PPE3003 Exam 5 The Self The self a broad term that encompasses the parts of human behavior that require or are altered by self reflection Self concept o Basis for self understanding o Answer to the question Who am I Development of self concept Become able to recognize themselves Basic self awareness of own body Recognize own gender and age Self concept expands to include family Self concept based on developing abilities o Infant o Ages 2 3 o Ages 3 4 o Ages 5 6 Social comparison i e What do I do What do others do Private self concept learn to keep secrets and lie Theory of mind understanding that others may have different perspectives and want different things than you do Self complexity o Extent to which self schemas are differentiated and compartmentalized Basic straightforward description of self low self complexity Complex description of self high self complexity Self discrepancy theory o Actual self what you are today o Ideal self what you want to be driven by goals and desires Paying attention to opportunities Promotion focus seek positive outcome Achievement pleasure not achieving ideal self sadness depression o Ought self what you think others want you to be Paying attention to avoiding harm shame punishment etc Prevention focus avoid negative outcome Achievement relief not achieving ought self anxiety guilt Self esteem o How you feel about yourself o Self esteem is NOT Your beliefs about how capable you are Necessarily about a reflection of reality Various kinds of self esteem o State vs Trait 1 PPE3003 Exam 5 State self esteem how a person feels about themselves at a particular moment in time ex Receiving a bad grade receiving a compliment Trait self esteem how a person feels about themselves generally o Global vs Specific Global how you feel about yourself in general across domains Specific how you feel about yourself in a specific domain Self esteem and positive life outcomes o People with higher self esteem Are happier Are less depressed Have more friends Are more satisfied with their relationships Worry less about being rejected Work harder at difficult tasks o Norwegian study longitudinal study Norwegian 3rd and 6th graders A year later measure grades measure self esteem Time 1 measure grades measure self esteem Findings initial grades predict self esteem all along Good grades cause higher self esteem as opposed to self esteem causing better grades o Three potential issues with concluding that increasing a person s self esteem would lead to positive life outcomes Issue 1 self report Issue 2 causality Issue 3 very few people actually have low self esteem usually people who are low are average in scoring What does having high self esteem really predict o Initiative o Trying again after failure o Don t pay attention to one specific failure attribute it to their whole lives low self esteem global attributions o Less likely to have eating disorders o Having sex at an earlier age Three theories of self esteem o Terror Management Theory fear of death Awareness of our own mortality existential anguish We cope with this through believing that we are individuals of value in a culture that will continue after we die Walk through cemetery thoughts of death increase in anxiety Self esteem is A way for us to cope with the fact of our own mortality 2 PPE3003 Exam 5 o Sociometer Theory We have a fundamental need to belong relationships are a major cause of anxiety Self esteem measures your belongingness Self esteem is A gauge of how well you are getting along with others o Self determination Theory Three needs Competence feeling like you are effectively able to deal with the environment Relatedness being connected to others Autonomy being able to be the causal agent in your life ex Choose how you spend your time who you spend it with make your own decisions etc A reflection of the extent to which we feel competent related Self esteem is Hazel Markus study o Self relevant information vs non self relevant information o Found that people process information that is especially relevant to their self schemas in highly efficient ways o Classified college students as strong independence schema strong dependence schema or aschematic having neither o Placed adjectives on screen that were either schema relevant o Dependence showed faster reaction times in response to dependent dependence or independence or schema irrelevant creativity and student pressed one of two buttons ME or NOT ME adjectives than they did to schema inconsistent adjectives and schema irrelevant adjectives reaction times to independent adjectives and independent words schematics showed similar pattern of results with faster did not differ at all in their processing times for dependent o Independent o Aschematics Laura King studies o Asked respondents to consider the what might have been in their own lives had things turned out differently than they did o Found that current happiness tends to be associated with the extent to which people are able to let go of their lost possible selves and invest energy in their current goals for the future o Tendency to articulate an elaborate and coherent study about what might have been tends to lead to increases in maturity down the road o Individuals who articulated detailed accounts of lost possible selves at time 1 tended to show significant increases in ego development two years later Not 3 only were these people mature to begin with but they became even more mature over time o Central message a good life involves both happiness and psychological PPE3003 Exam 5 maturity Not achieving ideal self depression Not achieving ought self anxiety Personality and Social Interaction Person situation debate o Correlations between personality traits and assorted behaviors are modest o Are traits or situations better predictors of behavior Relative stability of traits Relative flexibility of specific behaviors r 30 o Difficult to predict specific behavior from personality o Personality predicts behavior across situations Aggregation the principle in psychological measurement that urges an investigator to collect many different samples of the same behavior across many different situations and or over time in order to obtain a reliable estimate of personality and behavioral trends Three ways that personality affects social interactions o Selection Our personality influences the situations and people we select Personality characteristics of others influence whether we select them as interaction
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