Understanding The Self (SOCIAL ANIMAL 104S)

“I”:

refers to the self as a thinker, active processor of information (self-awareness)

“Me”:

refers to the known self. Our thoughts and beliefs about ourself (self-concept)

Self-Concept:

sum total of an individual’s personal beliefs about his or her own personal attributes; contains all self-knowledge, and is connected to every schema in your head in some way (has 3 functions)

Managerial:

tells of relationship to physical and social world, organizes behavior, plans for future

Organizational:

helps organize, interpret and recall info about self and world

Emotional:

helps determine emotional responses

Red-Dot Study:

chimps in this study were raised alone or in social groups At some point a red dot is painted on their forehead. They are then put in front of a mirror, and their reactions are studied; Implications: the social environment affects the development of the self. Without your social environment, you might not even have a “self.” The same red-dot study has been done with infants and two-year olds. Two year olds touch the dot, infants do not.

Independent Self Concept:

the self is separate and autonomous; Individual needs are most important, Being true to self is highly important; Being consistent is highly important; Common in America and other western societies

Interdependent (Collectivist) Self Concept:

self is connected with others; Group and other needs are most important; Maintaining group harmony is paramount; More common in eastern societies (japan, korea, etc)

Sources of Self Knowledge:

introspection, self perception, social comparison theory

Introspection:

thinking about yourself and looking within; You are just searching in your own brain for a ready-made answer or a feeling; Typically used when an answer is clear and readily available; Introspections can be biased

Self-perception:

Looking to your behavior to determine your thoughts or attitudes (Bem, 1972); Will only occur if your thoughts and attitudes are uncertain or ambiguous; Similar to figuring out information about someone else by observing them; Self-perception also has downsides, such as misattribution of arousal (happens when you feel physical excitement or stress, like a fast heartbeat, but mistake what caused it)

Social Comparison Theory:

we learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people. People turn to others to evaluate their opinions, abilities and emotions; We define ourselves by using others as a benchmark

3 keys for social comparison theory:

We want to gain accurate knowledge; If available, they will consult an objective standard; if not they will compare with another person; People will gain the best knowledge when comparing with similar others *Accuracy is not always the goal of social comparison

Counterfactual Thinking:

Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t. Two kinds– Upward counterfactuals: if only and Downward counterfactuals: at least

Self Esteem:

defined as the evaluative component of the self and it consists of both positive and negative self-evaluations

Self-Serving cognitions:

different ways that people think about themselves or others to boost their self esteem

Rationalizing:

thinking about things in a way that reflects positively (or less negatively) on you; coming up with excuses to explain your own behaviors, blaming others etc

Self serving attributes:

explanations for one’s successes that credit, disposition factors, and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors

False consensus effect:

overestimating the extent to which others agree with our opinions; it can make you feel better about a bad decision

Better than average effect:

people tend to rate themselves as better than average on any given dimension, even though this is impossible; most of us are unrealistically optimistic

Implicit egotism:

the tendency to automatically prefer things associated with the self; occurs even for things associated with one's name or even one’s birthday; people with first names “dennis” were more likely than expected to be dentists

Self-handicapping:

creating some sort of obstacle to your performance in order to have an excuse for poor outcome; if we fail we have a ready-made situational excite (no internal attributes needed); if we succeed we must be exceptional