Fluent Essays

People tend to compare themselves to others to gauge their intelligence, attractiveness, and success. Problematically, those who need a self-esteem and self-confidence boost may try to gain it through a downward comparison. In other words, in order to improve their self-esteem and self-confidence, they might compare themselves to less intelligent, attractive, or successful individuals to make them feel better about their relative social standing. Consider the pervasive media images of female or male physical perfection. Western culture often overemphasizes a woman’s (and, to a lesser degree, a man’s) physical attractiveness as a measure of her (or his) cultural value. That is, western culture often conflates physical attractiveness with inherent goodness—a woman (or in some cases, a man) who is not physically attractive is somehow less good.   For this Discussion, you will analyze the development of self-concept from the perspective of downward comparisons and idealized images.   Post how downward comparisons and idealized images of physical attractiveness impact the developing self-concept. Would this impact be the same across race and ethnicity? Support your post with references to social psychology theory and research.    Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Akert, R. M., & Sommers, S. R. (Eds.). (2019). Social psychology (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Chapter 5, “The Self: Understanding Ourselves in a Social Context”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPThNmxF7JY+  Analyze the development of the self-conceptJournal of Personality and Social Psychology 1997, Vol. 73, No. 1,31-44 Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-35i4/97/$3.00 Prejudice as Self-image Maintenance: Affirming the Self Through Derogating Others Steven Rsin Williams College Steven J. Spencer Hope College The authors argue that self-image maintenance processes play an important role in stereotyping and prejudice. Three studies demonstrated that when individuals evaluated a member of a stereotyped group, they were less likely to evaluate that person negatively if their self-images had been bolstered through a self-affirmation procedure, and they were more likely to evaluate that person stereotypically if their self-images had been threatened by negative feedback. Moreover, among those individuals whose self-image had been threatened, derogating a stereotyped target mediated an increase in their self-esteem. The authors suggest that stereotyping and prejudice may be a common means to maintain ones self-image, and they discuss the role of self-image-maintenance processes in the context of motivational, sociocultural, and cognitive approaches to stereotyping and prejudice. A most striking testament to the social nature of the human psyche is the extent to which the self-concept—that which is the very essence of ones individuality—is integrally linked with interpersonal dynamics. Since the earliest days of the for- mal discipline of psychology, the significant influences of a number of social factors on the self-concept have been recog- nized. A central focus of sociocultural and social-cognitive approaches to psychology has concerned the ways in which individuals self-concepts are defined and refined by the people around them. This is evident in early discussions of the social nature of individuals self-concepts (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934) and of social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), and it contin- ues to be evident in more recent work, such as that concerning self-fulfilling prophecies (e.g., Eccles, Jacobs, & Harold, 1990; Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968; Snyder, 1984) and cultural influ- ences (Abrams, 1994; Cameron & Lalonde, 1994; Cohen & Nisbett, 1994; H. R. Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 1994; Triandis, 1989; Turner, Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty, 1994). The converse focus—the self-concepts influence on percep- tions of and reactions toward others—has been recognized more fully within the last two decades, through, for example, research on self-schemas (H. Markus, 1977; H. Markus & Wurf, 1987), self-verification (Swann, Stein-Seroussi, & Giesler, 1992), self- discrepancies (Higgins, 1996; Higgins & Tykocinski, 1992), and a host of self-serving biases in individuals perceptions, judgments, and memories involving the self (e.g., Ditto & Lo- pez, 1992; Greenwald, 1980; Klein & Kunda, 1992, 1993; Nis- Steven Fein, Department of Psychology, Williams College; Steven J. Spencer, Department of Psychology, Hope College. Steven J. Spencer is now at Department O R I G I N A L P A P E R Putting a price tag on others’ perceptions of us Yohanes E. Riyanto1 • Jianlin Zhang2 Received: 26 August 2014 / Revised: 26 May 2015 / Accepted: 2 June 2015 / Published online: 10 June 2015 � Economic Science Association 2015 Abstract Standard economic theories assume that people are self-interested and their wellbeing solely dependent on their own material gains or losses. Unless they have an impact on monetary payoffs, the perceptions of anonymous individuals are irrelevant to people’s decision making. However, a large body of research in sociology and social psychology demonstrates that self-identity is developed through one’s understanding of how one is perceived by others. Using (Cooley’s, Human nature and the social order, 1964) concept of the ‘‘looking-glass self’’ as a framework, we evaluate experimentally whether or not people care about the imputed judgment of anonymous others arising from their imagination of their perceptions. We implemented variants of the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak mecha- nism to elicit the monetary value attached to the perceptions by participants. In one variant, only nonnegative bids were allowed, while in another, negative bids were allowed. We show that in an environment in which the perceptions of others are only conveyed to participants anonymously and privately, self-interested individuals exhibited strong negative perception avoidance even though the perceptions have no impact on their monetary payoff. The participants were willing to spend a Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10683-015-9450- 3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Jianlin Zhang [email protected] Yohanes E. Riyanto [email protected] 1 Division of Economics, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 14 Nanyang Drive HSS 04-83, Singapore 637332, Singapore 2 Global Education, Singapore Institute of Management, 461 Clementi Road, Singapore 599491, Singapore 123 Exp Econ (2016) 19:480–499 DOI 10.1007/s10683-015-9450-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10683-015-9450-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10683-015-9450-3 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10683-015-9450-3&domain=pdf http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10683-015-9450-3&domain=pdf significant amount in order to avoid confirming the supposedly negative perception. Thus, for them, ignorance was truly bliss. We also show that, in the absence of the audience effect, the fair-minded participants adopted a neutral attitude towards the perception of them as fair. Keywords Social image � The value of other’s perceptions � Pay to reveal � Pay to conceal � Dictator game JEL Classification C91 � D64 � Z13 1 Introduction Standard theories in economics assume that people are self-interested and their wellbeing is solely dependent on their own material gains or losses. Accordingly,