Cognition and Approaches to the Self

Question 1

cognition and the subjective experience: components

Answer 1

• conscious thoughts
• feelings and emotions
• beliefs
• desires about oneself and others

Question 2

self and self-concept

Question 3

levels of cognition

Answer 3

1. perception
   - process of imposing order on info received by our sense organs
2. interpretation
   - process of making sense of events in the world
3. beliefs and desires
   - standards and goals people develop for evaluating themselves and others

Question 4

overcoming learned helplessness

Answer 4

we behave differently if we believe we can do something about our situation

Question 5

personality and perception

Answer 5

field independent
- people have the ability to focus on details despite the clutter of background info

Question 6

measures to assess field-dependence

Answer 6

• rods and frame test (RFT)
• embedded figures test (EFT)
• refer to slide 6 and 7 of powerpoint

Question 7

effects of field dependence/independence on life choices

Answer 7

education
- FI favour natural sciences, math, engineering
- FD favour social sciences and education
interpersonal relations
- FI people are more inerpersonally detached
- FD are attentive to social cues oriented toward other people

Question 8

interpretation: Kelly’s personal construct

Answer 8

personal constructs
- constructs used to interpret and predict events
Kelly and post-modernism
- reality = constructed
- every person and every culture has a unique version of reality
reality is what we experience, every person has a unique experience and no one has the right one

Question 9

Kelly’s personal construct: commonality corollary

Answer 9

• if 2 people have similar construct systems, they will be psychologically similar, personality similar
• culture is an example of how 2 people might think similarly

Question 10

Kelly’s personal construct: sociality corollary

Answer 10

• to understand a person, we must understand how they construe the social world
• we must understand their constructs

Question 11

what is a corollary?

Answer 11

a result, a consequence

Question 12

Kelly’s personal construct: anxiety

Answer 12

result of not being able to understand and predict life events

Question 13

interpretation: locus of control

Answer 13

describes one’s interpretation of responsibility for events
1. external
- generalized expectancies that events are outside of one’s control
2. internal
- generalized expectancies that reinforcing events are under one’s control, and that one is responsible for major life outcomes

Question 14

interpretation: learned helplessness

Answer 14

• becoming passive and accepting of a situation when subjected to unpleasant and inescapable circumstances
• learning to be helpless
• observed in both humans and non humans

Question 15

learned helplessness: explanatory style

Answer 15

• tendency to use certain atributional categories when explaining causes of events
• tendency to explain stressors in characteristic manner
• pessimistic and optimistic

Question 16

learned helplessness: categories of attirbutions

Answer 16

• external vs internal
• stable vs unstable
• global vs specific

Question 17

causal attributions

Answer 17

refer to notebook page _____

Question 18

personal projects analysis

Answer 18

• emphasizes the “doing” of personality over the trait approach of “having”
• active nature of personality
• personality strictures a person’s daily life through the selection of goals and desires

Question 19

aspects of the self

Answer 19

• self-awareness
• self-concept
• self-esteem
• social identity
• self-recognition in the mirror test is one criterion for determining whether a species has self-awareness

Question 20

self-concept

Answer 20

• basis for understanding onself
• answers “who I am?”

Question 21

development of self-concept: infancy

Answer 21

• realize that it is distinct from the rest of the world
• rudimentary sense of self-awareness of one’s own body

Question 22

development of self-concept: 2-3 years

Answer 22

• identify and associate with their sex and age
• expand self-concept to include references to family

Question 23

development of self-concept: 5-6 years

Answer 23

• children increasingly begin to compare their skills and abilities with those of others (social comparison)
• development of the private self concept

Question 24

development of self-concept: teen years

Answer 24

• final unfolding of the self-concept
• perspective taking
• objective self-awareness
• many teens go through a period of extreme self-consciousness

Question 25

shyness

Answer 25

- when objective self-awareness becomes chronic - is genetic - shy individuals have more reactive amygdala - parents of formerly shy children encouraged them to socialize - shy people tend to interpret social interactions negatively

Question 26

evaluation apprehension

Answer 26

shy people are apprehensive about being evaluated by others

Question 27

self-schemata

Answer 27

- specific knowledge structures/cogitive representations of self-concept - past experiences influence our autobiographical memories; memories accessed will depend on the self-schemata in question - guide processing of info about the self; particularly in social interactions - e.g. attitudes, preferences, traits

Question 28

possible selves

Answer 28

- schemata for selves in the future - ideas each person has about who he might become, hope to become, or fear they will become

Question 29

self-guides: the ideal and ought self

Answer 29

ideal self - what a person wants to be ought - understanding of what others' want us to be

Question 30

self-discrepancy theory

Answer 30

refer to notebook page ____

Question 31

self-complexity

Answer 31

- extent to which people have many different and relatively independent ways of thinking about themselves - refer to drawing in notebook page ____

Question 32

self-concept clarity

Answer 32

- extent to which knowledge about the self is stable, clear, consistently defined - those with low concept-clarity tend to have 1. low self-esteem 2. high neuroticism 3. high rumination 4. more likely prone to overall depression

Question 33

the true self

Answer 33

- person you truly are - authenticity is how close one is to true self - 4 related components 1. awareness 2. unbiased processing 3. behaviour 4. authentic relationships - importer phenomenon: 1. feeling like a phony, fraud, fake 2. typically occurs when shifting social roles, or attempting something beyond skills or training

Question 34

self-esteem

Answer 34

- one's general evaluation of one's self-concept along a good-bad, or like-dislike dimension - how we feel about ourselves can vary from day-to-day, hour-to-hour, BUT always around some average - people can evaluate themselves differently in different areas of life or different aspects of self

Question 35

self-esteem vs self-worth

Answer 35

self-esteem: how we feel about ourselves in relation to others self-worth: how we feel about ourselves consistently, what we believe we are deserving of

Question 36

implicit self-esteem

Answer 36

- not necessarily aware of having it - can be measured with the Implicit Association Test

Question 37

explicit self-esteem

Answer 37

- aware of having it - usually, similar levels of implicit and explicit self-esteem

Question 38

reactions to criticism

Answer 38

high self-esteem - concerned with projecting successful, prosperous and thriving self image low self-esteem - most concerned with avoiding failure - following failure, they generalize to other areas of life

Question 39

defensive pessimism

Answer 39

- expect to fail - when failure occurs, no new negative info about the self is revealed

Question 40

self-handicapping

Answer 40

- person deliberately does things that increase probability of failure - when they fail, they have the excuse for failure - hence, failure is not attributable to self

Question 41

self-serving bias

Answer 41

taking credit for success, but denying responsibility for failure

Question 42

self-esteem regulation

Answer 42

- action involved in maintaining self-esteem 1. forming close relationships 2. belonging to sical groups 3. experiencing success

Question 43

self-esteem variability

Answer 43

- refers to magnitude of short term fluctuations in self esteem - individual differences characteristics - thought to result from particular vulnerability of a person's self-worth to events of everyday life

Question 44

your identity

Answer 44

- is the self we show to others - part of ourselves that we use to create impression to let others know what to expect from us - different from self-concept: identity contains elements that are socially observable publicly available expressions of the self

Question 45

What is the similarity between identity and self-concept?

Question 46

What is the difference between identiy and self-concept?

Answer 46

Identity includes elements of ourselves that are expressable and publicly available to others

Question 47

social identity

Answer 47

- includes sex, ethnicity and height - element of continuity, because many of its aspects = constant - identity provides social definition of a person - refers to social knowledge or what others think of the person

Question 48

identity: continuity

Answer 48

people can count on you to be the same person tmr and today

Question 49

identity: contrast

Answer 49

- your social identity differentiates you from others - makes you unique in the eyes of others

Question 50

identity crises

Answer 50

identity deficits - arises when a person has not formed adequate identity - has trouble making major decisions identity conflict - involves incompatibility between 2 or more aspects of identity - e.g. The values of an individual may clash with the values of the workplace

Question 51

resolving identity crises

Answer 51

- whether in adolescence or adulthood, resolution identity crisis has 2 steps 1. person decides which valus are most important to them 2. person transforms abstract values into desires and behaviours