PSY20016 Social Psyc Week 3

PSY20016 Social Psyc Week 3

1. Self Concept

   • Self Schemas
   • ABC
   • Self-recognition
   • Source 1
     • Introspection
       • Not always reliable
       • Doesn't create reliable affect forecasting
   • Source 2
     • Perceptions of our own behaviour
       • Bem’s Self-Perception Theory
         • Infer internal state and develop self concept
   • Source 3
     • Influences of other people
       • Suggested self is relative
         • Use social comparison when unsure of a situation
   • Source 4
     • Autobiographical memories
       • Exceptions to this recency rule: retrieve autobiographical memories from our adolescent and young adult years (a “reminiscence bump”) and we have a tendency to remember transitional “firsts” in our development and flashbulb memories

2. Cultural self concepts

   • Individualistic Cultures
     • People in such cultures strive for personal achievement.
     • Virtues of independence, autonomy, and self-reliance
   • Collectivist Cultures
     • Derive more satisfaction from the status of the valued group.
     • Virtues of interdependence, cooperation, and social harmony
   • Function of willingness to promote oneself versus the desire to appear modest.
     • Between cultures, self-esteem consisten

3. Self-esteem

   • + self-image tend to be happy, healthy, productive, and successful.
   • - self-image tend to be more depressed, pessimistic about the future, and prone to failure.
   • Terror Management Theory
   • Gender
     • Found consistent differences in self-esteem in adolescents but not much in adulthood
   • Race
     • Minority status affects self-esteem, but the direction of the effect varies.
   • Self-Discrepency Theory
     • 1. The bigger the discrepancy between actual self and self-guide, the worse we feel
     • 2. The more important the domain of discrepancy is to our self-concept, the worse we feel
     • 3. The more we focus on the discrepancy, the worse we feel.
   • Enhance self esteem
     • Method 1: Self serving cognitions
       • Credit for success, distance from failure
       • False sense of control over random events
     • Method 2: Self-handicapping
       • Sabotage to explain failure
     • Method 3: Basking in the glory of others
       • bask in reflected glory (“BIRG”) vs cut off reflected failure” (“CORF”
     • Method 4: Downward social comparisions
       • Make social comparisons with others who are worse off

4. Self-awareness Theory

   • Certain situations allow more people to self centred
     • More self aware = compare to others = negative discrepancy and temp self esteem reduction
   • Discomfort
     • Shape up
       • Behave to stop discrepancies
     • Ship out
       • Withdraw from self awareness

5. Self-focusing Persons

   • Some characteristically more self-focused
     • Private self-consciousness: Tendency to introspect about inner thoughts and feelings
     • Public self-consciousness: Tendency to focus on outer public image

6. Self-regulation

   • Self focused attention motivate to meet ideals
   • Self control as limited resource - glucose drops

7. Ironic Processes

   • Harder we try, harder to inhibit feeling
   • ie. insomnia

8. Mechanisms of Self-enhancement

   • Tend to see +ves over -ves of descriptives of ourselves
   • More competent = more realistic
   • Implicit egotism = unconscious self-enhancement

9. Positive Illusions

   • Positive is better for mental and physical than realism - higher self-esteem
   • Higher (false) self esteem = less social skills

10. Self presentation

    • Try to shape what others think of us and what we think of ourselves.
    • Strategic
      • Efforts to shape others’ impressions in specific ways to gain influence, power, sympathy, or approval.
        • - Ingratition - Self Promotion
    • Self-verification
      • Desire to have others perceive us as we truly perceive ourselves.

11. Self-monitoring Individual Differences

    • People to regulate their behaviour according to the relevant social situation
      • High self-monitor: Sensitive to strategic self-presentation concerns
    • Low Self-Monitors: More concerned with self-verification.

12. Multifaceted Self

    • Historically: stable over time, slow to change
    • Moulded by life experiences, situations change