H&S - PBL1 - Who am I?
Learning goals:
1. What is the self / self-concept ?
2. How do you construct the self ?
Readings:
● Kassin, S., & Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2014). Social Psychology (9th ed.).
Wadsworth: Cengage Learning. Chapter 3. p. 53 - 71
● Kunda, Z. (1999). Social cognition. Making sense of people. Cambridge MA: MIT
Press. Chapter 11, p. 518 -525.
APPLIED CASE ON CANVAS
Introduction: the social self
Interrelated aspects of the “social self”:
1. Self-concept: how people understand who they are, their own actions, emotions,
and motivations (COGNITION)
2. Self-esteem: affective component, how people evaluate themselves and defend
against threats to their self-esteem (AFFECT)
3. Self-presentation: behavioural manifestation of the self, how people present
themselves to others (BEHAVIOUR)
Example: William Thompson had a brain disorder and couldn’t recall recent memories:
1. Impact on inner-self: self-reflection is necessary for people to feel as if they
understand their own motives and emotions and the causes of their behaviour
2. Impact on outer-sefl: we need to put an identity of ourselves in front of others =>
M.Thompson was always creating new identities in front of others
I. SELF-CONCEPT
● Self concept: the sum total beliefs that people have about themselves (multiple
mind maps)
● Self schemas (cognitive molecules that make the self concept): beliefs about oneself
that guide the processing of self-relevant information (one mind map)
○ Self concept = theory/library, self schemas: hypothesis/ books
E.g: you can think of yourself as independent/dependent, masculine/feminine,
introverted/extroverted… => SELF-SCHEMAS
➔ Body weight: for people whom body image is important for their self concept they are
considered schematic regarding their weight
➔ For those whom it’s NOT important they are aschematic regarding their weight
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, ● People are multifaceted: self concept is continued with multiple self schemas
○ E.g people with a double culture have “double consciousness” about who
they are
Rudiments about the self concept
● Brain: synaptic connections in the brain provide biological base for memory => sense
of continuity which is necessary for a normal identity
○ Sense of self can be transformed/destroyed by brian injuries; tumours,
diseases, toxic substances…
● Animals? some are capable of self-recognition in front of mirror (apes)
● Self-recognition development between 18 and 24 months
○ Self-recognition → (for some scholars) first clear expression of the concept of
“me”
● Why is the self a social concept?
○ Looking-glass self: others serves as a mirror in which we see ourselves
■ George Herbert Mead → we get to know ourselves better by imaging
what significant others think of ourselves and ADDING these
SELF-THOUGHTS to our self-concepts
○ Self is relational: create of self with past and current relationships with the
people around us
Introspection
● Is introspection the key to self knowledge? DEBATABLE => 1) Human are ot busy
processing constant info 2) Better than average effect
● Affective forecasting: The process of predicting how one would feel in response to
future emotional events
○ people have difficulties to project and predicts how they would feel in
response to future emotional events
○ Tendency to overestimate the strength and duration => impact bias
Self-Perception
● Self-perception theory: when internal cues are difficult to interpret, people gain
self-insight by observing their own behaviour
○ When internal states are weak or difficult to understand people deduct what
they are feeling by analysing their behaviours
○ Can ONLY happen when the situation alone didn’t cause the behaviour (not
possible in the case of reward or punishment)
E.g: relaxing how angry you are about someone in the middle/after of a heavy conversation
=> you UNDERSTOOD you were angry DURING/AFTER the argument
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, ● Vicarious self-perception: deducting YOUR OWN feeling through SOMEONE'S
behaviour
○ E.g: for an experiment we asked colleges students to listen to an interview of
another fellow student, we assigned some students randomly and others
were told that their brain-wave patterns were similar => participants with
similarities draw themselves as more sensitive and self-sacrificing towards
the other student, by observing the behaviour of a fellow student
● SOKA model (self-other knowledge
asymmetry): we know ourselves better
than others for internal trait → e.g:
optimism, anxiousness
○ There is no difference with
others for external and “easy” to
observe traits → e.g introvert,
extrovert, social…
○ Others know us better with traits
that can touch our self-esteem
and might have developed
blind-sports → intelligence,
creativity…
E.g for an experiment we asked participants to
rate their friends by their personality traits
➔ Internal/non-evaluative traits: SELFmore accurate
➔ Observable/non-evaluative: SELF and Friends
➔ Internal/Evaluative:FRIENDS
● Self perception of emotion → Facial feedback hypothesis: The hypothesis that
changes in facial expression can lead to corresponding changes in emotion.
➔ changes in facial expression can trigger correspond changes in the subject
experience of emotion
○ e.g: James Laird made some participants watch a cartoon, but before he
asked to either contract their facial muscles as a frown or a smile => result:
participants that smiled found the cartoon funnier than the ones that frowned
● Forcing a smile can make you feel happier / an angry face can make you feel worse
○ DEBATED: biology => smiling can cool down your temperature and thus
make you feel more at ease, on the contrary angry faces rise the body
temperature and thus make you feel not well
● Self-perception of motivation → Overjustification effect: The tendency for intrinsic
motivation to diminish for activities that have become associated with reward or other
extrinsic factors
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, ○ E.g: when athletes are paid millions of dollars does the money overwhelm
their love for the farmer => playing become slike work
○ Studies have shown that when people are reward to do tasks they already
enjoy thy LOSE interest over time
Experiment:
3 groups of preschool children were observed →
1) First group was simply drawing with
markers and no action were done to interfere
2) Second group were TOLD that if they
pick up there marker they would receive a
“Good Player award” with a certificate and a
ribbon
3) Third group were NOT TOLD they
would receive an award but it was given to
them after picking up the markers
➔ At the end of the week they
observed the children in a room without
interfering or giving any awards for this
occasion → the 1nd (no interference) and the
3rd group (the award was not expected) did not lose interest in drawing and
kept on using the markers, however, the 2nd group was not interest in
drawing without the promise of getting and award afterwards => Intrinsic
motivation (grades, test, competition…) vs. extrinsic motivation
Influence of Other People
● People tend to say first the unique or specialty that differs them from others → e.g
girls living with male predominant families will first tell that they are a girl (same goes
with boys living in female predominant families), college students older than their
fellow student will first mention their age…
○ Change someone's social surroundings and you can change their
spontaneous self description
● Social comparison theory: The theory that people evaluate their own abilities and
opinions by comparing themselves to others.
○ when people are uncertain about their abilities they evaluate themselves
through comparison with SIMILAR others
1. When do people turn to others for comparative information?
a. States of uncertainty
2. With whom do we choose to compare ourselves?
a. People similar to you (e.g comparing you level in football with
people on you team or other university, not high scholar sand
not professionals)
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, ● Social medias: countless numbers of people are accessible → affect on social
comparison
○ “Facebook Depression”: the more time people would spend on the app the
less happy they were CAUSES
1. Link between facebook and self evaluation depends on WITH WHOM
do people compare themselves
2. People on Facebook turned to picture a fake perfect life
● Two factor theory: The theory that the experience of emotion is based on two
factors physiological arousal and a cognitive interpretation of that arousal
○ When people are uncertain about their emotional state they react depending
on others around them => in order to happen the individual must meet these
conditions:
1. Symptoms of physiological arousal: racing heart, rapid breathing;
tightening of the stomach…
2. Make a cognitive interpretation that will explain the origin of that
arousal
○ After meeting these conditions the reaction of people help us interrupt our
own arousal
E.g: In an experience we injected in a group of people a drug that intensify physiological
arousal
1. Group 1 knew the effect of the drug
➔ They expected the arousement and thus DID NOT need to find an
explanation
2. Group 2 didn’t know the effect of the drug
➔ Since they didn't expect the arousement they should try to find explanation in
someone else's with the other participant in the same situation => they would
feel the same way as the accomplice of the experiment
3. Group 3 was injected with a placebo
➔ They would not be aroused in the first place and thus would not search for
explanation
DEBATABLE => sometimes people interpret their feelings by watching others SOMETIMES
Autobiographical Memories
● Memories shape the self-concept: parents, childhood friends, success, failures,
places you lived, school you used to go, books you read, teams you plates for….
● People have tendencies to recall their most recent experiences BUT
○ Adults personal memoirs are from their adolescence and early adult years →
“reminiscence bump”
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