PSY 3126 Lecture 7: Motivation Lecture + Textbook Notes
28 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
October 30, 2017
Motivation
Self-Enhancement
Self-enhancement: motivation to view oneself positively
-Once thought to be universal
How might you assess self-enhancement?
-Self-esteem: how positively you evaluate yourself
•93% of Euro-Canadians reported self-esteem above the midpoint of the scale
-Self-serving bias: tendency to exaggerate how good one is
•Ex. 94% of American college professors thought they were better than average (statistically impossible)
•Most people think that they’re above average
•Maintained because people rarely encounter concrete information in these domains, so there is nothing to prove
that one is not average
•People are actually quite accurate about their standing when they encounter incontrovertible evidence, but when
this evidence is absent they’re likely to interpret evidence favourably
•NB: Westerners are more susceptible to self-serving bias
Strategies for bolstering self-esteem:
-Downward social comparison (vs. Upward social comparison): comparing your performance to people who did
worse
-Compensatory self-enhancement: acknowledging your poor performance, but focus on/exaggerate your good
performance in another area
-Discounting: reducing the perceived importance of the domain of poor performance
-External attribution (vs. Internal attribution): blame something outside yourself
-Basking in reflected glory: emphasize your connection to successfully performing others
•Ex. People are more likely to refer to their university’s football team with the pronoun “we” rather than “they” if
the team has recently won a game and if the individual has just done poorly on a test
Cultural Variation in Self-Enhancing Motivations
Euro-North Americans
East Asians/Asian-Canadians
Equally likely to compare downward and upwards
More likely to compare upwards
Increase self-assessment in other domains
(compensatory self-assessment)
Decrease self-assessment in other domains (think
they’re not great in other domains as well)
1
October 30, 2017
Cultural variation in self-enhancement:
-Individualistic cultures have higher self-esteem
-Individualistic cultures are more likely to show self-serving biases
-Individualistic cultures find successes more memorable, collectivistic cultures find failures more memorable
NB: generally, self-enhancement is associated with having an independent view of self
Are East Asians really more self-critical? Alternate hypotheses have been proposed:
-East Asians do not self-enhance, but rather group-enhance
•Discounted: Americans are more likely to group-enhance too
-East Asians would self-enhance on different traits that they find more important that were not assessed
•Generally discounted
-Modesty norms prevent East Asians from reporting self-enhancement
•I.e. These studies are not measuring people’s “true” feelings, but are tapping into differences in cultural norms
for describing oneself
•Discounted: differences in self-evaluation also shown in anonymous situations and using hidden/indirect
measures (counteracts the need to be modest)
The alternative hypotheses do not hold up, and it has been found that East Asians are generally more self-critical
Where do these differences come from?
-Proximal explanation: they are the result of parental interactions
•Ex. American parents are more likely to tell stories emphasizing children’s past success while Taiwanese
parents are more likely to emphasize past transgressions
•Ex. American parents view self-esteem as central to child-rearing while Taiwanese parents do not
-Distal explanations: shifts in societal norms
•Protestant Reformation and the notion of predestination (more details later on)
-Will view yourself more positively because you want to view yourself as one of God’s chosen people
•Individualism = the self as self-contained, self-sufficient, self-reliant
-In this context, viewing the self positively is relatively more important - you’re all that you got, so you need to
be good
More external attributions after failures
More external attributions after successes
Discount importance of task after failure
Emphasize importance of task after failure
Bask in reflected glory after failure
More critical of own group after failure
Euro-North Americans
East Asians/Asian-Canadians
2
October 30, 2017
-As societies become more individualistic, the importance of self-esteem also increases
•Economic inequality = greater motivation for self-enhancement
-Some people are motivated to think of themselves as better than others when there are pronounced
differences in economic opportunities
NB: evaluations of owned objects also differ across cultures
-Ex. Endowment effect is more pronounced in individualistic cultures (increasing value of an object after you buy it)
•Westerners are more likely to see a connection between their objects and their selves, and once an object is
owned, people’s self-views tend to colour the objects
•Since Westerners tend to be self-enhancing, while East Asians do not, Westerners tend to increase the value of
their owned objects
Motivations for Face and Self-Improvement
Face: the social value others give you if you live up to the standards expected of you given your social positions
-What others think of you (vs. What you think of yourself)
•Think: save “face”, lose “face”
-In hierarchical collectivistic societies, face is an important concept
•What matters most isn’t what you think of yourself but whether significant others think you’re doing well
-Since face is granted by others, must avoid losing it - can’t be easily gained
•The amount of face you can get also depends on your position - higher position = more face value
Prevention orientation (avoid losses) vs. Promotion orientation (acquire gains): Japanese are more prevention
orientated and Canadians are more promotion oriented
-Ex. Study compared Japanese and American book review on Amazon
•Japanese book reviews that were considered most useful are more oriented towards prevention orientation
-Ex. This book was so boring, don’t waste your time
•American book reviews that were considered most useful are more classified towards promotion orientation
-Ex. This book was so great
-Ex. Persistence when confronted by opportunities for success or failure
•Study gave Japanese and Canadian participants were given either positive or negative feedback on creativity
and their persistence on a creativity task was measured
•Found that Canadians had a promotion orientation and persisted more when given positive feedback
-More likely to persist after success because this activity is more likely to give good outcomes
•Japanese had a prevention orientation and persisted more when given negative feedback
3
Document Summary
Self-esteem: how positively you evaluate yourself: 93% of euro-canadians reported self-esteem above the midpoint of the scale. Self-serving bias: tendency to exaggerate how good one is: ex. Upward social comparison): comparing your performance to people who did worse. Compensatory self-enhancement: acknowledging your poor performance, but focus on/exaggerate your good performance in another area. Discounting: reducing the perceived importance of the domain of poor performance. External attribution (vs. internal attribution): blame something outside yourself. Basking in re ected glory: emphasize your connection to successfully performing others: ex. People are more likely to refer to their university"s football team with the pronoun we rather than they if the team has recently won a game and if the individual has just done poorly on a test. Equally likely to compare downward and upwards more likely to compare upwards. Decrease self-assessment in other domains (think they"re not great in other domains as well) Individualistic cultures are more likely to show self-serving biases.
