Lecture 2: What is the Self?

What is the Self?

• The self is inherently social

• Distinct entity, separate from other things or other people

• Contains multiple sets of beliefs

• Organizes knowledge & information that we have about ourselves

  • Everything we take in through lens of the self

• Influences how we think, feel & behave

• Very deep illusion that we are separate entities entirely

  • Body & mind ecosystem of different things connecting

  • Interweb of connections

  • Social psych pushes against notion of a clear bounded self, the self is very social, interconnected, constructed by relationships with others

What is a Self- Concept?

• The self is a concept : a set of beliefs & perceptions you have about yourself

• Gives rise to a self-schema: a cognitive structure that represents the self, derived from past experiences

  • Represents a person’s beliefs & feelings about the self (in both general & specific situations)

• Used interchangeably

• Self concept, a schema is a way of representing the self

• Collection of beliefs about the self

Where does our self-concept & self schemas come from?

• Others!!! 

• The self is, in large part, a social construct

  • Not something you created or individually came up with but reflection of society, how society views you 

Frame of Reference Podcast

The Self is Inherently a Social Construct

• Self is derived, in part from others or our relationship to others

  • Learn who we are from peers, parents, sibling

  • Draw info about self from how others see us, am i funny? Do other people laugh when i say things? Social perspective. 

• Reflected self appraisals: a belief about what others think of us

  • we experience overt or subtle reactions & appraisals from those around us

  • e.g., parents may praise accomplishments, romantic partner makes light of your fears. We internalize how we think others perceive us not necessarily how they do

What is the Relational Self?

• Aspects of the self that are associated with one’s relationship with significant others

• Who you are as:

  • daughter/son

  • boyfriend/girlfriend

  • friend

What is Social Identity?

• Aspects of the self that are derived from one’s group membership

• Who you are as: 

  • You are liberal

  • You are a Raptors fan

  • You are Canadian

• Socially constructed, self tied to membership of that group

The Self is Inherently a Social Construct

• Self is derived, in part from others or our relationship to others

• The self is influenced by context (power of the situation)

  • Social context can change

  • The self shifts depending on the context

What is a Working Self-Concept?

• Self-concept is fluid

  • Changes, moving around with whatever context you’re in

  • For example: we see in movies teenage characters shifting who they are to conform with people around them. Around studious classmates may be more into homework versus more nonchalant around school athletes.

• Subset of self-knowledge that is brought to mind in a particular context

  • Since context changes, can be put in forefront, background, dynamic fluidity to it

  • More fluid than people realize

  • May see yourself as more relaxed when with close friends but more shy and inhibited around new people

• Context social

What is the Distinctiveness Hypothesis?

• In this study young kids 6th graders, asked to write 12 statements about themselves

• Idea what are they going to write about 

• More likely to list something if makes them distinct or unique from others- born in place most people weren’t born in, more likely to be something mention when asked to describe yourself 

• Or women in class of mainly men

• Whats salient to person in given moment is what makes them unique-thats whats at the forefront of the mind

• Self-concept is fluid and changes depending on context

• We tend to highlight what makes us unique or distinctive in any given situation

• Children defined themselves with respect to how they differed from their classmates

Where’s the continuity in a fluid self-concept?

(1) Some core beliefs are stable (not fluid)

• Might have normal values stable and been with you for while, that wouldn't change based on the context

• For example: although as you may see yourself shy around strangers compared to close friends, you see yourself as a good listener no matter what.

(2) There is stability underneath, though different dimensions can be salient

• Fair you maybe at special event, interacting with people, fun but recognize generally you are a homebody

• Out social, but homebody, hold those two things at same time

• Can be introverted but extroverted, stable introvert that doesn't love going out

(3) The Impact of context is predictable

• Self more understandable and stable

• More talkative in one context, shy in one context

• Talkative in small groups, shy in large groups 

• Some continuity there

(3) There are some enduring social influences on the self-concept that add stability

• For example take a person who sees themselves as confident around friends but insecure about critical mother. Although this person’s sense of self shifts according to the context, when she is around friends she is confident versus when around mother.

• It is malleable, shifting from one context to another but it also has core elements that persist across contexts

What are some enduring social influences on the self?

What are Individualistic Cultures? What sort of self does it give rise to?

• Individualistic Cultures

  • Canada, US, Europe, Australia

  • Prioritize individual a little more, the self is an autonomous entity that is distinct & seperate from others

  • Gives rise to independent self

What are Collectivist Cultures? What Self does it give rise to?

• More interdependant self

What is the Independent Self?

(1) Autonomous & distinct (outgoing)

• See self as distinct & seperate from others

(2) Defined by traits & personal preferences (smart)

• Internal, more specific to you

(3) More stable across context (funny)

• Individualistic Cultures

• In these cultures, the self is an autonomous & distinct entity separate from others

• Depicted as non-overlapping circles for the self & others

  • important for people in these cultures to assert their uniqueness & independence

  • More of an inward focus on the self

What is the Interdependent Self?

(1) Connected to others (sister)

• Sense of self connected to others more

(2) Defined by social duties & shared traits/preferences (students)

• Define who are by social duties, shared traits/preferences

(3) Qualified by Context (funny at work)

• Self as more qualified by context

• self will change

• Women more interdependent than men

  • Differences in different countries

  • The self fundamentally connected to other people

  • Overlap between the circles representing the self & others

  • Imperative to find a place within the community & to fulfill appropriate roles

  • Close attention to social context and recognition of the shifting demands of situations on behaviours

  • More of an outward focus of the self

Independent Self vs. Interdependent Self

• Who am I?

• Independant self more likely to say “I’m friendly, “I’m hardworking”, “I like dancing”

• Verus interdependent self “I am Sherman’s friend, I am serious at work”.

  • less likely to mention personal characteristics

Example Study

Northern Italy (independent)

• More individualist, independent self

•  You are incredibly ugly

• I wish you a cancer 

• Swine

• Pile of shit 

  • Person and qualities

  • Self of self separate

Southern Italy (interdependent)

• More collectivist culture, interdependent 

•  #@% you and 36 of your relatives

• Your mother is a whore

• Your mother is a breeding sow

•  Go to your @#!in’ dead relatives

  • Sense of self bound to others

• Kinds of insults given to others

• Participants filled out survey of swears 

How do we perceive & evaluate ourselves?

What is Self-Esteem?

• The positive or negative overall evaluation that each person has of themselves

• High self esteem, better health outcomes

  • High self esteem good for a person

Where do you place your self worth?

• Self esteem shifts by situation, relatively stable

• Where you place self worth?

  • School, grades

  • How others view me 

  • Generally people have a few

What are Contingencies of Self-Worth?

• Self-esteem is contingent on successes and failures in domains on which a person has based his or her self-worth

  • self esteem goes up when you do well in areas that matter to you

  • Self esteem goes down when you stumble in areas that matter to you

• Self esteem doesn't impact areas don’t care about

• If being good friend important to you and do poorly, affect self esteem

• If only have 1 place put self worth, if have failure in that domain, self-esteem tank because self worth out in one place

• If have a few, feel worse failing in domain care about but can shift self esteem worth to other areas

• Don't put all eggs in one basket

• Place self worth in different areas, if dail in one domain take temporary hit but move self worth to other places

What is the Sociometer Hypothesis?

• Sociometer Hypothesis states that self-esteem is an internal, subjective index or marker of the extent to which a person is included or looked on favorably by others

• You decide your self esteem, comes from your successes and failures

• Very social, alternate hypothesis

• Self socially constructed, self important to humans, deep need to belong & connect to others

• Self esteem quite social

• Because need others to survive, self esteem asks as thermometer of how well doing in social group 

  • How well things going in groups

  • High self esteem striving in social group

  • Low self esteem at risk of failure, ostracized by group

  • Self esteem as gage of how well going in group context

  • Hard to measure

  • Ideas put forward about what self-esteem is, how well doing in social group 

Culture & Self-Esteem- How does it differ?

• Members of individualistic cultures tend to report higher levels of self-esteem than members of collectivistic cultures

  • Idea feeling self is valued more important in individualistic cultures that focus on self more

  • Other cultures more focus on self improvement than how good or bad i am, contribute to group. Less emphasis on feeling good and contributions to group. More motivated towards self-improvement & commitment to group goals

What is Social Comparison Theory?

• We evaluate ourselves through comparisons to others

  • How other people are doing 

  • What matters is how you make these social comparison theory

What are Downward Social Comparisons?

• Invoke downward social comparison, looking down to person 

• Feel good about yourself

• Fais to provide info on how to improve

• Boosts self esteem

• Good qualities & bad qualities

Example: told to draw a picture, you draw the one on the left. Other person draws the one on the right

• Fails to provide information on how to improve

• Boosts self-esteem

• “Compared with people who are slightly worse at tennis than I am, I’m pretty good”

  • These sorts of downward social comparisons help us define ourselves favourably & boost our self esteem

What are Upward Social Comparisons?

• You feel worse

• Motivates self-improvement

• Upward social comparison, someone did something better then you

• Feel worse about yourself 

• Motivate self-improvement, incorporate texture 

• Make social comparison all the time

• Some tend to make more upwards, some more downward 

Jonathan Haidt- Has Social Media Destroyed a Generation? Podcast

Social media, self-esteem & social comparisons

• Survey Study: People who used Facebook most often had poorer self-esteem 

• Explained by greater exposure to upward social comparisons on social media.

• Experiment: People saw fake profiles to elicit upward or downward and felt lower self-esteem in the upward comparison condition.

What is Self-Enhancement (Bias)?

• Self-Enhancement is the desire to maintain, increase or protect one’s positive self views

  • Prominent in individualistic contexts

  • Do things to see selves positively

  • For example remember positive info about selves receives, versus bad

  • Failure to external factors, successes to internal

  • Creates Illusions about the self 

• Is self-enhancement good or bad?

  • Good: protects self esteem, confidence, strengths adhering to those 

  • Bad: not changing/grow

  • Enduring trait or bias we have 

What is the Better-than-average effect?

• Better than average effect: the finding that most people think they are above around on various domains (such as personality trait & ability)

• How would you rate your driving compared to other drivers? 

  • A: I am an above-average driver 

  • B: I am a below-average driver

  •  C: I don’t know how to drive

• Most people think above average at something 

• We cannot all be above average 

• Are some people better than average not

• Protective to think better than average, can be bad in certain cases, protective against that

What is Self-Verification?

• We strive to get others to confirm or verify our pre-existing beliefs about ourselves

  • For example if you see yourself as extraverted, self-verification theory predicts that you will try to get others to see you as extraverted as well

    • Generally get people to verify positive ways see yourself 

    • Comforting to feel others see you the way you see yourself. 

    • Want others to see you like you see yourself

    • Attend more heavily to info that confirms self, verus info we dont believe 

(1) We attend to and recall more self-verifying information (consistent with beliefs)

• people with negative self views, spend more time studying negative rather than positive feedback about themselves, remember negative feedback better & interact with others who provide negative feedback

(2) We signal our identity

(3) We enter into relationships that help us self-verify

• Most people wanna see self positively

• More people have more negative views of self

  • Depressed people: remember negative feedback more than positive

  • Verifies how see self

• People with low self esteem seek & stay with partners more abusive, coherence, think bad, someone treating them bad and makes the world make sense. 

What is Self-Enhancement vs. Self-Verification? How do they differ?

Self-enhancement: most relevant to emotional responses to feedback about self

• What info getting from others, feedback, drives emotional responses to feedback

Self-Verification: determines more cognitive assessment of validity of feedback

• Tells accuracy of that

• To test this, researchers gave participants with negative or positive self-beliefs negative or positive feedback

Study- What does Self-Verification Show?

• Recruited people with positive views or negative views

• Got + and - feedback

• 4 quadrants: positive few how received positive feedback, neg

• Neg + feedback, neg and neg

• People with negative fews found the negative feedback more accurate

• Participants with positive views found positive feedback more accurate 

• Self-verification 

Study- What does Self Enhancement Show?

• All participants however felt good about positive feedback, and disliked the negative feedback.

• Self enhancement differently

• Feels bad to get negative feedback

• Both felt bad about getting negative feedback

• Both felt good to get positive feedback

• Accuracy reflecting their + or - views

• Negative feedback feels bad, positive feedback feels good

• Two theories integrated

• Know IV, DV, methods generally & outcomes & what that tells you 

What is Self Regulation?

• The process by which people initiate, alter, and control their behavior in pursuit of a goal to resist short-term rewards that thwart long-term goals.

  • Gives rise to idea called self discrepancy theory

What is the Self-Discrepancy Theory?

• Self-discrepancy theory is a theory that behaviour is motivated by standards reflecting ideal and ought selves, falling short of these standards elicits specific emotions & may lead to efforts to get closer to them

Ought Self

• The self you think you should be

• (concerned with the duties, obligations & external demands people feel they are compelled to honour)

Actual Self “True Self”

• The self you actually are

Ideal Self

• The self you aspire to be

• (embodies people’s wishes & aspirations)

• According to this theory, ideal & ought selves serve as self-guides, motivating people to regulate their behaviours in order to close to gap between their actual self and their ideal and ought standards

• When people pursuing goals to become ideal self, research shows focused on Promotion

  • Seeking out and obtaining certain goals

  • approach/promotion focused

  • Obtain positive outcomes to obtain ideal self

  • Promotion focus: self regulation of behaviour with respect to ideal self-standards, a focus on attaining positive outcomes through approach related behaviours

  • People from individualistic more likely to have promotion focus, attaining personal goals

• Ought self

  • prevention/avoidant

  • Avoid negative outcome

  • If i think i ought to keep you here for 3 hours, avoid letting you leave early, extra lecture

  • Get in way of ought self, type of prof i should be

  • When people regulate their behaviour with respect to ought self standards they have a prevention focus: a focus on avoiding negative outcomes (such as being a bad grand-daughter)

  • People from interdependent cultures more likely to exhibit prevention focus: concerned with the possible negative consequences of their actions & how that might affect relations with others

• Ideal self promotion

• Prevention focused, vigilant for ought self

• Sometimes have discerptancy between 3 selves

Discrepancies between our actual & ideal or ought self leads to negative emotions

• If people feel discrepancy between who they should be (ought self) and actual, anxiety, anxious, worried not doing what they feel they ought to do. 

• If there is a discrepancy between the actual self and ideal self, feel dejected, disappointed in abilities

What are some Self-Regulation Strategies?

(1) Focus away from hotter, more tempting qualities of short term reward

• Marshmallow Experiment

  • Kids focus more on marshmallow touched it, tended to be more likely to ring bell

  • Longer hold out shows other tradeoffs: go out vs. study

  • Going out to party (focus on spending money, losing out on sleep)

(2) Focus on high-level construals

• See forest rather than trees, more long term thinking

• High level LT goals, what trying to accomplish

(3) Action-implementation

• If then statement

• Smoking want to quit, dont make plan, just say going to quit

• If i get urge to smoke, ill chew gum 

• Make these ahead of times help you in hot time, craving

How do we manage how others see us?

What is Self-Presentation?

• Presenting the person that we would like others to believe we are

  • Doesn’t always correspond to type of person we are 

1. Impression management 

2. Self Monitoring

What is Impression Management?

• Managing outward appearance to other (how dress, who associate with, what reveal about self or others) 

  • We present, put best face forward, doesn't always correspond to who we are, discrepancy

What is Self-Monitoring?

• Tendency to monitor one’s behaviour to fit the current situation

• Tendency to monitor what we say and scrutinize behaviour in front of others to fit current situation

  • Do this with other people

  • People vary on this

  • High self monitors carefully scrutinize situations, according to the people or situation at hand

  • Low self monitors behave according to their own traits and preferences, regardless of social context

Self Monitoring Activity

• What is your favorite and least favorite food? Why?

• One person dont say “dont”, other “very”

What are the dangers of Self-Monitoring?

• The self-monitoring group showed a reduction in:

  • Intellectual acuity on test taken after

    • Taking up bandwidth 

  • Interpersonal restraint

    • Not look as comfortable, engage as much

  • Physical stamina

    • reduced

  • Executive function

    • Reduced 

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Phenomena

• Don't ask people about sexual orientation in military and don't offer information

• In theory not infringe on people

• Make everything smoother

• Negative

• Have element, partner, part of self now told cant share with people

• Element of self told not supposed to share, not supposed to ask about

• Self-monitoring

• Not good 

  • Negative consequence of self monitoring

What is Self-Handicapping?

• Tendency to engage in self-defeating behaviour to prevent others from assuming that poor performance is due to lack of ability

• Tendency to engage in sef-defeating behaviour in order to have an excuse ready should one fail or do poorly

  • Idea you take test and not sure going to do well, go out night before instead of studying, if fail test, because its because i was out partying all night 

  • self-sabotage/handicap, create context fail 

  • Procrastination can be

  • Self protective strategy