it is.  humans have more emphasis on resolution, which means perceiving things precisely. so, our ears cannot hear as wide a range of sounds as dogs, but we hear them much more distinctly. with regards to animals: the sensory organs of most animals are aimed at detecting other species. this is crucial for survival. animals must spot the predators who want to eat them (in order to run away in time) and the animals they eat (so they can chase and catch them) with regards to humans: the human sensory system is not aimed mainly at other species. human sense organs (especially eyes & ears) is designed to help us perceive each other.  this unusual feature of human sense organs reflects a change in biological strategy.  nature selected humans to pursue survival & reproduction.  instead of getting information from the environment, our sense organs are designed to help us get it from each other.  that is what culture is all about – humans getting information from each other in order to survive & reproduce Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  22  it doesn’t stop with information, people get most of what they need from each other, instead of directly from the physical world around them.  humans are heavily interdependent and are good at developing cultural systems that allow them to benefit from each other’s work. animals learn from their own experiences – they deal with the physical world, and they are rewarded or punished depending on how things turn out WHEREAS (in contrast) humans rely much less on what they learn from their own direct experience with the physical world – people learn from each other and from the culture.  the culture operates as a kind of “general store” of information.  when people don't know what to do, they typically ask someone else who knows the culture’s information. the question to these answers are not the specific wisdom learned by specific individuals – they are general rules for getting along in the culture, and any knowledgeable person can tell you the answer (after which you would be able to pass that information on to anyone else)  for example: “how do you buy airtime? or apply for a new credit card?”  nature has constructed human beings to turn to each other for food, shelter, support, information, and other needs.  so many inner processes serve interpersonal functions, and this enables people to rely on each other and treat each other as vital resources.  recent work has confirmed the importance of getting information from others, with the twist that the effects depend on whether the other is similar to you. The implication is that we put people first – but especially people to whom we have some closeness or connection.  if your brain is like a computer, then culture is like the internet – linking into the system greatly increases the power of what a single computer and by comparison a single brain can do.  by belonging to a culture, you can learn an immense amount of information, whereas if you had to learn from your own direct experiences, you would only have a tiny fraction of that knowledge. our tendency to put people first enables us to take advantage of the knowledge and wisdom that is gathered in a cultural general store. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 – CHAPTER 2 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY ! !  1 c h a p t e r 3 – the self social psychology a south African perspective 2nd edition explain the importance of a complex self in a cultural being. summarise the different sources and motives of self-knowledge. describe how the sources of self-knowledge lead to self-concept. analyse the benefits and drawbacks of high self-esteem and positive illusions. evaluate the different functions of self-presentation.  the self is an important tool with which the human organism makes its way through human society and thereby manages to satisfy its needs.  to be effective at this, the human self has taken shape in a way that is marked by deep and powerful drives – this drive serves the goals of survival & reproduction. 3.1 what is the self?  some brain researchers say that the self is an illusion, mainly because they cannot find any specific spot in the brain that seems to correspond to the self.  HOWEVER, people know the difference between what is their own & what is someone else’s – if the self was an illusion, there would be no genuine difference between what is your own and someone else’s. in the battle on the other between selfish hand, selfishness impulses and must be kept social under control if much of the self conscience, the society is to the self must be is designed to self is in the operate able to enable humans middle. effectively, and understand to interact with the self selves often these social one another – sometimes incorporate the morals and this includes naturally feels morals and other values and claiming and selfish, and, in other values of be able to act on sustaining a many situations, the culture. them, even place in a they have very those morals when that cultural system strong impulses mostly tell you requires that connects a to do what is to do what is overriding one's person to other best for best for the natural selfish people themselves. they group instead of impulses. are designed to what is best for know and do you personally what is best for or what you feel them. like doing Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  2  everyone has a separate body (and selves begin with bodies), so there is no way for a human being to be completely without a self.  many inner traits of human beings serve interpersonal functions. the self has three main parts which correspond to several main things that the self does: first part second part third part 1. self-knowledge or self- 2. the interpersonal self or 3. the agent self or concept public self executive function (def) self-knowledge ( or self- (def) interpersonal self (or public (def) agent self (or the concept) – a set of beliefs about self) – the image of the self that is executive function) – the part oneself. conveyed to others. of the self involved in control, including both control over human beings have self- the interpersonal self or public self people and self-control. awareness, and this awareness helps the person connects socially enables them to develop to other people. the agent self or executive elaborate set of beliefs about function enables the self to themselves. most people have a certain image make choices and exert that they try to convey to others. control, including both self- when someone asks: “tell me this public self resembles the self- control and control over other something about yourself?” concept, but the two are not the people (and things) these answers involve self- same. knowledge and self-awareness. for example, sometimes you often, people work hard to present make a promise and later for example: on a first date, a particular image to others even make an effort to keep it or your partner asks you about if it is not exactly their full, precise sometimes you decide not to yourself, and you try to give truth as they know it. eat something because it is honest answers that show the unhealthy or fattening. kind of person you are. many emotions indicate concern over how one appears to others. all these actions reveal this self such moments show the self- for example, you feel embarrassed as not just a knower but also reflecting on itself and on its because someone saw you do as a doer. store of information about something stupid. itself. these episodes reveal that the self is often working in complex ways to gain social acceptance and maintain good interpersonal relationships. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  3 1. self-knowledge (or self-concept) self knowledge (or self-concept) 2. interpersonal self (or public self) 3. agent self (or the executive - information about self functioning) - self-awareness - self-esteem - self-deception interpersonal agent self self (or executive (or public self) function) - self - decision presentation making - member of - self-control groups - taking charge - relationship of situations parter - active - social roles responding - reputation  the best explanation for the origins of selfhood is that the self comes into being at the point of interaction between the inner biological processes of the human body and the sociocultural network to which the person belongs (that is, the other people in the society + it's “general store” of common beliefs and practices) a) a true or real self:  an article by sociologist Ralph Turner noted that different cultures (and different groups or historical eras within a culture) may differ in their ideas about the true self by placing emphasis on either one of two main approaches: 1. one approach emphasizes the inner feelings as the true self. 2. the other focuses on the way the person acts in public, especially in official roles.  Turner’s point was that cultures disagree as to whether the public action or the inner feelings count as the more real or true side of the self. public actions can be used as a coping mechanism – a person’s coping abilities is influenced by their upbringing and background. for example, in some patriarchal societies, women tend to stay in abusive relationships because leaving a relationship is seen as a failure. the woman may be encouraged to use prayer to deal with the abusive situation. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  4 e x a m p l e : marriage attitudes towards marriage may reflect different attitudes about the real self: approach one: emphasizing the inner approach two: focusing on the way the feelings as the true self. person acts in public, especially in official roles. in cultures that emphasize inner feelings as a culture that emphasizes public behavior the true self, the actual wedding ceremony and commitment downplays the inner and its legal or religious significance or feelings and instead places great secondary. significance on role performance. marriage is seen as a sociological union of a couple may have a good marriage even if two persons, and what matters is how they they stop loving each other, so long as they feel about each other. if they lose their love remain true to their vows and act the way for each other, or become attracted to spouse is also supposed to act. someone else, they may feel justified in abandoning their spouse because to do so the actual wedding ceremony counts for is to be true to one selves. much more in such societies then it does among the impulse oriented societies a marriage is thus only as good as the because it is at the wedding that the real current emotional state of the partners. self changes to become married in the eyes of society. b) culture and interdependence:  selves are different across different cultures.  the most studied set of such cultural differences involves independence versus interdependence – this dimension of differences involves different attitudes towards the self, and different motivations as to what the self mainly tries to accomplish.  it results in different emphasis about what the self is. to avoid the overused term self-concept, the term self-construal was introduced. (def) self-construal – a way of thinking about the self. an independent self-construal is a self- an interdependent self-control is a self- concept that emphasizes what makes the concept that emphasizes what connects the self different and sets it apart from others. self to the other people and groups. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  5  the general finding has been that Easterns (Japan, China, Korea) change would be more interdependent, whereas Westerners (USA, Canada, Western Europe) tend to be more independent. It is considered that people from Africa are more interdependent than independent. these differences represent deep seated differences in what the person strives to become: the western ideal may be the the African ideal of selfhood may help create the self-made man or woman, who consummate team player who makes valuable works alone to create or contributions to the group, who does not let personal achieve something, possibly egotism stand in the way of doing what is best for the overcoming obstacles or other group, and who remains loyal to the group and helps it people's resistance in the overcome external threats. process, and who eventually becomes a true individual in Africans see the self as deeply enmeshed in a web of the sense of a unique person personal, family, social, and cultural relationships, outside with highly special traits. of which there is meaninglessness and loneliness. that is the spirit of ubuntu, a concept that refers to human westerns see the south as interdependence and dignified cooperation. following its own path to autonomy, self-sufficiency, and (def) ubuntu - defined as a comprehensive illusion unique individuality African worldview based on the values of intense humanness, caring, sharing, respect, compassion, and associated values. ubuntu has no motive implications in that it encapsulates moral norms and values such as altruism, kindness, generosity, compassion, benevolence, courtesy and respect and concern for others. the idea that individual action becomes subjected to social action, and that individuality should be directed at achieving social goals for all Africans has been inspired by the spirit of ubuntu. “i am because we are”. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  6 c) social roles - what are selves for? purpose of the self: 1. the self has to gain social acceptance. 2. the self is one tool what people use to accomplish goals such as having a job, to have friends and lovers, & to have a family. 3. the self is constructed to help people on the road of social acceptance, which includes changing and adapting themselves so as to appeal to others. (by learning how to act properly and how to conform to social rules and norms, people can improve their chances of social acceptance.) 4. another purpose of this self is to play social roles. (def) social roles – the different roles a person plays (as in a movie or play)  a culture is a large system with many different roles, and everyone has to find a place in it (or several places) – the human self is flexible to take on new roles and to change roles.  these roles are often part of the social system.  most roles are ways of relating to other people within our cultural system.  a person’s social identity shows the interplay of the individual organism and the larger cultural system: society creates and defines the roles, an individual people seek them out, adopt them, and sometimes impose their own style on them.  without society, the self would not exist in full. the self has its roots in the human capacity to turn attention back toward its source. without self-awareness: self-hood and self-knowledge would be impossible. (def) self-awareness – attention directed at the self. early in the 1970s, two social psychologists began studying the difference between being self-aware and not being self-aware. they developed several clever procedures to increase self-awareness, such as having people work while seated in front of a mirror, or telling people that they were being videotaped. there are two main kinds of self-awareness: private self-awareness public self-awareness (def) private self-awareness – refers to (def) public self-awareness – refers to looking inward on the private aspects of the looking outward on the public aspects of self, including emotions, thoughts, desires, the self that others can see and evaluate. and traits. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  7  self-awareness usually involves evaluating the self, rather than just merely being aware of it – people look in the mirror and compare themselves against various standards.  the essence of self-awareness is comparing oneself against these standards (such as good-looking hair, good clothing) and thereby coming up with good or bad evaluations about the self. a) standards: (def) standards – ideas (concepts) of how things might possibly be. standards include: ideals. norms. expectations. moral principles. laws. the why things were in the past & what other people have done.  standards are an example of the power of ideas to cause and shape behavior.  the self is not good or bad on its own, but only when compared to certain standards.  self-awareness is often unpleasant because people compare themselves to high standards such as ideals for good behavior & so then people are aware that they fall short of standards, the bad feeling leads to either of two reactions: change or escape: "change" (match behaviour to mirror, audience, standard) unpleasant self- photo, hear self-awareness discrepancies "escape" name (withdraw from self-awareness)  one reaction is to try to remedy the problem, such as by improving oneself.  sometimes changing the standard is easier than changing the self.  the other response is trying to avoid or reduce self-awareness so as to escape from feeling bad.  a person’s reactions to standards depend on how promising vs hopeless the prospect of meeting the standard seems. when people think they can reach their goals or other standards in a reasonable time, self-awareness makes them try harder to do so. but if the goal looks unattainable or the person does not feel that they are making satisfactory progress, then avoiding self- awareness seems to be the more appealing solution. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  8 b) self-awareness and behavior:  self-awareness can make you people behave better.  being self-aware makes you compare yourself to moral standards or other ideals.  increased self-awareness makes people act more consistently with their attitudes about many different issues. the fact that self-awareness enables people to behave better, according to cultural standards, reflects this theme that inner processes serve interpersonal functions.  humans could not get along with each other if they did not have self-awareness.  self-awareness enables people to reflect on themselves and change themselves so as to become more attractive and socially desirable – precisely what is needed to improve their ability to get along. self-awareness does not always make people behave better: example: terrorists might become more obsessive and more destructive as a result of being self-aware because their standard is to terrorize their enemy (but these are just exceptions)  the general effect of high self-awareness is to make people more aware of positive, desirable standards and make them try harder to behave in a positive manner.  one class of largely destructive behaviors does come from high self-awareness.  these behaviors arise when people are aware of themselves in some bad, upsetting aspect, and they cannot solve the problem.  in those cases, they may attempt to escape from self-awareness by resorting to destructive or socially undesirable methods. c) escaping self-awareness:  people seek to escape from self-awareness when it feels bad.  drinking alcohol is one of the most common methods of reducing self-awareness.  alcohol narrows attention and this usually means directing it away from the self (although if you get drunk and just think about your problems, you may feel worse)  studies have confirmed that people who are drunk seem less aware of themselves. for example, in how much they talk about themselves. people drink when things have gone badly because the alcohol helps them stop thinking about it. in contradiction, people also turn to alcohol when they feel good and want to celebrate. that's because people want to lay down their inhibitions in order to have a good time, and self-awareness is essential to most inhibitions. (remember that self-awareness makes you compare yourself against morals and other 2 standards of proper behavior; that supports inhibitions) Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  9 this may have been one of the reasons that the South African government banned and then limited the sale of alcohol during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020: - drinking alcohol makes people lace inhibited, and perhaps less likely to follow the social distancing rules or cause harm to themselves or someone else which may require hospital care.  people use other methods to escape self-awareness – the most extreme and destructive of these is suicide. attempts at suicide, even when unsuccessful, are often intended as ways to escape from a sense of self as being a terrible person, or a person who is responsible for some terrible event. research indicates that even normal, healthy people can experience a rise in 2222222 suicidal thoughts when they failed to live up to their goals, values or other 22222222standards. not all escapes from self-awareness are destructive, but several of them are, possibly because people who are desperate to stop thinking bad thoughts about themselves don't worry about the harm their methods might cause. 1. self-awareness is vital for self-regulation. (def) self-regulation – the process people used to control and change their thoughts, 22222222222 feelings and behaviors.  self-awareness usually involves comparing oneself to meaningful standards because that might be precisely what self-awareness is for – people can reflect on themselves, decide that they not act improperly and try to change. 2. self-awareness is part of the mechanism by which people can bring themselves into line with what other people, including their culture, want and expect. 3. self-awareness also helps us adopt the perspective of other people and imagine how they see us; people are oriented toward other people. to get along, we look to others, and in particular we want to be accepted in social groups. knowing how we appear to others is a great help toward making ourselves more appealing and acceptable to others. 4. self-awareness is helpful on the long road to social acceptance as it indicates that inner processes (in this case self-awareness) serve interpersonal functions (to help people get along better with others) Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  10 5. at a more complex level, self-awareness can help people manage their behavior over long periods of time so they can reach their goals. people can feel good even though they have not reached their goals; as long as they're making progress towards them. 3.2 Where self-knowledge comes from  humans have a self-concept, or at least a stock of self-knowledge, some of which is true and some of which is distorted.  one influential theory is that people learn about themselves from others.  people interact with other people daily – through these interactions they learn how others perceive them. these interactions help develop public self-awareness which is our ability to imagine how others perceive us. the term was created by Charles Horton Cooley to refer to the idea that people learn about themselves from other people. Cooley proposed three components to the looking-glass self: a) you imagine how you appear to others. b) you imagine how others will judge you. c) you develop an emotional response (such as pride or shame) as a result of imagining how others will judge you. (def) looking-glass self – the idea that people learn about themselves by imagining how 222222222222222 they appear to others.  the American social philosopher George Herbert Mead built on this notion to suggest that most self-knowledge comes from feedback received from other people, whether particular individuals or what Mead called the generalized other – essentially, other people tell us who and what we are. (def) generalized others – a combination of other people’s views that tells you who and 22222222222222 what you are. a person may be mistaken about how other people regard them for two reasons: 1. the first reason is that people do not always tell the truth. people are reluctant to communicate bad news, to criticize someone, to complain, and in other ways to tell people what is wrong with them. this generalization is subject to cultural differences. an individual with an individualistic view of the self may be more willing to communicate objections and criticism WHEREAS members of a cultural group with a collective view of the self may be reluctant to communicate bad news and to criticize others. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  11 this is because the person’s self-identity is seen in terms of their perceived connectedness with significant others, who validate the individual’s sense of selfhood. 2. the second reason is that people are not always receptive to feedback from others. people may try to tell you that you are hard to get along with, but you may not accept what they say. (you might get angry, argue that the person is wrong, or change the subject) people are very selective in how they process incoming information about themselves. this is the biggest misconception in the notion of the looking-glass self: it seems to depict the person as a passive recipient of information, as if people simply believed whatever other people told them about themselves. but in reality, people pick and choose, and sometimes they completely reject what others tell them. it is no wonder that many people's self-concepts do not match what others think of them. with regard to your unappealing traits, there is a sort of conspiracy of silence: others don't want to tell you, and you don't want to hear it.  people simply have direct knowledge of what they are like – they don't need to rely on what other people tell them; they just look inward, and they know the answer. (def) introspection – refers to the process by which a person examines the contents of their 222222222222222 mind and mental states.  people seemingly can always tell what they are thinking and feeling, probably better than anyone else – the concept of ” refers to the power of introspection; that is, “I have privileged access to my own feelings, which I can know directly but you (or anyone else) can only infer” & you only know what I’m feeling if I tell you.  people do know their own thoughts and feelings in ways that others cannot match.  introspection is one source of self-knowledge.  introspection it has limits: one limit is developmental: many children think that their knowledge of their own inner state is no match for parental knowledge. researchers ask children who knows based on what kind of person you really are, deep down inside “privileged access” would mean that everyone should say “ I know myself best” but up until the age of 11 children were more likely to say that their parents knew best. the children thought that if they and their parents disagreed about some trait in the child the parent would be more likely to be correct. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  12 in conclusion, children believe that their parents know them better than the children know themselves.  Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson proposed that people do not really have much in the way of privileged access, and hence when they look inside, they simply made mistakes, guests, or give what they assume or plausible or socially desirable answers.  Nesbitt and Wilson claimed that people do not know their own minds met fierce assistant in some quarters. but sometimes people do know what they are thinking and feeling. the difference lies partly in the duplex mind. the duplex mind has two parts: one part engages in automatic, nonconscious processing of information, whereas the other part involves deliberate processes that we are consciously aware of.  introspection is a conscious process.  the automatic system does a great deal of work that the deliberate system does not know about or understand. the self has many traits, some of which are in contrast, for traits that have a strong based known to the self, others more easily good-bad dimension, like intelligence and seen by others. creativity, people may be biased and prone to self-deception, and close acquaintances the study concluded that people are the or better judges than the self. base judges of their own traits that are hard to observe, such as neuroticism (a tendency to feel unhappy and be bothered by many things)  some self-knowledge requires looking at other people.  in social comparison, you learn not the facts about yourself, but what those facts mean and how they count – in the context of what other people are like.  the theory of social comparison laid out the power and the processes in which people learn about themselves by comparing themselves to others. (def) social comparison – examining the difference between oneself and the other person.  many facts about the self don't carry much weight by themselves and only become meaningful in comparison to others.  social comparison is another instance of “putting people first” – we get information we need, even about ourselves, by focusing on other people. but to whom do you compare yourself?  the most useful comparisons involve people in your same general category. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  13  sometimes people deliberately compare themselves to others who are better or worse. involving people better than you can inspire you to want to do better in order to reach their level (however, they can also be discouraging) (def) upward social comparisons – comparing yourself to people better than you. against people who are worse off than yourself can make you feel good. (def) download social comparison – comparing yourself to people worse off than you.  sometimes people compare themselves to others who are close by, such as their friends and family members. such comparisons can be hard on the relationship, especially for the one who doesn't come out looking good.  another theory about where self-knowledge comes from is that people learn about themselves in the same way they learn about others – by observing behavior and drawing conclusions (this is the opposite of introspection theory because it dismisses the whole privileged access issue.) the self-perception theory does not claim that people have no privilege access to knowing their inner feelings and states. the self-perception theory proposes that when people have such information, they might not rely on self-perception processes. (def) self-perception – the theory that people observe their own behavior to infer what they 222222222222222 are thinking and how they are feeling.  psychologists have discovered a smaller self-concept that changes much more easily and readily called the phenomenal self or the working self-concept. (def) phenomenal self (working self-concept) – the image of self that is currently active in 222222222222222222222 the person's thought.  situations can call up different parts of self-knowledge into the phenomenal self.  whatever aspects of you stand out as unusual often become prominent in the phenomenal self: example: if you are the only woman in a room full of men, you're probably quite aware of being a woman, whereas if you are among other women, your femaleness does not stand out so much and you may be less aware of it (note that you are still a woman in either case, and of course you know it)  the difference is merely what stands out in your mind. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  14  this sense of yourself standing out is especially important when you are the only member of some category, such as a racial ethnic group.  being the lone member of some category heightens self-awareness and can impede performance. it can even make you feel that you are responsible for your group's reputation, which greatly increases the pressure.  worrying about how your performance my reflect on your group is called stereotype threat. an important aspect of this self is being the same across time, yet people think of themselves somewhat differently when they are focused on the present as opposed to the future. future versions of self have broader categories as compared to present concept of self: the future self-concept is vague, simple, the present self-concept tends to be much broad, and general. clearer cut, complex and specific.  one driving factor is that people want to know themselves, so in many circumstances they actively seek out information about the self. people do this through: personality tests (even magazine self-tests that have little or no scientific validity) consult horoscopes. spend years and thousands of rands on psychoanalysis or other therapies that promise to improve self-knowledge. learn to meditate. pay close attention to what others say about them. a) beginnings of self-knowledge:  you need self-knowledge in order to fit in better with others.  cultural groups consist of different roles & different tasks, so it is valuable to know what your strengths and weaknesses are in order to know how best to fit in with the group. b) the reasons for wanting self-knowledge:  people want to learn about themselves, but they'd rather learn some things than others.  three main motives shape the quest for self-knowledge.  these three motives sometimes compete against each other, and different motives apply in different people or different circumstances. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  15 the appraisal motive: self-enhancement motive: the consistency motive: the first motive is the simple the second motive, called the third motive, the desire to learn the truth about the self-enhancement consistency motive, is a oneself, whatever it is. this is motive, is the desire to learn desire to get feedback that called the appraisal motive. favourable or flattering confirms what the person things about the self. already believes about (def) appraisal motive – the themselves. simple desire to learn the (def) self-enhancement truth about oneself, whatever motive – the desire to learn once people have formed it is. favourable or flattering ideas about themselves, they things about the self. are generally reluctant to it consists of a broad, open- revise those opinions. minded curiosity, and its main preference is for information unlike the appraisal motive, (def) consistency motive – a that is both important and the self-enhancement desire to get feedback that reliable. motive can exert a strong confirms what the person bias, driving people to already believes about for example, the appraisal dismiss or ignore criticism themselves. motive may motivate people while exaggerating or to start out with tasks of inflating any signs of their in this respect, self- medium difficulty because good qualities. knowledge is no different these offer the most from knowledge about many information. if you start out aspects of the world; once with something that is very people have formed opinions easy, then success does not or beliefs about almost give you much information anything, they are resistant about whether you have high to change. or low ability because anyone might succeed at an easy task. the consistency motive is also sometimes called the by the same token, if you start self-verification motive, out with something that is which implies that people very difficult, then failure does actively seek to “verify” their not give you much self-concepts by obtaining information about whether confirmation that what they you have high or low ability think about themselves is because anyone might fail at a correct. difficult task. Jenna Minnaar SLK 220 CHAPTER 3 FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY  16 to illustrate these three motives: (suppose that you believe that you are not very good at sports) the self-enhancement motive might make you want to learn that you do have some talent at sports after all. (if you can't get the appraisal motive such feedback, then the consistency motive would make you want the self-enhancement would make you to get more motive might drive prefer to gain further information about you to avoid any more evidence that you are your sports abilities, information about bad at sports, because regardless of what that yourself at sports, and that confirms what information might say it might also push you you already think. to compensate for your athletic flaws by finding out that you are good at other things, such as music or cooking.) c) when motives compete: when such conflicts arise betw