PSYC 2600 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14,16: 18 Months, Reference Group, Pessimism
19 Jun 2018
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Week 9 Readings:
Chapter 14: Approaches to Self
Self-Concept: your understanding of yourself
Self-Esteem: how you feel about who you are
Social Identity: your presentation of yourself to others
Descriptive Component of the Self: Self-Concept
Development of the Self-Concept
- A child learns that they are separate from the rest of the world
The Rouge Test: drawing a mark on the nose and then holding them to a mirror, if they can
determine that the dot is on their own nose and not the mirror, then they have developed a
self-concept
- Not just humans (chimpanzees, monkeys, elephants)
- Self-recognition happens around 18 months (15-24 months)
- Around 2 years old, children can recognize themselves in a photo, they realize other’s
expectations of themselves as well
- 2-3 years of age the child identifies themselves as a boy or girl
- Age 3-12 the self-concept focuses on developing skills
Social comparison: the evaluation of oneself or one’s performance in terms of a comparison
with a reference group
- When children start school around 5 or 6 they compare their skills with other’s
Private Self-Concept: the realization that inner thoughts are private
- The child learns they can lie and keep secrets around age 5-6
- May have an imaginary friend that no one else can see/hear
- In adolescence, the self-concept changes to be based on concrete characteristics such as
physical appearance and possessions
Perspective Taking: the ability to take the perspectives of others, to see oneself as others do
- Happens in teen years
- Objective Self-Awareness: seeing yourself as an object of other’s attention
Self-Schemata: Possible Selves, Ought Selves, and Undesired Selves
Self-Schema: specific knowledge structure, or cognitive representation, of the self-concept
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- Building blocks of the self-concept
- Cognitive structures that are built on past experiences and that guide the processing of
information about the self-, particularly in social interaction
Possible Selves: the many ideas people have about who they think they might become, who
they hope to become, or who they fear they will become
- Ideal Self: what a person wants to be
- Ought Self: what other’s want the person to be
- Self-Guides: standards that one uses to organize information and motivate appropriate
behaviour
Influence what we pay attention to, focuses our attention on goal accomplishment
Evaluative Component of the Self: Self-Esteem
Evaluation of Oneself
Self-Esteem: the sum of your positive and negative reactions to all the aspects of your self-
concept
- average low point of self-esteem is in adolescence
- self-esteem increases over the lifetime
- increases in self-esteem accompany positive life events
- people evaluate themselves positively or negatively in different areas of their lives
Research on Self-Esteem
- most of our evaluation comes from school and jobs
Reactions to Criticism and Failure Feedback
- people with low self-esteem are more likely to give up and perform poorly on
subsequent tasks after they receive negative feedback
Failure is consistent with their self-concept so the readily accept the feedback
They are more concerned with avoiding failure
- failure feedback makes people with high self-esteem determined
Failure is not consistent with their self-concept, so they try harder because they do not
accept the feedback
They want to project a successful image, more concerned with not succeeding
Self-Esteem and Coping with Negative Events
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- high self-esteem people maintain their self-esteem in negative events, they cope
effectively with challenges
High self-esteem people will focus on another aspect of their life that is going well if
they fail in another
Self-Complexity: we have many roles and aspects to our self-concept
- Example: having high self-complexity would mean your self-concept focuses on many
aspects of life (relationships, work, family, school)
- People with higher self-complexities, a failure in one aspect of their life, is buffered
because there are other aspects of the self that are unaffected
- A person with low self-complexity may be devastated by a negative event because it is
the only thing making up their self-concept
Protecting vs. Enhancing the Self
- Some people are concerned with not failing, they are motivated to protect their self-
concept
- Defensive Pessimism: motivated by the fear of failure, but they take this gloomy outlook
because the impact of failure can be lessened if it is in advance
Example: expecting to do poorly on an upcoming test
They use worry and pessimism in a constructive way, to motivate themselves to work on
things they are pessimistic about
This sometimes annoys others
- Self-Handicapping: when a person deliberately does things that increase the probability
of failure
Example: thinking you’re going to fail an exam, so you don’t study, that way if you fail
you have an excuse
Self-Esteem Variability:
- An individual difference characteristic, it is the magnitude or short-term fluctuations in
ongoing self-esteem
- Some people have higher self-esteem variability than others
Social Component of the Self: Social Identity
Social Identity: the self that is shown to other people
- Gender and ethnicity
- Your driver’s licence
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Self-esteem: how you feel about who you are. Social identity: your presentation of yourself to others. A child learns that they are separate from the rest of the world. The rouge test: drawing a mark on the nose and then holding them to a mirror, if they can determine that the dot is on their own nose and not the mirror, then they have developed a self-concept. Around 2 years old, children can recognize themselves in a photo, they realize other"s expectations of themselves as well. 2-3 years of age the child identifies themselves as a boy or girl. Age 3-12 the self-concept focuses on developing skills. Social comparison: the evaluation of oneself or one"s performance in terms of a comparison with a reference group. When children start school around 5 or 6 they compare their skills with other"s. Private self-concept: the realization that inner thoughts are private. The child learns they can lie and keep secrets around age 5-6.
