The Social Self
Chapter 3
Game Plan
• Self-concept and its sources
• Introspection
• Perceptions of our own behavior
• Influences of other people
• Culture
• Self-esteem
• Need for self-esteem
• Self-discrepancy theory
• Self-awareness trap
• Self-regulation and its limits
• Mechanisms of self-enhancement
• Self-presentation
• Strategic self-presentation
• Self-enhancement
• Self-verification
The Self-Concept
Warm-Up Activity!
• Take a sheet of paper, or open a document on your computer
• Write “I AM…” on the top
• List 10 things that would fit after “I AM…”
• Don’t worry about order or importance! Just list them in the order in
which they come to your mind
• Hold on to your responses (till next class)
• Take 5 minutes to complete this exercise
Self-Concept
• Self-Concept
• The sum of total beliefs people have about themselves
• Made of many self-schemas
• Self-Schema
• Beliefs about oneself that guide processing of self-relevant information
• Cognitive in nature
Sources of Self-Concept
1. Introspection
2. Perceptions of our own behavior
3. The influence of other people
4. Autobiographical memories
5. Culture
Sources of Self-Concept: Introspection
• How do we achieve insights into our own beliefs, attitudes, emotions, desires,
and motivations?
• Introspection
• Looking inward at one’s own thoughts and feelings
• Self-knowledge
• Social psychologists skeptical about the accuracy of introspection
• People often cannot explain the causes or correlates of their own behavior
• People overestimate the positives when self-assessing
• Better-than-average effect
• Statistically impossible
Sources of Self-Concept: Introspection
• Affective Forecasting
• The process of predicting how we would feel in response to future
emotional events
• How would you feel if you fail this class? How long would that feeling last?
• How would you feel if your partner breaks up with you? How long would
that feeling last?
• People find this difficult
• People also tend to overestimate the strength + duration of their
emotional reactions
• Impact + Durability Bias
Sources of Self-Concept: Introspection
• Why this impact + durability bias?
• We tend to underestimate our own psychological coping mechanisms
• We believe that others will suffer even more than we would
• Even more discounting of others’ coping mechanisms
Sources of Self-Concept: Perceptions of Our
Own Behavior
• How many of you have devoured a sandwich so fast, after which you realized
that you were actually very hungry?!
• Daryl Bem (1972)
• People can learn a lot about themselves by watching their own behavior
• Self-Perception Theory
• When internal states are difficult to interpret, we gain insight by
observing our own behavior and the situation in which that behavior
takes place
Sources of Self-Concept: Perceptions of Our
Own Behavior
• Limits to Self-Perception
• People learn about themselves through self-perception only when the
situation alone is insufficient to have caused the behavior
• E.g., If you were paid to house that sandwich, you won’t necessarily
deduce that you were hungry!
• Vicarious Self-Perception
• Learning about yourself by observing the behavior of someone else
with whom you completely identify
Sources of Self-Concept: Perceptions of Our
Own Behavior
• Self-Perception of Emotions
• Facial Feedback Hypothesis
• Changes in facial expressions can trigger corresponding changes in
the subjective experience of emotion
• But face not necessary for the subjective experience of emotion
Sources of Self-Concept: Perceptions of Our
Own Behavior
• Self-Perception of Motivation
• Originates in factors within a person
Intrinsic • Engaging in activities based on interest, challenge,
Motivation or enjoyment
• Originates in factors outside the person
Extrinsic • Engaging in an activity as a means for an end
Motivation • Money, grades, recognition, obligation, etc.
Sources of Self-Concept: Perceptions of Our
Own Behavior
• Self-Perception of Motivation
• Overjustification Effect
• The tendency for intrinsic motivation to diminish for activities that
have become associated with reward or other extrinsic factors
• Paradox!
• Observed in children + adults
• When people start getting paid for a task they already enjoy, they
sometimes lose interest in it
Sources of Self-Concept: Influence of Other
People
• Social Comparison Theory
• People evaluate their own abilities and opinions by comparing
themselves to others
• Most likely to use comparisons to evaluate things that are self-relevant
• As students, you often compare your academic performance to other
students
• We compare ourselves to peers who are similar to us
Sources of Self-Concept: Influence of Other
People
• Social Comparison Theory
• Direction of comparison matters
• Downward Comparison
• Comparing ourselves to others who are doing worse than us
• Can boost feelings of self-esteem
• Upward Comparison
• Comparing ourselves to others who are doing better than us
• Can challenge self-esteem or threaten our self-concept
Thoughts? Reflections?
Sources of Self-Concept: Autobiographical
Memories
• Autobiographical Memories
• Recollections of the sequences of events that have touched our life
• When prompted to recall our own experience, we usually report more
events from recent past (recency effect), except
• Older adults Reminiscence Bump: Remembering events from
adolescence and early adulthood (formative years)
• Transitional firsts
• First day of uni
• First kiss
• First time driving
Sources of Self-Concept: Autobiographical
Memories
• Autobiographical Memories
• Give a sense of narrative identity
• “A drama in which the self is the leading
player”
• Internalized and evolving story of the self
• Reconstructs the past
• Inflates personal sense of importance and
achievement
• Our autobiographical memories are … self-
centered
• E.g., You will always report doing better in high
school than you actually did
Sources of Self-Concept: Culture
• Cultural Conceptions of the Self
• Different cultures foster different conceptions of the self
• Independent View: Self as an entity that is distinct, autonomous, and
self-contained
• Western cultures
• Describe self in terms of personal traits
• See self as less similar to others
• Interdependent View: Self encompasses others in a larger social
network
• Asian, African, Latin American, and Arab cultures
• Describe self in terms of personal affiliations
• See self as more similar to others
Sources of Self-Concept: Culture
• Cultural Conceptions of the Self
Self-Esteem
Self-Esteem
• What is self-esteem?
• An evaluative component of the self
• Affectively charged– how we feel about ourselves
• Positive or negative self-evaluations
• Made up of many self-schemas
• Some more favorable than others
Activity!
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
Self-Esteem Over the Course of a College Career
The Need for Self-Esteem
• We all have the need for self-esteem
• Depending on who we are + our culture, we value different attributes and
pursue self-esteem in different ways
• Appearance
• Physical strength
• Professional accomplishments
• Wealth
• People skills
• Group affiliations
The Need for Self-Esteem
• Positive Self-Images
• Happy, healthy, productive, and successful people
• Negative Self-Images
• More depressed, pessimistic about the future, and prone to failure
• Vicious cycle of low self-esteem
Cultural Differences in Self-Esteem
Self-Discrepancy Theory
• Actual Self
• Traits that describe who you think you actually are
• Ought Self
• Traits that would enable you to meet your sense of duty, obligation,
and responsibility
• Ideal Self
• Traits that describe the kind of person you would like to be
• Self-esteem is lowered by the degree to which the actual self falls short of
the ought and ideal selves
Self-Discrepancy Theory
The Self-Awareness Trap
• Self-Awareness Theory
• Self-focused attention leads people to notice self-discrepancies
• Motivates an escape from self-awareness or a change in behavior
Does Thinking About God Produce Self-Awareness
Effects?
The Self-Awareness Trap
Self-Regulation and Its Limits
• Self-Regulation
• The process by which we control our thoughts, feelings, or behavior in
order to achieve a personal or social goal
• AKA self-control
• Self-Regulation Fatigue
• Self-control is a limited inner resource that can be temporarily depleted
by usage
• Can be counteracted via psychological factors
• Self-affirmation!
For the next 30 seconds, try not to think of a white cat.
Self-Regulation and Its Limits
• Ironic Mental Processes
• Trying too hard and thinking too
much Choking under pressure
• Paradoxical effects of attempted
self-control
Mechanisms of Self-Enhancement
• The better-than-average effect
• Implicit egotism
• Self-serving beliefs
• Self-handicapping
• Basking in reflected glory
• Downward social comparisons
Self-Serving Beliefs
• We tend to take credit for success and distance ourselves from failure
• Students and exams
• Do good Smart, worked hard
• Do poorly Tough exam, harsh professor
• Researchers and publications
• Article accepted Excellent research!
• Article rejected Unfair editor, biased reviewers
• Unrealistically optimistic about our futures
• Wishful thinking
• Illusion of control
Self-Handicapping
• Why do we make excuses?
• E.g., I didn’t submit my paper because my laptop crashed
• Anticipate future poor performance
• Procrastination – provides excuse for future failure
• We protect ourselves from seeing failure as due to a lack of ability
• Self-Handicapping
• Behaviors designed to sabotage one’s own performance in order to
provide a subsequent excuse for failure
• E.g., Partying all night and drinking before an exam
Self-Handicapping
• Sandbagging
• Downplaying our own ability, lowering expectations, or openly
predicting failure
• Reduces performance pressure and the negative impact of failure on
self-esteem
Basking in the Glory of Others
• Self-esteem is influenced to some extent by those individuals and groups
with whom we identify
• To enhance our self-esteem we often bask in reflected glory by associating
with others who are successful
• E.g., Sports teams that you like (think World Cup mayhem and fireworks)
• E.g., Team work
• Failure of others we associate with negatively influences our self-esteem
Basking or Social Comparison?
• How do we react to a sibling, spouse, or close friend who is more successful
than we are?
• If success is in an area not important to us, we bask in reflected glory
• If success is self-relevant, we may experience social comparison jealousy
Are Positive Illusions Adaptive?
• We preserve our self-esteem through methods of self-enhancement
• Individuals who are depressed or have low self-esteem have more realistic
views of themselves than most others
• Depressive Realism
• Positive illusions promote
• Happiness
• Desire to care for others
• Ability to engage in productive work
• But, they may give rise to chronic patterns of self-defeating behavior
Self-Presentation
Self-Presentation
• Self-Presentation
• Strategies we use to shape what others think of us
Self-Presentation
• Strategic Self-Presentation
• Efforts to shape others’ impressions in specific ways in order to gain
influence, power, sympathy, or approval
• Ingratiation
• Acts motivated by the desire to “get along” with others and be liked
• Self-promotion
• Acts that are motivated by the desire to “get ahead” and gain
respect for competence
• The need to project a favorable public image can lure us into unsafe
patterns of behavior
Self-Presentation
• Self-Verification
• The desire to have others perceive us the way we truly perceive ourselves
• Confirming or verifying our existing self-concept in the eyes of others
• We go out of our way to correct others whose impressions are positive
but mistaken
• What happens when the desire for self-verification clashes with the need
for flattery and self-enhancement?
• Self-verification wins
Self-Presentation
• Self-Monitoring
• The tendency to regulate our own behavior to meet the demands of
the social situation
• High self-monitors:
• Have a repertoire of selves from which to draw
• Sensitive to strategic self-presentation concerns
• Easily modify behavior from one situation to the next
• Concerned with what other people think
• Low self-monitors:
• Self-verifiers by nature
• Less concerned about social acceptability of their behavior
• Express self in a consistent manner
Concluding Remarks
• The self is not simple– it is multifaceted
• Aspect of self-concept that is stable over time
• Aspect of self-concept that changes with social situations
• We engage in many strategies to maintain and enhance our self-esteem
• Self-serving cognitions, self-handicapping, BIRGing, and downward
social comparison
• We have a private self and a public self, making self-presentation important
Next Week (September 19, 21)
• Please read:
• Chapter 4: Perceiving Persons
Have a lovely weekend!