WEEK 8 - Perceiving Oneself

Constructing an Identity

Social construction of Personality - Sarah Hampson

• 3 things involved

  • actor

    • someone who acts a certain ways

    • residing in the individual

    • Single/ Multiple traits theories: big 5 model, big 6 model of personality theory

    • the personality itself

  • the observer

    • someone who watches the actor

    • person perception

    • attribution theories

    • impression formations

  • the self-observer

    • self-perception

    • self-concept

    • identity

    • self-evaluation

Self-perception theory

• perceive ourselves through observations of our own behaviour and the situations which we encounter

• we are more likely to change after we aware of how we behave

• we are more likely to change it if we have a weak self-concept

• idea of self-concept can also be stronger if someone was watching = can change depending on what others expect of us

STUDIES

- Changing facial expressions - laird, 1974; Lewis, 2012

- Making Fist - Schubert & Koole , 2009

- Open Posture - Carney, Cuddy & Yap, 2010

How accurate are we?

• generally people are not very accurate

  • Zell & Krishna, 2014 - self-evaluations of ability correlate “moderately” with performance outcomes: mean r= .29

  • people we perceive themselves to be better will also perform better → not a very strong correlation.

• we can also look at how people behave when they receive information about themselves to research accuracy.

  • Sedikides et al., 2016 - memory for self-relevant info

  • worse memory for negative self-relevant feedback → processed shallowly (linked with avoidance).

• Self-serving attributions

  • if something good happens its because of ourselves, however if something bad happens its due an external factor.

  • if positive concept is under thread we work harder to avoid self judgement.

Social Comparison Theory

• we try to evaluate our opinions and abilities accurately

• we compare with similar others

• Wills, 1981 - people prefer downward comparisons especially after their “ego threat”.

Best-then-average Effect

• people normally rate themsleves as better than average

• Alice & Govorun, 2005

• Zell, 2020 - meta-analysis showing ‘large’ overall effect size across 291 studies.

Self-enhancement strategies - Sedikides & Gregg, 2003

• self-promotion - greater among high SE people.

• self-protection function - especially when SE is threatened

• subject to plausibility constrains - ‘strategic’ self-enhancement

Is it all about self-enhancement?

Self-verification Theory

• describing how we work hard to verify self-conceptions

  • Cognitive strategies - consistant feedback → more attention, better memory, more trusted

  • Selective interactions - spend time with others who see us as we see ourselves

  • Identity cues - clothes, haircut, tattoos, possessions, etc. (if identity insecure)

  • Interpersonal prompts - emphasise self-consistent behaviour (after inconsistent feedback)

• Identity négociation

  • self-verification → stable self-concept

Self-enhancement vs Self-consistency

• enhancement: predicts people will perfect positive feedback regardless of their self-views

• consistency: predicts people with negative self-views will prefer negative feedback; can contradict S-enhancement if we have a positive view of ourselves.

• Cognitive affective crossfire

  • both self-enhancement and self-consistency can happen at the same time

Self-enhancement vs Self-assessment

• S-assessment rarely beats S-enhancement or S-consistency

Sociocultural beliefs and Identity Construction

Sociocultural context

• both enables and constrains identity formation

• identity categories

• stereotypes

• interpersonal experiences

• identity compatibility

• possible future selves

Discourse and Identity Change - Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson, 1995

• interviewed 80 lesbian woman who had previously lived > 10 years in heterosexual to lesbian

• they had their own stereotypes of lesbians’ ‘traits’ and physical appearance.

• they had difficulty during and after their identity transition (“had to leave” their husbands and children, didn’t know what “groceries lesbians bought”)

• “a threat in the air“

Stereotype threat and performance

• Spencer, Steele & Quinn, 1999

  • Participants

    • Women and men taking maths tests

    • All strong in maths, saw themselves as strong maths students, saw this as important to self-definition

  • Manipulation of stereotype threat

    • Participants told that test normally showed gender differences (threat) or not (control)

  • Control condition: scores of women = men

  • Stereotype threat: scores of women < men

Group differences in IQ

Stereotype threat Mechanisms

• effects do not depend on belief in stereotype - people who care the most are worst affected

• several mechanisms

  • extra pressure → Working Memory depletion, self-consciousness interferes with automatic processes.

  • threats to self-integrity and belonging → lower aspirations.

Self-theories and Mindset

• people have implicit theories about the nature of personality, intelligence, morality and other individual differences.

• these theories, when applied to self, have important consequences for people’s motivation and performance.

Entity theories

• 30 min left.