Quiz 2 Study Guide
Quiz 2 Study Guide
Please note that this study guide is a summary of the material we covered in chapters 3 and 4. This should be used as a general guide to review information. When studying, you should study from the slides and textbook, as not all information in the quiz is covered here.
Chapter 3 Summary
Chapter 3 Summary
Self: our sense of personal identity and of who we are as individuals
Still one of the most important and most researched topics in social psychology
Conceptualize the self through by looking at person-situation interaction and ABCs of social psychology
Self-concept: knowledge of ourselves, including our beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals.
Self-schemas: a variety of different cognitive aspects of the self
Can have self-schemas about progress in school, appearance, skill at sports
Self-schemas direct and inform processing of self-relevant information
Information related to self-schema better remembered than information unrelated to it
Information related to self can also be processed very quickly
Twenty Statements Test (T S T): self-report measure that can reveal a lot about a person. Designed to measure most accessible (and thus the most important) parts of a person's self concept.
Physical characteristics are an important component of the self-concept
Personality traits: specific and stable personality characteristics that describe an individual
Remainder of self-concept reflects its more external, social components
Memberships in the social groups that we belong to and care about
Social identity: sense of our self that involves our memberships in social groups
People from individualistic cultures often describe selves using internal characteristics that emphasize uniqueness
People from collectivistic backgrounds tend to stress shared social group memberships and roles
Self-complexity: extent to which individuals have many different and relatively independent ways of thinking about themselves
High self-complexity: various aspects of self are separate
Positive and negative thoughts about particular self-aspect do not spill over into thoughts about other aspects
If higher in self-complexity tend to experience more positive outcomes:
Self-concept clarity: extent to which an individual's self-concept is clearly and consistently defined
Self-concept clarity generally higher in individuals from individualistic cultures
Members of more collectivistic cultures tend to have lower self-concept clarity
Self-awareness: extent to which are currently fixing our attention on our own self-concept
Self-consciousness: when our self-concept becomes highly accessible because of concerns about being observed and potentially judged by others.
Deindividuation: the loss of individual self-awareness and individual accountability in groups
Social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE model): being in deindividuated state can reinforce group salience and conformity to specific group norms in current situation
Private self-consciousness: tendency to introspect about our inner thoughts and feelings
Public self-consciousness: tendency to focus on our outer public image and be particularly aware of extent to which are meeting standards set by others
Self-awareness theory: when focus our attention on ourselves, tend to compare our current behavior against our internal standards
When self-awareness leads us to comparisons where feel are being congruent with our standards, then self-awareness produces positive affect
Self-discrepancy theory: when we perceive a discrepancy between our actual and ideal selves, this is distressing to us
Cognitive dissonance: discomfort that occurs when we respond in ways that we see as inconsistent
May realign our current state to be closer to our ideals or shift our ideals to be closer to our current state
Both will help reduce dissonance
Another potential response: reduce state of self-awareness that gave rise to feelings by focusing on other things
Self-affirmation theory: try to reduce the threat to self-concept posed by feelings of self-discrepancy by focusing on and affirming worth in another domain, often unrelated to issue at hand
Illusion of transparency: illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others.
Self-esteem: feelings (positive or negative) that we have about ourselves
Narcissism: personality trait characterized by overly high self-esteem, self-admiration, and self-centredness.
Narcissism is partly about having an excess of self-esteem (more valued in individualistic cultures)
Narcissistic traits are higher, on average, in people from individualistic versus collectivistic cultures
Programs designed to boost self-esteem should be used only in limited way and should not be only approach taken
Looking-glass self: part of how we see ourselves comes from our perceptions of how others see us
Labeling bias: when we are labeled, and others' views and expectations of us are affected by that labeling
Self-labeling: when we adopt others' labels of us into our self-concept
Internalized prejudice: when we turn prejudice directed towards us by others onto ourselves
Social comparison: when we learn about our abilities and skills, about appropriateness and validity of our opinions, and about relative social status by comparing own attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours with those of others
Social comparison occurs primarily on dimensions on which there are no correct answers or objective benchmarks
Downward social comparison: when attempt to create positive image of ourselves through favorable comparisons with others who are worse off than we are
Leads to higher self-esteem
Upward social comparison: when compare ourselves with others who are better off than we are
May lower self-esteem by reminding us that are not as well off as others
Social identity theory: we draw part of our sense of identity and self-esteem from social groups that we belong to
Basking in reflected glory: when use and advertise our ingroups' positive achievements to boost our self-esteem
Self-evaluation maintenance theory: self-esteem can be threatened when someone else outperforms us
Particularly if that person is close to us and performance domain is central to our self-concept
