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1 THE SELF IN A SOCIAL WORLD

CHAPTER 2
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4 OUTLINE
7 I. Spotlights & Illusions
II. Self-concept: Who am I?
8 III. Self-esteem
IV. Perceived self-control
9 V. Self-serving bias
VI. Self-presentation
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8 H O W W O U L D Y O U F E E L WA L K I N G A R O U N D T H E
C A M P U S W I T H T H AT L O O K ?
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9 I. SPOTLIGHTS & ILLUSIONS
10 SPOTLIGHT EFFECT
--The belief that others are paying more attention to one’s appearance
and behavior than they really are.
11 ILLUSION OF TRANSPARENCY
--The illusion that our concealed emotion are “leaked out” and can be
easily read
vs. with mybyfriends.
others.
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13 I I . S E L F - C O N C E P T: W H O A M I ?
14 A. OUR SENSE OF SELF
•Self-concept– A person’s answers to the question “Who am I?”.
üYour idea of yourself.
üMultidimensional and multifaceted
üActive and changing
üDepends on what we are thinking at the moment and on the
social context.
•Schemas-- Are mental templates by which we organize our worlds.
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•Self-schema– Specific beliefs by which you define yourself.
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•Schemas-- Are mental templates by which we organize our worlds.

•Self-schema– Specific beliefs by which you define yourself.
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16 A. OUR SENSE OF SELF

•Possible selves– Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in
the future.
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19 B. DEV. OF THE SOCIAL SELF

1. THE ROLES WE PLAY
•Whether we are a college student, parent, or salesperson our sense
of role affects the way we see our self.
•leader, officer, kapatid, bestfriend, “bestfriend”
2. SOCIAL COMPARISONS
•Social Comparison– Evaluating one’s abilities and opinions by
comparing oneself with others.
•Smart or dull?, rich or poor?, Good looking or kind? J
•
20 B. DEV. OF THE SOCIAL SELF
3. SUCCESS & FAILURE
•Our daily experiences of success and failure give us a sense of social
self.
•What would you feel if you get a high score in math?
4. OTHER PEOPLE’S JUDGMENTS
•What people think well of us, it helps us think well of ourselves.
•Looking-glass self= tendency to use others as a mirror for perceiving
our selves.
21 B. DEV. OF THE SOCIAL SELF
5. THE CULTURE
•In Cultural psych, self and culture are seen as mutually constitutive.
•Culture and self construct each other!
•Culture transforms
us and then we
transform the
culture!
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culture!
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23 C. SELF & CULTURE

•Individualism– The concept of giving priority to one’s own goals over
group goals & defining one’s identity in terms of attributes rather than
group identifications.
-Can result to independent self (identity as unique individual).
•Collectivism– Giving priority to the goals of one’s group and defining
one’s identity accordingly.
-Can result to interdependent self (identity in relation to others).
24 C. SELF & CULTURE
•Twenty Statements Tests (Cousins, 1989)
–Repeatedly asks the questions “Who am I?”
–Americans used more trait descriptions while Japanese used more
role-specific and situational answers.
•In Bali, individuals are not known by their names but rather in terms of
whose children they are (Geertz, 1975)
•In the PH, the self and the other are integrated into kapwa (Enriquez,
1997)
25 C. SELF & CULTURE
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31 THE FILIPINO YOUTH

Peña-Alampay (2003)
•Filipino youth scored higher in the interdependent self compared to
independent self.
•Five major categories of self-aspects:
–Relational social roles (e.g. anak)
–Social roles (e.g. estudyante)
–Situations (e.g. sa bahay)
–Superordinate categories
(e.g. ang gusto kong baguhin)
–No contextual reference

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(e.g. ang gusto kong baguhin)

–No contextual reference
(e.g. ako)
•
•
32 C. SELF & CULTURE
CULTURE & SELF-ESTEEM
•Self-esteem– overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth.
•Americans tend to have high self-esteem with disengaged emotions–
feeling effective, superior and proud. (Kitayama & Markus, 2000)
•Asians tend to have high self-esteem with positive social
engagement– feeling close, friendly, & respectful. (Kitayama &
Markus, 2000)
•
•
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35 D. SELF-KNOWLEDGE
EXPLAINING OUR BEHAVIOR
•When it comes to explanation of our behavior sometimes we know
sometimes we don’t.
•We tend to dismiss the subtle factors or predictors of some of our
behaviors.
•Mondays are not really a contributing factor to the participants’ moods
(Stone et al., 1985)
•Thus, sometimes we don’t really know ourselves!
•
36 D. SELF-KNOWLEDGE
PREDICTING OUR BEHAVIOR
•Your roommate better predicts whether your romance would survive
or not ( Lutsky & others, 1993)
•Planning Fallacy– The tendency to underestimate the time of
completion of task.
•On average, students finished three weeks later than their “most
realistic” estimate (Buehler & others, 2002)
•How can you improve your self-predictions?
•The best way is to be more realistic about how long tasks took in the
past.

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•The best way is to be more realistic about how long tasks took in the
past.
•However, we tend to misremember those previous tasks (Roy &
others, 2005).
•
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38 D. SELF-KNOWLEDGE
PREDICTING OUR FEELINGS
Most women said they would feel angry if asked sexually harassing
39 questions. However, they felt more fear (Woodzicka & LaFrance,
2001).
•Impact bias- overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing
events.
•Immune Neglect-- Tendency to underestimate the speed & strength of
the “Psychological Immune System”.
üEmotional
üImplicit Recovery
can change or Resilience
through practice, w/c forms new habits.
39
40 Yung akala mo kilala mo na yung sarili mo
41 PA R T 2
42 OUTLINE
I. Spotlights & Illusions
II. Self-concept: Who am I?
III. Self-esteem
IV. Perceived self-control
40
V. Self-serving bias
41 VI. Self-presentation
42
43 III. SELF-ESTEEM
44 A. SELF-ESTEEM
•Self-Esteem-- A person’s overall self- evaluation or sense of self-
worth.
•Self-Esteem is contingent (bound by circumstance).
–You feel good when you feel smart & good looking vs. you feel good
when you meet some moral standards.
43 •Self-perceptions can have an influence. (E.g. if you think you’re good
in Math you tend to do well in Math).
44
•In an exam in Psychology, the students whose self-esteem was
boosted did by far the worst on the final—in fact, they flunked it
(Forsyth & others, 2007).
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boosted did by far the worst on the final—in fact, they flunked it
(Forsyth & others, 2007).
45 B. SELF-ESTEEM MOTIVATION
•Self-esteem feelings are radars for social rejection.
•Sibling rivalries & married couples with identical career goals.
•We want to avoid social rejection, consequently, it motivates us to act
with greater sensitivity to others’ expectations.
•Social acceptance= éSelf-Esteem ;Social rejection= êSelf-Esteem.
•Self-Esteem is bound by the standards of the society.
•In times of failures, éself-esteem people sustain their self-worth by
perceiving other people as failing, too, and by exaggerating their
superiority over others.
•

•
•
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47 C. THE “DARK SIDE” OF SELF-ESTEEM

•People with low self-esteem often have problems in life– they make
less money, more likely to abuse drugs and be depressed (Nurmi et
al., 2007)
•People with high self-esteem become teen gang leaders, terrorists,
and men in prison for committing heinous crimes (Bushman &
Baumeister, 2002)
48 C. THE “DARK SIDE” OF SELF-ESTEEM
Narcissism: Self-Esteem’s conceited sister
•Bushman & Baumeister (1998), undergraduate volunteers wrote
essays and received rigged feedback that said, “This is one of the
worst essays I’ve read!”
• Self-Esteem + Narcissism= aggression.

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50 I V. P E R C E I V E D S E L F - C O N T R O L
51 SELF-EFFICACY
•Self-Efficacy– A sense that one is competent & effective.
•-How competent we feel on the task.

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•Self-Efficacy– A sense that one is competent & effective.
•-How competent we feel on the task.
•-Given challenging tasks, people who imagine themselves as
hardworking and successful outperform those who imagine themselves
as failures (Ruvolo & Markus, 1992).

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54 A OR B?
1 a. In the long run, people get the respect they deserve in this world.
a. What happens to me is my own doing.
a. The average person can have an influence in government decisions.
•
2 b. Unfortunately, people’s worth passes unrecognized no matter how
hard they try.
b. Sometimes I feel that I don’t have enough control over the direction
my life is taking.
b. This world is run by the few people in power, and there is not much
the little guy can do about it.
•
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56 A. LOCUS OF CONTROL
•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.
•“Swerte lang”, “Na-malas ako!”
•“The Law of Attraction”
•“Kasi magaling ako”
•“Because I practiced well”

57 A. LOCUS OF CONTROL
1 INTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL
2 •You probably believe you control your own destiny.
•“I failed because I didn't’t study.”
•‘They can because they think they can.”
3 EXTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL
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•‘They can because they think they can.”
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3 EXTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL
4 •You probably feel chance or outside forces determine your fate.
58 •“I failed because my teacher didn’t like me by chance.”
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60
60 B. LEARNED HELPLESSNESS
•Learned helplessness– The sense of hopelessness and resignation
learned when a human or animal perceives no control over repeated
bad events.
•E.g. Depressed or oppressed people become passive because they
believe their efforts have no effect.
61 •
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62 C. SELF-DETERMINATION
•People benefit by training their self-control “muscles.” (Oaten &Cheng,
2006).
•Prisoners given some control over their environments—by being able
to move chairs, control TV sets, and operate the lights—experience
less stress, exhibit fewer health problems, and commit less vandalism
(Ruback & others, 1986; Wener & others, 1987).
•In all countries studied, people who perceive themselves as having
free choice experience greater satisfaction with their lives . And
countries where people experience more freedom have more satisfied
citizens (Inglehart & others, 2008).
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65 SELF-DETERMINATION
65 The Costs of Excess Choice
•Too many choices can lead to paralysis!
• Students who chose which classes they would take during the
upcoming semester tend to most likely procrastinate and fail exams
(Vohs & others, 2008 ).
•More satisfaction in marriages decades ago when it was more
irrevocable Vs. Today that we have greater freedom to escape
(annulment, divorce).
•

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(annulment, divorce).
•
•
66 PA R T 3
67 OUTLINE
I. Spotlights & Illusions
II. Self-concept: Who am I?
III. Self-esteem
IV. Perceived self-control
V. Self-serving bias
VI. Self-presentation
68 V. S E L F - S E R V I N G B I A S
69 SELF-SERVING BIAS
•Self-serving bias-- The tendency to perceive oneself favorably.
•Group-serving bias- The tendency to perceive one’s group
favorably
•Most of us have a
good reputation with
ourselves.
70 A. POSITIVE & NEGATIVE EVENTS
•Self-serving Attributions-- A form of self-serving bias; the tendency to
attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other
factors.
–Salient in games, exams, & job applications.
•People attribute their success to their ability and effort, but they
attribute failure to external factors such as bad luck or the problem’s
inherent “impossibility” (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999).
•Ironically, we are even biased against seeing our own bias. People
claim they avoid self-serving bias themselves, but readily
acknowledge that others commit this bias (Pronin & others, 2002).
•
•
71 B. BETTER THAN AVERAGE?
•Compared with people in general, most people see themselves as
more ethical, more competent at their job, friendlier, more intelligent,
better looking, less prejudiced, healthier, and even more insightful and
less biased in their self-assessments.
•Young married Canadians usually believed they took more

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less biased in their self-assessments.

•Young married Canadians usually believed they took more
responsibility for such activities as cleaning the house and caring for
the children than their spouses credited them for (Rios & Sicoly,
1979).
•
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74 C. UNREALISTIC OPTIMISM
•A predisposition of a positive approach in life.
•Myself= Unrealistic optimism about my future ; Others= Pessimism to
others’ fate
•Illusory optimism increases our vulnerability. Believing ourselves
immune to misfortune, we do not take sensible precautions.
•Sexually active undergraduate women who don’t consistently use
contraceptives perceive themselves, compared with other women at
their university, as much less vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy
(Burger & Burns, 1988).
•
75 D. FALSE CONSENSUS AND UNIQUENESS
•False Consensus effect-- The tendency to overestimate the
commonality of one’s opinions and one’s undesirable or unsuccessful
behaviors.
–We think that others think and act like we do.
–We generalize from a limited sample, which prominently includes
ourselves.
–“Everyone cheats anyway!”
•False Uniqueness effect--The tendency to underestimate the
commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or successful
behaviors.
–“I’m the one who studies in this class anyway!”
•

•
76 D. FALSE CONSENSUS AND UNIQUENESS
77 IN SUMMARY…
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78 IN SUMMARY…
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79 V I . S E L F - P R E S E N TAT I O N
79 A. SELF-HANDICAPPING
•Self-handicapping-- Protecting one’s self-image with behaviors that
create a handy excuse for later failure.
•Handicaps protect both self-esteem and public image by allowing us
to attribute failures to something temporary or external.
•We always have a DISCLAIMER!!
•Because we are always concerned with our SELF-IMAGE!
80 •
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82 B. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
82 •Self-presentation-- The act of expressing oneself and behaving in
ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that
corresponds to one’s ideals.
•We want to present a desired image both to an external audience
(other people) and to an internal audience (ourselves).
•That’s why we apologize if necessary.
•We also must make sure not to brag too much and risk the
disapproval of others (Anderson & others, 2006).
•

83 B. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
83 •Self-monitoring-- Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in
social situations and adjusting one’s performance to create the
desired impression.
•We are Social “Chameleons”
•Social Desirability is salient among Filipinos whenever we answer
surveys or questionnaires.
•

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