Block 5 (Part 2)

Question 1

Self-Efficacy

Answer 1

the belief that you are able to effectively perform the tasks needed to attain a valued goal

Question 2

Self-Report Measure

Answer 2

a type of questionnaire in which participants answer question whose answers correspond to numerical values that can be added to create an overall index of some construct

Question 3

Task-Specific Measures of Self-Efficacy

Answer 3

measures that ask about self-efficacy beliefs for a particular task (e.g. athletic self-efficacy or academic self-efficacy)

Question 4

Verbal Persuasion

Answer 4

when trusted people (friends, family, experts) influence your self-efficacy for better or worse by either encouraging or discouraging you about your ability to succeed

Question 5

Imaginal Performances

Answer 5

when imagining yourself doing well increases self-efficacy

Question 6

Vicarious Performances

Answer 6

when seeing other people succeed or fail leads to changes in self-efficacy

Question 7

Performance Experiences

Answer 7

when past successes or failures lead to changes in self-efficacy

Question 8

Self-Regulation

Answer 8

the complex process through which people control their thoughts, emotions, and actions

Question 9

Collective Efficacy

Answer 9

the shared beliefs among members of a group about the group’s ability to effectively perform the tasks needed to attain a valued goal

Question 10

What is self-enhancement?

Answer 10

people tend to rate themselves unduly high on practically every dimension that they value

we maintain our unduly high self-evaluations by treating evidence about ourselves differently from the way we treat evidence about others

Question 11

What are self-serving cognitions?

Answer 11

beliefs about oneself that serve to enhance self

people tend to take credit for success and distance themselves from failure, all while seeing themselves as objective and not biased

people exhibit an optimistic bias about their own future, judging desirable events as more likely to occur than undesirable events

Question 12

What is the actor-observer effect?

Answer 12

the person who performs an action commonly attributes the action to the situation; in contrast, an observer of the same action is likely to attribute it to the actor’s internal characteristics

Question 13

What are possible explanations of the actor-observer effects?

Answer 13

knowledge-across-situations hypothesis

visual-orientation hypothesis

Question 14

What is the knowledge-across-situations hypothesis?

Answer 14

makes us aware of own behavior in all situations and know that it varies

we do not think that other people’s behaviors vary across situations

Question 15

What is accepting praise?

Answer 15

people tend to accept praise at face value

most of us hear many more positive statements about ourselves than negative statements

Question 16

How do people remember success?

Answer 16

people generally exhibit better long-term memory for positive events and successes in their lives than for negative events and failures

doesn’t apply to our perception of others

Question 17

How people define their own criteria for success?

Answer 17

people may evaluate themselves by those measures that are most favorable to themselves

inflation is stronger for endeavors in which the criteria are ambiguous

Question 18

What is self-handicapping?

Answer 18

behaviors designed to sabotage one’s own performance in order to provide a subsequent excuse for failure

set up failure: set one’s goals extremely high

“sandbagging”: playing down ability or lowering expectations

Question 19

What are gender differences in self-handicapping?

Answer 19

men are more likely to self-handicap

women tend to use sandbagging more

Question 20

Why is self-handicapping an ingenious strategy?

Answer 20

when the odds are stacked against us, we’re shielded from failure and praised for success

Question 21

What are the costs of self-handicapping?

Answer 21

increases risk of failure, doesn’t cause people to like you

Question 22

What is basking in the glory of others?

Answer 22

to raise our self-esteem we often bask in reflected glory (“BIRG”) by associating with others who are successful

to protect our self-esteem, we will “cut off reflected failure” (“CORF”) by distancing ourselves from others who fail or are of low status

Question 23

What is downward social comparison?

Answer 23

when self-esteem is at stake, tend to make comparisons with others who are worse off

will make temporal comparisons between past and present selves

when victimized by tragic life events, people like to affiliate with others in the same predicament who have adjusted well, but they tend to compare themselves with others who are worse off

Question 24

Are positive illusions adaptive?

Answer 24

those with the most realistic view of themselves are those who are depressed or low in self-esteem (make fewer self-serving attributions)

positive illusions are “health-protective” psychological resources that help people cope with adversity

but, positive illusions can lead to chronic patterns of self-defeating behaviors

Question 25

Is self-enhancement universal?

Answer 25

in East Asian countries the ideal person is someone who is aware of his or her deficiencies and is working hard to overcome them

findings are apparently not just the result of Easterner’s attempts to appear modest to others

several studies, however, indicate that con certain traits East Asian do show self-enhancing biases (on traits that promote collectivism)

possible that self-enhancing biases are universal, but the traits vary across cultures

Question 26

What are characteristics of people with high self-esteem?

Answer 26

are happier, healthier, more productive and more successful

are confident and motivated, and persist longer on tasks

sleep better and have fewer ulcers and colds

conform less to peer pressure

Question 27

What are characteristics of people with low self-esteem?

Answer 27

anxiety, depression, illness and pessimism

less task persistence, less confidence, less success

more learned helplessness

more self-blame for failure

Question 28

What is the Leary and Baumeister (2000) Sociometer Theory of self-esteem?

Answer 28

self-esteem provides an indicator of how we’re doing in the eyes of others

Question 29

What is the Greenberg, Solomon, and Pyszczynksi (1997) Terror Management Theory of self-esteem?

Answer 29

self-esteem is a protective shield designed to control the potential for terror that results from awareness of our own inevitable death

Question 30

What are the characteristics of the sociometer theory of self-esteem?

Answer 30

self-esteem acts like a meter to inform us, at any given time, of the degree to which we are likely to be accepted or rejected by others

from an evolutionary perspective, our survival depends on others’ acceptance of us and willingness to cooperate with us

our capacity for self-esteem motivates us to act in ways that promote our acceptance by others

Question 31

What is the support for the sociometer theory of self-esteem?

Answer 31

self-esteem correlates with or is affected by:

beliefs in acceptance or rejection

perceptions of change in other people’s opinions

actual real-life praise, social acceptance, or other satisfying social experiences and after social rejection

feedback about success or failure if the person was led to believe that others would hear of this success or failure