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39 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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How are Rene Descartes' questions "what is self?" and "I think, therefore I am" related to social psych? |
He's asking what the feeling of consciousness is like, he's saying the one things you can be sure of is your own thoughts -- he was skeptical about trusting sense |
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What are the three selves William James outlined in 1890? |
Individual self: beliefs about our unique personal traits, abilities, preferences, etc. Relational self: beliefs about our identities in specific relationships (mom,dad) Collective self: beliefs about our identities as members to social groups (Canadian) |
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Working self-concept? |
refers to a self-concept that changes in context - your sense of self may shift depending on who we're interacting with |
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What's a context factor that changes the working self-concept? |
Your distinctiveness. School children in American are likely to describe themselves by what makes them different (I grew up in Ireland, I'm older) |
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What's the difference between an independent and interdependent view of self? What determines these differences? |
Independent: self seen as a distinct, autonomous entity, defined by individual traits.more common in individualistic/western cultures. across cultures, men generally have more of an independent view. interdependent: self seen as connected to others, defined by social duties and shared traits and preferences. more common in collectivist/eastern cultures. |
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When Ed Koch, a New York former mayor, asked peopl: "How am I doing?" What was he showcasing? |
self evaluation |
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How do you define and measure self esteem? |
positive and negative overall evaluation that each person has of themselves. measured by the rosenburg self esteem scale (RSE) where you agree/disagree on a numerical scale with statements (this works less over time since statements are quite extreme and self esteem has been increasing in the west) |
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What are the two explanations of self-esteem (ie, how it grows?) |
1) contingencies of self worth- maintains that self esteem is contingent upon successes and failures in domains on which a person has based his or her self worth ie what we care about 2) sociometer hypothesis - says that self esteem is an internal, subjective index to the extent to which a person is looked favourably by others <-- this is kind of the right one b/c failure socially has much larger impact than failure in other domains |
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What's the evolutionary take on self esteem? What's the biggest criticism? |
we have to work well with other humans so self esteem is a built in facility to judge how well we're doing that, giving it a function. it's intended to motivate changes so the group doesn't dislike you. If this were true, self esteem should be consistent across cultures. |
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Collectivist cultures don't value self esteem as much. What do they value instead? |
self-improvement. less emphasis on feeling good about oneself and more on feeling good about one's contribution to collective goals. |
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Measurements of self-esteem say collectivist cultures have low self-esteem. This may not be true. What's a resolution? |
With correct culturally-appropriate measures, self-esteem will shown to exist. |
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What are the cons of high self-esteem? |
-inflated self esteem can be counterproductive, as it allows people to be satisfied with poor life outcomes -can be more sensitive to threats, insults, challenges if the self-esteem is unwarranted ie insecure - |
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What's social comparison theory? |
the hypothesis that we evaluate ourselves through comparisons to others; downward comparisons can boost our self esteem; upwards can motivate self improvement |
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Why do most people believe they're better-than-average than others? |
- most westerners tend to have a positive view of the self -tend to rate the self as better than average b/c we weight abilities that we excel at as more valuable |
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What are the benefits of positive illusions? |
-most well adjusted people tend to think of the world and themselves a tad unrealistically -it elevates mood -fosters social bonds -promotes pursuit of goals |
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What is self-presentation? |
presenting the person we want others to think we are. this allows us to manage impressions others have. |
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public vs private face |
public - awareness of what others think of us private - awareness of our own internal feelings,thoughts,preferences |
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what is self-monitoring, and what are the differences between high and low self-monitors? |
it's the tendency to monitor and scrutinize one's behaviours when in a public situation; high self monitors try to fit their behaviour to the situation and low self monitors are more likely to behave according to their internal preferences |
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How do we protect each other's "face"? |
we strategically communicate in ways to preserve the public faces of ourselves and others. 2 types of these strategic communications: 1) on record communication- direct, honest language meant to be taken literally (Dutch story) 2)off record communication - indirect, ambiguous language not meant to be taken literally, meaning is supposed to be understood without directly saying it (canada) |
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Attribution theory? |
general term for theories about how people explain the causes of events they observe |
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What's causal attribution and what's the importance of it? |
It's the explanation for the cause of your or another's persons behaviour; the type of attribution you make will influence how you respond to the situation |
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What's internal vs external attributions? (how you explain other people's behaviour) |
Internal attribution: behaviour explained by aspects of the person (when consensus and distinctiveness are low but consistency is high) External attribution: aspects of the situation; likely if consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency are all high |
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What's explanatory style (how you explain your own behaviour)? And what are the dimensions of it? |
It's a person's habitual way of explaining events. dimensions - 1)internal vs external (degree that cause is linked to self or the situation) 2)stable vs unstable (degree that the cause is seen as fixed or temporary) 3)degree that the cause is seen as affecting other domains in life or is restricted to one domain |
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What's a pessimistic attribution style and what are the effects of it? |
It's when you have an internal, stable, and global attributions habitually made for negative events ("This happened bc of who I am as a person, I'm never going to get better, I'm no good at anything") -it predicts lower grades and poor physical health later in life |
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What's the covariation principle, and what are the three things most commonly looked at for it? |
It's behavioural attributions that are made by weighing information about the potential causes of behaviour; and three things that are commonly looked at are - 1)consensus (what would most people do in the given situation) 2)distinctiveness (is the individual's behaviour unique to a given situation, or would they behave in the same way in other situations) 3)consistency (whether an individual acts the same way in the same situations) |
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compare the discounting and augmentation principles. |
discounting: principle that says less weight should be given to a particular cause of behaviour if there are alternative causes present. augmentation: principle that more weight should be given to a particular cause of behaviour if other causes are present that would have produced the opposite result. |
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What's counterfactual thinking? |
Thoughts of might have been, could have been, or should have been "if only" something had gone differently |
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What's emotional amplification and how does it relate to olympian medalists? |
It's the emotional reaction to counterfactual thoughts; stronger feelings for how how easy it is to imagine an alternative. It's easier for silver medalists to imagine a Gold so they're less happy than Bronze medalists, who can easily imagine not getting a medal at all. |
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What are the two main biases in attribution? |
1) self-serving bias (for own behaviour): the tendency to attribute failures to external causes and successes to internal causes; they can boost and maintain positive self esteem 2) fundamental attribution error (other's behaviour): tendency to believe behaviour is due to personal traits rather than situational causes present |
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There are four causes of Fundamental Attribution Error. What are they? |
1) differential availability - different things are salient to observer than questioner 2) motivation to believe in a just world - motivated to believe people get what they deserve in life 3) perceptional salience - often attribute things to what appears to be most obvious cause; and usually what the person is doing is the most obvious 4)automatic and controlled cognitive processing - dispositional attributions are made automatically; situational attributions require more cognitive thought after weighing information about the context |
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What are actor-observer differences, and what are their causes? |
the actor is explaining behaviour due to situation. the observer explains behaviour as due to dispositional qualities of the actor. caused by perceptual salience: lack of information about the intentions and past behaviours of the actor. when you are the actor, you don't see the invisible constraints that may be acting on them. when you are the actor, you are seeing the whole picture. |
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Why is the FAE less prevalent in collectivist cultures? |
because individualists are more likely to attribute behaviour to dispositions |
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How do attributional styles change depending on cultural context, or for people from two opposing cultures or mixed cultures? |
If someone belongs to opposing cultures or a mixed culture with both individualist and collectivist ideals, then you can prime them to attribute one way or the other with images related to Western/eastern cultures |
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What does Charles Cooley mean by the phrase "look-glass self?" |
used to describe the idea that other people's reactions to us serve as a mirror of sorts; related to the idea of reflected self-appraisals - we see ourselves partly through the eyes of those around us. |
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What's the self-evaluation maintenance model, and what two processes are involved? |
It's the idea people are motivated to view themselves favourably and they do so through 1) reflection (by associating ourselves with people when they're good at something but YOU don't particularly care about ie sports team) and 2) social comparison (compare ourselves to those who are worse than us) |
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Tory Higgins proposed the self-discrepancy theory. What does the theory state and what three selves are a part of it? |
It says that behaviour is motivated by standards reflecting ideal and ought selves, and that falling short of these standards produces specific emotions: dejection-related for actual-ideal discrepancies; and agitation-related behaviours for actual-ought discrepancies. the three selves are: the actual self (who you believe you are), the ideal self (represents hopes and wishes), and the ought self (represents duties and obligations) |
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What's promotion vs prevention focus? |
promotion: self regulation of behaviour with respect to ideal self standards, a focus on attaining positive outcomes and approach related behaviours prevention: focus on avoiding negative outcomes, when people regulate behaviours with respect to ought self standards |
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What's ego depletion? |
It's when people lack the energy or resources to engage in further acts of control after exhausting themselves from doing acts of control. Ex: All day you think about eating that chocolate, but you turn yourself down at every turn. Someone offers you a cookie when you get home and you're going to take it. |
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What's self-handicapping? |
It's the tendency to engage in self-defeating behaviour in order to have an excuse ready should one perform poorly or fail. |
