PBSI 315 Exam 2

What is self-concept?

• What you understand about yourself

• It forms the answer to "who am I"

• The self-concept is multifaced

William James (basically founder of psychology)

• Talks about the self, and what it means to be the self

  • Anything you can attach yourself to (Many things)

    • Possessions, Clothes, Hobbies

How many selves?

• According to many theorists, you have many selves.

• Suggests any given moment the self is relatively malleable

• Working Memory:

  • Can only hold so many things at one given time

  • 5-7 items at a given time

• Working Self Concept:

  • Because of its sheer volume, only a small section about the self can be cognitively activated at any given point in time

• What influences working self concept?

  • Social Contact, success or failure, motivation, emotions

Self-Knowledge:

• Sometimes we feel we know who we are better than others

• What influences this?

  • How you perceive a situation, personal experience, past events, how you perceive yourself.

• What would you do if you wanted to understand who you really are?

  • Give them your experiences and show them you have gone through similar circumstances, take a step back and look back at yourself at when you were younger and how much you have grown (take a step back)

Self-Discrepancy:

• Actual Self: Represents what you think you are really like

• Idea Self: Represents what you could be when you are at your best

• Ought Self: Represents what you should be, as opposed to what you would like to be

Self Guides:

• Ought and Ideal selves represent self guides

• Standards one uses to organize info and motivate behavior

  • The ideal and ought selves both represent hypothetical ideals

  • When the ideal and ought selves differ from your actual self emotional consequences are experienced.

    • Ex: Anxiety, Depression, feeling like you arent living up to your full potential

Self Esteem:

• Overall opinion of our self

• What determines our level of self-esteem?

  • How much you are valued, social relationships, comparison to others, personal goals and accomplishments

• 2 components of Self Esteem:

  • Affective (feeling)

  • Cognitive (judgement)

• Is self-esteem related to aggression?

  • Low SE and aggression?

  • High SE and aggression?

    • Inflated High Self Esteem more prone to aggression

    • Why?

      • Unstable/High so you feel more hurt and disrespected leading to aggression as feel ego is threatened

Narcissism:

• Inflated self-esteem

• Prone to

• Do we want self-esteem?

• A fundamental need?

• People argue that we often want to enhance or maintain high self-esteem

  • Cultural Differences?

  • Individual Differences?

    • Some people might feel validated if others view them as high self-esteem. Some people might want to be viewed as low self-esteem as they want to get more attention and reassurance.

How do we:

• Maintain self-esteem

• Enhance self-esteem

Social Comparison:

• Downward Social Comparison

  • Compares oneself to people or groups that are worse off than you (looking downwards)

    • Ex: You got a C on exam but you look at other classmates and see they all got D so now you feel better temporarily of self-importance.

    • Ex: You spend a lot of money on school supplies and you feel bad but at least it isn't drugs and alcohol so it is benefiting you.

• Upward Social Comparison

  • Compare oneself to people or groups that are better off than you (looking upwards)

  • You could be doing better than how you are now

    • You get into your dream graduate school but your roommate gets into the best one in the country so you feel bad

• Self-serving bias

  • Tendency to perceive oneself favorably

    • Self-serving = Serves your needs

    • Ex: Everyone at track meet looking at people shoes and thinking "I passed the exam cause I'm smart, I failed the exam cause it was too hard"

• Examples of Self Serving Bias:

  • Unrealistic Optimism

    • Huge disconnect to how people compare themselves to others, think things that happen to other can't happen to them

    • "Sure 50% of marriages end in divorce, but there is no chance that mine will"

  • False Consensus Effect

    • Tendency to overestimate the commonality of undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors

    • Everybody is doing it so its fine

  • False Uniqueness Effect

    • Tendency to underestimate the commonality of one's ability and one's desirable or successful behaviors

    • I'm Special, I drive way better than these people, I eat the less junk food out of all my friends.

• Self Knowledge

  • Attributing positive outcomes to oneself and negative to other factors

    • I won UNO cause of my skills, I lost UNO cause I got unlucky and got bad cards

• Better than average effect

  • Only 50% only above average of many items such as being friendlier, live longer, etc

• Self-handicapping

  • Creating obstacles to success so that potential failure can be blamed on external factors

    • Ex: Procrastinating studying so when fail exam you blame it on that

• Berglas and Jones, 1978

  • Participants who were told they were going to have difficulty with a test preferred to take a performance reducing drug rather than a performance enhancing drug (actually placebo)

    • If they fail, they blame the drug

    • If they pass, they did so in spite of the drug (give credit to themselves, not to the drug)

• Basking in reflected glory (BIRG)

  • Associating oneself with successful offers and adopting their success as your own

    • You were captain in high school for track team and now that you are gone they are successful and you feel that same success as your own.

    • A&M wins the football game so the next game you wear all of A&M gear, WE WON

      • If they were to lose, THEY LOST NOT ME, less gear worn

    • Cialdini et al, 1976

      • Students more likely to wear school apparel

      • "We" won the game vs "They" lost it

The Accessibility of Information:

• The human memory system stores a vast amount of information

• Cognitive accessibility refers to:

  • The activation potential of available knowledge

Priming and Accessibility:

• Priming refers to making concepts temporarily (or chronically) accessible. (Can be subtle)

  • You are walking and hear flowing water and think "damn I need to pee"

• What does priming do to how we think, act, and feel?

  • Ex: walking through HEB and smelling bread that grandma would make and feeling happy and motivate you to call grandma

• Prime concepts associated with old age make people…

  • Makes people change behavior and attitude

• Prime associated with alcohol make people…

  • Might make them feel more aggressive

• Prime associated with Religion make people…

  • Might make their life feel more meaningful

How do we process information???

• Like a computer?

• Rational beings?

Goal: Conserving Mental Effort

• Social World is complex and full of information

• Human mental capacity is limited

  • Simplification Strategies:

  • Heuristics

  • Confirmation Bias

  • Magical Thinking

Heuristics:

• Rules of thumb to simplify judgements (mental shortcuts)

• Ignore actual probabilities

  • Ex: You see a snake, don’t go a mess with it (Assuming snakes are dangerous)

Representative Heuristic:

• Tendency to judge the frequency of likelihood of an event by the extent that it resembles a typical case.

  • Ex: What's the likelihood of the coin landing HHHH or HTTH

  • Which one is more likely?

  • Most people said HTTH is ore likely as it looks more random

  • Each flip is 50/50 so both are equally possible of happening

  • Ex: Ted Bundy didn’t look like the average serial killer.

Practice Question Representative Heuristic:

Shelly, who is 31, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in

philosophy in college. As a student she was deeply concerned with

discrimination and other social issues, and she participated in antinuclear

demonstrations.

A. Shelly is a mid-level manager at a Restaurant Chain

B. Shelly is a writer for the New York Times.

C. Shelly is the head of a feminist movement

D. Shelly is a mid-level manager and the head of a feminist movement

Availability Heuristic:

• Basic Judgements on ease with which examples come to mind

• The easier something comes to mind, the more frequent/important/true it seems to be

  • Ex: Shark attacks at SPI (3 people attacked), we hear about it everywhere, more likely for us to think it will happen to us. Less likely to go to beach.

  • Participants asked to list either 3 or 10 smart things they did that week

  • Group that wrote down 3 things rated themselves as more smart than 10 as it is easier to think of 3 things quicker than 10.

• What influences Availability:

  • Personal importance, Relevancy, When it occurred, How it was consumed

Confirmation Bias:

• Tendency to…

  • Pay attention to information that confirms one's beliefs

  • Distort, mislabel, or ignore info that contradicts beliefs

Illusory Correlations:

• Believing two (or more) variables are related when, in fact, no such relationship exists

• Typically involves OVERSTIMATING extent of relationship

  • Ex: Money and Happiness

  • Whenever you have money, you spend, and buy stuff to make you happy

  • However to get that money you have to work 40 hours a week so after a while you realize money isn't making you happy.

Self-fulfilling prophecy:

• A belief or prediction that influences behavior in ways that help the belief come true.

  • Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968

  • Teachers were led to believe half the kids were gifted (super smart) and some not. This was not true

  • Teachers behaved in ways that helped confirm their (false) beliefs and students reacted to teachers' behaviors.

    • Kids labeled as gifted performed better than non gifted.

    • (Might be because the more gifted kids were upheld to higher expectations, therefore encouraging them to learn more)

  • Marijuana Example:

  • Gave surveys to students and parents over drug use, asking both if they used maryjane and if the parents believed they smoked maryjane.

    • If the parents believed the kid smoked maryjane, the kids were more likely in the future to smoke it.

How to convey Prestige(Element of Power)/Dominance?

• Nonverbal cues such as…

  • Expansive Body

    • Allows you to show your body (strength) and be perceived as more powerful

  • Smile

    • Allows you to feel more trustworthy

  • Head up

    • Confidence, Non threatening, Vulnerable

Magical Thinking:

• Sympathetic Magic

  • The formation of simple associations between objects

    • Law of contagion:

      • States that objects that have come into contact can exchange essences

      • Ex: 2 jackets, one that sucks but belonged to albert einstein, one that’s warm but belonged to Hitler, believed wearing the albert einstein one would be better when taking exam.

    • Law of similarity:

      • States that objects resemble each other share fundamental properties

      • Ex: Voodoo doll resembles person you don’t like so you poke it and kick it believing you are hurting the person.

We are meaning markers:

• We automatically make sense out of (most) experiences

Zeigarnik Effect:

• Remember "incomplete" tasks more than completed tasks

  • Ruminate about them more

  • A need for us to make sense out of why it happened

  • Ex: Power goes out and you cant finish movie so you are up all night just thinking about it

• As humans, we like having prediction and control

Attributions:

• Help us make sense out of experience

  • Help us make sense of something fast and with minimal effort.

• Linking an instance of behavior to a cause

• "Casual" attributions

  • (This person) did this, because of (this).

2 broad causes of behavior:

• Dispositional Causes: (Specifics about a person)

  • Personality

  • Traits

  • Individual Characteristics

• Situational Causes:

  • Environment

  • Constraints

  • Circumstances

  • Social roles

Ex: Someone breaks up with you

• Dispositional Causes:

  • Its your fault, you are too ugly and mean

• Situational Causes:

  • College was too stressful so she needs to focus

Biases in attribution process:

• Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

• Actor-Observer Effect

• Self-serving bias

Fundamental Attribution Error:

• Tendency to attribute others' behavior to DISPOSITIONAL factors and to undervalue the role of SITUATIONAL factors.

  • Ex: Someone cuts you off, you just think what a jerk instead of realizing they might be in an emergency or going to the hospital.

  • Dispositional: What a Jerk, You are so selfish!

  • Situational: They need to go to hospital, In a rush, New to the area

• Consequences of FAE:

  • Cost: Distorts perception of why things happen

  • Benefit: Cognitive shortcut (saves mental energy)

The Actor-Observer Effect:

• Actors and observers give different explanations for the same events

  • Observers tend to make dispositional attributions for actor's behavior

  • Actors tend to make situational attributions for own behavior

• Observer: Overestimate Disposition, Underestimate Situation

• Actor: Underestimate Disposition, Overestimate Situation

  • Ex: You don’t hold the door for someone

  • Observer: What an asshole he's probably rude

  • Actor: I'm so far I don’t want to make it awkward

Self-serving Bias:

• Tendency to take personal credit for success and make excuses (external attributions) for failure

Recap: Distinguishing among the biases:

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE):

• explaining OTHERS’ behavior

• attribute to disposition

Actor-Observer Effect (AOE):

• attribution depends on your perspective

Self-Serving Bias (SSB):

• Explaining OWN behavior

• attribution depends on whether behavior has positive or negative consequences

Attitudes:

• Favorable or unfavorable evaluations of something or someone

  • Ex: Attitude predicting behavior

  • When voting, if someone has a positive attitude toward a specific person, they will probably vote for them

Why are attitudes important?

• Do attitudes influence behavior?

  • Ex: If you suck at volleyball but you have good attitude and keep trying you may get better.

• What is the relationship between attitudes and behavior? Positive/Negative?

Do attitudes determine behavior?

• Lapierre traveled w/Chinese couple in 1930s

• Question: Would people express prejudice?

  • Called hotels and asked if his Chinese friends can go and stay at the hotels, when he want to the same hotel in person and asked they said yes they can stay.

  • Showed peoples attitudes do not always predict behavior.

Self-Justification:

• What is self-justification?

  • The desire we have to justify our actions, beliefs and feelings.

  • Self justification and rumors?

    • Ex: Earthquake happened in India and people in area were survey, people that lived farther away from the earthquake were more convinced that the earthquake is going to come back and cause more damage (No justification for fear as opposed to those that lived closer that were at a real threat).

The theory of cognitive dissonance:

• Relevant Cognitions/Behaviors

  • Consonant: Behaving in ways that align with feelings

  • Dissonant: Behaving in ways that don’t align with feelings

• Dissonance:

  • Aversive drive state

  • Ex: You go to a restaurant but don’t order your favorite thing even though you know you will like it and it will make you super happy.

    • A state of tension that occurs whenever an individual simultaneously holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent.

    • Also dissonance is created if a behavior is inconsistent with a preexisting attitude.

    • Tension is unpleasant and wea re motivated to reduce it by:

• Cognitive Dissonance:

  • Changing our behavior

  • Justifying our actions, feelings, or beliefs

• Examples:

  • You have an old friends from elementary that is a nerd, you start hanging with popular kids and they start making fun of your friend.

    • You don't want to see your friend hurt, however you don’t want to be seen as a nerd and and want to be cool.

    • What can you do to reduce dissonance?

      • Stand up for your friend so you wont feel guilty

      • Convince yourself that you don’t need to protect friend

• Motivated Reasoning:

  • Tendency to use reasoning not to justify-both to ourselves and others-the conclusion we prefer, or have already made

• Self-Integrity:

  • Remaining true to your core values

  • Requires self-knowledge

• How to live life with more integrity?

  • Owning up to mistakes

  • Learning from faults and failures

Dissonant Situations:

• Difficult decisions

  • Difficult decisions cause to to choose between 2 good things (Ex: Going out to party or Going out with a girl you like)

    • Consonant: Positive aspects are chosen and negative aspects are rejected

    • Dissonant: Negative aspects are chosen and Positive aspects are rejected

• Effort Justification

  • Suffering for something can cause use to find it more desirable

  • Fact that an activity is unpleasant is dissonant with engaging in the activity

  • Dissonance should be greater the more unpleasant the activity

  • Exaggerating the attractiveness of the outcome can reduce the dissonance

    • Adding a consonant cognition

• Insufficient Justification

  • Induced Compliance

• Brehm (1956)

  • Had study where college aged students came into room and did tasks. Gift was given and they had to rank how much they liked it.

    • Easy decision (1 valued high, 1 valued low): Pick an appliance and choose between the one you like and the one you don’t.

    • Difficult Decision (2 equally valued): Pick an appliance and choose between two that you kind of like

    • Control: Gift, receive an appliance and it was ranked

      • To reduce dissonance, they focused on positive things they chose and looked down upon the other that they didn’t choose.

• Aronson and Mills (1959)

  • Women participate in "Psyc of Sex" discussion group

  • Manipulated difficulty of group

    • Control: Just listen to group discussion

    • Mild: Read erotic words to experimenter

    • Severe: Read erotic story to experimenter

      •  Produces most dissonance as they probably don’t want to read the story but they really wanted to join the group.

      • The most severe group rated the group as more enjoyable than the others. Attitudes changed based off the level of dissonance.

Induced Compliance:

• Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959

  • Perform boring, repetitive tadk

  • Lie to someone about it

  • IV: Paid $1 or $20

  • DV: Did you like task?

    • After tasks, given another task to get people to join the study and were told they would get paid if they got someone else. They were then asked to rate the task after they got their money

• Results:

  • Those who were paid $1, rated the task as better than those who got $20 as those who got paid $1 didn’t have any justification for their actions as that is a small mount basically nothing. NO external justification , so they had to change their internal justification by changing their attitude on the task and now rated it as higher.

     

 __________

  Readings

Thursday, February 27, 2025

2:03 PM

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Developed by Leon Festinger, the theory explains how individuals experience discomfort (dissonance) when they hold conflicting cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes).

• Motivation to Reduce Dissonance: Just like hunger compels people to eat, dissonance motivates them to restore consistency between their cognitions.

Key Concepts

1. Definition of Dissonance:

   • Occurs when there is inconsistency between beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.

   • Example: A person who believes in healthy eating but regularly consumes junk food may experience dissonance.

2. Dissonance Reduction Strategies:

   • Change beliefs: Modifying one’s existing attitudes or beliefs.

   • Change behavior: Adjusting actions to align with attitudes.

   • Justify behavior: Finding external explanations or creating new justifications.

3. Post-Decision Dissonance:

   • Happens when individuals must choose between two similarly attractive options.

   • Example: High school girls in an experiment rated music records. After choosing one, they increased their preference for the chosen record and decreased it for the rejected one.

   • "Spreading of alternatives": Enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen option while devaluing the rejected option.

Experimental Evidence

1. Children's Toy Experiment:

   • When given two equally attractive toys and asked to choose, children later rated the selected toy as more desirable.

   • Shows justification of choice: People convince themselves they made the best decision.

2. Adults’ Gift Experiment:

   • Adults given two equally desirable gifts and allowed to choose later rated the selected gift as more attractive.

   • Demonstrates attitude adjustment to reduce regret.

3. Temptation and Attitude Change:

   • Study with children showed that mild punishment leads to attitude change (devaluing a forbidden toy), while severe punishment does not.

   • Implication: If people voluntarily refrain from an action with little external justification, they are more likely to change their attitudes.

Applications of Cognitive Dissonance

1. Persuasion & Behavior Change:

   • Encouraging voluntary commitment (e.g., public declarations of quitting smoking) increases the likelihood of long-term behavior change.

2. Marketing & Consumer Behavior:

   • Post-purchase rationalization: Consumers justify expensive purchases by emphasizing benefits.

3. Social & Political Attitudes:

   • People defend choices (e.g., voting decisions) by emphasizing positives of their choice and negatives of the alternative.

4. Workplace & Personal Development:

   • Employees justify working in demanding jobs by focusing on intrinsic rewards.

_____________________________

Social Cognition and Attitudes: Key Concepts

Social cognition examines how people perceive, think about, and make judgments regarding their social world. It involves heuristics, social prediction, affective influences on judgment, and explicit and implicit attitudes.

1. Simplifying Our Social World

• Schemas: Mental models that help us organize and interpret information efficiently.

  • Types:

    • Person schemas (stereotypes about individuals)

    • Self-schemas (beliefs about ourselves)

    • Event schemas/scripts (expected behaviors in given situations)

  • Example: A restaurant script includes waiting to be seated, ordering from a menu, and paying at the end.

• Heuristics: Mental shortcuts that simplify decision-making.

  • Representativeness heuristic: Judging category membership based on similarity to a prototype.

  • Availability heuristic: Estimating the likelihood of an event based on how easily examples come to mind.

  • Example: People overestimate the risk of plane crashes because they are highly publicized.

2. Making Predictions About the Social World

• Thin-Slice Judgments: People can accurately assess others' emotions, personality, and future behavior based on minimal information (e.g., a short video clip of a teacher can predict student evaluations).

• Self-Predictions: While we know a lot about ourselves, our predictions can still be flawed.

  • Planning fallacy: Tendency to underestimate how long tasks take.

  • Affective forecasting: Predicting future emotions; people overestimate intensity and duration of emotions (e.g., overestimating happiness from winning the lottery).

  • Impact bias: Overestimating the strength of emotions after events.

  • Durability bias: Overestimating how long emotions will last, especially negative ones.

3. Hot Cognition: Influence of Motivation, Mood, and Desires

• Hot cognition: Decisions influenced by emotions and motivations.

• Directional goals: We tend to favor information that supports what we want to believe.

• Motivated skepticism: Dismissing strong evidence when it contradicts our beliefs (e.g., disbelieving a negative health diagnosis).

• Need for closure: The desire to reach a quick, definitive conclusion; leads to bias in decision-making.

• Mood-congruent memory: We recall memories that match our current mood (e.g., remembering past sadness when feeling down).

• Misattribution of mood: External factors (e.g., weather) can influence self-reported life satisfaction.

4. Automaticity: Unconscious Influences on Behavior

• Automatic processes: Behaviors that occur without intentional control (e.g., driving, fear responses).

• The Chameleon Effect: People unconsciously mimic others’ behaviors, increasing social bonding.

• Priming: Exposure to certain concepts influences subsequent thoughts and behaviors.

  • Example: Exposure to words associated with a stereotype (e.g., "basketball" for Black individuals) can activate implicit biases.

• Stereotypes: Generalized beliefs about a group that can unconsciously shape judgments and actions.

5. Attitudes and Attitude Measurement

• Attitudes: Evaluations of people, objects, or ideas, which can be positive or negative.

  • Explicit attitudes: Conscious, self-reported attitudes.

  • Implicit attitudes: Unconscious attitudes that influence behavior.

• Measurement of Attitudes:

  • Explicit measures: Self-report surveys, Likert scales (e.g., strongly agree to strongly disagree).

  • Implicit measures: Capture unconscious biases through reaction times.

    • Implicit Association Test (IAT): Measures speed of pairing concepts with positive/negative attributes.

    • Evaluative priming task: Measures reaction times in labeling attitude objects.

• Implicit attitudes and behavior:

  • Implicit biases can affect decision-making, such as racial bias influencing policing decisions.

Key Takeaways

• Social cognition helps us efficiently process vast amounts of information but can lead to biases.

• People rely on heuristics and schemas to navigate their social world.

• Predictions about the future are often flawed due to cognitive biases like impact and durability bias.

• Emotions, motivations, and external influences shape decision-making, often unconsciously.

• Attitudes influence behavior, with implicit attitudes shaping responses without conscious awareness.

__________

The Self and Identity: Key Concepts

Understanding the self is essential in social psychology. The self is both the knower (I) and the known (Me). Psychologists conceptualize the self in three perspectives: the social actor, the motivated agent, and the autobiographical author.

1. The Self as a Social Actor

• Shakespeare’s Metaphor: "All the world’s a stage"—people perform roles and display traits in social life.

• Evolutionary Perspective: Humans evolved to live in groups, making social acceptance and status critical for survival.

• Emergence of the Social Self:

  • Around 18 months, children recognize themselves in mirrors.

  • By age 2, they use self-referential words ("me," "mine").

  • Social emotions like shame, guilt, and pride emerge, indicating awareness of social evaluation.

• Development of Traits and Roles:

  • Young children define themselves by simple traits (e.g., “I’m nice”).

  • By late childhood, personality traits align with the Big Five Traits:

    1. Extraversion (outgoing vs. reserved)

    2. Neuroticism (emotionally stable vs. anxious)

    3. Agreeableness (kind vs. uncooperative)

    4. Conscientiousness (organized vs. careless)

    5. Openness to Experience (creative vs. traditional)

  • Social roles also shape identity (e.g., "I am a student").

• Changing the Social Self:

  • People attempt to change traits but find it difficult.

  • Changing social roles (e.g., taking on leadership) is often more effective.

2. The Self as a Motivated Agent

• Agency Defined: The ability to act with purpose and direction.

• Theory of Mind (age ~4): Understanding that people’s actions are driven by desires and goals.

• Age 5-to-7 Shift: Children become more planful and intentional in pursuing goals.

• Self-Esteem and Goal Achievement:

  • Success in achieving personal goals boosts self-esteem.

  • Adolescents begin exploring values and life goals (identity formation).

• Identity Formation (Erikson’s Theory):

  • Adolescents and young adults explore and commit to values, vocations, and relationships.

  • Identity development continues into adulthood as people adjust goals and priorities.

3. The Self as an Autobiographical Author

• Narrative Identity: Creating a life story that connects the past, present, and future.

• Emergence of Life Stories:

  • By age 5 or 6, children tell simple personal stories.

  • In adolescence, people develop autobiographical reasoning—linking life events to a broader identity.

• Culture and Narrative Identity:

  • Different cultures emphasize different story structures.

  • In the U.S., a common narrative is redemption (overcoming hardship).

  • McAdams’ Research: Americans who tell redemptive life stories often have higher well-being.

• Changing the Self Through Storytelling:

  • Therapy and personal reflection can reshape life stories.

  • Religious conversion, career changes, and other turning points often involve reframing one’s story.

Key Takeaways

• The self develops in layers: first as a social actor, then as a motivated agent, and finally as an autobiographical author.

• Social life shapes identity, but people also actively construct their self-concept.

• Changing one’s social role or life story is often easier than changing deep-seated traits.

• Culture strongly influences how people define and narrate their identities.

__________

Social Comparison Theory

• Developed by Leon Festinger (1954): People compare themselves to others to evaluate their abilities and opinions.

• Two types of comparisons:

  1. Opinion-based comparisons: People compare their opinions to others to establish social norms.

  2. Performance-based comparisons: People assess their abilities by comparing themselves to others.

Factors Affecting Social Comparison

1. Relevance:

   • People compare themselves in areas important to their self-concept.

   • Example: A student cares more about comparing grades than sports if academics are more important to them.

2. Similarity:

   • Comparisons are made with people of similar backgrounds or abilities.

   • Example: A casual tennis player compares themselves to another casual player, not a professional.

3. Direction of Comparison:

   • Upward Comparison: Comparing to someone better.

     • Pros: Can inspire improvement and motivation.

     • Cons: Can harm self-esteem.

   • Downward Comparison: Comparing to someone worse.

     • Pros: Boosts self-esteem (self-enhancement effect).

     • Cons: Can lead to feelings of superiority or complacency.

Consequences of Social Comparison

• Self-esteem fluctuations: Doing well compared to others boosts self-esteem, while doing poorly lowers it.

• Emotional effects:

  • Regret: Comparing past decisions with better alternatives.

  • Envy: Wanting what others have.

  • Schadenfreude: Taking pleasure in others' failures.

• Behavioral effects:

  • Increased competition: Trying harder to outperform others.

  • Sabotage or hostility: May occur when self-esteem is threatened.

Self-Evaluation Maintenance (SEM) Model (Tesser, 1988)

• People manage self-evaluation by adjusting their comparisons and relationships.

• Key factors:

  1. Relevance: If an area is important, comparisons threaten self-esteem.

  2. Closeness: Comparing to a close friend can be more impactful.

  3. Performance Gap: Large performance gaps can lead to distancing from the person or reducing the importance of the ability.

Situational Factors Affecting Social Comparison

1. Number of Competitors (N-Effect):

   • As the number of competitors increases, motivation decreases.

   • Example: SAT scores tend to be lower in larger test centers.

2. Local Dominance Effect:

   • People focus on nearby comparisons rather than broader statistics.

   • Example: A student may feel smart if they outperform friends, even if they’re below the national average.

3. Proximity to a Standard:

   • People compete harder when they are close to an important benchmark.

   • Example: Students ranked #2 and #3 in a class are more competitive than students ranked #200 and #201.

4. Social Category Lines:

   • Comparisons across social groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity) increase competition and bias.

   • Example: Boys vs. girls voting on prom music choice.

Related Phenomena

1. Frog Pond Effect:

   • People feel better being a big fish in a small pond.

   • Example: A top student at a small school may feel more confident than an average student at an Ivy League university.

2. Dunning-Kruger Effect:

   • Incompetent people overestimate their abilities, while competent people underestimate themselves.

   • Example: A failing student might think they did well on a test, while a top student might doubt their performance.

Key Takeaways

• Social comparison is unavoidable and affects emotions, motivation, and self-esteem.

• People adjust comparisons to maintain positive self-evaluations.

• Situational and individual factors determine whether comparison motivates or discourages.

• Recognizing biases like the Frog Pond Effect and Dunning-Kruger Effect can help people interpret comparisons more accurately.