Continued from Sense of the self in the world 2

1. The Self
in a
Social
World

2. — Benjamin Franklin

3. We are going to explores the
interplay between our sense of self
and our social
worlds.
How do our social surroundings
shape our self-identities?
How does self-interest color our
social judgments and motivate our
social behavior?

4. • From our self-focused perspective, we
overestimate our conspicuousness
positive or negative (Noticeability) .
• Positive or effect; (red carpet effect)
• 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.
• spotlight effect The belief that others
are paying more attention to one’s
appearance and behavior than they
really are.

5. On Being Nervous about Looking Nervous
• Negative; (Presentation anxiety/ effect)
we often suffer an illusion of transparency.
If we’re sad and we know it, then our face
will surely show it.
And we presume that others will notice.
• We also overestimate the visibility of our
social blunders and public mental
slips.
• Example: When we accidentally insult
someone, we may be mortified
/ashamed
(“Everyone thinks I’m a jerk”).
• But what we agonize over, others may
hardly notice and soon forget.

6. • Experiment:
• Savitsky and Gilovich (2003) knew that people
overestimate the extent to which their internal
states “leak out.”
• People who are asked to tell lies presume that
others will detect their deceit, which feels so
obvious.
• Many people who find themselves having to
make a presentation report being
not only nervous but also anxious that they will
seem so.
• And if they feel their knees shaking and hands
trembling during their presentation, their
presumption that others are noticing will
continue their anxiety more.

7. • To find out, they invited 40 students to their laboratory in pairs. Savitsky
assigned a topic, such as “The Best and Worst Things About Life Today,”
and asked the person to speak for three minutes and the other person
gave a three-minute impromptu/ unprepared talk on a different topic.
• Afterward, each rated how nervous they thought they appeared while
speaking (from 0, not at all, to 10, very) and how nervous the other
person seemed.
The results?
• People rated themselves as appearing relatively nervous (6.65, on
average). But to their partner they appeared not so nervous (5.25), a
difference great enough to be statistically significant .
• Twenty-seven of the 40 participants (68 percent) believed that they
appeared more nervous than did their partner.
• Class activity: Tell us a very ugly secrets

8. •
The spotlight effect and the related illusion of transparency are but two of many
examples of the interplay between our sense of self and our social worlds.
• Here are more examples:
• Social surroundings affect our self-awareness.
When we are the only member of our race, gender, or nationality in a group, we notice
how we differ and how others are reacting to our difference.
• Self-interest colors our social judgment.
When problems arise in a close relationship such as marriage,
we usually attribute more responsibility to our partners than to ourselves.
When things go well at home or work or play, we see ourselves as more responsible.
Class activity: seat in your group and find a situation like either of aforementioned
principles.

9. • Self-concern motivates our social
behavior.
In hopes of making a positive
impression, we agonize about our
appearance.
• Social relationships help define
our self.
In our varied relationships, we have
varying selves,
We may be one self with Mom,
another with friends, another with
teachers.

12. Self-Concept: Who Am I?
Self-concept: the specific beliefs by
which you define yourself.
how accurately, do we know ourselves?
What determines our self-concept?
You know who you are, your gender,
feelings and memories you experience.
To discover where this sense of self
arises, neuroscientists are exploring the
brain activity that underlies our
constant sense of being oneself.

13. Self-Concept: Who Am I?
Some studies suggest an important role for
the right hemisphere.
One patient with right hemisphere damage
might be failed to recognize his own face,
and was controlling his left hand.
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.

14. The elements of self-concept
The elements of your self-concept, are your self-schemas
and possible selves.
Schemas are mental templates by which we organize our
worlds.
our perceiving ourselves —powerfully affect how we
perceive, remember, and evaluate other people and
ourselves.
1. The self-schemas that make up our self-concepts help
us organize and retrieve our experiences.
2. Possible Selves (Ideal self)
possible selves include our visions of the self we
dream of becoming —the rich self, the thin self,
the passionately loved and loving self. They also
include the self we fear.

16. Development of the Social Self
The self-concept has become a major social-psychological focus
because it helps organize our thinking and guide our social behavior.
But 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

17. THE ROLES WE PLAY
As we enact a new role —college student,
parent, salesperson—we initially feel self-
conscious.
• 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.
• Role playing becomes reality.
Example : prisoner and guard
• Guards and prisoners in the Stanford
prison simulation quickly absorbed the
roles they played.

18. social comparisons (Festinger, 1954)
• The “big fish” is no longer in a small pond.
• 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 (outshined) in an
average high school goes on to an
academically selective university.

19. Downward comparison
• We compare ourselves with others doing
as inferior.
• Much of life revolves around social
comparisons.
Example: We feel handsome when others
seem homely, smart when others seem
dull.
• When we witness a peer’s performance,
we may, 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 & others, 1996).

20. Upward comparison
• Social comparisons can also diminish our
satisfaction.
• When we experience an increase in affluence
(prosperity), status, or achievement, we
“compare upward”
• we raise the standards by which we evaluate
our attainments/ achievements.
Example: When climbing the ladder of success,
we tend to look up, not down; we compare
ourselves with others doing even better.
• When facing competition, we often protect
our shaky self-concept by perceiving the
competitor as advantaged.
Example: college swimmers believed that their
competitors had better coaching and more
practice time .

21. SUCCESS AND FAILURE
• Self-concept is also fed by our daily experiences.
We undertake or start challenging yet realistic tasks and to succeed is to feel more
competent / capable.
Example: why female body builders or practice marshal arts
• After mastering the physical skills needed to repel /keep away a sexual assault, women
feel less vulnerable, less anxious, and more in control.
• Application: Why what we pleases us teaches us.
• 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).
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,
more resilient.
or plays the other way around.

22. OTHER PEOPLE’S JUDGMENTS
• When people think well of us, it helps us think well of
ourselves.
Example: Children whom others label as gifted, hardworking,
or helpful tend to incorporate such ideas into their self-
concepts and behavior.
• “Disidentify”: If minority groups feel threatened by
negative stereotypes, they may “disidentify” with those
realms.
• Example: poor students by teachers or parents/ women if
women feel threatened by low expectations for their
driving/ wont fight such prejudgment they may identify
their interest elsewhere. ( having affair)

23. OTHER PEOPLE’S JUDGMENTS
The looking-glass self ; how we
think others perceive us as a mirror for
perceiving ourselves.
What matters for our self-concepts is not
how others actually see us but the way
we imagine they see us.
Example: People generally feel freer to
praise than to criticize; they voice their
compliments and restrain their gibes.
We may, therefore, overestimate others’
appraisal, inflating our self-images.

25. Self-Knowledge
• How can I explain and predict myself.
1. EXPLAINING OUR BEHAVIOR
Why did you choose where to go to college?
Why did you lash out (attack )at your roommate?
Why did you fall in love with that special person?
Sometimes we know. Sometimes we don’t.
Research : They also recorded factors that might affect their moods:
the day of the week,
the weather,
the amount they slept, and so forth.
At the end of each study, the people judged how much each factor had affected their
moods.

26. Self-Knowledge
there was little relationship between
their perceptions of how well a factor predicted their mood and how
well it really did.
Example: people thought they would experience more negative
moods on Mondays,
but in fact their moods were no more negative on Mondays than other
weekdays.
How much insight do we really have into
what makes us happy or unhappy?
As Daniel Gilbert notes in Stumbling on Happiness (2007), not much:
We are remarkably bad predictors of what will make us happy.

27. Self-Knowledge
2. PREDICTING OUR BEHAVIOR
People also err when predicting their behavior.
Example: Dating couples tend to predict the longevity of their
relationships through rose-colored glasses.
Their friends and family often know better.
Tara MacDonald and Michael Ross (1997)Among University of
Waterloo students, showed their roommates were better
predictors of whether their romances would survive than they
were.
So if you’re in love and want to know whether it will last,
don’t listen to your heart—ask your roommate.

28. immune neglect
Wilson and Gilbert (2003) say people neglect the speed and the power of their
psychological immune system, which includes their strategies for
rationalizing,
discounting,
forgiving,
and limiting emotional trauma.
Being largely ignorant of our psychological immune system (a phenomenon
Gilbert and Wilson call immune neglect ), we adapt to disabilities, romantic
breakups, exam failures, tenure denials, and personal and team defeats more
readily than we would expect.
Ironically, as Gilbert and his colleagues report (2004), major negative events
(which activate our psychological defenses) can be less enduringly distressing
than minor irritations (which don’t activate our defenses).
Example: extreme sadness when pet is sick than she dies.

29. planning fallacy
One of the most common errors in behavior prediction is
underestimating how long it will take to complete a task (called the
planning fallacy. )
Example : The Big Dig freeway construction project in Boston was
supposed to take 10 years and actually took 20 years. The Sydney Opera
House was supposed to be completed in 6 years; it took 16.
On average, students finished three weeks later than their “most
realistic” estimate—and a week later than their “worst-case scenario”
estimate.
Just as you should ask your friends how long your relationship is likely
to survive, if you want to know when you will finish your term paper, ask
your roommate or your mom.

30. So, how can you improve your self-predictions?
The best way is to be more realistic about how long tasks took in the past.
Apparently people underestimate how long something will take because they
misremember previous tasks as taking less time (Roy & others, 2005).
Our self-knowledge is curiously flawed/ faulty.
We often do not know why we behave the way we do.
When influences upon our behavior are not conspicuous (obvious) 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.

33. Self-esteem: A person’s overall self evaluation or 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.

34. Narcissism, Self-esteem, and Aggression
• High self-esteem becomes especially problematic if it
crosses over into narcissism, or having an inflated sense of
self.
• Most people with high self-esteem value both individual
achievement and relationships with others.
• Narcissists usually have high self-esteem, but they are
missing the piece about caring for others (Campbell &
others, 2002).
• Although narcissists are often outgoing and charming early
on, their self-centeredness often leads to relationship
problems in the long run (Campbell, 2005).

35. Narcissism, Self-esteem, and Aggression
Narcissism and self-esteem interact to influence aggression. In an experiment by Brad
Bushman and colleagues (2009), the recipe for retaliation ( revenge) against a critical
classmate required both narcissism and high self-esteem.

36. Perceived Self-Control
• self-efficacy
A sense that one is competent and effective, distinguished from self-
esteem, which is one’s sense of self-worth. A bombardier might feel high self-
efficacy and low self-esteem.
Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura (1997, 2000, 2008) captured the power
of positive thinking in his research and theorizing about self-efficacy (how
competent we feel on a task).
Believing in our own competence and effectiveness pays dividends (Bandura
& others, 1999; Maddux and Gosselin, 2003).
Example: Children and adults with strong feelings of self-efficacy are more
persistent, less anxious, and less depressed.
They also live healthier lives and are more academically successful.
In everyday life, self-efficacy leads us to set challenging goals and to persist.
More than a hundred studies show that self-efficacy predicts worker
productivity (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). When problems arise, a strong
sense of self-efficacy
leads workers to stay calm and seek solutions rather than ruminate on their
inadequacy.

37. Many people confuse self-efficacy with self-esteem. If you believe you can do
something, that’s self-efficacy. If you like yourself overall, that’s self-esteem.
locus of control
The extent to which people perceive outcomes as internally controllable by their own efforts ( internal locus of control)
or as externally controlled by chance or outside forces (external locus of control).
Which statements do you more strongly believe?
a. In the long run, people get the respect they deserve in this world.
b. Unfortunately, people’s worth passes unrecognized no matter how hard they try.
a. What happens to me is my own doing.
or b. Sometimes I feel that I don’t have enough control over the direction my life is taking.
Learned Helplessness
When animals and people experience uncontrollable bad events, they learn to feel helpless and resigned.
Dogs confined in a cage and taught that they cannot escape shocks will learn a sense of helplessness. Later, these dogs
cower passively in other situations when theycould escape punishment. Dogs that learn personal control (by
successfully escaping their first shocks) adapt easily to a new situation. Researcher Martin Seligman (1975, 1991) noted
similarities to this learned helplessness in human situations. Depressed or
oppressed people, for example, become passive because they believe their efforts have no effect.

38. Perceived Self-Control
•
Several lines of research show the benefits of a
sense of self-efficacy and feelings of control. People
who believe in their own competence and effectiveness, and
who have an internal locus of control,
cope better and achieve more than others.
•
• Learned helplessness often occurs when attempts
to improve a situation have proven fruitless;
self-determination, in contrast, is bolstered by
experiences of successfully exercising control and
improving one’s situation.
•
• When people are given too many choices, they may
be less satisfied with what they have than when
offered a smaller range of choices.

39. Self-Serving Bias
• As we process self-relevant information, a potent bias intrudes. We readily
excuse our failures, accept credit for our successes, and in many ways see
ourselves as better than average. Such self-enhancing perceptions enable
most people to enjoy the bright side of high self-esteem, while occasionally
suffering the dark side
self-serving attributions
A form of self-serving bias; the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to
oneself and negative outcomes to other factors.
• false consensus effects
We have a curious tendency to enhance our self-images by overestimating
or underestimating the extent to which others think and act as we do. On
matters ofopinion, we find support for our positions by overestimating the
extent to which others
agree—a phenomenon called the false consensus effect

41. • • Contrary to the presumption that most people
suffer from low self-esteem or feelings of
inferiority, researchers consistently find that most
people
exhibit a self-serving bias. In experiments and
everyday life, we often take credit for our
successes
while blaming failures on the situation.
• Most people rate themselves as better than
average
on subjective, desirable traits and abilities.

42. •
• We exhibit unrealistic optimism about our futures.
• We overestimate the commonality of our opinions
and foibles (false consensus) while underestimating
the commonality of our abilities and virtues (false
uniqueness).
•
• Such perceptions arise partly from a motive to
maintain and enhance self-esteem, a motive that
protects people from depression but contributes to
misjudgment and group conflict.
•
• Self-serving bias can be adaptive in that it allows us to
savor the good things that happen in our lives. When
bad things happen, however, self-serving bias can
have the maladaptive effect of causing us to blame others or
feel cheated out of something we “deserved.