The Self

Question 1

Wilson et al (1982)

Answer 1

Asked participants to keep a diary logging their mood and factors that could influence it e.g health, sleep etc.

They were asked to judge how these factors impacted their mood and others were also asked the same without seeing the diary.

Other people had 45 correlation and the people themselves had 42.

Question 2

Nisbett and Wilson (1977)

Answer 2

Had a stall with 4 sets of identical nylon socks and asked people to pick which they preferred

A – 11, B – 17, C – 31 and D – 41

Therefore there is a clear statistical trend yet the people were unaware of the effect of the position on their decision suggesting we may have no more insight into ourself than others.

Question 3

Johansson et al (2005)

Answer 3

Asked participants to pick their favourite photo then later showed them a different photo and asked them why they chose it

87% failed to notice and continued to explain their choice process for the photo

Question 4

Swiney and Sousa (2013)

Answer 4

Participants were given TMS helmets and were told they were attempting to transfer thoughts (fake)

People claimed they heard thoughts and even said “it was clear to me that the thoughts were not my own”

Question 5

Markus (1977)

Answer 5

Found that participants with either labelled themselves strongly dependent or independent (schematic), and then those who were moderately between (aschematic) schematic participants judged schema relevant traits as true or not of themselves much quicker than aschematic suggesting this information is more accessible

Question 6

Pfeifer et al (2009)

Answer 6

Discovered that regions of the brain involved in taking others perspective were active when particpants were asked to think about their self, and was increased in adolescents

Evidence for reflected self appraisals

Question 7

DePaulo et al (1987)

Answer 7

Participants were paired with 3 separate people to complete 4 tasks each time.

Afterwards they had to rate each person on personality and liking, and then estimate how they thought each person rated them.

Although they could perceive liking went up throughout experience they could not pick out differences in likening

They thought they were rated the same by all but this was not the case

Question 8

Morse and Gergen (1970)

Answer 8

Participants deceived to think they’re applying for a researching assistant job, filled in a self esteem questionnaire before and after clean/dirty confederate walked in

Scores showed change in self esteem dependent on whether they viewed the other applicant as better or worse than them

Question 9

Thornton and Moore (1993)

Answer 9

Ps filled out questionnaires on their own physical attractiveness in a room with a ‘unrelated’ poster of 24 attractive/unattractive faces of same gender

Found that attractiveness ratings were significantly higher in unattractive condition and vice versa

Question 10

Taylor and Label (1989)

Answer 10

Found that upward and downward social comparison can be beneficial as women with breast cancer chose to compare themselves to people worse off than them to remind them it could be worse but also compare themselves to women doing better to be inspired.

Question 11

Maguire and Padawer-singer (1978)

Answer 11

Asked children to describe themselves and most focused on qualities that made them different to classmates

Question 12

Cohen and Gunz (2002)

Answer 12

Asked Canadians and Asian participants to tell stories about 10 different situations, and found that Asians were much mor likely to describe the scene from an observers point of view whereas Canadians described the scene from their own viewpoint.

Question 13

Crocker, Summers & Luhtanen (2002)

Answer 13

Students filled out self esteem questionnaires every time they received a college response and as expected their self esteem went up with acceptance and down with rejections; however the effect was much greater for those whose self esteem was contingent on academic success

Question 14

What is the self?

Answer 14

The self is an organised set of stable beliefs we hold about ourselves that define our identity as individuals.

The major components of the self are the self-concept and self-esteem, which is the evaluative component of the self.

Question 15

What is meant by ‘social me’?

Answer 15

Implyies that the self changes for different social contexts, based on the impression we want formed of ourself.

Question 16

What is meant by the term ‘narrated self’?

Answer 16

James (1980) suggested we go through life continually telling a story about ourselves to help us feel fulfilled with age

Argued we construct self-narratives to integrate goals, make sense of conflict and explain change over time

Question 17

How accurate is self knowledge?

Answer 17

We are no better at inferring effects of variables such as the weather on our mood than outside observers are (they may have better knowledge of external traits)

We give confabulations when asked to explain our behaviour without realising that we are doing that (many also have motives too deceive)

We can even be fooled into thinking that our own thoughts are not our own.

Conscious awareness is, therefore, not a trustworthy source of knowledge about ourselves.

We cannot access many unconscious processes that influence our decisions, actions and opinions - so don’t always known our true motives

Question 18

How is self-knowledge organised?

Answer 18

A self-schema is an organised structure derived from pas experience, that represents a person’s beliefs and feelings about the self in general and in specific situations.

They influence our interpretations and judgments of ourselves and the social world.

They vary in content as certain traits may be more important to some than others, and those with either a very high or low trait are likely to have detailed beliefs on that trait.

Question 19

What are reflected self appraisals?

Answer 19

The idea is that we come to know ourselves by imagining how others perceive us.

However we are not necessarily accurate about how others see us, and even when people tell us information about ourselves they are not necessarily trustworthy.

It can also be argued that our pre-existing beliefs about ourselves influence how we imagine others see us, implying we project our self beliefs onto others.

Question 20

What is situationism?

Answer 20

Aspects of the social self changes across different contexts dependent on who you’re interacting with.

The working self concept is a subset of self-knowledge that is brought to mind in a particular context.

Despite this apparent malleability core aspects of the self remain consistent across context as a persons pool of self knowledge remains relatively stable over time.

Additionally contextual shifts conform to a stable predictable pattern e.g if you are confident around your friends and shy around your crush, this is likely to stay the same.

Question 21

What is the social comparison theory?

Answer 21

The hypothesis that people compare themselves to other people in order to obtain an accurate assessment of their own opinions abilities and internal states.

In order to maintain high self esteem we must compare ourselves to people at similar levels to us; however this gives us a positive bias of self-knowledge.

Although when we want to improve on an aspect of ourselves we engage in upward social comparison as seen in an experiment by Blanton et al (1999) where school children chose to compare their grades to classmates achieving higher.

Question 22

What are the gender differences with the social self?

Answer 22

Women in both cultures view themselves in a more interdependent manner, focussing on relations with others; whereas men view themselves more independently focussing on their unique qualities.

This may of course influenced by socialisation agents such as media portrayals, the way boys and girls are raised and the kinds of games they play and the values that teaches them.

Additionally there may be evolutionary routes due to men being naturally equipped to hunt and protect whereas women were equipped to nurture and raise the children.

Question 23

What are cultural differences regarding the self?

Answer 23

Researchers distinguish individualistic and collectivist cultures, and it has been shown that people in collectivist cultures apply personality trait labels to themselves in a way that is situation-specific, whereas people in individualistic cultures see their personality traits as applying across situations.

Self worth is valued more in Western cultures as Eastern language doesn’t even allocate a word to describe self-esteem.

Question 24

What are the two types of self-esteem?

Answer 24

Trait self esteem which is a person’s enduring level of self- regard across time (stable)

State self esteem which is the dynamic and changeable self evaluations a person experiences as momentary feelings about the self.

Question 25

What is the sociometer hypothesis

Answer 25

Suggests that self esteem is an internal, subjective index or marked of the extent to which a person is included or looked on favourably by others.

It’s also implied there is evolutionary significance as we are much more successful in groups; therefore this was a way of assessing our social standing.

Contingencies of self-worth has been proposed to explain changes in self esteem as a result of successes and failures.