The Self Concept

1
The Self Concept

• Who we are from our own perspective

2
Our Many Selves

• Self consciousness, self schema, and
  individuation
• The self as actor
• The personal self and the social self
• The positive and negative possible self Ideal
  self versus real self

3
Self Focus and The Self Reference Effect

• People shift from external focus to self focus
  and there are individual differences in how much
  one focuses on the self.
• Adolescents have more self focus and experience
  the imaginary audience as a result of adolescent
  egocentricity in cognitive development.
• The self reference effect deals with better
  memory for things related to the self

4
Personal-Social Identity Continuum

• At any given moment we vary in how much we
  identify with the personal self (intragroup
  comparisons) and how much we identify our self
  with identity groups (intergroup comparisons)
• Situational factors such as whether we are in a
  minority in a group help determine how important
  group identity is to us.

5
Terror Management Theory

• When threats such as salience of our own
  mortality exists we tend to increase self
  identification with the group.
• Existential terror causes more allignment and
  identity. People see themselves as similar to
  the group. An exception is when a negative
  aspect of the group is salient. Then people
  distance themselves.

6
Self Monitoring

• High self monitors Regulation of behavior on the
  basis of external factors especially the
  evaluation of others.
• Low self monitors Regulation of behavior based
  on internal factors especially values and sense
  of self.

7
Core Social Motives

• Belonging Group membership and identity
• Understanding Sharing meaning and prediction
• Controlling Perceived congruency between
  behavior and outcome
• Self Enhancement Seeing self as worthy or
  basically improvable.
• Trusting Others seen as basically benign

8
Self Esteem

• Self esteem Sense of self worth. High self
  esteem represents a close relationship between
  the ideal self and the real self.
• Self esteem can be measured as a global sense or
  in terms of self esteem in specific areas.
• Some aspects of self esteem may be temperamental
  as a trait. Others are related to experiences
  and are situational.

9
Self Esteem Gone Wrong

• Non-contingent or unrealistic measures to
  increase self esteem can backfire.
• The narcissistic person may have an
  unrealistically high self esteem.
• Narcissism Excessive self esteem causes
  antisocial behavior.
• Paradoxical self esteem Too much or too little
  relative to reality.

10
Secure Versus Defensive Self Esteem

• People with defensive self esteem are obnoxious,
  talk a lot, and talk at people rather than
  listen.
• Especially when criticized, they are prone to
  bullying, aggression, and sexual coercion.
• Low self esteem effects are not as great as many
  claim.

11
Narcissistic Personality Disorder

• Grandiose sense of self importance
• Preoccupied with fantasies of success, power,
  brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
• Believes that he or she is special and can only
  be understood by special people
• Requires excessive admiration and has a sense of
  entitlement
• Interpersonally exploitative and lacks empathy

12

• Envious of others and believes others are envious
  to them
• Show arrogant or haughty behaviors or attitudes
• These traits often result in paradoxically high
  self esteem and can lead to violent,
  exploitative, uncaring behavior by someone who
  deserves what they wish no matter whom it hurts.

13
Adolescent Self Esteem

• Children in early adolescence, especially girls,
  show a drop in self esteem.
• For most this drop is only temporary and is not
  debilitating. However it is an ongoing problem
  for some.
• Body image and transition to junior high may be
  factors. Sexual harassment and bullying have
  been implicated.

14
Gilligan and Critical Periods in Girls Self Esteem

• According to Carol Gilligan, girls reach a
  critical juncture in gender role development in
  early adolescence. They face different rhythms
  and emotions in relationships.
• In early adolescence, there is a greater decline
  in self esteem for girls than for boys.

15

• Gilligan believe girls must balance independence
  and relationships. They wish neither to be
  selfish or overcommitted to others needs and not
  take care of the self.
• Gilligans critics object to different
  developmental models for girls and boys.
• Curriculums emphasizing cooperation rather than
  competition have been introduced in some schools.
  

16
Downward and Upward Comparisons

• With a stranger Downward has positive effect
  upward has no effect.
• With a member of the in group Downward has
  positive effect upward has negative effect.
• With someone close downward has negative effect
  upward has positive effect.

17
Self Efficacy

• In order for people to be motivated to act they
  must believe the outcome is valuable and that
  they will be effective in reaching the outcome.
• Increasing efficacy can occur through performance
  accomplishment, modeling, exhortation, and
  arousal reduction.
• Performance accomplishment is best

18
Three Types of Self Efficacy

• Self regulatory self efficacy
• Social self efficacy
• Academic self efficacy
• High regulatory and academic self efficacy is
  related to lower problem behaviors and moral
  transgressions.
• High social self efficacy leads to more prosocial
  behavior and lower sense of grievance.

19
Sex and Gender

• Sex Maleness or femaleness as determined by
  genetic factors at conception that result in
  anatomical and physiological differences.
• Gender That attributes, behaviors,
  personalities, and expectancies associated with a
  persons biological sex in a given culture.

20
Gender Differences

• Gender differences can result from biology,
  learning, or a combination of both.
• Gender differences when observed may be small and
  there is a great deal of overlap in the
  distributions.
• Whether an individual is in the gender majority
  or minority may determine the importance of
  gender.

21
Gender Similarities Hypothesis

• Meta analysis shows that most gender difference
  effect sizes are small.
• Exceptions include some areas of sexualtiy,
  motor performance in throwing distance and
  velocity, moderate differences in physical and
  relational aggression but not in overall
  aggression, and mental rotation tasks.

22
Gender Role Schema

• Masculine
• Feminine
• Androgynous The positive characteristics of both
  genders. (High on both instrumentality and
  nurturance. Tends to be flexible.
• Undifferentiated

23
Prejudice, Discrimination and Stereotyping

• Prejudice represents negative attitudes towards
  members of a social group because of membership
  in that group.
• Discrimination represents negative behaviors
  towards members of a social group that result
  from prejudice against members of that group.

24

• Stereotypes are beliefs about social groups in
  terms of the traits or characteristics that they
  are deemed to share.
• They are cognitve frameworks (schemas) that shape
  perceptions, but the difference from other
  schemas is that they inevitably tie the trait to
  the person because of group membership.

25
Origins of Prejudice

• Social Categoriazation The ultimate
  attributional error
• Threat to group and group identity
• Social Norms Allowances for groups to
  appropriately have prejudice and
  discrimination.
• Intergroup Conflict Realistic conflict theory

26
Minimal Group Effect and Social Identity Theory

• Minimal group effect studies indicate that people
  will identify with one another even over minor
  characteristics.
• Group identity involves a sense of shared fate
  and tends to increase the members self esteem.
  Often conflict arises when that identity is
  threatened.

27
Social Categorization

• People categorize others as part to the in
  group or out group.
• There is a tendency to view members of the out
  group as all the same (out group homogeneity.)
• Members of in groups are viewed as having more
  differences (in group heterogeneity.) In group
  members are seen as good.

28
Threats to Group and Individual Identity

• When individual identity is threatened as in
  existential terror we identify with group when
  positive aspects of identity are there.
• When groups are threatened prejudice and
  discrimination increase.
• When identity is threatened both ingroup and
  outgroup homogeniety increase, and a sense of
  ingroup superiority is higher.

29
Stereotyping

• Stereotyping involves a type of schema that
  represents a unitary view of those who are in a
  particular group.
• Stereotypes represent the belief that all members
  of a social group share certain characteristics
  and behaviors in common.
• There is a fine line between stereotypes and the
  schemas people use to process information about
  others.

30
Stereotypes and Processing Information

• People notice and remember behavior that is
  consistent with stereotypes and ignore that which
  is not consistent.
• People see stereotype consistent behavior as
  going with and being caused by group membership.
• People interpret the same behavior in different
  terms because of stereotypes.

31
Self Stereotyping and Stereotype Threat

• Self stereotyping involves the acceptance by
  target group members of the stereotypes held by
  others.
• Stereotype threat represents the response to
  negative aspects of self stereotyping. This
  effect has particularly been seen with
  psychological testing for academic abilities in
  minorities and memory among seniors.

32
Stereotype Threat and Working Memory

• Stereotype threat places a burden on working
  memory and uses some of its limited capacity.
• Women who were primed that a working memory task
  was a math test did worse on working memory than
  men or women in a control condition.
• This may be the mechanism behind stererotype
  threat effects on tests.

33
Implicit Attitudes and Stereotypes

• Techniques for measuring the implicit attitudes
  associated with stereotypes such as the Implicit
  Association Test and the Evaluative Priming
  Technique (bona fide pipeline) indicate implicit
  stereotypes even among those who claim low
  prejudice on self report questionnaires.
• Many people have such implicit stereotypes.

34
Emotions, Prejudice and Discrimination

• Emotional labeling of groups predicts behavior
  better than stereotype content.
• Labeling goes along two dimensions Warmth
  (trustworthy, friendly, sincere) and competence
  (skillful, capable)
• These labels are related to emotional responses.

35

• High on warmth and competencepride
• Low on bothdisgust
• High on warmth, Low on competencepity
• Low warmth, high competenceenvy
• Envy often begets genocide
• U. S. and European cultures higher on in group
  pride while Asian cultures are lower on ingrup
  pride but have the sam responses to other
  emotions.

36
Reducing Prejudice through Contacts

• The Robbers Cave experiment indicated the power
  of super ordinate goals.
• Equal status contact with opportunities for
  informal contact and norms of cooperation and
  prejudice reduction.
• The jigsaw classroom allows for minority groups
  to have access to valued information.

37
Mindfulness and Recategorization

• Increasing peoples mindfulness helps those
  with implicit attitudes and stereotypes recognize
  their prejudice. This is especially true for low
  prejudiced people.
• Recatagorizing out group members as having
  similar goals helps reduce prejudice.

38
Extended Contact Hypothesis and Training Parents

• Merely knowing that members of the in group have
  friendships with out group members reduces
  prejudice These in group/out group friendships
  are important in reducing prejudice (the extended
  contact hypothesis.)
• Teaching parents to model low prejudiced behavior
  can aid in prejudice reduction.

39
Guilt and Emotional Techniques

• Guilt can be used with people who believe they
  are egalitarian, but there are limits to using
  guilt in any situation.
• Collective guilt may reduce racism.
• People can be trained to just say no.
• The influence of opinion leaders can bring both
  normative and emotional changes.

40
Tokenism

• Knowledge that one has been given a resource as a
  token of increasing diversity is highly
  stressful and reduces the individuals self
  esteem.

41
Gender Stereotypes

• Gender stereotypes associate various
  characteristics with gender as if they are
  inevitably tied to men or women. Also there is a
  tendency to see the other gender In terms of
  out-group homogeneity.
• Gender role stereotypes tend to exaggerate
  differences between the genders.

42
Sexism

• Gender discrimination continues in a number of
  areas of society.
• Benevolent sexism emphasizes that women deserve
  protection, are superior to men in such traits as
  purity and taste, and are necessary for the
  happiness and fulfillment of men.
• Studies show both women and men give more respect
  to men.

43
Attraction to Close Relationships

• Of the multitude of people with whom we come in
  contact we are attracted to only a few and
  repulsed by a few more. Usually through the self
  fulfilling prophecy and the chance to relate to
  people we further refine our interactions to
  build up close relationships.
• Attraction is not random

44
Need for Affiliation

• At a biological level in order to survive we must
  affiliate with others.
• We particularly need to affiliate with those who
  share our genetic material most closely.
• Affiliation provides social support and social
  comparison especially in terms of our emotional
  responses.

45
Need for Privacy

• Autonomy
• Emotional Release
• Self Evaluation
• Maintenance of intimacy
• Indicators of social status
• Maintenance of identity and sense of individuality

46
States of Privacy

• Solitude
• Intimacy
• Anonymity
• Reserve
• Gestures and non verbal communication
• Signs and symbols of privacy

47
Dialectic of Privacy

• There is a constant balance to be maintained
  between desire to be alone and desire to be with
  others.
• Too much or too little privacy is stressful.
• There is a constant shifting of desired level of
  privacy.
• Control of privacy is an important social skill

48
Variables in Attraction

• Physical contact, propinquity, and the mere
  exposure effect.
• Observable characteristics Physical appearance
  and observable similarity
• Similarity of attitudes, personality, and
  background
• Complementarity of needs
• Mutual liking and reciprocity in evaluation

49
The Mere Exposure Effect

• Repeated exposure increases liking for objects
  for which we are positive, neutral or slightly
  negative.
• The familiar stranger effect occurs when we
  repeatedly encounter people with whom we do not
  interact. We like and trust these people more
  than unfamiliar strangers.

50
Physical Appearance

• Physical appearance is associated with positive
  attributes on the part of the target
• People respond to appearance in children and
  others in whom they do not have a romantic
  interest.
• Other children also respond positively to
  attractive children.
• People make more external attributions for bad
  behavior in pretty children.

51
Similarity

• People are more attracted to and more positively
  evaluate those who are similar in attitudes,
  personality, and background.
• People engage in social comparison with those who
  are similar.
• Dissimilar attitudes have a greater impact than
  similar attitudes. We like people we meet until
  we find them dissimilar.

52
Personality Similarity and Voters

• Modern campaigns emphasize emotions an and image
  of politicians.
• Voters have trouble differentiating on issues and
  use heuristic judgment in evaluating candidates.
  
• Voters seek similarity in personality and from
  that congruence of values.

53
Affect Centered Model of Attraction

• Attraction is determined by the direct and
  associated sources of affect often mediated by
  cognitive processes schemas, attitudes, beliefs,
  and expectancies.
• This attraction or repulsion results in
  behavioral and evaluative responses to others
  often leading to feedback loops.

54
Balance Between Independence and Mutuality

• A well adjusted person is able to balance
  independence and mutuality or shared fate in a
  close relationship.
• This is a source of negotiation throughout the
  lifespan. Adolescents must negotiate with their
  parents to maintain this new balance. Spouses
  must have a similar negotiation.

55
Social Penetration Theory

• People explore relationships by tentatively
  increasing the depth and breadth of their self
  disclosures. The relationship reaches a certain
  point and there is often an unspoken agreement to
  keep it there.
• The pacing of self disclosure is crucial. Too
  fast or too slow self disclosure causes an
  imbalance and mistrust.

56
Adult Attachment Styles

• Original terms Secure, Insecure-avoidant,
  Insecure-ambivalent.
• In the Working Model of Attachment Styles
• Preoccupied High on self esteem, low on
  interpersonal trust.
• Fearful Avoidant Low on self esteem and
  interpersonal trust.
• Secure high on both
• Dismissive high on trust, low on self esteem

57
Dispositional Lonliness

• Most loneliness does not involve lack of access
  to friends, but it is the result of the response
  of the person to others.
• Lonely people know about social skills in theory,
  but they lack the ability to trust others. They
  make negative attributions about the friendly
  intent of other people.
• Depression, fear of intimacy, unappreciated,
  interpersonal anxiety

58

• Pessimsism, self blame, attributions of rejection
  on the part of others, perceived lack of
  reciprocity from others. Often relationships
  become self fulfilling prophecies.
• Shyness, ambivalence in relationships,
  dependent-dissatisfied relationship adding to
  stress, interpersonal aggression and teasing.

59
Investment in a Relationship

• People examine their perception of the fair
  exchange in a relationship and the alternatives.
• People in a committed relationship devalue the
  alternatives, make positive attributions about
  the relationship, and forgive their partners. A
  sense of investment leads to commitment.

60
Responses to Dissatisfaction

• Voice active problem solving. More common among
  women.
• Loyalty Stay in a relationship because problems
  minor or alternatives poor.
• Neglect Neglect of relationship. Let it wither
  on the vine.
• Exit Examines both relationship and alternatives.

61
Gender and Mate Choice

• Our anscestors survived because of male choice of
  furtile females and female choice of males with
  resources.
• Women tend to be much more concerned with long
  term, commited realationships and seek romance in
  first sexual encounters. However there is not as
  much gender difference in views on fidelity in
  marriage.

62
Styles of Love

• Eros Passionate love
• Storge Companionate (friendship) love
• Ludus Game-playing love
• Mania Possessive love
• Pragma Logical love
• Agape Selfless love

63
Sternbergs Theory of Love (page 318)

• Infatuation Passionate love alone
• Empty Love Commitment alone
• Liking Intimacy alone
• Consummate Love Intimacy, passion, commitment
• Fatuous Love Passion and commitment but without
  time for intimacy

64

• Romantic Love Intimacy plus passion
• Companionate Love Intimacy plus commitment
  Often in marriages where passion has faded.
• Over time the relative importance of passion,
  intimacy, and commitment changes in a
  relationship. The problem occurs when partners
  change at a different rate.

65
Similarity and Marriage

• Happy couples show more actual similarity.
• Assumed similarity is higher than actual
  similarity for happy couples.
• Initial attraction because of dissimilarity often
  ends up with dissatisfaction because that which
  was attractive becomes annoying.

66
Attributions and Marriage

• In happy marriages positive behaviors are seen as
  resulting from internal, stable, global traits
  and negative behaviors are seen as resulting from
  external, unstable, specific, factors.
• Distancing attributions represent the opposite.
  External attributions for positive events and
  internal for negative events.

67
Marriage and Subjective Well Being (SWB)

• Longitudinal study in Germany
• Average person returns to baseline of SWB after
  change in marital status. It takes a little
  longer for baseline for widowhood. But there is
  great individual variation.
• Happy people less positively changed by marriage
  but more hurt by divorce.

68
Some Tips on Mariatal Success

• Understanding partners point of view.
• Not threatening partners self esteem.
• Compromising Would you rather be right or rather
  by happy? Hows that working for you?
• Decreasing costs and increasing benefits.
• Being agreeable, increasing positive affect,
  managing negative affect. Checking the validity
  of attributions.