Chapter 2

The Self in a Social World

By: Maydee V. Reyes
Spotlight and Illusions
Spotlight effect – the belief that others
are paying more attention to one’s
appearance and behavior than they
really are (Lawson, 2010)
Seeing our self in the center,
we over estimate attention
from others through our
physical appearance, and
emotional state
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 Illusions of Transparency
Illusion of Transparency
– (Stavitsky & Gilovich,
2003) the illusion that our
concealed emotions leak
out and can easily read by
others

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“
Social surrounding affect our self-awareness
Self-interest colors our social judgment
Self-concern motivates our social behavior
Social relationships motivates our self

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Self-Concept: Who Am I?
▫ How and how accurately, do we
know ourselves?

▫ What determines our self concept?

▫ A person’s answers to the question

“Who am I”?

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Self-Concept: Who Am I?

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Schema
An organized mental representation of information
about the world.

Self- Schema
Beliefs about self that organize and guide the
processing of self-relevant information.

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 Possible Selves
Schematic cognitive representations, of what
people believe they may become, are hopeful of
becoming or are fearful of becoming.

Our self-concepts include not only our self schemas

about who we currently are but also who we might
become

Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in

the future

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 Self-esteem
My sense of self-
worth

Want big impact?

Social self
My roles as a
Self Concept
Who I am? Use big image.
student, family
member, and friend;
my group identity

Self-knowledge
How can I explain
and predict myself 9
 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 behavior

Factors that may influences our personality and self-concept:

1. The roles we play

2. The social identities we form
3. The comparisons we make with others
4. Our successes and failures
5. How other people judge us
6. The surrounding culture

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Social Comparison
Evaluating one’s abilities
and opinions by comparing
oneself with others

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The looking-glass self
Described our use of
Coined by Charles how we think others
perceive us as a
H. Cooley (1982)
mirror for perceiving
ourselves

George Herbert
The way we
Mead (1934) imagine they
see us, matters
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 Self and Culture
Individualism – the concept of Collectivism- Giving priority to
giving priority to one’s own goals the goals of one’s groups (often
over group goals and defining one’s extended family or work
one’s identity in terms of group) and defining one’s identity
personal attributes rather than accordingly.
group identifications.

Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue

Collectivism

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Culture and the self
Richard Nisbetts “The Geography of
Thought” (2003)

Contends that collectivism results in

different ways of thinking

Asians tend to think more in

relationships than Americans

Americans see choices as expressions

of themselves

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 Interdependent Self
-Construing one’s identity in relation to others

-Not only a way of viewing oneself but also a way of understanding one’s relationship
to the larger social world.

-(e.g., “I’m Nancy’s best friend” or “I’m the youngest son in my family”) and their important
group memberships (e.g., “I’m a sorority sister” or “I’m an Asian American”). 

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Our process is
easy

1. 2. 3.
first second last

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Self knowledge
“know thyself”, an ancient Greek
oracle

“There is one thing, and only one

in the whole universe which we
know more about than we could
learn from external observation”

“ourselves” is that “one thing”

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true
wisdom. Mastering others is strength; Mastering yourself is
true power.”
-Lao Tzu, Chinese Taoist Philosopher

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Explaining our
Self-knowledge The wisdom and
illusions of self
behavior analysis

Planning fallacy – the tendency to

under estimate how long it will take
to estimate a task Dual attitudes- differing implicit (automatic)
and explicit (consciously controlled)
attitudes toward the same object. Verbalized
Predicting our
explicit attitudes may change with education
behavior
Predicting our and persuasion; implicit attitudes change
slowly, with practice that forms new habits
feelings

Immune neglect – the human tendency to

underestimate the speed and the strength of
Impact bias – overestimating the the “psychological immune system” which
enduring impact of emotion-causing enables emotional recovery and resilience
events after bad things happen 18
 Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a measure of how much
you value, respect and feel confident
about yourself.

You know you have good self- esteem if:

 you like the way you are

You like what you do

And sometimes you have doubts about

yourself and your abilities, but you like
yourself nonetheless.

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 Self-esteem is an over all self-
evaluation- the sum of our self-
schemas and possible selves

-it is important because it can

Self-esteem affect our mental health, how we

behave, our decisions,
friendship success and our life

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 Self-esteem Motivation
Abraham Tesser (1998), reported
that a “self-esteem maintenance”,
motive predicts a variety of
interesting findings, even friction
among brothers and sisters

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Self-esteem maintenance
Tesser presumes that people’s
perceiving one as more capable
than the other will motivate the
less able one to act in ways that
maintain self-esteem.

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 The “dark side” of Self-esteem
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 et.
al,. 2006)

High self-esteem does have some benefits - it

fosters initiative, resilience and pleasant
feelings (Baumeiter & others, 2003)
 Self-esteem

HIGH LOW
Behavioral problem Clinical problems

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Narcissism
High self-esteem becomes
especially problematic if it
crosses over into narcissism,
or having an inflated sense
of self
They have high self-esteem,
but they are missing the
piece about caring for others
(Campbell & others, 2002)
Narcissism on the rise
The Generation me – express
more narcissism

they love being the winners, but

aren’t as concerned with being
emotionally close to others.

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Perceived Self-control
Effortful self-control depletes our limited will
power reserves… controlling emotions during
upsetting film resulted.

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 Self-Efficacy
Albert Bandura A sense that one is competent
It is how competent we feel on a and effective distinguished
task that from self-esteem, which is
one’s self worth.
• leads us to set challenging
goals to persist Bombardier might feel high
• Competency + persistence = self-efficacy and low self-
accomplishment / self- esteem
confidence
 Are you A or B
A B
In the long run , Unfortunately,
people get the people’s worth
respect they deserve passes unrecognized
in this world no matter how hard
they try
 Are you A or B
A B
What happens to me Sometimes I feel
is my own doing that I don’t have
enough control over
the direction my life
is taking
 Are you A or B
A B
The average person This world is run by
san have an the few people in
influence in power and there is
government not much I can do
decisions about it
Locus of Control
The extent to which people
perceive outcomes as internally
controllable their own efforts or as
externally controlled by chance or
outside forces

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 Learned helplessness vs. self determination

Learned helplessness Depressed or oppressed people,

Martin Seligman (1975, 1991) become passive because they
noted similarities to this learned believe their efforts have no
helplessness in human situations. effect

Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue

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 Learned helplessness vs. self determination

Learned helplessness Self- determination

The sense of hopelessness and
resignation learned when a
human or animal perceives no
control over repeated bad events
Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue
Development of self-discipline in
one area of your life may cause
self-control in other areas as well
Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue

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 The cost of excess choice
Excess freedom
Barry Schwartz (200, 2004) contends that
individualistic modern cultures indeed have “an
excess freedom” causing decreased life satisfaction
and increased rates of clinical depression

According to him, too many choices can lead to

paralysis or the “tyranny of freedom”

Making choices is also tiring

 The cost of excess choice
Excess freedom
Too many choices can lead to
dissatisfaction with our final choice

People tend to be generally happier with

decision when they can’t undo them
 Self serving bias
•- Tendency to perceive
oneself favorably

Explaining positive and negative events

Self-serving attributions is the tendency to attribute
positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes
to other factors

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Self serving bias
Can we all be better than average?

It also appears that when people compare themselves

with others

Lake Wobegon effect “all children are above average”

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Self serving attribution
A form of self-serving bias; that tends to attribute
positive outcomes to one self and negative outcomes to
other factors

it contributes to marital
discord, worker dissatisfaction, and bargaining
impasses (Kruger & Gilovich, 1999)

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 Unrealistic Optimism

Illusory
Optimism
optimism
predisposes a
increases our
positive
vulnerability
approach to life

False consensus
effect
Tendency to
False undersestimate
the commonality
Tendency to
overestimate the uniqueness of one’s abilities
and one’s
commonality
effect desirable or
succesful
behavior 42
 Defensive pessimism

It is the adaptive value of anticipating problems

and harnessing one’s anxiety to motivate effective
action

It anticipates problems and motivates

effective coping
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 Explaning self serving bias
It is a by product of how we
process and remember information
about ourselves

Self serving bias may be;

Adaptive – protects and help
people from depression (Snyder &
Higgins, 1988)
Maladaptive – group serving bias
explaining away out-group
members positive behavior; also
attributing negative behaviors to
their dispositions

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 Self-Presentation
Wanting to present a desired
image both to an external
audience (other people) and
to an internal audience
(ourselves) SNS such as fb, IG etc.,
provide a new and sometimes
intense venue for self
presentation

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 Impression Management
Self-serving bias, false modesty, and self-
handicapping reveal the dept of our concern for
self image.

Weather we wish to impress, intimidate, or

seem helpless, we are social animals, playing to
an audience 46
Self-handicapping
Protecting one’s self image
with behaviors that create a
handy excuse for later failure

Self-monitoring
Tendency to act like social
chameleons
Being attuned to the way one
presents oneself in social
situations and adjusting one’s
performance to create the
desired impression
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� Thank you for listening

�
Reference: Social Psychology
David Myers, 11th edition

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