The Self in a Social World

• Self-awareness: Understanding that you exist as an entity with internal states.
• Spotlight Effect: Believe others are paying more attention to you than they really are.

Self Concept

Self-Concept: Collection of traits, attributes, and beliefs that characterize oneself.

• Working Self-Concept: Self-knowledge that is brought to mind in a specific context
• Self-Schemas: Mental framework organizing self-relevant info (feelings, beliefs) Influence what we think, notice, remember, and how we behave.
• Self-Reference Effect: Tend to remember info better if the info is related to yourself.

Social Self

Socialization Agents: People in society affect our sense of self (e.g. parents)

• The Looking-Glass Self: How others see us influence our sense of self (internalization). Our sense of self is what we imagine others think of us. (Not how they actually see us)
  • We internalize what we think are others’ opinions
  • Affect self-esteem

Situationism: The situation affects our sense of self

• Self-concept Differentiation: The extent to which people’s self differs in different social roles and contexts Higher with interdependent self, lower with independent self.

Social-Comparisons Effect: We learn our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people.

• Upward/Downward Social Comparison: Process where we compare ourselves to people who are better/worse than us.
• Social comparisons can be based on incomplete information (e.g. online profiles)

Culture Values can shape how people construe & experience the self.

• Independent Self: Define self with one’s own thoughts, feelings, and actions. (Emphasizes uniqueness and independence, conformity disapproved)
• Interdependent Self: Define self with relationships to other people. (Emphasizes connectedness, egotism disapproved)
• Cultural Self-construals influence our attention and how we perceive the world