5. Self

Question 1

What is my self-concept? How can you test it?

Answer 1

Made up of 3 things

• Self knowedgge
• Self esteem
• Social Self (ex. social roles like mom, sister, daugher, teacher, etc.)
• forms at 18months to 2years. This is true for all kids except for twins
• its very concrete at the start (I’m jacob I have brown hair and like to play hockey) as •we age it gets more complication and conmplex.
• red dot test. Put person to sleep and puts a red dot on them and puts in front of mirror, if they try to get rid of it they they have a sence of self
• humans seem to be uniquley expressing this

Question 2

Self-Schemas

Answer 2

The elements of the self-concept that define who you think you are
–Your self-schemas shape how you see the world
•Example: Twin schematic!
•Some schemas are stable, but some change with social context
• define who you think you are and help shape how you see the world

Question 3

Self-regulation

Answer 3

• Serves an executive function, regulating people’s behavior, choices and plans for the future
• Exerting control over ourselves: Deciding which goals to pursue, whether to pursue them now or later, trying to control our thoughts, moods or behaviour, etc.

Question 4

Marshmello study

Answer 4

• bring kids into lab and sit them infront of a marshmell and you can either ‘eat this now or wait 10min and you get double the marshmello’. Then watch how good the kids is at self regulation (some good like sit on hands and look away). OTher kids are not good (oick uo the marshmelo and sniff it, lick it, stare longingly at it). Self regulation at young as 6 pridicts later life outcomes such as in later school.
• kinds from higher socioeconimic backgrounds tend to be better at self regulations (maybe this had to do with the avalibailty of respurces in the enviornment.
• Really little kids have almost no self regulaton (if they don’t have a fully formed self concept they won’t be able to self regulate)

Question 5

Study:

• have hungry participants come into lab (tell them don’t have lunch before they come in and itd be lunch time)
• then theyd have to sit in front of raddishs and cookies for 5 min.
• Condition 1 ‘don’t eat the cookies’
• Condition 2 ‘don’t eat the radishes’. (apparently the lab just smeeled by cookies and baking cause the RAs were baking in the halls)
• control no food at all
• 2nd part they’re asked to solve unsolvable puzzles. -How long did the participants spend working on the puzzle.

Answer 5

The people told to not eat cookies (have done self regulation) spent 8min. The people told not to eat the radishes spendt 20min on the task. Therefore spending more time on self regulation took up more energy so they ended up spending less time on the puzzle.

Question 6

What 4 aspects of non-verbal self-presentation does Patricia Ryan describe?

Answer 6

1)Eye contact (useful for asserting oneself)
2)Weather or not the body is maintained in a sustained way or if its in a jerky way (it effects speach and makes it harder to maintain sentances with jerky movements)
3)remains clam
4)steady breathing
high status behaviour (calm eye contact vs. low status of avoid eye contact and jerky)
Can also change other peoples status

Question 7

What is strategic self-presentation?

Answer 7

how to pressent yourself to others so they see us how we want to be seen
People respond to the cues we put out and adjust their responces to reflect this which make a closed circuit. That’s why depressed people think and think they’re confirmed as depressed, vs. outgoing people are played off of as outcgoing with inforces that responce in them

Question 8

According to Hazel Markus, what is culture?

Answer 8

• socially based, a way of define who we are
• culture is what you do. If they connect with american ways of thinking and doing things, then they become american.
• The common ideas and ways of doing things.
• culture is necessary in order to have a sence of self. ITs something we do and enact.

Question 9

Introspection

Answer 9

process whereby people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings, and motives.
People do not rely on introspection as often as one would think.
When people do use introspection, the reasons for their feelings and behaviours can be hidden from conscious awareness.

Question 10

self-awareness theory

Answer 10

proposes that when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate and compare their behaviour to their internal standards and values.

Question 11

Actual Self

Answer 11

your self-concept, what you think you are actually like

Question 12

Ideal Self

Answer 12

the kind of person you wish and aspire to be, your hopes, goals and desires for yourself

• decrpencey between ideal and actuak sled you feel sad and disipointment. You feel bad that your not living up to your ideal.
• when ideal self is primed promotion goals are active. -Your trying to achive something.
• “how do you want to do on the test? Oh I want to get an A+”
• Promotion Goals: goals to achieve positive outcomes, seek reward

Question 13

Ought Self:

Answer 13

the kind of person you feel you should and ought to be, your sense of duties, obligations and responsibilities

• Prevention Goals: goals to avoid negative outcomes, escape punishment
• When ought self is primed we have prevention goals, to escape negative outcomes or punishment. “how do you want to do on the test? Oh I don’t want to fail”
• Descepency betwwen ideal and ought causes anxiery and guilt.
• People with lots of self esteem have lots of promotional goals whereas low self esteem is lots of prevention goal (maybe double check that this isn’t reversed!)

Question 14

What if you have discrepancies in your selves but you don’t really care about them?

Answer 14

People also differ in how often and how much they think about self-discrepancies
–The more these discrepancies are on your mind, the more they affect you

Question 15

Study:
–Ps reported attributes of their ideal and ought selves, were classified as having a discrepancy
–Rated how much they had each attribute and how much they wanted or ought to have it – classified accessibility based on how fast they did this
•DV: Reported mood during the last week

Answer 15

If desrepency was highly acceceble you get agitation and dejection
Accesacilty matters, its not just the magnitive of the descrepency that matters

If discrepancy was highly accessible, high correlation between:
•Actual/ideal discrepancy and dejection
•Actual/ought discrepancy and agitation
•No relation for Ps whose discrepancies were not as accessible

Question 16

The Relational Self

Answer 16

Mental representations of who we are with different people

Question 17

Transference

Answer 17

idea that say you have a critical dad so eveytime you interact with dad you cower and become timid. Go out in the world and meet this guy who looks like your dad and suddenly you feel really timid aroudn them and you don’t know why you don’t know them. This oculd be transference. Could also be good if + transference (ie. somone reminds you of your super kind loving mom)

Question 18

looking glass self

Answer 18

we tend to see ourselves through the eyes of other people (when their imaged we call them internal audience)

Question 19

Study:

1. Had fem come in to lab and think of an older family member (guided visual imagry) then had them read a sexy cosmo article.
2. priming they either showed grad students a scowling face of grad director or of an approving/warm face. This was fast flash of fate. Then had to create research ideas.
3. Brought catholic women in. Primed wiht Picture of scowling man or with picture of Pope John Paul II looking disaprooving. Then they had them read a sexy passage and then rate themselves on a number of dimentions.

Answer 19

1. Those primed to think of older fam article rated the article as less enjoyable them those primed to think of uni friend (this means the prime had brought up dif things)
2. Those primed with scorwl rated the research ideas as worse then thosed primed with smile.
3. Those primed with the pope rated themselves much more negativley then the other women.

how we feel about ourselves in the moment can depend on who the internal audoence is.

Question 20

Study: You are given information about someone you will meet . This new person shares traits with a significant other (from pre-test data).

Answer 20

Those assigned to the transference condition, they wound that the participants working self concept changed. The participants shifted to be more like what hteir like with their SO

Question 21

say you have highly complex sence of self (sister, volunteer, student, etc.) then you do bad on a test.

Answer 21

If buffers you. Maybe you go oh its okay that I did bad cuase I have all these other things going for me. Vs. if you have a low self complexity and do bad on test, it can domino and feel like eveythings going to hell.
When stressful things did happen lots of others things to draw stength from, it wasn’t all interconnected

Question 22

Self-Concept Clarity

Answer 22

Extent to which knowledge about the self is stable, and clearly and consistently defined

Question 23

Low in self-concept clarity:

Answer 23

–Tend to have low self-esteem
–Are prone to depression
–More neurotic and less aware of internal states