L15 The Self

• What are the three levels of consciousness?

  • Minimal consciousness
  • Full consciousness
  • Self consciousness
• What is minimal consciousness?

  A connection between the person and the world. It is a low level awareness that occurs when the mind inputs sensations and may output behaviour.
• What are characteristics of full consciousness?

  You know and are able to report your mental state.
• • Self consciousness is when the person's attention is drawn to the self as an object, and they exclude almost everything else.
• What is self control?

  Self control is the general capacity to regulate thoughts and behaviours in the face of conflict. We must have this ability in order to integrate successfully into society, as to be a member of a social group you have to without desires and impulses to strategically negotiate with others.
• Self control develops significantly over preschool years, reflected by increased executive functions that help to plan, organise and inhibit thoughts and behaviours.

  Maccoby identified four kinds of inhibition:

  1. Inhibition of movement
  2. Inhibition of emotion
  3. Inhibition of conclusion
  4. Inhibition of choice
• • Children's self control is influenced by how their parents behave. 
  • One exception is that children with strict parents usually exhibit less self-control. This may be because children do not internalize control, as they need more independence to do so
• The Self concept:

  • The I and the Me. William James (1890)
  • The I is the self that thinks, experiences and acts in the world, it is the knower. This is like consciousness.
  • The Me is the self that is an object in the world, it is the known. This is more a concept of a person
• • Traits people use to define themselves can be called self-schemas (Markus, 1977)
  • We often arrive at our self-concepts through interacting with others and their opinions of us.
• People derive a comforting sense of familiarity and stability from knowing who they are. We engage in self-verification, the tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self-concept (Swann, 1983), and we find it disconcerting when people see us differently to how we see ourselves
• Self esteem:

  • The sense of self-worth, and how much an individual likes and accepts the self.
• Self esteem:

  • Some psychologists say that high self-esteem arises from being accepted and valued by significant others
• Self esteem:

  • Self-esteem can be influenced when an important authority figure is 'watching you from the back of your mind'
• Evolution and emergence of the sense of self:

  • Mirror self-recognition: apes, elephants dolphins and 65% of 20-24 month old children pass the test
• Levels of self-awareness

  • Subjective: distinguish self and environment, regulate own internal processes (all organisms)
  • Objective: self-awareness, awareness of own state of mind, theory of mind (those with mirror recognition?)
  • Symbolic: capacity to represent the self through language, communicate the self to others, future goals extensive self schemas (only humans)
• Increased self-consciousness via seeing one's mirror imagine makes people more prosocial and honest - watching-eye effect
• • A ‘face’ culture is one in which people are especially concerned with social approval and reputation.
• Sociometer theory:

  • For ancestral humans, social acceptance was a matter of life and death. 
  • We evolved to be highly sensitive to whether we are accepted by others, and self-esteem is a subjective gauge of social acceptance.
• Ego depletion 

   

  • Self control may be a limited resource, and engaging in self-control should reduce capacity immediately afterwards.
• Ego depletion Chocolate study: 

  1. There was a chocolate/ radish condition in which participants ate one or the other.
  2. Chocolate condition = no self control
  3. Radish condition = more self control
  4. Participants worked on unsolvable puzzles.
  5. Chocolate condition = gave up more quickly - lasted 18.9 minutes
  6. Radish condition = 8.35 minutes