Psych of Everyday Life Unit 2

The Self, Theories of Personality, Social Thinking and Influence, Interpersonal Communication

**Self-Concept**

An organized collection of beliefs about the self

(Piaget)

Affected by feedback from others, social contact, cultural values

**Possible Selves**

Thoughts and ideas about the person you might become in the future

**Self-Perceptions**

Actual self: qualities people think they actually possess

Ideal self: qualities people would like to possess

Ought self: qualities people think they should possess

**Self-Discrepancies**

Mismatches between the actual, ideal, and ought self

**Three Factors of Discrepancies**

Amount of discrepancy experienced

Person’s awareness of discrepancy

Whether or not the discrepancy is important to the person

**People cope with discrepancies by…**

Change behavior to match ideal self

Rationalize

Avoid self-awareness

**Social Comparison Theory**

We compare ourselves with others in order to assess and/or improve our abilities (Festinger)

**Reference Group**

Set of people who are used as gauge in making social comparisons

**Individualism vs. Collectivism**

Individualistic cultures put personal goals ahead of the group, want to stand out

Collectivist cultures put group goals ahead of themselves, want to “blend in” with society

**Self-Esteem**

One’s overall assessment of worth as a person

**Trait Self-Esteem**

An enduring sense of confidence in a person

**State Self-Esteem**

Dynamic feelings about the self that change with the situation

Why is self-esteem important?

Strongly connected to happiness

High self-esteem makes people more likeable, cope better, have better relationships

**Roy Baumeister**

Lots of work in the area of the self, self-esteem, etc

**Narcissism**

Preoccupied with fantasies of success, believe they deserve special treatment, react aggressively when their ego is threatened

**Two dimensions of parenting**

Parental acceptance/responsiveness and parental control/expectations

**Authoritative:**

Warm and nurturing, high expectations, set boundaries with the child

**Permissive:**

Allow kids to do what the want, result is generally immature and aggressive

**Authoritarian:**

Very strict and don’t negotiate, high standards, results in lower self-esteem

**Negligent:**

Uninvolved, careless, don’t seek to have a close relationship, result is poor social and academic outcomes

**Meta-Analysis**

Multiple studies used to draw a singular conclusion

**Automatic Processing**

How we handle information without much deliberate decision-making

**Controlled Processing**

Active thinking required for important decision-making and analysis

**Self-Attributions**

Inferences that people draw about the causes of their own behavior

**Internal:**

Causes of behavior are from personal traits, abilities, feelings

**External:**

Behavior comes from situational demands

**Stable:**

The cause of behavior is unlikely to change over time

**Unstable:**

The cause of behavior is subject to change

**Explanatory Style**

Use similar casual attributions for a wide variety of events in one’s life

**Optimistic:**

Attribute setbacks to external, unstable, and specific factors

**Pessimistic:**

Attribute setbacks to internal, stable, and global factors

**Two motives guide self-understanding**

**Self-Assessment:**

Desire for truthful information about oneself

**Self-Enhancement:**

Desire to maintain positive feelings about oneself

**Methods of self-enhancement**

**Downward social comparison:**

Compare oneself with someone whose problem’s are bigger

**Self-serving bias:**

Attribute successes to personal factors and failure’s to situational factors

**Basking in reflected glory:**

Enhance one’s image by announcing association with successful people

**Self-handicapping:**

Sabotage performance to make an excuse for possible failure

Ego Depletion Model of Self-Regulation

People have a limited amount of self-control

Self-Efficacy

Belief about your ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes

Associated with Bandura

Sources of Self-Efficacy

**Master Experiences:**

Learning new skills, persisting in face of failure

**Vicarious Experiences:**

Watching others learn new skills

**Persuasion and Encouragement:**

From internal and external sources

**Interpretation of Emotional Arousal:**

Tend to get nervous when trying new things

**Self-Defeating Behaviors**

Seemingly intentional actions that thwart a person’s self-interest

**Deliberate Self-Destruction:**

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**Trade-Offs:**

Immediate pleasurable outcomes that have detrimental long-term effects

**Counterproductive Strategies:**

Persisting in ineffective strategies to achieve a goal

Public Self

An image presented to others in social interactions

Impression Management

Usually conscious efforts by people to influence how others think of them

Impression Management Strategies

**Ingratiation:** Behaving in ways to make oneself likable to others

**Self-Promotion:** Accenting your strong points in order to earn respect

**Supplication:** Acting weak or dependent in order to get favors from others

**Negative Acknowledgement:** Admitting your flaws

Self-Monitoring

Degree to which people attend to and control the impressions they make on others

**High:** More concerned about making favorable impressions

**Low:** More likely to express their true feelings or attitudes

Personality

An individual’s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits

Personality Traits

A durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations

EX: Honest, moody, impulsive, friendly, etc

Big Five

“higher-order” traits

**Extraversion:** Retiring, sober, reserved vs. Sociable, fun-loving, affectionate

**Neuroticism:** Calm, secure, self-satisfied vs. Anxious, insecure, self-pitying

**Openness to experience:** Practical, routine, conforming vs. Imaginative, variety, independent

**Agreeableness:** Ruthless, suspicious, uncooperative vs. Soft, trusting, helpful

**Conscientiousness:** Disorganized, careless, impulsive vs. Organized, careful, disciplined

Psychodynamic Theories

Focus on unconscious mental forces that shape out personalities

Freud, Jung, Adler

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

Personality is governed by unconscious forces that we cannot control

Childhood experiences play a significant role in determining adult personality

Personalities are shaped by the manner in which individuals cope with sexual urges and aggression

Three Structures of Personality

**Id:** Primitive, instinctive component of personality that operates according to the pleasure principle

**Ego:** The decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle

**Superego:** The moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong

Layers of Awareness

**Conscious:** One is aware of at a particular point in time

**Preconscious:** Material just beneath the surface of awareness that can be easily retrieved

**Unconscious:** Material well below the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exerts great influence on one’s behavior

Defense Mechanisms

Largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from painful emotions such as anxiety and guilt

Repression

Keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious

Projection

Attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another person

Displacement

Diverting emotional feelings from their original source to a substitute target

Reaction Formation

Behaving in a way that is exactly the opposite of one’s true feelings

Regression

Reversion to immature patterns of behavior

Rationalization

Creation of false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior

Identification

Bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary or real alliance with some person or group

Psychosexual Stages

**Oral:** (0-1 years), erotic focus on mouth, weaning

**Anal:** (2-3 years), erotic focus on anus, toilet training

**Phallic:** (4-5 years), erotic focus on genitals (masturbating), identifying with adult role models, coping with Oedipal crisis

**Latency:** (6-12), no erotic focus, sexually repressed, expanding social contacts

**Genital:** (Puberty onward), focus on genitals (sexual intimacy), establishing intimate relationships, contributing to society through working

Jung’s Analytical Psychology

**Personal Unconscious:** similar to Freud’s unconscious layer

**Collective Unconscious:** A storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past that is shared with the entire human race

Adler’s Individual Psychology

Our most important drive is not sexuality, but striving for superiority

Compensation

Efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one’s abilities

Inferiority Complex

Exaggerated feelings of weakness and inadequacy

Psychoanalytic theories contributed many important insights

Unconscious forces can influence behavior

Internal conflict may play a key role in psychological distress

Early childhood experiences can influence adult personality

People do rely on defense mechanisms to reduce unpleasant emotions

Psychodynamic theories have been criticized for…

Poor testability - too vague, difficult to measure

Depend too heavily on clinical case studies

Many central hypotheses have been contradicted by empirical evidence

Male-centered, even sexist, view of personality

Behavioral

Theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study observable behavior

Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning

A type of learning in which a neutral stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus

Extinction

The gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response tendency

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers an unconditioned response

Unconditioned Response (UR)

An unlearned, naturally occurring response due to an unconditioned stimulus

Neutral Stimulus (NS)

A stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning

Conditioned Response (CR)

A learned response due to a conditioned stimulus

Dogs Salivating

Dogs would salivate (UR) when they were brought food (US)

The bell (NS) didn’t do anything until it was presented with the food (US)

The bell eventually causes the dogs to salivate (CS)

Thorndike’s Law of Effect

Responses to a situation that are followed by satisfaction are strengthened; responses that are followed by discomfort are weakened

Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

A form of learning in which voluntary responses come to be controlled by their consequences

Positive Reinforcement

Occurs when a response is strengthened (increases frequency) because it is followed by the arrival of a pleasant stimulus

EX: Given a cookie after being polite

Negative Reinforcement

Occurs when a response in strengthened (increases in frequency) because it is followed by the removal of an unpleasant stimulus

EX: Beeping when you don’t use seatbelt

Reinforcement

Any event that strengthens the behavior it follows

Punishment

Occurs when a response is weakened (decreases in frequency) because it is followed by the arrival of an unpleasant stimulus

Positive Punishment

Adding something aversive

Negative Punishment

Taking away something desirable

Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory

**Observational Learning:** Occurs when an organism’s response is influenced by the observation of others, who are called models

Self-Efficacy

The belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes

Observational Learning

Learning that involves acquiring skills, strategies, and beliefs by observing others

Pay attention to and understand consequences of others’ behavior

Social, cognitive, and behavioral factors influence learning

Humanism

Emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their free will and their potential for personal growth

Roger’s Person-Centered Theory

Personality only contains one construct (the self)

Congruent

Our ideas about ourselves match our actual experiences

Incongruence

Our ideas about ourselves do not match reality, which undermines our well-being

Conditional Love

Children develop incongruent self-concept because they do not feel worthy of love

Unconditional Positive Regard

Children feel worthy of affection and develop congruent self-concepts

Maslow’s Theory of Self-Actualization

Human motives are organized into a hierarchy of needs

Humans have an innate drive towards personal growth and the highest need is self-actualization

Hierarchy of Needs

An arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused

Self-Actualization

Fulfillment of one’s potential

Self-Actualizing Person

Commitment to personal growth, accurately tuned into reality, balanced personality, thrive on their work, etc

Humanistic Concepts are criticized for…

Poor testability

An unrealistic view of human nature

Inadequate evidence

Eysenck’s Theory

Personality as a hierarchy of traits, function of genetic differences in “conditionality”

Special interest in explaining variations in extraversion-introversion

Heritability Ratio

An estimate of the proportion of trait variability in a population that is determined by variations in genetic inheritance

Evolutionary Psychology

Examines behavioral processes in terms of their adaptive value for members of a species over the course of many generations

Terror Management Theory

Human cognition is unique and allows us to be aware of our own mortality

Creates great anxiety, can be reduced by cultural worldviews that promote self-esteem and faith

Reminding people of their mortality leads to increased self-esteem as an anxiety buffer

Psychological test

A standardized measure of a sample of a person’s behavior

Standardization

Refers to the uniform procedures used to administer and score a test

Test Norms

Provide information about where a score on a psychological test ranks in relation to other scores on that test

Self-Import Inventories

Personality scales that ask individuals to answer a series of questions about their characteristic behavior

EX: 16 Personality Factor, NEO Inventory

Projective Tests

Ask individuals to respond to ambiguous stimuli in ways that may reveal aspects of their personalities

EX: Rorschach test, Thematic Apperception Test

Person Perception

The process of forming impressions of others

Snap Judgments

Judgments made quickly and based on only a few bits of information and preconceived notions

Automatic Processing

Used when we are not motivated to form an accurate impression of another person

Systematic Judgments

Require more controlled processing and tend to occur when forming impressions of others that can affects our happiness and welfare

Atributions

Inferences that people draw about the causes of behavior and events

Internal Attributions

People attribute the cause of others’ behavior to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, or feelings

External Attributions

People attribute the cause of others’ behavior to situational demands or environmental constraints

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Expectations about a person cause them to behave in ways that confirm the expectations