Chapter 3&4

Self concept, self awareness, self esteem

Self Concept

• Image you have of who you are

1. Charles horton cooley: looking glass self

• You are what other people reveal to you about who you are through their treatment of and behavior towards you

• Getting scolded rather than being praised and rewarded

2. Social comparisons: you compare yourself to you peers

   1. Men and women use social media differently

   2. Men = to find and make friends

   3. Women = to engage in self comparison

3. Cultural teachings

   1. Attitudes, beliefs, values are instilled by parents, teachers, media… these provide the benchmarks against which you measure yourself

4. Self evaluations

   1. React to- and interperet- your own behavior

Self Awareness: extent to which you know yourself

1. People who are self aware and more confident, better communicators, perform better at work

2. Johari window

   1. Open self: things that you know about yourself and that others also know about you

   2. Blind self: things about me that other people know, but I am not aware of

   3. Hidden self:  things that I know about myself but I don’t want others to know about me

   4. Unknown self: I don’t know this about me and others don’t know this about me either

Self esteem: extent to which you value yourself (your worth)

1. Cognitive (thinking)

   1. Assessment of strengths and weaknesses

   2. Who you are vs. who you want to be

2. Affective (emotional)

   1. How you feel about your cognitive assessment of yourself

3. Behavioral 

   1. Verbal and nonverbal ways of behaving in a given situation

4. How can you improve

   1. Attack self destructive beliefs: I should be liked by everyone, I should be successful in everything, I should always win, I should be totally in control of my life, I should always be productive

   2. These expectations are unrealistic and set you up for failure

5. Seek out nourishing people

   1. Carl rogers: noxious and nourishing people

   2. Noxious = critical and negative (low self esteem)

   3. Nourishing: optimistic and positive

6. Seek out people that are similar to you

   1. Identification with similar people can boost self esteem

Imposter Phenomenon

• Belief that you are “fake” or you “don’t deserve to be there”

• Everyone feels that way sometimes

Set yourself up for success

• Select projects that you can accomplish

• Each success facilitates future successes

• A failed project doesnt mean you are a failure

• Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”

Recall your PAST successes

• Analyze your successes, what you did right, and how it felt

• Focus on what’s good about me

• Review positive qualities, don’t dwell on failure, identify what went wrong correct it and move one

Secure Affirmation

• Statement of verification that something is true

• Self talk influences your self-esteem and communication with other

  • What you say and how you say it

  • How you interpret what you hear

• Focus on positive qualities with “I” statements

  • I am, I can, I will…

• Chronically low self esteem:

  • Doesn’t believe self affirmations

  • Need affirmation from others

  • May benefit more from interacting with positive people (maybe a psychologist)

Self concept : what you think of you

Self awareness : how well you know yourself

Self esteem : the value you place on yourself

Perception in Interpersonal communication

• Process by which we become aware of and experience everything in our senses take in

• Five stages

  • 1) stimulation (senses detect something)

  • 2) organization (sort the stimuli)

  • 3) interpretation-evaluation (make sense of it)

  • 4) memory (we save the salient stuff)

  • 5) recall (construct later)

1. Stimulation:

   1. One of more of the senses stimulated; change, novelty, dissimilarity attract attention

   2. Selective attention: attending only to desirable or rewarding things

   3. Selective exposure: exposing yourself only to that which reinforces what you already believe or consider rewarding

2. Organization

   1. By rules: 

      1. Similarity 

      2. Proximity

      3. Contrast 

   2. By schemata

      1. Preconceived mental framework

      2. stereotypes

   3. By scripts

      1. How an even should play out

3. Interpretation-evaluation

   1. Influenced by experiences, values, beliefs, emotional state…

   2. Influences by schematic scripts

   3. Judgements are ethnocentric (we use ourselves ad the standard for normal)

   4. A 5’8 person can be perceived as tall or short depending on how tall you are

      1. Culture can affect this perception, and even whether they are male or female

4. Memory

   1. What and how we store perceived information is influenced by out organizational rules, interpretations, and evaluations

   2. Use selective attention/exposure to limit data for storage

   3. Tend to store info consistent with our established rules schemata and scripts

5. Recall

   1. Info stored in memory is accessible retrieved info is reconstructed rather than reproduced, thus prone to in accuracies

   2. Recall what is consistent with our schema (possibly made up some of it unconsciously)

   3. We lose that which is inconsistent with our schema (even if its true)

   4. Drastically contradictory info causes us to rethink and modify our schema

Impression Formation: refers to how we formulate our perceptions of others

• Implicit personality theory

  • Halo effect: a few observed positive attributes suggest additional unobserved positive attributes

  • Reverse halo effect: observed negative attribute suggests additional unobserved negative attributes

Self fulfilling prophecy: a prediction that comes true because you act on free will

• Predicted threat

• Self protective behaviors

• Behaviors interpreted as hostile

• Defensive behaviors

• Behaviors confirm prediction

• Opposite direction:

• Friendliness predicted

• Prosocial behaviors 

• Behaviors interpreted as friendly

• Friendly response

• Behaviors confirm prediction

Perceptual Accentuation (impression formation)

• Tendency to see (accentuate) what will satisfy your needs and desires, even if its not really there

  • I said “I’m baking cookies tonight”. He heard “i’m baking cookies and you can have some”.

• Primacy effect

  • What you saw/hear first

• Recency effect

  • What you saw most recently that you remember better

Attribution of control

• Self serving bias: take credit for the positive, not negative

  • “I got an A on my first presentation, but the prof gave me a C+ on the second one”

• Over attribution: assume 1 trait causes others

  • “She goes on a lot of dates because shes tall”

• Fundamental attribution: internal causes external

  • “Hes irresponsible that's why he got into a car accident”

Increasing accuracy in impression formation

Question your perceptions: were you in a bad mood at the time? Did the person remind you of someone you don’t like?

Delay your conclusions: remind yourself that impressions are formed quickly with very little evidence; look for both contradictory and validating evidence to balance your preliminary evaluation.

Impression communication

Nonverbal: facial expressions, mannerisms, posture, behaviors, dress, grooming, photos and online activity, who you associate with, how you spend your time

Affinity seeking strategies:

• Follow a culture's rules

• Encourage others to talk about themselves

• Listen attentively

• Be optimistic and positive

• Communicate warmth and empathy

Politeness strategies

Positive face: desire to be viewed positively and favorably by others. (belong socially)

Negative face: desire to be autonomous, have the right to do what we wish. 

Impoliteness is an attack on positive face (criticizing people) of negative face (make demands on someone)

Your behaviors confirm your own self-image and let others know who you are

• Adopting behaviors that are characteristics of the image you want other to see

• Avoid behaviors that confirms

Verbal messages

Usually verbal and the non-verbal complement each other

• But sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes non-verbal message is more reliable

• Before trying to interpret message meaning, evaluate the whole message package

  • The channel via which its sent adds to its meaning

• Meanings are created by individuals

  • Everyone interprets messages differently: how its sent, when its sent…

Denotative and connotative meaning

Denotative:

• Objective, unemotional, universal

Connotative

• Subjective, emotional, individual 

Snarl and Purr words? — connotative words

Messages vary in their degree of abstraction

• Generalization vs specificity

• “I had an accident” very abstract

• “I accidently fell off a ladder” more specific

What situations would benefit from giving a more abstract message?

• If you don’t know the other person very well you might not give them all the details

When would a high degree of abstraction be problematic?

• Giving someone directions to go somewhere, need to be as specific as possible

Politeness is behavior that is considerate and respectful of other people, BUT definitions may vary culturally)

• Positive politeness: maintains positive face

  • Attracts others

  • “Thanks you’ve been very helpful”

• Negative politeness: help others maintain negative face

  • More independent 

  • “I’ll go now so you can get back to your movie”

• Face threatening acts

  • Messages that infringe upon someone's positive or negative face needs

  • “You’re wrong” attack on positive face

  • “Am I mistaken” attack on negative face

  • Indirect messages prevent offence and provides an acceptable way to refuse a request and allow expression

Lying: sending verbal messages that's intention is to deceive

• prosocial(benefits other)

• Self-enhancement (promotes self)

• Selfish (self-protection)

• Antisocial deception (harm other)

Messages vary in assertiveness

Assertiveness is not aggressive

Speaks own mind;allows other to do the same

Favors “win-win” outcome

Distinction b/w passive, assertive, and aggressive varies culturally

1. Describe the problem objectively

2. State how problem affects you

3. Propose workable solution

4. Confirm understanding

Onymous: signed or identified

Anonymous: no name, not signed

Messages can confirm of disconfirm or reject

• Confirm: acknowledges thru support of argument

• Disconfirm: ignores, indifferent, jumps to conclusion

  • Racism

  • Heterosexism

  • Ageism

  • sexism

• Rejection: disagreement unwilling to accept others words or actions

Extensionalize

• Extend the benefit of the doubt to torah people

• See people as they are, not as what you heard

Avoid Allness

• Keep an open mind (avoid self-fulfilling prophecies)

• “Know it all”

• Remember: we, in fact, don’t know everything there is to know about anyone or anything

Distinguish between facts and inferences

Talk about the middle

• Avoid polarization

• Always ——— Never

• Best worst

Static evaluation: Once a _______, always a ________