HALIMA S.

Aspects of Social QURESHI

Identity LECTURER, NDP, NUMS
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST

Halima S. Qureshi | Lecturer | Clinical Psychologist 1

Self

• A symbol using social being on his or her own behavior

 Spotlight Effect

• The belief that others are paying more attention to one’s appearance
and behaviour than they really are.
• Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec, and Kenneth Stavisky (2000)
explored the spotlight effect
• The self-conscious t-shirt wearers guessed that nearly half their peers
would notice the shirt. Actually, only 23 percent did.
• illusion of transparency
• The illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily
read by others.
• Read Research on Page no. 29 of Book Social Psychology 12 th ed.
“on being nervous about looking nervous”
• 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 ashamed (“everyone thinks I'm a jerk”).
• But research shows that what we struggle over, others may hardly
notice and soon forget (savitsky & others, 2001).
• 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. A white American friend once told how self-
consciously white he felt while living in a rural village in Nepal; an hour later, an
African American friend told how self-consciously American she felt while in
Africa.
• Self-interest colours 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.
• Self-concern motivates our social behaviour. In hopes of making a positive
impression, we worry about our appearance. We also monitor others’ behaviour and
expectations and adjust our behaviour accordingly.
• Social relationships help define our self. In our varied relationships, we have
varying selves, noted Susan Andersen and Serena chen (2002). We may be one self
with mom, another with friends, another with teachers. How we think of ourselves is
linked to the person we’re with at the moment.
 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 behaviour 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
The 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 theatre of life is absorbed into our
sense of self.
 Social Comparisons

• How do we decide if we are rich, poor, smart or dumb? 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,: we compare ourselves with them and consider
how we differ.
• We feel handsome when others seem unattractive, smart when others seem
dull, caring when others seem cold-hearted.
• When we witness a peer’s performance, we cannot resist implicitly
comparing ourselves (gilbert & others, 1995; stapel & suls, 2004).
• We may, therefore, 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).
 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).
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 behaviour.
• If minority students feel threatened by negative stereotypes of their
academic ability, or if women feel threatened by low expectations for
their math and science performance, they may “disidentify” with
those realms. Rather than fight such prejudgments.
Looking glass self

• The looking-glass self was how sociologist Charles H. Cooley (1902)

described our use of how we think others perceive us as a mirror for
perceiving ourselves.
• George Herbert Mead (1934) refined this concept, noting that what
matters for our self-concepts is not how others actually see us but the
way we imagine they see us.
• 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 (shrauger & schoeneman, 1979).
 Self-concept

The sum total of a person’s thoughts and feelings that

defines the self.
I am---------
Write 5 to 10 sentences starting with word “I”
Self and Culture

• For some people, especially those in industrialized western cultures,

individualism prevails. Identity is self-contained. One’s identity—as a
unique individual with particular abilities, traits, values, and dreams
—remains fairly constant.
• The psychology of western cultures assumes that your life will be
enriched by believing in your power of personal control.
• 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 self-critical and have less need for positive
self-regard (Heine & others, 1999).
• Malaysians, Indians, Japanese, and traditional Kenyans such as the Maasai,
for example, are much more likely than Australians, Americans, and the
British to complete the “I am” statement with their group identities (kanagawa
& others, 2001; ma & schoeneman, 1997).
• When speaking, people using the languages of collectivist countries say “I”
less often (kashima & kashima, 1998, 2003). A person might say “went to the
movie” rather than “I went to the movie.”
Culture and Cognition
Independent or Interdependent Self Concept
 Self-Esteem

A person’s evaluation of his or her self-concept.

His or her overall opinion about self.
“One person may have self-esteem that is highly contingent on doing
well in school and being physically attractive, whereas another may
have self-esteem that is contingent on being loved by god and adhering
to moral standards.”
Thus, the first person will feel high self-esteem when made to feel smart
and good looking, the second person when made to feel moral.
If you think you’re good at math, you will be more likely to do well at
math.
• Among sibling relationships, the threat to self-esteem is greatest for an older
child with a highly capable younger brother or sister.
• Self-esteem threats occur among friends, whose success can be more threatening
than that of strangers (Zuckerman & jost, 2001). And they can occur among
married partners, too. Although shared interests are healthy, identical career goals
may produce tension or jealousy (Clark & Bennett, 1992).
• People with low self-esteem often have problems in life—they make less money,
abuse drugs, and are more likely to be depressed (Salmela-aro & Nurmi, 2007;
Trzesniewski & others, 2006).
• Maybe people low in self-esteem also faced poverty as children, experienced
sexual abuse, or had parents who used drugs, all possible causes of later
struggling.
Narcissism: Self-esteem’s Arrogant Sister

• 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).
• For those in individualistic cultures, self-esteem is more personal and less
interpersonal. Threaten our personal identity and we’ll feel angrier and
unhappier than when someone threatens our collective identity (Gaertner &
others, 1999).
• Unlike Japanese, who continue to work more on tasks when they are failing
(wanting not to fall short of others’ expectations), people in individualistic
countries persist more when succeeding, because success elevates self-esteem
(heine & others, 2001).
• Western individualists like to make comparisons with others that boost their
self-esteem. Asian collectivists make comparisons (often upward, with those
doing better) in ways that facilitate self-improvement (White & Lehman,
2005).
 Self-efficacy

• A sense that one is competent and effective, distinguished from self esteem,
which is one’s sense of self-worth. A sharpshooter might feel high self-efficacy
and low self-esteem.
• 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).
• 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.
• If you believe you can do something, will that belief necessarily make a
difference? That depends on a second factor: do you have control over your
outcomes? You may, for example, feel like an effective driver (high self-
efficacy), yet feel endangered by drunken drivers (low control).
• You may feel like a competent student or worker but, fearing discrimination
based on your age, gender, or appearance, you may think your prospects for
success are dim.
 planning fallacy

• The tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task.

• One of the most common errors in behaviour prediction is underestimating
how long it will take to complete a task (called the planning fallacy. )
• The big dig freeway
• Construction project in Boston was supposed to take 10 years and actually
took 20 years.
locus of control

• The extent to which people perceive outcomes as internally

controllable by their own efforts or as externally controlled by chance
or outside forces.
 Learned Helplessness

• The sense of hopelessness and resignation learned when a human or animal

perceives no control over repeated bad events.
• 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.
 Impact Bias

• Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events.

• We are especially prone to impact bias after negative events.
• When gilbert and his colleagues (1998) asked assistant professors to predict
their happiness a few years after achieving tenure or not, most believed a
favourable outcome was important for their future happiness: “losing my job
would crush my life’s ambitions. It would be terrible.”
• Yet when surveyed several years after the event, those denied tenure were
about as happy as those who received it. Impact bias is important, say Wilson
and gilbert (2005).
 Immune Neglect

• The human tendency to underestimate the speed and the strength of the
“psychological immune system,” which enables emotional recovery and
resilience after bad things happen.
• Moreover, say Wilson and Gilbert (2003), 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.
Self-awareness

• A psychological state in which you take yourself as an object of

attention.
• We evaluate and compare our current behavior to our internal
standards and values.
 Self-Regulation

The ways in which people control and direct their own actions.
Self-Discrepancies

• Discrepancies between our self concept.

• Real self and ideal self
Schema

• Organized, repeatedly exercised patterns of thought about some stimulus,

which are built up from experience and which selectively guide the
processing of new information.
• Your schema's about police or forces?
 Self-schema
The many beliefs people have about themselves that constitute the ingredient of the
self-concept
• Our self -schemas—our perceiving ourselves as athletic, overweight, smart, or
whatever—powerfully affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate
ourselves.
• If athletics is central to your self- concept (if being an athlete is one of your self-
schemas), then you will tend to notice others’ bodies and skills. You will quickly
recall sports-related experiences.
• And you will welcome information that is consistent with your self-schema
(kihlstrom & cantor, 1984).
• The self-schemas that make up our self-concepts help us organize and retrieve
our experiences.
Gender Identity

• The knowledge that one is a male or a female and the

internalization of this fact into one’s self-concept.
• Gender schema – a mental framework for processing information
based on its perceived male or female qualities
Self-Enhancement

• The process of seeking out and interpreting situations to attain a

positive view of oneself.
• Self-verification is the process of seeking out and interpreting
situations so as to confirm one’s self-concept.
 Self-Monitoring

• Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and
adjusting one’s performance to create the desired impression.
• For some people, conscious self-presentation is a way of life. They
continually monitor their own behaviour and note how others react,
then adjust their social performance to gain a desired effect.
• Those who score high on a scale of self- monitoring tendency (who, for
example, agree that “I tend to be what people expect me to be”) act like
social chameleons—they adjust their behaviour in response to external
situations (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000; Snyder, 1987).
• Being conscious of others, they are less likely to act on their own attitudes.
• As Mark Leary (2004b) observed, the self they know often differs from the
self they show. As social chameleons, those who score high in self-
monitoring are also less committed to their relationships and more likely to
be dissatisfied in their marriages (Leone & Hawkins, 2006).
• Those who score low in self-monitoring care less about what others think.
They are more internally guided and thus more likely to talk and act as they
feel and believe (McCann & Hancock, 1983). For example, if asked to list
their thoughts about gay couples, they simply express what they think,
regardless of the attitudes of their anticipated audience (Klein & others,
2004).
 Self- Monitoring

Social Acuity: the ability and inclination to perceive the psychological state of others and act accordingly.