The Self

I. Spotlights and Illusions A. Spotlight Effect: the erroneous belief that other individuals are paying more attention to your appearance and behavior than they actually are. This effect tends to be magnified in social situations (a) deemed of great personal importance and (b) with greater numbers of potential observers. B. Illusion of Transparency: the illusion that our attempts to conceal embarrassing emotions are highly unsuccessful, thus causing those emotions to be critically observed by others.

II. Self-Concept: Who am I? A. Looking-glass self: you only know yourself through your perception of other people’s perceptions of you. B. Self-concept: sense that one’s self is separate from others and that you exist as an object in the universe; descriptive and evaluative mental picture of one’s abilities and traits. C. Self-schemas: beliefs about yourself that organize and guide how you process self-relevant information. They serve as short-cuts that allow you to effortlessly filter out information you consider irrelevant to your sense of who you are. D. Schemas: concepts or frameworks that organize and interpret information.

E. Possible Selves: ideas of what we hope to become and of what we hope of not becoming. F. Social Comparison Theory: evaluating one’s abilities by comparing oneself with others. We tend to feel happier when we compare ourselves to people we perceive as inferior to ourselves and less happy when we compare ourselves to people we perceive as superior to ourselves. G. Self-efficacy: Sense of a capability to master challenges and achieve goals. 1) Upward Social Comparison: when an individual compares himself or herself with someone who is more successful regarding a particular ability or achievement. 2) Downward Social Comparison: when an individual compares himself or herself with someone who is less successful regarding a particular

III. Self and Culture A. Individualism: the concept of giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications. 1) Independent Self: the sense of oneself as special, unique, and separate from social contexts or group characteristics. B. Collectivism: giving priority to the goals of one’s groups (family members, coworkers, etc.) and defining one’s identity accordingly. 1) Interdependent Self: the sense of self as flexible, variable, and connected to social contexts and group environments.

IV. Self Knowledge A. Planning Fallacy: the tendency to under-estimate how long it will take to complete a task. B. Self-Knowledge and the Powerful Influence of Emotion 1) Regarding self-knowledge, our thoughts and feelings are powerfully linked. 2) Stimulating the emotions you are likely to experience in a situation you are trying to predict in terms of how you’ll feel or behave can increase self-knowledge accuracy. 3) Extreme emotions can interfere with your ability to predict how personally relevant events will unfold.

C. Impact Bias: overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events. D. Psychological Immune System: enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen.

V. Self-Esteem A. Self-Esteem: our overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth. 1) Research has shown that the best way to cultivate and maintain VALID high self-esteem is to… a) Praise yourself (or receive praise) that is true and specific to identifiable qualities, characteristics, or skills. b) Continuously strive for improvement. B. Academic Entitlement: expectations of high grades for little effort and demanding attitudes towards teachers.

C. Self-Esteem and Narcissism: The Recipe for Evil 1) Narcissism: excessive fascination with oneself; excessive self-love.

VI. Self-Control A. Internal versus External Locus of Control… an individual’s belief that the outcomes in one’s life are primarily determined by one’s own actions and choices (internal locus of control) or by environmental factors, such as other people, physical aspects of the world, and/or spiritual forces (external locus of control). B. Learned Helplessness: hopelessness and resignation learned when a person perceives no control over repeated or bad events. C. Self-Determination: development of self-discipline in one area of your life may cause self-control in other areas as well.

D. The Costs of Excess Choice 1) Too many choices can lead to (a) an inability to choose or (b) dissatisfaction with our final choice. 2) People tend to be generally happier with decisions when they can’t undo them. 3) In sum, we are generally happiest and feel the most in control when we have some versus many choices and make final versus reversible decisions.

VII. Self-Serving Biases A. Self-Serving Biases (attributions): attributions that we use to optimize our perception of ourselves. We tend to attribute positive outcomes to ourselves and attribute negative outcomes to other factors. B. Can we all be better than average? 1) Most people see themselves as better than the average person on a number of dimensions.

C. False Consensus Effect: the tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions and one’s undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors. D. False Uniqueness Effect: the tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or successful behaviors.

VIII. Self-Presentation A. Self-Handicapping: we intentionally put ourselves at a disadvantage to provide an excuse for an expected defeat or failure. B. Self-Presentation: the act of expressing oneself, usually in a social context. C. Self-Monitoring: being aware of how one is presenting oneself in a social context and being able to adjust that image in different social contexts to create favorable impressions.