Understanding the Self in Social Psychology

These flashcards cover key vocabulary related to the concepts of self-awareness, self-perception, and social psychology as discussed in the lecture.

Self-awareness

Attention directed at the self.

Public self-awareness

Looking outward to understand the self and how you are perceived by others. (EX - noticing your voice trembling during a presentation, realizing you are dominating a meeting)

Private self-awareness

Looking inward at private aspects of the self, including emotions, thoughts, desires, and traits.

The looking-glass self

A concept with three components: imagine how you appear to others, imagine how others will judge you, and develop an emotional response.

Social comparison theory

Examining the difference between oneself and another person to understand one's own social standing.

Self-perception theory

People observe their own behavior to infer what they are thinking and how they are feeling.

Overjustification effect

The tendency for intrinsic motivation to diminish for activities that have become associated with rewards.

Phenomenal self

The image of self that is currently active in a person's thoughts. (EX -Inner State: Feeling a sense of calm (the current mental state).)

Self-handicapping

Engaging in behaviors that inhibit performance to blame failure on external obstacles.

Automatic egotism

The automatic response of believing everything good is about oneself and everything bad is not.

Self-reference effect

The tendency for information relating to the self to be processed more deeply and remembered better.

Sociometer theory

A theory that links self-esteem to social acceptance, viewing self-esteem as a measure of desirability. (Self-esteem measures social acceptance)

Narcissism

Excessive self-love and a selfish orientation that may be related to high self-esteem.

Self-presentation

Any behavior that seeks to convey some image of the self to other people. (the conscious or subconscious process of managing how others perceive you through your words, behavior, and appearance) (Examples include professional networking, job interviews, and team introductions)

Self-esteem

How favorably someone evaluates themselves.

Deliberately seeking self-knowledge

The evolutionary urge to learn about oneself for appraisal, self-enhancement, and consistency.

Self-deception strategies

Techniques used by individuals to maintain a positive outlook, including using self-serving bias. (Ex - rationalization ("I didn't want the promotion anyway")

Nature, and Culture have what?

Nature and culture have shaped each other

Nature

The physical world around us, including its laws and processes

Nurture

influences are environmental influences on behavior (e.g., pollution, diet, parenting, social interactions, etc.)

Evolution

Over the last four decades, many social psychologists have focused on how evolution helps explain social behavior

Mutation

Changes that occur during replication or via genetic damage.

Genetic drift

The chance disappearance of certain genotypes due to death or non-reproduction

Gene flow

The movement of genes into or out of a population due to migration of species members or movement of gametes (e.g., pollination)

Natural selection

Genes are being selected within a species because they are adaptive and promote reproductive success. Also decides which traits will disappear, and which will continue

Being social offers evolutionary benefits

–Find more food

–Mate and reproduce easier

–Alert each other to danger

–Take care of those who are sick and injured

Social brain hypothesis

animals with bigger brains live in larger, more complex social groups, Human brain evolved to enable human beings to have rich, complex social lives

Cultural animal theory

Evolution shaped the human psyche to enable humans to create and take part in culture

Social Animals

People are social animals that seek connections to others and prefer to live, work, and play with other members of their species

Important features of culture

–Culture is an advanced way of being social

–Shared ideas: brain puts special priority on information directly experienced as shared

–Culture as social system: a network linking many different people

–Culture as praxis: depends on shared ideas and shared ways of doing things

–Culture, information, and meaning: encoding and sharing meaningful information

Being a cultural animal is different than being a social animal

Division of labor

Shared knowledge and communication

Ability to solve disagreements without using aggression

Cultural norms vary

–Interpersonal space differences

–People do share some of the same experiences

Most people love their children, try to get enough to eat, and make distinctions between right and wrong

Automatic system

Outside of consciousness

Simple tasks

Always on, even in sleep

Deliberate system

Mostly operates in consciousness

Turns off during sleep

Involved with planning

Consciousness focuses on complex thought and logical reasoning

How Automatic and Deliberate work together

Automatic system makes conscious thought possible

Deliberate system can suppress automatic urges

Nature vs Culture (Nature)

impulses, wishes, and other automatic reactions that predispose people to act in certain ways

Nature vs Culture (Culture)

teaches self-control and restraint

line-judging task

This is about conformity

Participants felt it was more important to be accepted by the group than to be correct on the line-judging task

People rely more on information from other people than on their own senses

Self-Regulation

the self’s capacity to alter its own responses

Effective self-regulation components are

–Standards: ideas of how things might or should be

–Monitoring: watching what you’re doing

–Strength: willpower for change

Norman Triplett

competition enhances performance (reel study)

The bike experiment, Competition lead to better performance

Max Ringelmann

as group size increases, individual effort decreases (Social Loafing)

Ex - Think of a group project and nobody does their work

Attribution theory

A psychology concept explaining how people interpret the causes of their own and others' behavior, deciding if actions stem from internal factors (personality, effort) or external factors (situation, luck) (Ex - failing a test: attributing it to laziness is an internal, stable cause, whereas blaming the test's high difficulty is an external, situational cause.)

Developmental psychology

Developmental psychologists study how people change across their lives, from conception and birth to old age and death.

Personality psychology

Personality psychologists focus on important differences between individuals, as well as inner processes.

Social psychology

Social psychologists focus on how human beings think, act, and feel. Thoughts, actions, and feelings are a joint function of personal and situational influences.

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychologists focus on thought processes, such as how memory works and what people notice.

Clinical psychology

Clinical psychologists focus on “abnormal” behavior.

Biological psychology

Biological psychologists focus on what happens in the brain, nervous system, and other aspects of the body.

Random Assignment

Each participant has an equal chance of being in each group. By randomly assigning participants to groups, the researcher attempts to ensure no initial differences between groups.

Quasi-Experiment

Quasi-experiment, the researcher “takes people as they are.” Researchers often use preexisting groups (e.g., classrooms, fraternity groups, athletic clubs) because random assignment is not possible.

construct validity

ensures a test or measurement actually measures the abstract, theoretical concept (the "construct") it claims to—such as intelligence, anxiety, or satisfaction—rather than something else

Field experiments

Real-world settings

Laboratory experiments

High control level

Experimental realism

participants forget they are in an experiment

Mundane realism

Settings physically resemble the real world

External validity

findings generalize to other people, other settings, and other time periods (a drug trial on 100 young, healthy male athletes, which may have low external validity if the findings are applied to the general population, including older adults or women, as results might differ.)

Correlation doesn’t equal what?

Correlation does not equal causation, EX - Ice cream purchases go up, so do the number of shark attacks.

Correlational approach

Researcher does not try to control variables or randomly assign participants to groups

Population

the total number of people under consideration

Random sample

each person in the population has an equal chance of being selected

Reliability

a survey gives consistent results

Validity

How accurate the the info is supposed to measure

HARKing

Hypothesizing After the Results Are Known

Replication

repeating the studies corrects false theories over time

Reactance theory

People desire freedom of choice, and react negatively when freedom is reduced (Ex - when the corp had to put in leave every weekend)

Entity theory

Good and bad traits are fixed

People should not be expected to change; dislike criticism or bad feedback

Incremental theory

traits can change and be improved

People can change

People enjoy learning and challenges

Self-determination theory

people need at least some degree of autonomy and internal motivation

Duplex mind is relevant to goal hierarchies

•Automatic: tracking of goal progress and initiation of goal directed behaviors

•Deliberate: navigating obstacles, making plans, being flexible.

Goal shielding

shutting off thoughts about other goals while pursuing a single goal

Appraisal Motif

Finding the truth about oneself WEAKEST

Confirming Motif

Finding info that confirms the self-knowledge about yourself SECOND BEST

Self-Enhancement Motif

Motif that enhances or glazes the others confirmation about themself letting them know that they are awesome sauce

Endowment effect

Items gain in value to the person who owns them

Terror management theory

Having high self-esteem helps shield people from fear of death

Gordon Allport

Importance of attitudes

Kurt Lewin

behavior is a function of the person and situation

Stanley Milgram

role of obedience (in light of World War II)

Social psychology Combines

Both Freudian psychoanalysis, and Behaviorism

The ABC Model

Affect - the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, or mood that influences mental and bodily states

Behavior - observable actions

Cognition - the mental processes of thinking, interpreting, and understanding oneself and the world

Scientific Method

–State the problem

–Formulate a testable hypothesis

–Design the study and collect data

–Test the hypothesis with the data

–Communicate the results of the study to the scientific community