2. The self in social world
“There are three things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to know
one’s self.”
Errors of Self
Spotlight Effect
Illusion of Transparency
Interplay between our sense of self and our social worlds.
Social surroundings affect our self-awareness.
Self-interest colors our social judgment.
Self-concern motivates our social behavior.
Social relationships help define our self.
3. Spotlight Effect
The belief that others are paying more attention to one’s appearance and behavior than they
really are.
From our self-focused perspective, we overestimate our conspicuousness. This spotlight effect
means that we tend to see ourselves at center stage, so we intuitively overestimate the extent
to which others’ attention is aimed at us. Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec, and Kenneth
Savitsky (2000) explored the spotlight effect by having individual Cornell University students
don embarrassing Barry Manilow T-shirts before entering a room with other students. The self-
conscious T-shirt wearers guessed that nearly half their peers would notice the shirt. Actually,
only 23 percent did.
4. Illusion of Transparency
The illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by
others.
What’s true of our dorky clothes and bad hair is also true of our emotions: our
anxiety, irritation, disgust, deceit, or attraction (Gilovich & others, 1998). Fewer
people notice than we presume. Keenly aware of our own emotions, we often
suffer an illusion of transparency. If we’re happy and we know it, then our face
will surely show it. And others, we presume, will notice. Actually, we can be
more opaque than we realize.
We also overestimate the visibility of our social blunders and public mental
slips. When we trigger the library alarm or accidentally insult someone, we may
be mortified (“Everyone thinks I’m a jerk”). But research shows that what we
agonize over, others may hardly notice and soon forget (Savitsky & others,
2001).
5. SELF CONCEPT
Self Concept: A person’s answers to the question, “Who am I?”
How, and how accurately, do we know ourselves?
What determines our self concept?
You have many ways to complete the sentence “I am _____ .”
(What five answers might you give?) Taken together, your answers define
your self-concept.
The most important aspect of yourself is your self.
You know who you are, your gender, whose feelings and memories you
experience
6. Our Sense of Self
To discover where this sense of self arises, neuroscientists are exploring
the brain activity that underlies our constant sense of being oneself.
Some studies suggest an important role for the right hemisphere. Put
yours to sleep (with an anesthetic to your right carotid artery) and you
likely will have trouble recognizing your own face. One patient with right
hemisphere damage failed to recognize that he owned and was controlling
his left hand (Decety & Sommerville, 2003). The “medial prefrontal cortex,”
a neuron path located in the cleft between your brain hemispheres just
behind your eyes, seemingly helps stitch together your sense of self. It
becomes more active when you think about yourself (Zimmer, 2005).
7. Self-schemas
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, are your self-schemas (Markus & Wurf, 1987). Schemas are
mental templates by which we organize our worlds. Our self -schemas—
our perceiving ourselves as athletic, overweight, smart, or whatever—
powerfully affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate other people
and ourselves.
8. Possible selves:
Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future.
Our self-concepts include not only our self-schemas about who we
currently are but also who we might become—our possible selves. Hazel
Markus and her colleagues (Inglehart & others, 1989; Markus & Nurius,
1986) note that our possible selves include our visions of the self we dream
of becoming—the rich self, the thin self, the passionately lovebecoming—
the underemployed self, the unloved self, the academically failed self. Such
possible selves motivate us with a vision of the life we long for
becoming—the underemployed self, the unloved self, the academically
failed self. Such possible selves motivate us with a vision of the life we long
for.
9. THE SELF
The self-concept has become a major social-psychological focus because it helps organize our
thinking and guide our social behavior .
10. Development of the Social Self
What determines our self-concepts?
Studies of twins point to genetic influences on personality and self-concept, but
social experience also plays a part.
Among these influences are the following:
the roles we play
the social identities we form
the comparisons we make with others
our successes and failures
how other people judge us
the surrounding culture
11. Roles we play
As we enact a new role—college student, parent, salesperson—we initially
feel self conscious. Gradually, however, what begins as playacting in the
theater of life is absorbed into our sense of self. For example, while playing
our roles we may support something we haven’t really thought much
about. Having made a pitch on behalf of our organization, we then justify
our words by believing more strongly in it.
12. social comparisons
Evaluating one’s abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others.
How do we decide if we are rich, smart, or short? One way is through
social comparisons (Festinger, 1954). Others around us help to 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.
Social comparison explains why students tend to have a higher academic
self-concept if they attend a high school with mostly average students
(Marsh & others, 2000), and how that self-concept can be threatened after
graduation when a student who excelled in an average high school goes
on to an academically selective university. The “big fish” is no longer in a
small pond.
13. SUCCESS AND FAILURE
Self-concept is fed not only by our roles, our social identity, and our
comparisons but also by our daily experiences. To undertake challenging yet
realistic tasks and to succeed is to feel more competent.
After experiencing academic success, students believe they are better at
school, which often stimulates them to work harder and achieve more (Felson,
1984; Marsh & Young, 1997). To do one’s best and achieve is to feel more
confident and empowered.
Low self-esteem does sometimes cause problems. Compared with those with
low self-esteem, people with a sense of self-worth are happier, less neurotic,
less troubled by insomnia, less prone to drug and alcohol addictions, and more
persistent after failure (Brockner & Hulton, 1978; Brown, 1991; Tafarodi & Vu,
1997). But as we will see, critics argue that it’s at least as true the other way
around: Problems and failures can cause low self-esteem.
14. OTHER PEOPLE’S JUDGMENTS
When people think well of us, it helps us think well of ourselves. Children
whom others label as gifted, hardworking, or helpful tend to incorporate
such ideas into their self-concepts and behavior .
Our ancestors’ fate depended on what others thought of them. Their
survival was enhanced when protected by their group. When perceiving
their group’s disapproval, there was biological wisdom to their feeling
shame and low self-esteem. As their heirs, having a similar deep-seated
need to belong, we feel the pain of low self-esteem when we face social
exclusion, notes Mark Leary (1998, 2004b). Selfesteem, he argues, is a
psychological gauge by which we monitor and react to how others
appraise us.
15. Self and Culture
For some people, especially those in industrialized Western cultures,
individualism prevails. Identity is self-contained. Adolescence is a time of
separating from parents, becoming self-reliant, and defining one’s
personal, independent self. One’s identity—as a unique individual with
particular abilities, traits, values, and dreams—remains fairly constan
Most cultures native to Asia, Africa, and Central and South America place a
greater value on collectivism. They nurture what Shinobu Kitayama and
Hazel Markus (1995) call the interdependent self. In these cultures,
people are more selfcritical and have less need for positive self-regard
(Heine & others, 1999).
16. CULTURE AND COGNITION
contends that collectivism also results in different ways
of thinking. Consider: Which two—of a panda, a monkey,
and a banana—go together? Perhaps a monkey and a
panda, because they both fit the category “animal”?
Asians more often than Americans see relationships:
monkey eats banana.
When shown an animated underwater scene, Japanese
spontaneously recalled 60 percent more background
features than did Americans, and they spoke of more
relationships (the frog beside the plant). Americans look
more at the focal object, such as a single big fish, and
less at the surroundings (Chua & others, 2005; Nisbett,
2003),
17. Self-Knowledge
“Know thyself,” admonished an ancient Greek oracle. We certainly try. We
readily form beliefs about ourselves, and we in Western cultures don’t
hesitate to explain why we feel and act as we do. But how well do we
actually know ourselves?
Our self-knowledge is curiously flawed. We often do not know why we
behave the way we do. When influences upon our behavior are not
conspicuous enough for any observer to see, we, too, can miss them. The
unconscious, implicit processes that control our behavior may differ from
our conscious, explicit explanations of it. We also tend to mispredict our
emotions. We underestimate the power of our psychological immune
systems and thus tend to overestimate the durability of our emotional
reactions to significant events.
18. Self Esteem
Self-esteem is the overall sense of self-worth we use to appraise our traits and
abilities.
Our self concepts are determined by multiple influences, including the roles we
play, the comparisons we make, our social identities, how we perceive others
appraising us, and our experiences of success and failure.
Self-esteem motivation influences our cognitive processes: Facing failure, high-
self-esteem people sustain their self-worth by perceiving other people as
failing, too, and by exaggerating their superiority over others.
Although high self-esteem is generally more beneficial than low, researchers
have found that people high in both self-esteem and narcissism are the most
aggressive. Someone with a big ego who is threatened or deflated by social
rejection is potentially aggressive.
