Fluent Essays

Thomas E Heinzen - Social Psychology (2018, Sage Publications, Inc) - Chapter 3 - The Social Self.pdf Impression Management (chapter 3)consists of our efforts to shape others impressions in specific ways in order to gain influence, power, sympathy or approval.   DISCUSSION: Discuss how specific information within these chapters might support an explanation for how  social media (Facebook, twitter, selfies etc) canapply impression management.  Include a comment on how email composition, grammar, spelling and punctuation might influence impressions. Remember the MINIMUM REQUIREMENT  is to:                  1. Your responses should reflect what you have learned and clearly identify you as a student in social psychology through the accurate use of course specific vocabulary. 2. Your response should be a minimum of 10 sentences with correct spelling and capitalization. 3. You must include a minimum of 3 citations to text material in each DQ.  Citing other sources does not eliminate the requirement to cite the text. 4. You must cite and provide a reference for all information taken from sources such as your text using APA style citing and referencing. 5. You must thoughtfully respond to 1 other student for each DQ.  Responding to another student when you respond to the DQ is the best option.  CANVAS does not notify me that you have submitted a reply to another student, therefore, unless it is done at the same time as your original submission, I would not know to include your reply in your DQ grade. 6.  Be aware that 20% of your grade is based on scholarship which is performing ABOVE the minimum. 1 3 The Social Self © istockphoto.com/phototerry 2 Core Questions 1. What is the “self”? 2. How do we know the self is social? 3. Why do we present different selves in different situations? 4. Is the truth always the self’s friend? 5. What is self-esteem and how can we measure it? 3 Who are you if you have lost your memory? Consider the following movies about memory loss: Memento (Todd & Todd, 2000): A man finds mysterious tattoos on himself after sustaining brain damage that prevents him from accessing any new memories. 50 First Dates (Giarraputpo, Golin, Juvonen, & Producers, Segal, 2004): A woman has difficulty falling in love because she can’t remember the romantic events from the previous day. The Bourne Ultimatum (F. Marshall, Crowley, Sangberg, & Greengrass, 2007): A CIA agent tries to figure out who he is after suffering long-term amnesia and brainwashing. Total Recall (Moritz, Jaffe, & Wiseman, 2012): A man in the future discovers his memory has been altered and starts an adventure to discover his true self and history. Finding Dory (Collins & Stanton, 2016): A friendly but forgetful blue tang fish struggles to be reunited with her long-lost parents. The characters in these memory-loss movies had to imagine their probable selves into existence. Hollywood scriptwriters are not the only ones using memory loss to imagine the self into existence. The rest of us also have imperfect memories, so we construct our sense of who we are by piecing together fragments of memory, interpreting uncertain evidence, and hoping for the best. The self is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. William Swann and Michael Buhrmester (2012) call the self a “functional fiction” because it’s a story with a purpose. And even though it’s a made-up, pieced-together tale that has an audience of only one person, this solitary self is also a social self. That’s because the plot of our self-story always involves family, friends, neighborhood, culture, and much more. To understand how each of us live, think, and behave in a social world, we have to first understand how we define and perceive ourselves. Learning Objectives 3.1 Explain how social psychology has defined self-awareness and the self-concept. 3.2 Analyze how our self-perceptions are influenced by others. 3.3 Explain how we adjust our public self-presentation to influence others. 3.4 Articulate why we sometimes benefit from positive illusions and moderate self-deceptions. 3.5 Apply both explicit and implicit methods to the many facets of self-esteem, including its dark side. 4 What Is the “Self”? — LO 3.1: Explain how social psychology has defined self-awareness and the self- concept. Perhaps the proverbial slap on a newborn baby’s backside (or the more likely suction device up the baby’s nose) first jars us into self-awareness. Before that moment, we were part of someone else’s body. With a snip of the umbilical cord and a sudden breath of air, we became a separate, living creature. But did we know it at that moment? The scientific challenge is to develop a reliable way of discovering how and when we develop self- awareness (also called self-recognition), the understanding that we are a separate entity from other people and objects in our world. The experience of becoming self-aware (Sedikides & Skowronski, 1997) is not easy to document with the reliability and validity that science requires. Infants mirror the expressions of adults while becoming aware of themselves as independent beings. © istockphoto.com/aywan88 5 The Scientific Study of Self-Awareness How we think about ourselves changes over the entire arc of our lives. The creator of psychology’s first textbook, William James (1890), wrote that the self “is the sum total of all that a person can call his [today we would add “or her”] own,” including not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house . . . his reputation and works . . . his yacht and his bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down. (p. 292) How has science approached the abstract and changing construct of self-awareness? Charles Darwin noted early signs of mental development in his infant son, William. His “eyes were fixed on a candle as early as the 9th day . . . on the 49th day his attention was attracted by a bright-coloured tassel” (Biographical Sketch of an Infant, p. 286). Cambridge University Library, 1842 Early Research on Self-Awareness: Darwin and Imitation. He was really just a proud papa. Charles Darwin couldn’t help but notice interesting things about the development of his beautiful new baby. The scientific study of self-awareness began with Darwin’s naturalistic observations of William, the first of the 10 children of Charles and Emma Darwin. Darwin (1877) carefully observed and reported that his infant 6 son began imitating what he saw and heard: When our infant was only four months old I thought that he tried to imitate sounds; but I may have deceived myself, for I was not thoroughly convinced that he did so until he was ten months old. (p. 286) Since these first observations from Darwin, scientists have been studying imitation as an early sign of self-awareness (Anderson, 1984; Damon & Hart, 1988). A 1977 study documented 2- to 3-week-old infants imitating a mouth opening, a finger moving, or a tongue appearing between the lips (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). By 1989, the same research team had documented imitation among infants who were less than 72 hours old (including a 42-minute-old infant!). Four-month-old infants reliably display a more distinct sense of self by smiling more and looking longer at pictures of others compared to looking at pictures of themselves (Rochat & Striano, 2002). Testing Self-Awareness: The Mirror Self-Recognition Test. Imitation is interesting to see in infants, but does it really mean that they have self- awareness? To more directly test this, scientists—including Darwin—wanted to come up with a way to test whether people (and animals) seem to realize they are independent, unique entities. Do all animals have a sense of self, or is this perception unique to humans? Darwin (1872) tried to answer that question with an experiment. He reported that many years ago, in the Zoological Gardens, I placed a looking-glass on the floor between two young [orangutans] ....... They approached close and protruded their lips towards the image, as if to kiss it, in exactly the same manner as they had previously done towards each other. (p. 142) Those orangutans acted as if the creature in the mirror were another animal, not themselves, suggesting that they did not possess self-awareness. Almost 100 years later, in 1968, Gordon Gallup followed Darwin’s lead by attempting to find out whether some animals respond to their mirror image “as if their image represented another animal” (Gallup, 1968, p. 782). So he created a more controlled version of Darwin’s original experiment by first anesthetizing some chimpanzees, macaques, and rhesus monkeys. While they were unconscious, Gallup marked each animal with a nonodorous, nonirritating red dye just above the eyebrow. The animals could not smell, feel, or see the red dye without the help of a mirror. What would it mean if an animal looked into the mirror, saw the unmistakable red dye, 7 but did not touch the red dye? The animal probably perceived that the creature in the mirror was just some other animal that happened to have a red splotch on its forehead. But what if an animal looked into the mirror and touched the unusual red dye on its own face —not on the mirror? In that case, the animal was telling us, “That’s me in the mirror: I am —and I know that I am the one with the red mark.” The mirror self-recognition test (also called the mark test) creates an opportunity for animals to demonstrate self-awareness. In Gallup’s first study, the four chimpanzees (but not the other primates) did indeed touch the red mark on their foreheads. Voila! Gallup had scientifically demonstrated self- awareness among chimpanzees. More recently, mirror self-recognition studies have also documented self-awareness among Asian elephants (Plotnik, de Waal, & Reiss, 2006), killer whales (Delfour & Marten, 2001), and dolphins (Marino, 2002). Self-awareness among animals is no surprise to dog owners. Misbehaving dogs will slink about and put their tails between their legs in ways that suggest awareness of a guilty self. Do non-human animals have a sense of self? A YouTube.com search for “animal self- recognition” results in videos on elephants, lions, chimpanzees and others toying with their image in a mirror. © istockphoto.com/Valery Kudryavtsev Self-awareness: The understanding that we are a separate entity from other people and objects in our world; a state of being conscious of our own existence. Self-recognition: See self-awareness. Mirror self-recognition test: A scientific paradigm where a mark is placed on an animal’s forehead and it is placed in front of a mirror. The animal is assumed to have self-recognition if it touches the mark on its forehead. 8 Defining and Measuring the Self-Concept The self-concept is the personal summary of who we believe we are; it is how we answer the question, “Who am I?” It includes our assessment of our positive and negative qualities, our relationships to others, our beliefs and opinions, and more. We acquire a self-concept in several ways, including the following: We compare our self to others (social comparison theory). Culture creates expectations about how the self should behave (social identity theory). We create mental structures that direct the self’s attention (self-schema theory). Let’s consider each of these theories in more detail. Dogs seem to be aware when they have misbehaved. They appear to demonstrate something like shame—but only when they are caught. © istockphoto.com/WebSubstance Social Comparison Theory. Social comparison theory proposes that we use social comparisons to construct our self- concept, especially when we have no other objective standard available to us (Festinger, 1954). How do you know if you are shy, competitive, rich, anxious, or anything else? These subjective ideas only become meaningful in comparison to others. For example, if you are walking alone on the beach, you may not even be thinking about your physical appearance. But when someone much more attractive walks by, the unflattering social comparison can deliver a small shock to your previously contented self- concept (Bachman & O’Malley, 1986; Marsh, Köller, & Baumert, 2001). At a basic level, there are two types of social comparisons we can make. Upward Social Comparisons. When we make an upward social comparison, we compare ourselves to someone who is better than us. This type of comparison can be useful when we want to improve on a particular skill. Most people who like to watch 9 cooking shows with celebrity chefs enjoy getting tips on how to make their own food taste or look better. The same is true for people who get ideas about home decorating from Martha Stewart or by reading magazines with ideas, or when athletes learn from coaches. However, constantly comparing ourselves to people who have excelled can lead to frustration or even depression—why can’t my cupcakes look as good as the ones on Pinterest? Downward Social Comparisons. That’s where the second type of social comparison comes into play: downward social comparison. This occurs when we compare ourselves to someone who is worse than we are. This might not help us improve, but it sure feels better. My cupcakes might not win any cupcake reality show contests, sure, but it’s better than the cupcake my daughter tried to make, for example. My tennis skills aren’t on a professional level, maybe, but I’m better than the guy in the next court who can’t hit a single ball over the net. How we process those social comparisons also makes a difference (Suls & Wheeler, 2000). The W.I.D.E. guide to social comparisons identifies four factors relevant to our subjective processing of what we see around us (see Figure 3.1): Who. We evaluate our abilities automatically (Gilbert, Giesler, & Morris, 1995) by comparing ourselves to similar others (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). Tennis players who are about my ability level or a little better give me the most useful social comparison feedback. Interpretation. How we interpret social comparisons influences our self-concept. Moving into a group home with sick elderly neighbors could be processed in two very different ways (Michinov, 2007): (1) “Thank goodness that I’m not that ill,” or (2) “Very soon, I also could be just as needy” (Brandstätter, 2000). Direction. The direction of our social comparison influences our self-concept. Comparing myself to better tennis players is an upward social comparison (that makes me feel worse) and comparing to worse players is a downward social comparison (that makes me feel better). Downward social comparisons tend to enhance our self-concept (Burleson, Leach, & Harrington, 2005; Gibbons et al., 2002; Guimond et al., 2007; Major, Sciacchitano, & Crocker, 1993). Esteem. Protecting our self-esteem influences our self-concept. The losing tennis player may say to her opponent, “You played extremely well today,” implying that her opponent had to play his or her best to beat her (Alicke, LoSchiavo, Zerbst, & Zhang, 1997). We’ll talk more about self-esteem—and how we use psychological tricks to protect it—a little later in this chapter. Figure 3.1 The W.I.D.E. guide suggests that social comparisons are made up of four factors. 10 Source: Adapted from Suls & Wheeler (2000). Social Identity Theory. Henri Tajfel was in a bad situation when he was captured by German soldiers during World War II. He was a Polish-born Jew who had volunteered to join the French army. When the Germans asked who he was, he faced a terrible dilemma; should he admit he was Jewish? He did—but he also falsely presented himself as a French citizen, which probably saved his life. After surviving the war with other French prisoners, Tajfel became a social psychologist who proposed that the self is composed of two general categories: Ask the Experts: Joanne Smith on Social Identity ©SAGE Publications 1. personal characteristics (serious, funny, grumpy, tall, or rich), and 2. social role characteristics (son, mother, musician, Catholic, or accountant). In other words, there are at least these two sides to the self, and they each have many working parts. You are not just “funny”; you are many other things: short-tempered, generous, and so forth. You are not just a student; you are also a daughter or son who has a Self-concept: The personal summary of who we believe we are, including our assessment of our positive and negative qualities, our relationships to others, and our beliefs and opinions. Social comparison theory: The use of social comparisons to construct the self-concept when no other objective standard is available. Upward social comparison: When individuals compare themselves to someone who is better than they are, often to improve on a particular skill. Downward social comparison: When individuals compare themselves to someone who is worse than they are, often to help them feel better about themselves. 11 certain ethnic heritage, religious upbringing, and sexual orientation. Your complicated self is organized around what Tajfel called social identity theory, which proposes that our self- concept is composed of a personal identity and a social identity (see Rivenburgh, 2000; Sherif, 1966b; Tajfel, 1981, 1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). What are some examples of social identities? The Regional Self. One social identity is based on where you are from. The well-known social psychologist Roy Baumeister (1986) pointed out that in Medieval times, a person’s region was sometimes part of his or her name; “Leonardo da Vinci” means “Leonardo, from Vinci.” Regional identity is also apparent in many of the World War II cemeteries in France for soldiers from different countries who died during the Normandy invasion. The cemetery designers organized the soldiers in death—as in life—in regional groups organized first by country and then by region within that country. The social self is influenced by cultural expectations and traditions that show up in surprising ways in controlled experiments. © istockphoto.com/GCShutter & © istockphoto.com/gradyreese Regional affiliations influence how others perceive us and how we, in turn, perceive ourselves. For example, one research team found that within the United States, people from Massachusetts are often perceived as intelligent but snobbish, Iowans as hard-working but hicks, Georgians as hospitable but racist, and New Yorkers as ambitious but rude (Berry, Jones, & Kuczaj, 2000). Do you feel proud when someone from your country, especially from your region of the country, wins at the Olympics? You probably didn’t train, sacrifice, donate money, or even care very much who won until you turned on the television. Nevertheless, our national and regional identity influence our self-concept. The Cultural Self. Social identity theory: Psychological theory that proposes that our self-concept is composed of two parts: a personal identity that is based on personal characteristics and a social identity that is based on social role characteristics. 12 The tricky thing about our cultural self is that we are mostly unaware of it until we happen to bump into another culture. Cultural collisions create humorous situations that have produced some great comedic films such as My Cousin Vinny (Launer, Schiff, & Lynn, 1992), Bend It Like Beckham (Chadha & Nayar, 2002), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Goetzman, Hanks, Wilson, & Jones, 2002, 2016), and even Elf (Berg, Komarnicki, Robertson, & Favreau, 2003). If you have ever traveled to another country, your assumptions, way of life, clothing, and more may have suddenly become salient to you in new ways because you may suddenly realize that your view of the world is changed due to your cultural self. Independent and Interdependent Self-Construals. By placing Western and Asian cultures on a cultural continuum, Figure 3.2 adds an additional layer to Tajfel’s social identity theory. This continuum is anchored by a personal, independent self-construal (many “Western” cultures) at one end and a social, interdependent self-construal (many Asian cultures) at the other end. This means that the ideal self in one culture is very different from the ideal self in another culture. The rugged individualist so valued in the United States will likely be perceived as rude and insensitive in Japan. The conciliatory team player so valued in Japan may be perceived as wimpy and nonassertive in the United States. Table 3.1 helps us understand how cultural norms influence how we think about the self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Figure 3.2 Identity can be shaped by culture. Self-Schema Theory. A third way to think about how the self-concept is formed is through self-schemas, memory structures that summarize and organize our beliefs about self-relevant information (Markus, 1977). A schema in general is a cognitive and memory structure for organizing the world, so self-schemas transform the raw material from cultural social comparisons into the building blocks of our self-concept (Hewitt & Genest, 1990), creating what Cervone (2004) calls “the architecture of personality.” Independent self-construal: When an individual’s ideal self is largely based on internal, personal qualities. Interdependent self-construal: When an individual’s ideal self is largely based on social qualities, especially relationships with others. 13 Source: Data from Markus & Kitayama (1991). For example, let’s say that you wake up late on Wednesday morning. Is your lateness because you are lazy or because you work so hard that you’re exhausted? You then speed in traffic heading to your job. Is your speeding because you are a dangerous, careless driver or because you are responsibly trying to get to work as quickly as possible? When you get to work, the first thing you do is get some coffee from the breakroom. Are you addicted and trying to procrastinate, or are you simply trying to get focused so you can be efficient? Instead of chatting with coworkers, you head straight to your desk. Are you rude or simply motivated to accomplish that day’s tasks? Your self-concept creates a coherent self by activating particular self-schemas that help you interpret your own behavior. In this example, your efforts to get to work could lead you to think of yourself in two very different ways: (1) you are lazy, dangerous, addicted, and rude, or (2) you are hard-working, responsible, highly motivated, and determined to succeed. How you interpret the flow of everyday events in your life depends on which self-schemas have been activated, as the schemas create cognitive frameworks for you to interpret the events of your life. Self-schema: A way to think about how the self-concept is formed whereby memory structures that summarize and organize our beliefs about self-relevant information create a cognitive framework within which individuals interpret the events of their lives. Schema: A cognitive and memory structure for organizing the world. The Main Ideas Self-awareness is the understanding that we are a separate entity from other people and objects in our world. One way that scientists have attempted to measure self-awareness is called the mirror self-recognition test. Our self-concept is the personal summary of who we believe we are. 14 comparisons, including upward (comparing the self to someone who’s better) and downward (comparing the self to someone who’s worse). Social identity theory describes the self as a mixture of personal and social identities, and self- memory. 15 Identify three activities you enjoy doing, such as sports, hobbies, and studying various subjects. Then, make one upward social comparison and one downward social comparison for each activity. As you identified one person who was better than you and one person who wasn’t as advanced, what emotions resulted from each type of comparison? List three ways that you typically perceive the world that you think might have been influenced by your regional, national, or specific social cultures. One way to do this might be to think about how your perceptions might be different from the perceptions of people from different cultures. yourself about how you are now, but would this delusion eventually shape you into a better person? 16 How Do We Know the Self Is Social? — LO 3.2: Analyze how our self-perceptions are influenced by others. Magnificent? Yes, humans are in many ways. But we are also petty, deceitful, prone to violence, moody, and many other unattractive things. Like winning the lottery, the gift of self-awareness changes our lives in both good and bad ways. We can’t un-win the lottery once we have won it, and we can’t undo having self-awareness and a self-concept once they have evolved. But how do we know that the self is social? You can think of the social self as the storytelling ringmaster in the three-ring circus of our complicated lives. It directs the spotlight of our attention and narrates a story that brings coherence to our otherwise chaotic interactions with others. Here are three strands of evidence indicating that the self is social: (1) our self-perceptions rely on the behaviors we display to others, (2) self-discrepancy theory describes how different components of the self are influenced by others, and (3) our sense of self often includes other people. Let’s talk about each strand. 17 Self-Perception Theory: Behaviors Tell Us Who We Are A friend of mine [Wind’s] met my parents a few years ago and was chatting politely with them. My friend casually mentioned to my parents, “Wind really loves waffles!” I was surprised—I don’t think I had ever talked to my friend about waffles, and I didn’t really consider myself a big waffle fan. When I asked my friend about her statement, though, she said, “Every time we go to brunch, you always order waffles.” I thought about it for a second, realized she was right, and realized that yes, I guess I do love waffles! This experience demonstrates self-perception theory. Our “self” sometimes seems like a circus ring master. It usually directs our attention to the most positive self-performances. Bill McCay / WireImage / Getty Images Self-perception theory proposes that we get help answering the question, “Who am I?” by making inferences about ourselves based on observing our own behaviors (Bem, 1967; Bem & McConnell, 1970). To understand this theory, first think about how you form perceptions of other people. You watch their behaviors and infer—or guess, really—about their motivations, attitudes, values, and core traits based on the behaviors they display to you. You never really know what’s going on behind the metaphorical curtain of these outward behaviors. Self-perception theory proposes that we form our self-concept in very similar ways. Perhaps 18 we don’t really have special, privileged access to our inner thoughts and choices all the time —and we thus try to infer our own motivations, attitudes, values, and core traits based on observing our own behaviors. If you regularly volunteer at a local dog shelter, then you must be someone who cares about animals. If you love to travel and eat exotic foods, then you must be open to new experiences. We define our self, in part, by how we observe ourselves as we interact with others. In this way, self-perception theory is the idea that our self-concept forms by observing our own behaviors in a social world. If other people seem to think we’re funny, we will likely incorporate “good sense of humor” into our self-concept. If other people look to us to make decisions about where to eat every Friday night, we might come to believe we’re decisive leaders. And if you always order waffles when you go to brunch with friends, you probably love waffles. Again, because the self-concept is abstract and subjective, one of the most straightforward ways to decide who we are is by simply observing what we do. Self-perception theory: The theory that individuals form their self-concept by observing their own behavior and trying to infer their own motivations, attitudes, values, and core traits. 19 Self-Discrepancy Theory: Are We Trying to Juggle Three Selves? So far, we’ve been talking about the self as if we all have a fully formed and single self- concept. Psychologist Tory Higgins (1987, 2002) suggested that in reality, we all have three simultaneous selves. We juggle these selves all at once, and they frequently change shape while in the air. As you learn about each one, consider how each contributes to your own self-concept. The Actual Self. Our first self is our “actual self,” which is simply who we think we are, right now. It includes both our good and bad qualities, as well as the qualities we think other people see in us. The actual self is who we are currently, as if someone took a snapshot of our evolving lives. A meaningful actual self can acknowledge our strengths and admit our weaknesses. The Ideal Self. Higgins hypothesizes that we also have an “ideal self,” which is the person we would like to become in the future. It includes enhancing or adding positive qualities that we don’t think are maximized in the actual self, and it means eliminating or at least reducing negative qualities we have right now. Our ideal self is our dreams and goals, the person we strive to become. Importantly, our ideal self is truly based on what we want, even if that means secret desires we’ve never been able to admit to anyone else. If you could, for example, have any job in the world, or look a certain way, or live a particular lifestyle, what would it be? The …