The Self

The self

the study of how we think about, present and evaluate ourselves

Self-serving bias

when making attributions for ourselves, the tendency to attribute successes to internal causes and failures to external ones

• Shepperd 1993 SAT study

• Schlenker and Miller 1977 groups study

• Gray and Silver 1990 divorce study

Shepperd 1993 SAT study

asked people whether the SAT was reflective of academic ability

• when people did well they said yes

• when people did poorly they said no

Schlenker and Miller 1977 groups study 

found that group member’s attributions for performance are not purely logical but are influenced by a self-serving bias

• participants in a four-person problem-solving group consistently rated their personal performance and responsibility higher for success, but this pattern reversed under failure conditions, where they took less personal responsibility to protect their self-image

• when group did really well, people said they contributed a lot

• when group did really poorly, people said they didn’t really contribute

Gray and Silver 1990 divorce study

found that former spouses tend to have biased and ego-enhancing views of themselves and their divorce with discrepancies in their perceptions of who was responsible and the desire to reconcile

• may also relates to the concurrent rise in “gray divorce” (later-life divorce)

• asked divorced couples whose fault the divorce was, said it was their partner

• when married couple were asked who is the reason the marriage works, they said themselves

Positive implications of self-serving bias

• feels good

• can motivate

Negative implications of self-serving bias

• can set people up for disappointment/disillusionment

• can demotivate

Why are people so biased?

• cognitive explanations (unrelated to goals)

  • schematic processing

  • shortcuts (heuristics)

• motivational explanations (goal-directed)

Motivational explanations

• self-enhancement

• self-verification

• self-justification

Self-enhancement

people have the goal to feel good about themselves and they process information in pursuit of that goal

1. optimistic bias

2. false consensus

3. false uniqueness

4. downward social comparison

Optimistic bias

the tendency for people to overestimate the likelihood that positive things will happen to them and that negative things will not (Weinstein)

False consensus

the tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s undesirable characteristics

False uniqueness

the tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s desirable characteristics

Downward social comparison

the process of comparing yourself to less fortunate others in order to feel better about yourself (Wills 1981)

• passive

• active

Wills 1981 study

proposed that when self-esteem is threatened, people make downward social comparisons - comparing themselves to those who are worse off - to restore self-esteem

• this is an exception to the general tendency to make upward comparisons to improve oneself

• theory suggests this defensive mechanism is especially likely for individuals with low self-esteem and has been applied to various areas of social psychology, such as prejudice, aggression and humor

Self-verification

• people have the goal to receive information that confirms their self-conceptions, and they process information according to that goal

• consider high self-esteem

• consider low self-esteem

Self-justification

• people have the goal to see themselves as rationale and logical, and they justify their actions in order to draw that conclusion

• Nisbett and Wilson studies

• so people think in ways that justify what they do, and will come up with justifications even when there are none

Nisbett and Wilson studies

people are often unaware of the true causes of their judgments and may incorrectly attribute their opinions to one set of reasons while being influence by another

• participants demonstrated than a global impression (like a person being likable) unconsciously influenced their evaluation of specific attributes (like their mannerisms or appearance

• they were convinced their specific judgments were based on the attributes themselves, not the overall impression

Impression management

orchestrating our behaviors in order to make a desired impression

Self-presentation

the process of behaving in ways that attempt to present a desired impression of ourselves

Self-monitoring

these people are high in their concerns of the impressions they are making

Beneficial impression management

the process of attempting to create a desired impression of someone/something else - significant other, organization

Some strategies self-presentation

1. behavioral matching - behaving consistent with our audience

2. conforming to situational norms - behaving consistent with situational norms

3. flattery - giving compliments in order to appear kind

• notice that these strategies can backfire

Self-handicapping

• Jones and Berglas 1978

• creating or pointing out impediments to success to protect against negative evaluation in the case that failure occur

• notice that this is controlling people’s attributions

• the target audience can be others, or ourselves

Jones and Berglas 1978

when people were uncertain about their ability to succeed (due to non-contingent success feedback) they were more likely to choose a performance-inhibiting drug before an upcoming test

• classic example of self-handicapping, where individuals create a handicap to provide an external excuse for potential failure and thus protect their self-esteem

• if they performed poorly, they would blame the drug

• if they performed well, it was because they were brilliant not because the test was easy

Self-esteem

overall evaluation of self

Function of self-esteem

• sociometer (Leary and Baumeister 2000) - serves as a gauge of our level of social acceptance

• how is it measured? - self-report

Leary and Baumeister 2000

proposes that self-esteem acts as a sociometer - an internal monitor that tracks how accepted and valued we are in our social grouos

• explains that a high self-esteem signals that are socially valued, while low self-esteem indicates a risk of social exclusion, motivating us to behave in ways that improve our social standing 

• argues that many behaviors driven by the need for self-esteem are actually attempts to maintain or improve our sense of belonging

Self-report

“on the whole, I am satisfied with myself”

• implicitly - name-letter task, how much you like the letters in your name, priming measures, speed with which people categorize positive and negative words after being primed with themselves

Bottom-up processing

developing a global view of self from evaluating specific components of self

• I’m smart, funny and attractive - I must be worthwhile

• we may also weight some traits as more important than others

• implication - changing specific self-views will change self-esteem

Top-down processing

• correlation is not causation

• evaluating specific components of self based on global view of self

• I’m a worthwhile person - I must be smart, funny and attractive

• people who have positive self-esteem tend to evaluate specific qualities of self more positively than people with low self-esteem - intelligence, attractiveness, social skills, etc.

• implication - changing self-view will change view of specific self-charcateristics

Evidence suggests…

that low-self esteem people often overgeneralize from specific negative events to global sense of worth - failure at a specific task leads to decreased sense of self-worth

High self-esteem people do not…

overgeneralize

Perhaps then buffering global view of self…

from specific evaluations is key

Narcissism

• a tendency toward self-admiration, entitlement and exploitation of others

• difference between narcissistic personality disorder and trait narcissism

• tends to be associated with verbal and physical aggression

• some scholars suggest levels of narcissism appear to be rising

• other scholars question that conclusion