Lesson 2

Question 1

• What we know and believe about ourselves.

Answer 1

Self-concept

Question 2

• Beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information.
  • The elements of your self-concept, the specific beliefs by which you define yourself.

Answer 2

Self-schema

Question 3

• are mental templates by which we organize our worlds.
  • Ex. Our self-schemas—our perceiving ourselves as athletic, overweight, smart, or anything else— powerfully affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate other people and ourselves.

Answer 3

Schemas

Question 4

• Evaluating one’s abilities and
  opinions by comparing oneself with others.
  • Others help define the standard by which we define ourselves as rich or poor, smart or dumb, tall or short: we compare ourselves with them and consider how we differ.
  • Much of life revolves around social comparisons.

Answer 4

Social comparison

Question 5

We may, therefore, privately take some pleasure in a peer’s failure,
especially when it happens to someone we envy and when we don’t feel vulnerable to such misfortune ourselves (Lockwood, 2002;
Smith et al., 1996).

• German word for this is:________.

Answer 5

Schadenfreude

Question 6

Social comparisons can also diminish our satisfaction in other ways.
• When we experience an increase in
affluence, status, or achievement,
we “compare upward” —we
raise the standards by which we evaluate our attainments.

Answer 6

Upward and Downward Social Comparison

Question 7

Developing an image of oneself
predicated on how one thinks or
appears to others is known as the
________.

Answer 7

looking-glass self

Question 8

The looking-glass self was how
sociologist _______ (1902)
described our use of how we think others perceive us as a mirror for perceiving ourselves.

Answer 8

Charles H. Cooley

Question 9

He (1934) refined this concept, noting that what matters for our self concepts is not how others actually see us but the way we imagine they see us.

Answer 9

George Herbert Mead

Question 10

• The illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others.

Answer 10

Illusion of transparency

Question 11

• The belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and behavior than they really are.

Answer 11

Spotlight effect

Question 12

• The concept of giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.

Answer 12

Individualism

Question 13

Giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly.

Answer 13

Collectivism

Question 14

The tendency to
underestimate how long it will take to complete a task.

Answer 14

Planning fallacy

Question 15

Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events.

Answer 15

Impact bias