SocSci Module 2: Self as an Integrated System

Self as a system of interconnected body, thoughts, feelings, and behavior

volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity - VUCA

Two Systems of Thinking

System 1

  • fast, intuitive, emotional, automatic, unconscious
  • used in every-day decision making
  • tasks that require less cognitive effort
  • part of our routine, practiced regularly, gotten used to doing

System 2

  • slow, rational, reflective, analytical, deliberate
  • used in making complex decisions
  • engage in tasks that require complex, effortful, and reflective thinking
  • involve high stake decisions, weighing pros and cons, thinking critically, analyzing situations

Cognitive Biases - psychological tendencies that cause the human brain to draw incorrect conclusions

  • unconscious errors of reasoning that distort our judgement
  • usually committed by System 1
  1. Peak End Rule - judge on an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, the total sum of the experience is disregarded
  2. Duration Neglect - total sum (of pleasantness vs unpleasantness) is neglected
  3. Representativeness - assumption that a person or object sharing characteristics within members of a particular group or category is also a memory of that group
  4. Anchoring & Adjustment - in making quantitative estimates under uncertainty, people start with a certain reference point (anchor) then adjust it insufficiently to reach a final conclusion

     1. in guessing how old someone is, you anchor on your age then add or subtract years based on your judgement

  1. Confirmation Bias - tendency to listen, trust, search for, and interpret information that will confirm one’s pre-existing beliefs or hypothesis and ignore information that will challenge these beliefs

     1. if you believe that your crush likes you, you interpret all their actions, despite how irrelevant, to enable this belief

  1. Filtering - focusing on the negative, ignoring the positive
  2. Catastrophizing - expecting the worst case scenario, minimizing the positive
  3. Polarized Thinking - all-or-nothing thinking, ignoring complexity
  4. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy - expecting self-sacrifice to be rewarded
    1. Control Fallacies - assumes only others to blame OR assumes only self to blame
    2. Always Being Right - being wrong is unacceptable, being right supercedes everything
    3. Fallacy of Fairness - assumes life should be fair
    4. Personalization - always assuming self responsible
    5. Overgeneralization - assumes a rule from one experience
    6. Jumping to Conclusions - assumptions based on little evidence
    7. Emotional Reasoning - If I feel it, it must be true
    8. Blaming - assumes everyone else is at fault
    9. Fallacy of Change - expects others to change
    10. Global Labelling - extreme generalization

     1. using one or two encounters as a general assumption of someone’s TRAITS

  1. “Shoulds” - holds tight to personal rules of behavior, judges self and others if rules broken

My Feeling Self

Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy

  • Aaron Beck - American Psychiatrist for Cognitive Therapy
  • Negative Cognitive Triad - self (self-criticism), world (pessimism), future (hopelessness)
    • only beliefs play a major role in our distress
    • therefore, changes in beliefs lead to changes in behaviors and emotions

Paul Ekman - studied facial expressions and emotions

  • consultant for Inside Out; characters in the movie are based on his Theory of Basic Emotions
  • did a research on an isolated tribe in Papua New Guinea who had no access to media and the modern world
  • found that facial expressions are universal

Emotions

  • Latin word: emovere - to stir up, to be excited, to get agitated
  • Functions of Emotions:
    • Intrapersonal Functions of Emotions
    • Emotions serve as survival mechanisms
      • emotions help us act quickly with minimal conscious awareness
      • emotions help us make rapid decisions concerning fight or flight, caring for others, rejecting poisonous food, and approaching something useful to us
    • Emotions influence our thoughts
      • emotions can help us think in constructive ways
      • if we get carried away with intense emotions, it affects our ability to think carefully about what to do and to regulate how we react
    • Emotions motivate future behaviors
      • society has conditioned us to attain positive emotions and avoid negative ones, therefore, we do things to land us in favorable positions and avoid negative ones
    • Interpersonal Functions of Emotions
    • emotions facilitate behaviors from others
    • emotions influence how other people react towards us
  • Emotions (1) communicate how we are feeling to our own selves and to others, (2) influence our thoughts and behaviors, (3) define and help us navigate our social interactions and relationships

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

  • Albert Ellis
    • American Psychologist

The Emotional Process

  • Ellis’ ABC Model
    • Activating Events
    • an event, situation, or a stimulus that triggers an emotion
    • (Paul Ekman) - there are universal antecedent events that elicit the same emotions across cultures
    • Beliefs
    • estimation, evaluation, interpretation of the event, which may be rational or irrational
    • Consequences
    • emotional response
    • physical and bodily reactions
    • behaviors and actions

Emotional Regulation

  • the ability to manage one’s experience of emotion in terms of intensity and duration and to manage strategically one’s expression of emotion in social contexts
  1. Gross’ Process Model of Emotion Regulation

   

  1. James Gross’ Process Model assumes that

       1. we can employ emotion regulation strategies at different points of the emotional process 2. we can regulate by changing how we think, how we pay attention, and how we behave

  1. Five Stages

       1. Situation Selection (antecedent event) - select which situations we would like to experience or avoid 2. Situation Modification (antecedent event) - modify the situation or the external environment in order to lessen the emotional impact 3. Attentional Deployment (cognitive appraisal) - redirect focus or attention to reduce intensity of emotional experience 4. distraction, mindful attention awareness, rumination 5. Cognitive Change (cognitive appraisal) - changing your interpretation of the meaning of an event 6. Response Modulation (consequence) - try to directly influence our physiological, experiential, and behavioral responses

  1. Frederickson’s Broaden and Build Theory

   

  1. provides tips to enhance positivity in our everyday lives
  2. positivity begets positivity
  3. positive emotions → broaden our view of the world → build personal resources → personal growth and fulfillment → positive emotions (cycle repeats)
  4. How to enhance positivity?

       1. find positive meaning

          1. meaning making through reframing 2. infusing ordinary events with positivity 2. be open

          1. accepting the daily positives and negatives 2. practicing present moment awareness 3. be social 4. do good

Body-Mind-Affect

Body-Mind Integration
  • the self itself is a system
  • interconnectivity and interdependence of body, mind, and emotions

Thinking Self

  • automatic and deliberate
  • mind is prone to systematic errors and biases
  • harbor certain beliefs that are actually unchecked assumptions or judgements

Feeling Self

  • all emotions are valid
  • acknowledge, identify, accept without judgement
  • ABC model

Emotional Regulation

  • capacity to regulate our emotions by changing thoughts or behaviors
  • healthy positivity acknowledges that difficult experiences are inevitable, but we can learn to cope with it
  • focusing on the positive requires deliberate effort