THE SELF IN A SOCIAL WORLD

We behave in response to way we interpret the world we have helped create.  Our thinking and feelings about ourselves affect how we interpret and remember the world and events.

SELF-CONCEPT: WHO AM I?

Self Concept: How we think of ourselves, I am _____.

Schemas are primarily used to navigate through social situations, allowing us to predict and explain the situations in which we find ourselves.

TYPES OF SCHEMAS

Self schema: Beliefs about the self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information, specific beliefs that define who we are.

Person Schemas are mental frameworks suggesting that certain traits and behaviors go together and that individuals having them represent a certain type.

Role Schemas contain information about how persons playing specific roles generally act, and what they are like.

Situational Schemas, or Scripts, relate events, or sequences of events pertaining to specific situations. They indicate what is expected to happen in a specific situation.

Self-reference effect: The tendency to process more efficiently and remember well information related to oneself.

Possible selves: Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future.

Self esteem: A person's overall self-evaluation or sense of self worth.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL SELF

THE ROLES WE PLAY

How does situation we are in affect our behavior?

SOCIAL COMPARISON

Social identity: The "we" aspect of our self-concept. The part of our answer to "Who am I?" that comes from our group memberships. Example: "I am Catholic."

When is it most salient?

Social comparison: Evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself to others.

SUCCESS AND FAILURE EXPERIENCES

What is the relationship between performance and self-esteem? Which comes first?

OTHER PEOPLE'S JUDGEMENTS

What is the relationship between culture, compliments, and our self-opinion?

SELF AND CULTURE

Individualism: The concept of giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications

Collectivism: The concept of giving priority to the goals of one's groups (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly.

SELF KNOWLEDGE

EXPLAINING OUR BEHAVIOR

Are we any good?

PREDICTING OUR BEHAVIOR

Can we do it?

PREDICTING OUR FEELINGS

Do we know how we would feel?

THE WISDOM AND DELUSIONS OF SELF ANALYSIS

When are we more accurate?

SELF AND CULTURE

How does culture affect how we think about ourselves and how we'd react if uprooted?

Main points: Our sense of self helps organize our thoughts and actions. When we process information with reference t ourselves, we remember it well (self reference effect). The elements of our self concept are the specific self schemas that guide our processing of self relevant information and the possible selves that we dream of or dread. Our self esteem is an overall sense of self worth that influences how we appraise our traits and abilities.

What determines our self-concept? There are multiple influences, including the roles we play, the comparisons we make, how we perceive other appraising us, and our experiences of success and failure. Cultures shape the self, too. Some people, especially in individualistic Western cultures, assume an independent self. Others, often in Asian and third world cultures, assume a more interdependent self. These contradicting ideas contribute to cultural differences in social behavior.

Our self-knowledge is curiously flawed. We often do not know why we behave the way we do. When powerful influences upon our behavior are not so conspicuous that any observer could spot them, we, too, can miss them.

PERCIEVED SELF-CONTROL

SELF-EFFICACY

Self efficacy: A sense that one is competent and effective.

How is that distinguished from self-esteem?

LOCUS OF CONTROL

Locus of control: The extent to which people perceive their lives as internally controllable by their own efforts and actions (determined by themselves) or externally controlled by chance or outside forces (determined by the world or powerful others).

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS VERSUS SELF-DETERMINATION

Learned helplessness: The hopelessness and resignation learned when a human or animal perceives no control over repeated bad events.

Main points: Several lines of research show the benefits of a sense of efficacy and feelings of control. People who believe in their own competence and effectiveness, and who have an internal locus of control, cope better and achieve more than do those who have learned a helpless, pessimistic outlook.

SELF-SERVING BIAS

Self serving bias: The tendency to perceive oneself favorably.

EXPLANATIONS FOR POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EVENTS

Why do we succeed? Why do others? What about failure?

Why do we have such tendencies?

CAN WE ALL BE BETTER THAN AVERAGE?

UNREALISTIC OPTIMISM

FALSE CONSENSUS AND UNIQUENESS

False consensus effect: The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one's opinions and one's undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors.

Why does it happen?

False uniqueness: The tendency to underestimate the commonality of one's abilities and one's desirable or successful behaviors.

OTHER SELF SERVING TENDENCIES

SELF ETEEM MOTIVATION

How does the importance of the activity, the closeness to a competitor, and the outcome of a competition affect our sense of self?

REFLECTIONS ON SELF-EFFICACY ADN SELF-SERVING BIAS

How is self-esteem related to self-serving bias?

THE SELF-SERVING BIAS AS ADAPTIVE

Depressive realism: The tendency for depressed people to describe themselves more accurately than non-depressed people describe themselves.

THE SELF-SERVING BIAS AS NON-ADAPTIVE

Main points: Contrary to the presumption that most people suffer form low self esteem or feelings of inferiority, researchers consistently find that most people exhibit a self serving bias. In experiments and in everyday life, we often blame failures on the situations while taking credit for successes. We typically rate ourselves as better than average on subjective, desirable traits and abilities. Believing in ourselves, we exhibit unrealistic optimism about our futures. And we overestimate the commonality of our opinions and foibles (false consensus) while underestimating the commonality of our abilities and virtues (false uniqueness). Such perceptions arise partly from a motive to maintain and enhance self esteem, a motive that protects people from depression by contributes to misjudgements and group conflict.

SELF PRESENATION

We want others to feel good about us, how do we do it?

FALSE MODESTY

Why do we put ourselves down?

SELF HANDICAPPING

Self handicapping: Protecting one's self-image by creating a handy excuse of for failure.

Why do we do it?

What are the drawbacks?

IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT

Self presentation: The act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one's ideals.

Self monitoring: Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one's performance to create the desired impression.

Main points: As social animals, we adjust our words and actions to suit our audiences. To varying degrees, we self monitor; we note our performance and adjust it to create a desired impression. Such impression management tactics explain examples of false modesty, in which people put themselves down, extol future competitors, or publicly credit others when privately they credit themselves. Sometimes people will even self handicap with self defeating behaviors that protect self esteem by providing excuses for failure.