PSY321 3. Self and Personality Flashcards

(312 cards)

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Central Tendency

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Mean = arithmetic average of the list of values: sum all values together and divide by the number in the list
Median = 50% quantile; 50% of values lie below this number an 50% of values are located above this value
Mode = most frequent number
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Central Tendency

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=

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Central Tendency

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Central Tendency

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Distribution

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Think about mean a little bit more. What is really a mean? Well, majority of people will fall somewhere around the mean, that is why it is a measure of central tendency after all. However, when people think about means, they often forget about the spread of the distribution. Considering the IQ distribution for example. The average IQ is 100 with a standard deviation of 15 points. Say that Becky has an IQ of 105 and her brother John’s IQ is 98—are they really that different? Well, not really, while Becky may score a few points above John, what is truly important in here is that they still lie within the region expectation: 85-115. That is, when we think about the mean, what we really should be thinking also is the spread and the proportion of people who should be located reasonable around the mean. That is, the fluctuation around the mean may be due to a number of causes—bad mood while taking the IQ test, lack of sleep, lower IQ, etc. However, what really is important to remember is that people will vary on a variable, yet a majority will fall somewhere around the mean.

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Distribution

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Distribution

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Distribution

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Distribution

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Distribution

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Distribution

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Distribution

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Regression

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Regression

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Regression

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Group Means

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Null hypothesis significance testing
Null versus Nil
Looking at the difference in means

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Group Means

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Group Means

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Group Means

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Group Means

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21
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Reading Graphs

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Reading Graphs

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Reading Graphs

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Reading Graphs

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Bar Graph
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Bar Graph
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Bar Graph
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Bar Graph
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Scatterplot
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Scatterplot
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Scatterplot
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Scatterplot
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Self and Personality
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Self and Personality
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Self and Personality
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Self and Personality
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Who Am I ?
This is an example of a typical test that cultural psychologists would use to begin understanding how people view themselves. There are various ways that people can describe themselves and the response is free format. Thus, the information comes in a more natural form without much prompt from researchers, avoiding the biases. However, it also is a disadvantage. Why don’t you take a moment to write 5 statements about yourself. Give me some examples of what you have written. As you can see, there is an interesting distribution of items: I am an family man—relational. I am a brother—relational. I am athletic—relational. I am a volunteer—can be quite confusing. We can say that the person identity is embedded in the role of the volunteer, as a helper to the community and other people around. However, we can also think about this person as having a more selfish motivation—I help the community, therefore I am good. In the latter case, the focus is less relational and more personal by its virtue. As such, some statements may be ambiguous and difficult to code because very little information is available to us. Nevertheless, the classification process is apparent in here. The researchers simply summarize the number of statements that refer to the individual versus to social relationships. Can do this for each individual or can do this for a group of people—it is indeed a simple count.
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Who Am I ?
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Who Am I ?
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Who Am I ?
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Who Am I ?
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Who Am I ?
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Who Am I ?
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Comparing Kenyans & Americans
What we see next is a bar graph comparing the number of statements referring to personal characteristics versus roles and memberships (hence the problem with volunteering is resolved). Here, the researchers examined the use of the 20 statements test comparing kenyans (more collectivistic culture) with Americans (who tend to be more individualistic). However, also there is some information about who these people are. As you can see, Kenyans in general tend to define themselves in terms of individual characteristics more if they are obtaining Americanize education, however, rural kenyans tend to pay more attention to roles and responsibilities towards each other. What is interesting, is that here we observe the effects of socialization, education and industrialization. That is, Workers in Nairobi, living in a more central city tend to be a little bit more individualist than people living in a more rural setting. Perhaps, because maintaining the relationships is not as critical for living in a city where you can have greater selection of opportunities (broadly defined). However, the striking contrast emerges when we see students who are exposed to Western educational system. Here, the kenyans become incredibly similar to Americans. Also, note the y-axis. Neither Americans, nor Nairobi undergraduates used more than 50% of descriptors to describe the self! Although the difference in descriptor use is pronounced between the cultures, there are many other descriptors that people use that do not necessarily fit into one category versus another. Can you think about some of those descriptors?
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Comparing Kenyans & Americans
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Comparing Kenyans & Americans
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Comparing Kenyans & Americans
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Comparing Kenyans & Americans
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Comparing Kenyans & Americans
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
Well, we believe that these statements represent individual’s sense of self. Let us begin examining each graphic in turn. The image in red represents an independent view of self whereas the image in blue represents and interdependent aspect of the self. They both represent how you might view yourself more generally. Now, let us consider the similarities between the two images and differences in turn. But before we do, we need to define what each symbol means. 1. The yellow circle represents an individual in holistic sense 2. The blue circles with singular labels represent other individuals (e.g., mother) 3. The Xs represent aspects of identity, descriptors that people will report using the twenty statements test 4. The big X represents a salient aspect of self-view and small X, less important characteristics 5. As you can see, the circles are separated by either solid or dashed line. Dashed line represents the flexibility of the representation—people can cross the border easily Solid line represents the stability of the representation—difficult to cross through 6. Finally, the figures are divided into what people would consider in-group and out-group members. Now, focusing on the independent self (figure in red): You see a individual with multiple characteristics that serve as defining features. In fact, each circle has those features defining their identity. That is, when you think about self, you think about your own attributes and when you think about others you think about other people’s attributes. Critically, these attributes are separate—there is little to no overlap between the sense of self and the sense of others may be like. Each individual in here is a separate entity that does not share many core attributes with others. As such, an individual is separate from others. While so, you can see that all others are embedded within the in-group, rather than out-group—this represents the closeness of relationships. As you can see, friends and family members tend to be close to an individual and acquaintances a little bit farther out. The strangers are located outside of the circle and do not have any attributes—they simply are out-group members and we have very little information about them. However, as you can see, it is very close in the view of independent self to cross the in-group/out-group boundary. Why? Well, if the self is a separate entity and is protected by the solid border, there is no reason to create a self of separation between yourself and other people who are located within the vicinity. Recapitulate. Interdependent self, in contrast to independent self, is defined through the relationships with others in the in-group. The self-identity is intrinsically represented as one with others and all of the self attributes overlap with attributes possessed by others. People tend to define themselves based on the “family resemblance,” similarity, and relationships that they have with the others. New attributes can arise and help define both individuals. Next, everything that is happening within the in-group setting is bound by the solid line. Meaning that whereas the relationships and identities are shared within the group, outsiders are not welcome because there is no relationship with them and identity is largely defined by the relationships with others within the circle. This of course is an extreme representation of the self. How many of you used at least one personal attribute when describing yourself on the 20 statements test? How many of you used at least one role/relationship to describe yourselves. As you can easily see, each individual can be both interdependent and independent at the same time. Why does it matter, well, we need to understand that independent and interdependent are located on the continuum and when we speak about cultural differences we do not necessarily think about this model as a perfect definition of what is going on—rather, we focus on the more flexible definition, stating that most people in collectivistic cultures would be expected to interact with the world in the interdependent way whereas most of the people in individualistic cultures would be expected to interact with the world in the relational way.
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
``` Independent: Self derives identity from inner attributes Attributes are: stable unique self-contained Interdependent: Self derives identity from relationships & group memberships Relational identity is: Connected to, Sustained by, and Contingent upon others ```
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
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Independent vs. Interdependent Self
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Individualism vs. Collectivism
Taking these differences to a broader spectrum, you will find that some cultures are more individualistic than they are collectivistic. In other words, most people in some cultures would define themselves in terms of individual attributes versus interpersonal attributes. Here, the map displays research by Hofstede, who surveyed IBM workers around the world. He used an instrument to capture individualist-collectivism dimension, as a part of larger research that allowed for a differentiation of cultures across multiple dimensions (Power Distance, Masculinity-Femininity, and uncertainty avoidance). He believed that culture can be visible only by comparison and extended this research more broadly to the corporate culture. That is, do people within the organization follow a defined hierarchy? Do they see themselves as a part of a broader collective versus as separate individuals, striving towards own goals that may or may not align with the vision of the organization. Can somebody guess what the difference between individualism and independence are?
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Individualism vs. Collectivism
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Individualism vs. Collectivism
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Individualism vs. Collectivism
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Individualism vs. Collectivism
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States Higher In
Individualism | We can take a closer look at the united states for example.
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States Higher In
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States Higher In | Individualism
``` New England Midwest Great Plains Mountain West Northwest ```
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States Higher In | Collectivism
``` Hawaii Utah Southeast California Indiana NJ, DE, MD, VA, NY ```
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States Higher In | A little of both
``` Nevada Arizona New Mexico Illinois Michigan West Virginia Pennsylvania Connecticut Rhode Island Alaska ```
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What about other dimensions?
Masculinity-femininity dimension is quite interesting as well. This dimension does not refer, however, to proportion of males or females. But rather speaks to the WESTERN ideas and stereotypes about males and females. Masculinity as such is defined by the degree to which culture endorses achievement, heroism, assertiveness, material reward for success, and dominance. Notably, dominance in psychology is rarely interpreted as physical power over others, but rather the degree to which the person is direct and assertive in conversations and relationships. These cultures tend to be more competitive. Femininity, on the other had, represents the degree to which cultures prefer cooperation, modesty, and caring for others well being. These cultures tend to be more consensus-oriented meaning that people in these cultures tend to value agreeableness to a greater extent. Similar to individualism and collectivism, you can imagine that East Asian cultures tend to be more relational and stereotypically more feminine in the view of the West. As such, there appears to be a degree of western bias in the definition. What is more interesting, however, is the degree to which gender plays a role for individuals’ identities and how they perceive each other. Important also if how people view others of different genders.
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What about other dimensions?
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What about other dimensions?
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What Correlates with Egalitarian Gender Views?
“Urbanization” Level of “individualism” Religious prescription
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What Correlates with Egalitarian Gender Views?
There are some defined correlated to holding more gender egalitarian views. The most notable of those is living in the city. That is, living in a more diverse place tends to be correlated with how much opportunities men and women receive in their environment. Although there is quite a bit of gender inequality, what we do observe is that people in more urban settings with greater degree of individualism tend to be less tolerant of gender inequality. Another aspect is, of course religious prescription, whereby many religions advocate a greater importance of a male, rather than female identity. Naturally, you can see a very obvious correlation in here: more liberal people tend to perceive gender inequality as more damaging to the society than more conservative people—quite an interesting findings.
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What Correlates with Egalitarian Gender Views?
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“Essentializing” Gender
North America = “Male” more essentialized than “Female.” (e.g., less acceptable for men to take ballet than women to play hockey.) India = “Female” more essentialized than “Male.” (e.g., Gods Kumar & Mina)
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“Essentializing” Gender
However, even going a step beyond that, we see that the very definition of gender can vary from culture to culture. Let us focus on the North American culture first. What we observe is that male identity is more essentialized than female identity. What does this essentializing mean? Well, the more essentialized identity tends to be more important, more central, and elicit greater degree of discomfort, given a violation. A simple example would be a male doing ballet, which contradicts the prescribed by the society role. What happens next then? Well, we look at the man doing ballet and assign a category to them that seems to resolve our inability to perceive the degree of maleness—we use a mental shortcut (stereotype) to correct our world view quite fast. Oh, you say, this make is doing ballet? That means that he has a high chance of being gay! No similar effect occurs for females, as you might note. You might describe the girl as a tom boy for example if she is doing sports, but the straight female identity remains connected to the individual. As such, to identify which gender tends to be more essentialized, we simply need to think about the degree of discomfort that the violation of the role will produce. In american culture, the violation of male gender role tends to be more essentialized because violating it is inappropriate. However, this does not seem to be a universal effect. In some locations in india, for example, the female role is more essentialized and people feel quite uncomfortable when a female takes on male attributes. In a study, mahalingam asked the participants how kumar (male) and mina (female) would act if they had switched the brains. The Ps sad that kumar will act like a female now and that mina will stay the same. As such, this evidence suggests that people thought of make identity as more malleable than female identity—hence, you can say that indians essentialize female identity more. Thus, not only does essentialization create some degree of discomfort, but also can be defined from the perspective of how flexible the gender identity is.
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“Essentializing” Gender
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Face Leadership
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Face Leadership
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Face Leadership
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Face Leadership
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Sex Role Ideology Scale
If we were to take a look at the distribution of sex role ideologies, we can see that there are many individualistic countries with greater scores on this measure, meaning that they have more egalitarian views. The initial scale was based on the feminists views before 1978. Those who endorsed those beliefs were considered to be more egalitarian. This uses the endorsement of values and beliefs on the questionnaire. But how do nations actually fair in this domain?
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Sex Role Ideology Scale
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Let’s take a look at statistics
Green nations represent greater equality between genders. GII, or the gender inequality index, takes 3 things into an account: (a) reproductive health, (b) empowerment, (c) labour market Health: maternal mortality & adolescent fertility rate Empowerment: the number of seats occupied by women and the number of women with higher education Labour: female participation in workforce What is the advantage of using these measures versus self reports?
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Let’s take a look at statistics
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Let’s take a look at statistics
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Let’s take a look at statistics
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Let’s take a look at statistics
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Self-Consistency
``` Study: Twenty-Statements Test Japanese & American Students 4 Different contexts 1) Authority 2) Peer 3) Group 4) Solitary ```
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Self-Consistency
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Self-Consistency
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Self-Consistency
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Results
Position participants into different situations and ask them to report different statements about themselves. Americans were more positive than japanese—why? Can you guess? We will cover this a little bit later, but American culture tends to encourage self-promotion and promotion orientation more generally, hence more positive responses. Japanese on the other hand tend to be more focused on failures and are more modest more generally. Hence, we see that they report that they are more negative. Next finding, across the context, Americans tend to report themselves in a more positive light, whereas Japanese tend to be more positive about themselves only when they are alone. In all other contexts they tend to use more negative than positive statements. This naturally affects our interpretation of personality and methods. Indeed, if people’s self perception varies as a function of situation, it tells us that personality may not be as stable as it is. There may be stability of self expression for Americans. However, the big question remains—which context should we consider true personality—as such, cultural psychology reveals something interesting about personality.
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Results
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Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Definition: Motivation for consistency b/w attitudes & behaviors. Motivated to “reduce” dissonance (usually by changing attitudes). Do we see cognitive dissonance in all cultures?
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Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Thus, people should be consistent. A classic example is what is know foot in the door. As for the first donation, get it. Ask for a bigger one next time and say that they have complied already—the likelihood that you will get more money goes up. Because people like to be consistent with themselves.
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Two Paths to Consistency
``` Consistent with oneself From Time 1 to Time 2 Consistent with others: Expectations Situation ```
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Two Paths to Consistency
You can either be consistent within oneself or with others. Being consistent within yourself means that you will exhibit the same attitudes, same opinions, ideas and behaviors from time 1 to time 2 and from one situation to the next. Being consistent with others means that the ideas, attitudes, and behaviors may change depending on what is expected of you (being in the presence of authority) or situation. People generally tend to be consistent within themselves and with others, depending on a number of factors. However, what we do observe is that westerners tend to exhibit very consistent behavior within themselves rather than with others. The opposite is true about East Asians, who are socialized to be considerate and fulfill the roles and obligations.
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Different Motivations for Consistency
Study: Request to take survey about beverage preferences. Would you comply or not? This is exactly what the researchers are finding—when individuals grow up in a more collectivistic culture and are socialized to be more interdependent, they are more likely to comply if majority of their peers have already complied to the request. Nothing similar happens with Americans. For Americans, we see the motivation to be unique at play—they are less likely to comply if their peers previously complied. However, taking a survey does not present any material burden—participants do not receive the money, nor do they are asked to pay the money. There is never an opportunity cost involved in here. What would be your prediction in cases where the participants are asked to pay money?
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Benefits of Self-Consistency
What is the functional value of self-consistency? Measures of well-being: Being consistent w/ oneself is more or less beneficial – depending on your culture!
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Benefits of Self-Consistency
Why would people want to be consistent? Makes sense for consistency with others, but why the self? Well, there appear to be some benefits to being consistent. Across several measures of well being, the authors of the study found that Americans who were more consistent reported better well being, more social skills and were evaluated as more likeable.
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Motivations to Fit In or Stick Out
Asch Line Study Which line – A, B, or C – is the same length as the far left line? When confederates said “line C,” 75% of Ps also said “line C” (at least on one of multiple trials) What are the social costs of “sticking out”?
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Motivations to Fit In or Stick Out
Let’s now take a closer look at the social benefits of fitting in—after all being other-consistent is a form of fitting in with others. Here is a classic experiment conducted by Asch—he invited a group if participants into the room and asked them to respond to line stimuli. The other members of the groups were confederates. When confederates made incorrect guess, the subjects tended to conform on at least one of the trials. Note when I say at least one of the trials—psychology researchers and media tend to exaggerate the degree of the effect. Indeed, at least one of the trial is not the best indicator of how much participants actually conformed. However, the fact remains, they still conformed. Well, the question is there about the degree of conformity and the effects of culture on it. I believe that the answer to this study is quite obvious at this point! Individuals who have a stronger motivation to fit in, will conform more than westerners.
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Motivations to Fit In or Stick Out
What are the social costs of non-conformity? Ironically, many now revered were hated during lifetimes However, “Non-conformity costs” may be higher in collectivistic cultures Thus, collectivist must be encouraged to fit in, rather than stick out!
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Motivations to Fit In or Stick Out
Airport Pen Study Participants offered different colored pens for study participation. Do participants pick majority- or minority-colored pen?
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Motivations to Fit In or Stick Out
What you see on this graph is that East Asians at the airport tended to prefer a majority pen, whereas westerners preferred a minority pen. This naturally indicates that there may be a degree of desire to “fit in” for East Asians and some desire to stick out for westerners. However, this still is inconclusive—for example, it indeed can be a motivation/desire to stick out! Alternatively, it could be that East Asians and Westerners were motivated to fit in the expectations and is has nothing to do with internal drives and desires. Okay, this is interesting! The authors concluded this in the framework of motivation, and on the test you should be consistent with the authors unless I explicitly ask you to critically analyze the study.
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Motivations to Fit In or Stick Out
How are cultural themes communicated? Magazine Ad Study Analyzed themes of conformity vs. uniqueness. Media reinforces individualistic & collectivistic norms.
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Motivations to Fit In or Stick Out
Moving on to another study, the authors found that media indeed had some themes of conformity and uniqueness. The graph explained the results quite clearly—the general conclusion remains—East Asians tend to conform and fit in because they think about the relationships with others.
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Self-Awareness
``` Two Types: Subjective: Thinking about the world outside. Objective: Thinking about yourself (how others see you). ```
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Self-Awareness
Okay, now we will start with the latter part of the lecture. First, we will take a look at self-awareness. What happens here? Well, there are 2 types—a subjective and objective way of thinking about it. You can either view yourself from a subjective perspective—what does it mean? Well, it basically mean that you are viewing the world from the first person perspective. Objective view is taken when you see yourself in the third person—as if you were a character in sims. Those moments when you start thinking about how you look, how you behave, and how others see you—natural example may be when you hear your voice on a recording. You tend to be more self-critical in those situations. Part of the reason of course is physiological (can someone guess what the physiological explanation is?). The other part is that we start feeling self-conscious.
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Mirror Study
``` Does the subjective/ objective perspective change? Actual Self Ideal Self Measuring “Actual-Ideal Discrepancy” ```
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This who I actually am, and this is what I want to be. Just kidding, I don’t really want to be a lawyer—never really considered the option. Anyways, suppose you have some characteristics/attributes that you can use to describe who you actually are—this would be your actual self. Ideal self, contains characteristics that you would like to have. This does not mean that you don’t have those characteristics already! What is important here, is the degree to which you want to have those characteristics. For example, it is very easy to be mean to other people, whereas practicing kindness can be a challenge. That is, instead of saying something unpleasant in bad mood, you might want to try harder to be a kind, helpful, and understanding person. Suppose that you are a kind person in general, however, ideally you want to be even more kind than you already are. The distance between your actual ratings of kindness and there you want to be is the Actual-Ideal Discrepancy. Note here, also that I said that you are already a kind person, which means that you have it. However, you have greater expectations. You can easily translate it into any domain—relationships, professions, education, intelligence. Thus, the ideal self is about where you want to be and actual self is about who you actually are.
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Mirror Study
``` Does the subjective/ objective perspective change? Americans Like I said, Americans tend to be more of subjective beings. They are looking at the world from the perspective of self! So what will happen when they actually look at themselves through the eyes of others, the direction will rapidly reverse. ```
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Japanese
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The Japanese on the other hand are objectively self aware—they are thinking about relationships and therefore must think about how others view them. As such, bringing in a mirror will not change very much at all.
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Mirror Study
This is exactly what happens! The discrepancy between ideal and actual self becomes more pronounced when Americans take the perspective of others. As you may note, Japanese tend to be quite self critical to begin with. However, also note, that the effects are actually not that large, the difference is barely .4 points on a scale!
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Do you consider yourself average, above average, or below average?
``` Ability to get along well with others Creativity Considerateness Driving ability Loyalty Dependability ```
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Do you consider yourself average, above average, or below average?
Let’s see a show of hands. How many of you think that you are above average on the following dimensions?
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Self-Enhancement
Basically, this can be explained through how people are motivated to view themselves. In america, it is especially prevalent—indeed, everyone is a winner! M2
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Self-serving biases
How would you rate your professors? Average, above average, or below average? How do professors rate themselves? 94% say they’re better than average! But so do: children, teenagers, college students, & adults!
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When it comes to professors, actually, I have conducted a study recently examining professors charisma. What did I find? They rated themselves 2 standard devations higher on charisma than undergraduate students. Wow! What an interesting finding!
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Downward social comparison “I may have gotten a C, but at least I didn’t get a D.” Upward social comparison Avoid the people who got As. Compensatory self-enhancement “I didn’t get an A, but I’m a great dancer.” Discounting “Who really cares about Chemistry anyway?” External attribution “The professor didn’t teach us anything!” Bask in the reflected glory (BIRG) “U of T students are above average.”
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And we are pretty good at maintaining these positive views! Take a look at these and think about moments when you may be biased by at least one of these! By the show of hands, how many of you have experienced at least one of these instances—that’s right! All of us are susceptible to these biases, but we may use them differently and to a different degree. As a side note, it is completely okay and normal to use these biases—that’s why we are humans! Clarification: Downward social comparison – comparing yourself with someone who did worse Upward Social Comparison – comparing yourself to someone who did better
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Self-Esteem
``` N. American Students 93% High self-esteem After Failure: Seek upward and downward comparisons Discount importance of task Make external attributions After Success BIRG of sports teams ```
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``` Japanese Students 55% High self-esteem After Failure: Seek upward comparisons View task as even more important ``` After Success Make external attributions More critical of their sports teams (no “BIRG-ing”)
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Why? And so we have, a huge number of Americans (NA) stating that they have high self esteem. And they use strategies to maintain their self-esteem NA – Seek equal number of upward and downward comparisons JP – Seek 3 times more upward comparisons BIRG refers to a different study where Ps were asked to reflect on sports team’s performance. Japanese tend to be more critical of their team, hence no BIRG.
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Why Self-Esteem Differences?
Do East-Asians have stronger motivation to “group enhance”? Probably not… Do East-Asians value different traits than N. Americans? Maybe… Not tapping into people’s “true” feelings, but simply cultural norms (e.g., Americans feigning bravado; East-Asians feigning modesty). Maybe...but still seems East-Asians don’t have as strong a motivation as Westerners for high self-esteem.
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Why Self-Esteem Differences?
Indeed, if we examine these hypotheses, we can only think that the culture itself is promoting bravado and modesty. Thus, it is not necessarily that the self-esteem is different, but rather that they are trying to fit in the cultural norms in reporting on their subjective feelings. Finally, could it be that East Asians simply do not have a concept of self-esteem to begin with?!
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Why Self-Esteem Differences?
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Why Self-Esteem Differences?
Other Factors: Parenting American parents Recalled stories about child’s past successes. Taiwanese parents Recalled stories about past transgressions (Miller et al., 1997). Historical Factors Protestant reformation Predestination Doctrine = Motivation to interpret life events favorably leads to self-enhancement.
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Why Self-Esteem Differences?
Link between Individualism & self-esteem? “I’m all that I’ve got.” Simultaneous in individualism & self-esteem (Putnam, 2000)
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It’s About “Face”!
“Face” = Amount of social value others give you if you live up to the standards of your position. What matters not how you think of yourself, but what others think of you. How are motivations different for “maintaining face” vs. “building self-esteem”?
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Another explanation is that self-esteem is not valued in East Asian culture. Being a relational culture, they tend to value the others views and others views tend to define the self more than the self itself. Let us linger on the idea for a little bit. If an individual is a separate independent entity, we would expect that he or she would need to construct the sense of self from within. Thus, the self esteem shall be defined by the self. In more collectivistic cultures, by the virtue of self-definition through relationships, it would be natural to consider other people’s opinions in the generation of self-esteem. In this case, we call it face.
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“Don’t Lose Face!”
Face is hard to gain; easy to lose. Dependent on social & hierarchical promotion. Good strategy = cautious, non-offensive, focus on improving weaknesses. Leads to “prevention orientation.”
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Prevention vs. Promotion
Prevention Orientation = Cautious approach to not lose something; try to avoid bad things. Promotion Orientation = Eager approach to gain something; try to secure good things (Higgins, 1996). East Asians show greater prevention (Elliot et al., 2001; Lockwood et al., 2005).
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Prevention vs. Promotion
How does a promotion focus vs. prevention focus affect responses to successes and failures? Participants received pos. or neg. feedback after creativity task
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Prevention vs. Promotion
East-Asians seek out potential weaknesses & work on them (so less likely to fail in future). East-Asians tend to have stronger Self-Improvement Motivation. N. Americans seek out things they already do well (so see themselves more positively).
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Implicit Theories of Self
``` Entity: Fixed abilities Innate intelligence Respond to failure by blaming self (lack of intelligence, abilities) Incremental: Malleable abilities Changeable intelligence Respond to failure by working harder ```
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Do cultures differ in implicit theories? Well, you can think about yourself from a perspective of change. Does your self stem from within, genetic factors? Are those factors stable and persistent? Or is the identity more malleable? And you can improve on things. As has ben said previously, east asians are excellent at improving over time, their sense of self tends to vary across situations, suggesting that they may be more likely to adopt an incremental view of the self. That is, they are likely to think that the traits are not stable and thus can be improved upon.
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Implicit Theories of Self
“What is intelligence based on?”
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Implicit Theories of Self
Looking at the distribution of beliefs, we can see that majority of japanese believe that intelligence is not based on innate feelings, meaning that people are not born with a certain level of intelligence, but rather that they acquire it over time. The contrast is striking when we look at the European americans who believe that intelligence is almost genetically determined and efforts affect intelligence very little.
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Agency and Control
“Implicit Theories of the World” Entity Theory: World is fixed & beyond our control to change it. Incremental Theory: World is flexible and responsive to our efforts to change it.
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But this is not limited to the self, as the self is situated in a broader world. You can view every event and every opportunity as a function of incremental and entity theories of self—you can think that the world can be affected and changed. How can we integrate the incremental and entity theories about the world. Well, think back to fitting in and sticking out. Individuals from collectivistic cultures tend to be more relational, change according to situation, and believe that face is very important and difficult to gain, yet easy to lose. If so, they adopt an ajustment strategy to the world, suggesting that East Asians, while having an incrimental theory of the self will have an entity theory of the world. That is, their attitude is to adjust their malleable self to the stable world. Westerners tend to be quite the opposite—accept me for who I am, take me baby or leave me! Thus, while they believe that they may not be able to change who they are, they think that they still may want to affect the world (especially if you are a student at Berkley, where they explicitly promote changing the world). Perhaps that is a reason why we see so much volunteering in Americans?! An interesting question that remains in here, is the directionality of causality? Do people with incremental beliefs of self adopt a more entittative perception of the world?
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Agency and Control
Aerobics Study: | “What do you do when a move is too hard for you?”
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Agency and Control
Influence vs. Adjust Study: | Ps asked to list times they either tried to influence or adjust to surroundings?
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Agency and Control
Study: Newspaper Reporting of Scandals Looked at reporting of same scandal in U.S. & Japanese newspapers. DV = Times newspapers referenced individuals vs. companies at fault?
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Agency and Control
Computer Game Study Choice = spaceship name and icon. 3 Conditions = Personal, Out-group, In-group. DV = How many games played (intrinsic interest)
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Agency and Control
What about social class? Do working class vs. upper-middle class see choice differently? “Pen Study” Free choice vs. Usurped choice.
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