Week 9: The Self

• Self


  Purpose of the Self
• Long road towards social acceptance
• Keeping 'yourselves' on track

  Self satnav
• Play social roles


  1. Society creates and defines roles

  2. Individual seeks and adopts them
• PSYC 3020 Week 10: The Self
• Dr Arnaud Wisman
• Anterior cingulate cortex


  Responsible for controlling and monitoring intentional behaviour
• Activated when people become self-aware
• What is the self versus what is the (function) Self?


  • Self Knowledge
  • Self Awareness
  • Interpersonal Self
  • Public Self
  • Agent Self
  • Executive Function
• The duplex mind/self (see later)
• Self-awareness


  Attention directed at the self
• Types of self-awareness


  • Private self-awareness
  • Public self-awareness
• Usually involves evaluative comparison
• Self awareness theory (SAT)


  Proposed by Duval and Wicklund (1972), suggests that some situations, such as looking in a mirror, lead to self-awareness. Self-aware people feel bad because they notice any discrepancies between who they are and standards. They can either "shape up" by matching the behavior to the standard, or "ship out" by trying to escape the self-aware state.
• Standards


  Concepts of how things might possibly be, including ideals, norms, expectations, moral principles, laws, past experiences
• Around age 2, begin use of standards
• Beginning of self-awareness
• Private Self-Awareness


  Awareness of the private aspects of oneself
• Can have positive consequences if people focus on positive aspects of the self
• Can lead to depression if people focus on the negatives
• Participants asked to read positive or negative statements about the self


  They became more extreme in their emotional responses when looking in a mirror
• Private Self-awareness improves behavior - reduces cheating behavior, improves eating behavior
• Being in front of a mirror makes us more privately self-aware so we are more likely to adhere to our attitudes rather than changing them
• It also makes us more moral
• Private self-consciousness


  Chronic private self-awareness and concern about private aspects of the self - can have positive and negative effects
• When self-awareness feels bad - act against values => seek to escape - facing mirror or not
• Purpose of Self-Awareness


  • Self-regulation
  • Adopt the perspective of other people
  • Manage behaviour in pursuit of goal
• Self-Knowledge & Self-Concept (I)


  Who am I? Lists of traits and identities. How we think about ourselves: We constantly redefine ourselves. The self is intrinsically social: Helps us to know what we should think, how we should behave and interact with others. We have a social relationship with ourselves.
• "Looking glass self" (Cooley, 1902)


  • You imagine how you appear to others
  • You imagine how others will judge you
  • You develop an emotional response as a result of imagining how others will judge you
• Symbolic interactionism


  • Seeing oneself from the outside
  • Seeing ourselves as others see us
  • Being aware of ourselves is a crucial part of being able to control ourselves
  • Adhering to social norms
  • Learning how to change
• Self-concept


  The complete set of beliefs people have about themselves
• Self-schemas


  • Different dimensions of the self
  • Some schemas are more important to people than others
  • Self-schemas determine our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour in specific contexts
• Study by Markus (1977)
• Participants who were self-schematic on independence or dependence more quickly identified words associated with their schemas and were more able to recall experiences that demonstrated their schema
• Self-schemas influence aspects of daily life
• Schemas can become all-consuming
• People can also have schemas about desired and undesired selves
• Having multiple or "spare" schemas to focus on is important
• Multiple Role Theory


  • Complexity of the self is important
  • It is beneficial to a person's health and well-being to have multiple self-identities
  • But also the risk of failure and frustration
  • Quality vs. quantity of roles is important, and the self needs to 'gel'
• Self-Concept Clarity


  The extent to which self-schemas are clearly and confidently defined, consistent with each other and stable across time