Social Psychology Study

mirror study: gallup

sense of self seems limited to humans and great apes

variation was done w/ toddlers: human self-recognition develops at about 18-24 months.

“who am i?’: montemayor & elsen

a child self is concrete: (age, gender, neighborhood, hobbies)

ex: “i am a boy, i have brown eyes & i have an uncle that is almost 7ft tall.”

as we mature, it’s less about physical characteristics and more on thoughts & feelings and how other people judge us.

ex: “a 12th grader listed moods, being indecisive, ambitious, a liberal, a radical & an atheist.”

“true self” study: strohminger & nichols

thinking about a friend that you hadn’t seen in 40 years, they rated a list of ways the friend had changed, on a scale from 0-100%

independent variable: changes in morality (personality, cognition, desires & perceptual ability)

dependent variable: how much the change affects the “true self”

morality is the central to the self-concept

“baby names” study: varnum & kitayama

babies born in recently settled states have more unusual names: the more recent, the less likely parents were to choose popular names (sign of independent self-construal)