Self and Personality

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Self and Personality

• Psychology 448C
• 10/14/08

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Agenda

• Lecture
• Dont need to know Culture Gender or Five
  Factor Model of Personality for exams
• In-class Activity

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Self-Concept

• How we perceive ourselves, and understand our
  identity plays a crucial role in how we think
  about many things.
• The self-concept is implicated in
• directing what information we should attend to,
• it shapes the kinds of meaning that we draw from
  events,
• it influences the kinds of relationships that we
  have,
• it affects our emotions, and
• it influences what we will be motivated to work
  towards.

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Who Am I?

• People are asked to describe themselves with a
  number of statements that begin with I am
  _______.
• The kinds of statements that they list are then
  counted and analyzed.
• People from some different cultural groups often
  provide different kinds of statements.

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Comparisons of European-Americans and Native
Americans (Fryberg Markus, 2003)

• European-American students described themselves
  more in terms of inner attributes than did Native
  Americans.

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Independent vs. Interdependent Views of Self

• Seminal paper by Markus and Kitayama (1991).
• Argued that much of what is known in social
  psychology, has been studied with people who
  share a primarily distinct view of self - an
  independent self.
• In much of the non-Western world, in contrast, an
  interdependent self is more common.

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European American Exceptionalism?

• A unique way of being in human history?
• Modern subjectivity?
• Social alienation
• Individualism

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Independent View of Self

• Identity is experienced as largely independent
  from others.
• Important aspects of identity are personal
  characteristics.
• Identity remains largely constant across roles
  and situations.
• Considerable fluidity between ingroups and
  outgroups.

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Interdependent View of Self

• Individuals identity is importantly
  interdependent with others.
• Key aspects of identity include roles,
  relationships, and memberships.
• As roles change across situations, identity is
  also somewhat fluid across situations.
• Clear distinction between ingroups and outgroups.

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Culture and Business
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1. How should a company determine compensation
of its employees? a) A company should take into
account the size of the employees family. The
company should be responsible for paying
additional compensation for each additional
family member. b) An employee should be paid on
the basis of the work s/he is doing for the
company. Therefore, the company does not have to
take into account the employees family.
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2. Suppose you, as a manager, are in the
process of hiring a new employee to work in your
department. Which of the two following
considerations is more important a) The new
employee must fit into the group or team in
which s/he is to work. b) The new employee must
have the skills, the knowledge, and a record
of success in a previous job.
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Determining compensationPercentage of
people who agree with bFamily size of the
employee is not a relevant factor for a company
to consider in determining compensation.
USA
Japan
Italy
England
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HiringPercentage of People who chose
bThe new employee must have the skills, the
knowledge, and a record of success in a
previous job.
Italy
USA
Germany
France
Singapore
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Self-Consistency

• The interdependent self should be more
  contextually variable than the independent self.
• When people are in different situations they are
  often in different roles
• if the identity of the interdependent self is
  grounded in roles, then across situations,
  identity should vary.

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Example

• In one study, Japanese and American students
  completed the Twenty Statements Test in different
  situations (Kanagawa et al., 2001).
• There were 4 test-taking situations
• alone
• with peers
• in a professors office
• in a large class
• DV how similarly positive peoples
  self-descriptions were across situations.

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American Data

• American self-descriptions were highly similar
  across different situations.
• Their self-descriptions were also uniformly
  positive.

Ratio of Positive to Negative Statements
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Japanese Data

• Japanese self-descriptions varied significantly
  across different situations.
• They were more positive when alone and most
  critical when with their professor.
• Their self-descriptions were also less positive
  than the Americans.

Ratio of Positive to Negative Statements
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Why do cultures vary in self-consistency?

• Often, cultural tendencies are functional
• People behave according to cultural norms because
  they derive benefits from it.
• Westerners benefit more than East Asians from
  being consistent across situations.

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Example

• Study compared how consistently Koreans and
  Americans described themselves across roles (Suh,
  2002).
• A consistency score was calculated for each
  participant.
• Americans described themselves more consistently
  than did Koreans.
• These consistency scores were then correlated
  with some other variables.

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Benefits of Consistency

• For Americans,
• positive correlations between consistency and
  well-being, social skills, and likability.
• For Koreans,
• the correlations were far weaker
• Americans benefit more from being consistent
  across roles than do Koreans.

Correlations between Self-Consistency and...
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Self-consistency

• Note that the East Asian tendency to be less
  consistent across situations does not mean
  unpredictability.
• East Asians are also consistent but its a
  different kind of consistency than found among
  Westerners.
• consistency across time within each kind of
  relationship.
• East Asians may feel differently about themselves
  when theyre with their family than when theyre
  with their friends,
• The family self remains constant, and the friend
  self remains constant (see English Chen, 2007).

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A Western Psychology

• Why doesnt psychology examine role-consistency
  instead of self-consistency?
• Americans would then be the exception
• Non-Westerners would be the norm

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Self-Awareness

• Think back to your high school graduation, when
  you stood on stage and received your diploma.
• Is your mental imagery about this event more from
  the 1st person perspective (what you saw from the
  stage) or from the 3rd person perspective (how
  people saw you from the audience)?

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Example (Cohen Gunz, 2002)

• Participants indicated whether their memories
  contained 1st person or 3rd person imagery for a
  variety of events.
• In some of the events they were the center of
  attention (e.g., your birthday party) and some
  they were not the center of attention (e.g.,
  watching a movie with friends).

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• This study suggests that East Asians are
  attending to the perspective of an audience so
  much more than are Westerners that this
  perspective influences their memories.

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Cultural Differences in Interpreting Social
Events (Chua, Leu, Nisbett, 2005)

• Main character focus
• To what extent were the passages about Emma?
  (Scale 1-9)
• To what extent were the passages about Jason,
  Elliot, Elliots cousin, Michele, Hannah, Amelia,
  Tom, and Professor Lewin, etc.? (Scale 1-9)
• Agency focus
• To what extent were the characters actions
  driven by their plans and goals? (Scale 1-9)
• To what extent were the characters actions
  influenced by the circumstances they found
  themselves in? (Scale 1-9)

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F(1, 55) 2.14, p lt.01
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F(1, 54) 4.94, p lt .05
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Emotion Perception

• Are there cultural differences between European
• Americans and Japanese in
• whether social context influences emotion
  perception of a target? (Masuda, Ellsworth,
  Mesquita, Leu, et al., 2008)

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Target stimuli
JON
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Central Happy Background Angry
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Central Happy Background Sad
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Central Happy Background Happy
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Central Happy Background Neutral
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Emotion of Background Figures Angry, Sad,
Happy, Neutral
Emotions of Central Figures Angry, Sad, Happy
X
Angry Sad
Happy
X
X
X
X
Angry Sad
Happy Neutral
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Methods

• Participants
• 40 Japanese in Japan
• 40 European American in the US
• Procedure
• Rating intensity of center figures emotion(s)
• Measures
• Emotion Scales (0-9) anger, happiness, sadness

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Central Person Happy
Intensity Ratings of Happiness
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Central Person Happy
Intensity Ratings of Anger
Angry Sad Happy
Neutral Background
Emotions
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Incremental vs. Entity Theories of Self

• Incremental theories of self
• abilities are malleable and are capable of being
  changed, with effort.
• Entity theories of self
• abilities are largely fixed, and reflect innate
  features of the self.
• Interdependent selves more incremental and less
  entity-based theories of self.
• Independent selves more entity and less
  incremental-based theories of self.

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What is Intelligence Based On?
Japanese Asian-Americans
Euro-Americans
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In-class Activity Examples

• Gender and math

• Ethnicity and intelligence