PSYC 2310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Roy Baumeister, Social Comparison Theory, Tabula Rasa

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2310
• Professor: Saba Safdar

Document Summary

Everyone is part of a larger social structure. No person is a lone island, everyone is connected. Who are you: self-concept or self knowledge (the known or the me) (the knowledge you know about yourself, self-awareness (the knower or the i) (the awareness of yourself) The concept of me shifts as we get older: when young, people describe themselves using physical characteristics, later people describe more mental characteristics. Three features of self (baumeister, 1986: self includes the body, self includes the social identity, self is the active agent. Self-knowledge come from: feedback from others, self-comparison. Self as a blank slate: not exactly true! Self-knowledge is obtained from others but it is heavily filtered through biases from others: politeness of others, our lack of tendency to hear and process criticism. Is it possible to have an accurate understanding of self-knowledge: yes, autobiography writers (self concept is the most complete form of knowledge available, no, psychoanalysts (self-concept is very hard to obtain)