Week 2 - The Self

Social Cognition (social thinking)

- social attitudes towards ourselves and others
- impressions of ourselves and others
- beliefs of ourselves and others

Self-concept

who am i?

Self-knowledge

how can i explain and predict myself?

Self-esteem

my sense of self-worth

Social self

my roles, my group identity

Self-schema

beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant info
- "mental templates"

Social comparisons

- we compare ourselves to others
- we are conscious of those differences
- may have either positive or negative effects on the self

Social comparisons study: Lockwood and Kunda (1997)

- participants were either 1st or 4th year students
- had them read an article about a "super-star" 4th year student
- 1st years: felt inspired
- 4th years: felt pathetic, self-doubt

Spotlight effect

- assume everything we do is gonna be highlighted and paid attention to
- see ourselves as if on centre stage

Illusion of Transparency

worry about being evaluated negatively, especially when feeling self-conscious

Illusion of Transparency study: Savitsky and Gilovich (2003)

- asked participants to give speech
- reassured condition: being reassured doesn't really do anything for confidence
- informed condition: inform participants about illusion of transparency, had positive impact on speech

Individualism

- culture's main focus is the individual person, self achievement and fulfillment
- independence, autonomy
- independent self: stable self-concept, personal self-esteem

Collectivism

- culture's main focus is the collective group, group happiness and fulfillment
- relationships, environment
- interdependent self: malleable self-concept, relational self-esteem

Culture and Cognition study: Masuda and Nisbet (2001)

- gave East Asians and Americans a photo of a marine scene
- East Asian individuals describe environment and the relationship among the fish
- Americans attend more to the single big fish in the photo

Culture and Cognition study: Kim and Marcus (1999)

- offered some pens, all the same colour but one
- different cultural preferences for uniqueness and conformity were displayed in pen choice

Self-Knowledge - predicting behaviour

- planning fallacy: always gonna underestimate time needed to complete a task
- makes us not great at predicting our own behaviours

Self-Knowledge - predicting feelings

- affective forecasting: predicting how we'll feel in the future
- impact bias: assuming something has more impact than it actually will, tend to overestimate emotional impact of certain events

Self-Knowledge Accuracy

self-reports are often untrustworthy because we're not good at predicting own behaviour or feelings

Dual attitudes - Implicit Attitudes

- automatic
- change slowly, with practice that forms new habits

Dual attitudes - Explicit Attitudes

- consciously controlled
- may change with education or persuasion

Low/High Self-Esteem outcomes

- associated with: anxiety, loneliness, eating disorders
- Narcissism: not exactly self-esteem, but when there is too much self-esteem

Self-Efficacy

- a belief in one's own competence
- high: lots of belief in one's abilities
- low: little belief in one's abilities
- different from self-esteem, not "i am great" but "i can be great if i try"

Self-Serving Bias

tendency to attribute positive outcomes to yourself and negative outcomes to other factors

Attribution styles

- Stable vs Instable
- Global vs Local
- Internal vs External

Comparison to Others

- most people consider themselves better than average (on a variety of dimensions)
- subjective behaviour dimensions more susceptible to this

Unrealistic Optimism

- predisposed to optimism
- tend to have unrealistic optimism towards future events, which is supported by pessimism about other's futures
BUT
- illusory optimism increases vulnerability
- defensive pessimism helps people prepare for problems

False Consensus Effect

overestimating commonality of one's opinions and one's undesirable or unsuccessful behaviours

False Uniqueness Effect

underestimating the commonality of one's abilities and one's desirable or successful behaviours

Self-Presentation

- different ways we present ourselves
- personal style, social media, language use
- all trying to present DESIRED IMAGE for both external and internal audience
- external: how others see you
- internal: reinforcing how you see yourself

Self-Handicapping

protecting one's self-image with behaviours that create an excuse for later behaviour

Impression Management

- want to present desired image to the world
- familiar vs unfamiliar situations
- in unfamiliar situations: try harder to make good impression and present oneself in positive light

Self-Monitoring

- being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting performance to create desired impression
- High: change behaviour based on social environment, very perceptive
- Low: stable personality and behaviour regardless of environment

Self-Presentation Theory

- suggests we are eager to present ourselves in ways that make us look good
- motivated to impress others, but we have self-doubts
- thus, we feel social anxiety

Overpersonalizing Situations

- concerning for people who are shy, anxious, or self-conscious
- views incidental events as related to themselves
- tendency breeds anxious concern and maybe paranoia
- especially prone to spotlight effect

Perceived Self-Control

- learned helplessness: individuals become passive when feel like they have no control over negative events
- too much freedom and self-determination can have negative effects such as decreased life satisfaction, depression, and regret
- low self-efficacy