Self as Object - “Me”
consists of:
- self-concept
- self-esteem
- autobiographical memory
- prospection
Self-concept
cognitive evaluation of one’s identity.
Self-esteem
affective evaluation of one’s self-worth.
Autobiographical memory
personal life narrative that people construct based on their memories of the past.
Prospection
expectations one has for their future.
Self as the Subject - “I”
the subjective center of experience that we each hold and the powerful feeling of being an agent in the world.
Subject of experience
we feel as though the various experiences that unfold at any given moment refer back to a single entity located somewhere in the body.
Agent/actor
we feel as if we are the creator of different thoughts/actions.
- (is psychologically constructed).
How do we come to know the self?
1) introspection
2) self-perception theory
Introspection
process of turning attention “inward” in an attempt to identify one’s feelings, thoughts, and motives.
Limitations of Introspection
- people overestimate how much they really know about themselves.
- emotional cues presented subliminally can alter people’s preferences for ambiguous items shown shortly after.
Introspection experiment
shows that people are trying to look inward and identify their motives, but they don’t know the true motives of their actions.
- have people come into a mall, near the entrance there are 4 identical items positioned from left to right.
- people tend to pick right most items. If you ask them why, they give you “made up” answers, i.e “it had the best texture”.
Self-perception theory
we figure out internal motives by looking at outward behaviour.
Over-justification effect
intrinsic motivation is undermined because one’s behaviour is attributed to extrinsic motivation.
How is the self-concept stored in the brain?
- medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) becomes active when people make judgments about themselves.
Individualistic cultures
mPFC is uniquely actively by self-judgments.
Collectivist cultures
mPFC is active for both self-judgments and close-other judgments (i.e mother).
Rubber-Hand Illusion
- shows constructed nature of self as subject.
- participants come to subjectively and involuntarily feel that an external rubber hand belongs to their own body.
- can predict how likely/intensely someone will feel rubber hand illusion by how much premotor cortex is activated.
Benjamin Libet
research shows that individuals subjective feeling of consciously willing an action emerges after (not before) the rising of neural signals that reliably predict that action well ahead of time.
Galvanic skin response (GSR)
a physiological response that indicates the change in the skin’s resistance to an electrical current.
Research on self esteem
- people would value a self-esteem boost more than eating their favourite food and engaging in their favourite sexual activity.
Defensive Self-esteem
highly dependent on external events.
- consists of high explicit, low implicit self-esteem.
Secure Self-esteem
does not fluctuate easily according to external events.
- consists of high explicit & implicit self-esteem.
Self-disclosure
speaking about oneself to another person is pleasurable.
- activates nucleus accumbens.
