PSY415 Psychology of the Self

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PSY415Psychology of the Self

• Week 5
• The Self from a Cognitive Perspective

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The Self from a CognitivePerspective

• The importance of top-down processes in
  conceptualizing the self
• How do we represent self-knowledge?
• How does self-relevant information become
  activated in the cognitive system?
• How do we process self-relevant information?
• Epstein (1973) argues that self-concept is a
  theory about the self

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The Representation of Self-Knowledge

• The self-concept is thought to be organized in
  hierarchical manner
• At the top of the hierarchy is the self
• Different aspects of the self, such as physical
  attributes, social identities, roles, etc., are
  organized under the self
• How we think about ourselves depends on the
  social context

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Self-Complexity

• Self-complexity (Linville, 1987) refers to
• organizing self-knowledge in more self-aspects,
  and
• maintaining greater distinctions in these
  self-aspects
• The model assumes that self is represented in
  multiple cognitive structures called self-aspects
• Social roles (instructor, father)
• Types of activities (reading, writing)
• Goals (getting A grade)
• Specific self-aspects activate in different
  contexts

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Self-Complexity

• The valence of different events activate
  different self-aspects
• The Spilloverover Process
• Activation of one aspect leads to some inference
  about oneself
• If two self-aspects are closely related, the
  person can generalize this inference to another
  self-aspect

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Self-Complexity

• Self-Complexity-Affective Extremity Hypothesis
• The lower the self-complexity, the more the mood
  changes in the direction of the valence of
  experience
• Self-Complexity Buffering Hypothesis
• Greater self-complexity moderates the
  relationship between stress and
  physical/psychological health
• However, too many identities might be problematic
• These identities should be well integrated !?

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Compartmentalization

• How does organizing positively and negatively
  valenced self-relevant information about the self
  into different categories affect self-esteem?
  (Showers, 1992)
• If self-knowledge is compartmentalized,
  activation of a category yields only positive or
  negative information
• Thus, if individuals can avoid activation of
  negative aspects, only positive information will
  be activated cf. Self-Esteem Maintainance!
• Showers (1992) observed that Compartmentalization
  of positively and negatively valenced aspestc of
  the self was positively associated with
  self-esteem

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Self-Certainty and Importance

• If individuals hold certain self-views
• These self-views are less likely to change
• They feel better about themselves
• If the self-views are central (important) in
  defining to self, individuals show stronger
  emotional reactions

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Self-Schema

• Self-views which are highly central in defining
  and certain
• Schematic vs. Aschematic Individuals
• Schematic individuals
• made judgments about self-related attributes
  faster than aschematics (Markus, 1977)
• Behave more consistently than aschematics
  (Markus, 1983)

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The Activation of Self-KnowledgePersonal Factors

• Self-Concept/Self-Esteem
• What we usually think about ourselves become more
  important, chronically accessible (Markus
  Kunda, 1986)
• High self-esteem individuals are more likely to
  think about themselves in positive terms than low
  self-esteem individuals
• Mood States
• Accessibility of self-views change as the mood
  states change
• Sad mood was related to negative evaluations of
  self, especially for low self-esteem individuals

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The Activation of Self-KnowledgePersonal Factors

• Goals
• Individuals can retreive a certain self-image
  which is most suitable for goal attainment in a
  specific social setting
• A desire to feel good can activate different
  self-views selective search for relevant
  information (Sanitiaso, Kunda, Fong, 1990)
• Physical Factors
• Using drugs, hormonal changes, sleep and food
  deprivation can selectively activate different
  self-views

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The Activation of Self-KnowledgeSituational
Factors

• Social Roles
• Salience of a social role activates the related
  self-view
• Social Context
• Distinctiveness of a trait is more
  self-descriptive
• Desirability of the comparison other can
  influence the self-evaluations by assimilation
  and contrast effects
• Psychological connectedness leads to assimilation
  effect, whereas disconnectedness leads to
  contrast effect
• Individuals with both high and low self-esteem
  showed contrast effects, but assimilation effect
  was especially observed for low self-esteem
  individuals (Brown, et al., 1992)

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The Activation of Self-KnowledgeSituational
Factors

• Significant Others
• Subliminal priming of approval of a significant
  other affects self-evaluations
• Recent Events
• A recent failure can create negative affect,
  which, in turn, can make negative self-views
  accessible
• However, high self-esteem individuals
  evaluatethemselves somewhat more positively
  following failure
• Selective memory of prior events can temporarily
  activate self-representations, and these in turn
  affect behaviors to be consistent with these
  self-representations

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The Activation of Self-Knowledge Stability vs.
Malleability in the Self-Concept

• Self-views are highly stable after the age 30
• How can self-views be easily altered in
  experiments?
• Different self-conceptions can be activated at
  different times that does not necessitate that
  self-concept changes
• Self-concept change in experiments is in a
  relative sense
• College students, the typical participants in
  self-related research, may have malleable
  self-concepts
• Experiments might lack external validity

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Processing Self-Relevant Information

• Self-Reference Effect (Rogers, Kuiper, Kirker,
  1977)
• Participants were asked to answer some questions
  about target words
• After making these judgments, they were asked
  unexpectedly to recall as many target words as
  possible
• Better recall was observed for words which were
  processed in reference to self as compared to
  other levels od processing
• Self-reference effect diminishes when the
  judgments are made without evaluative adjectives