The Self in a Social World

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The Self in a Social World

• Chapter 2

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Outline of Todays Lecture

• Self-Concept Who am I?
• Evaluating Ourselves
• Self-serving Bias
• Self-Presentation

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Class Exercise

• On a sheet of paper, write out and complete the
  following sentence stem 5 times
• I am ______________________

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Self-Concept Who am I?

• Self-concept A persons answers to the question,
  Who am I?
• Self-schema Beliefs about self that organize and
  guide the processing of self-relevant information

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Self-Concept Who am I?

• Self-reference effect The tendency to process
  efficiently and remember well information related
  to oneself

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Self-Concept Who am I?

• Basic fact of life Our sense of self is at the
  centre of our worlds
• Naïve realism Tendency to use ourselves as a
  standard for what is normal and right
• E.g., Anyone who drives slower than me is an
  idiot and anyone who drives faster than me is a
  maniac

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Self-Concept Who am I?

• Spotlight effect
• People have the tendency to overestimate how much
  their behavior is noticed by others

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Self-Concept Who am I?

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

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Self-Concept Who am I?

• Self-esteem A persons overall self-evaluation
  or sense of self-worth

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Video

• The Self

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Evaluating Ourselves

• Self-knowledge
• Locus of control
• Learned helplessness versus self-determination

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Self-Knowledge

• Social Comparison
• Evaluating ones abilities and opinions by
  comparing oneself to others

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Self-Knowledge

• Temporal comparison
• A comparison between how the self is viewed now
  and how the self was viewed in the past or how
  the self is expected to be viewed in the future

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Temporal Comparison Study
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Self-Knowledge

• Social identity The we aspect of our
  self-concept. The part of the answer to Who am
  I? that comes from our group memberships.
  Examples I am Canadian, I am a woman.

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Self-Knowledge

• When people think highly of us, it helps us think
  highly of ourselves
• Looking-glass self
• We use others as a mirror for perceiving
  ourselves

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Locus of Control

• The extent to which people perceive outcomes as
  internally controlled by their own efforts and
  actions or as externally controlled by chance or
  outside forces
• Sample Items for Locus of Control Scale
• Do you believe that most problems will solve
  themselves if you just don't fool with them?
• Do you believe that if somebody studies hard
  enough he or she can pass any subject?
• Do you believe that when bad things are going to
  happen they just are going to happen no matter
  what you try to do to stop them?
• Do you think that hard work or luck wins
  basketball games?

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Learned Helplessness versus Self-Determination

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

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Self-Serving Bias

• The tendency to perceive oneself favourably

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Self-Serving Bias

• Self-serving bias in marriage
• When married people estimate how much of the
  housework each partner routinely did, they both
  think they did a greater proportion than their
  spouse thinks he or she did.
• E.g., Wife thinks she vacuums 75 of the time and
  that her husband vacuums 25 of the time.
  Husband thinks he vacuums 50 of the time and
  that his wife vacuums 50 of the time

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Self-Serving Bias

• On nearly any dimension, most people see
  themselves as better than average

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Self-Serving Bias

• Unrealistic optimism
• People think they will fare better in the future
  than their peers

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Self-Serving Bias

• False consensus effect
• The tendency to overestimate the commonality of
  ones opinions and ones undesirable or
  unsuccessful behaviours

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Self-Serving Bias

• False uniqueness effect
• The tendency to underestimate the commonality of
  ones abilities and ones desirable or successful
  behaviours

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Self-Serving Bias

• Other self-serving tendencies
• The more favourably we perceive ourselves on some
  dimension, the more we use that dimension as a
  basis for judging others
• If a test or some other source of information
  flatters us, then we believe it, and we evaluate
  positive both the test and any evidence
  suggesting that the test is valid
• We like to associate ourselves with others
  success.

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Why do People Engage in Self-Serving Bias?

• Because they are motivated to maintain high
  self-esteem

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The Dark Side of Self-Esteem

• Researchers have found the following effects for
  high self-esteem individuals
• Teenaged males who engage in sexual activity at
  an inappropriately young age tend to have high
  self-esteem
• Teen gang leaders have high self-esteem
• Terrorists tend to have higher than average
  self-esteem

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The Self-Serving Bias as Adaptive

• Self-serving bias protects people from depression

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Self-Presentation

• False Modesty
• People disparage themselves even though they
  dont truly feel that way

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Self-Presentation

• Self-handicapping
• Protecting ones self-image with behaviours that
  create a handy excuse for later failure