Download The Self in a Social World

The Self in a Social
World
The Self: The Core of Your
Psychological Being
Self-Concept, Identity Status
and Diversity
Perception of Others
Prejudice and Discrimination
Attribution Theory and Personal
Adjustment
SCHEMAS
• SCHEMA: A set of beliefs and feelings about
something. Examples include stereotypes,
prejudices and generalizations.
• ROLE SCHEMA: a schema about how people in
certain roles (e.g., boss, wife, teacher) are expected
to behave.
• PERSON SCHEMA: a schema about how a
particular individual is expected to behave.
• SELF SCHEMA: the set of beliefs, feelings and
generalizations we have about ourselves
The Self
THE SELF
• Self: The totality of our impressions,
thoughts, and feelings, such that we
have a conscious, continuous sense of
being in the world.
• Parts of the Self: Physical, Social, and
Personal.
PHYSICAL SELF
• PHYSICAL SELF: Ones’ psychological sense of
one’s physical being—for example, one’s height,
weight, hair color, race, and physical skills.
• Adjustment to traits that are permanent, such as
height, sex & race, is closely linked to our selfesteem and self-acceptance.
• However, other traits such as weight, fitness and hair
style can be modified.
SOCIAL SELF
• SOCIAL SELF: The composite of the social roles
one plays—suitor, student, worker, husband,
wife, mother, father, citizen, leader, follower, and
so on.
• Roles and masks are adaptive responses to the
social situation.
• However, when our entire lives are played behind
masks, it may be difficult to discover true inner
selves.
PERSONAL SELF
• PERSONAL SELF: One’s private, continuous
sense of being oneself in the world. Personal
Self includes values, ethics, your name, selfconcept, self-esteem and the ideal-self.
• Ethics: Standards for behavior. A system of
beliefs from which one derives standards for
behavior.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
• Names can influence many things…such as
physical attractiveness. Research has found
that women with names such as Jennifer,
Kathy and Christine are rated as significantly
more attractive than Gertrude, Ethel, and
Harriet.
• Nicknames can reflect our attitudes towards
ourselves…Robert versus Bob versus Bobby.
Self-Concept, Identity Status
and Diversity
SELF-CONCEPT
• Self-Concept: One’s perception of oneself including
one’s traits and an evaluation of those traits. The
self-concept includes one’s self-esteem and one’s
ideal self.
• Self-Esteem: Self-approval. One’s self-respect or
favorable opinion of oneself. Self-esteem is neither
fixed nor unchangeable. Though relatively stable
over time, self-esteem can fluctuate, for better or
worse.
• Ideal self: One’s perception of what one ought to be
and do. Also called the self-ideal.
IDENTITY STATUSES
• Identity Achievement: The identity status that
describes individuals who have resolved an
identity crisis and committed to a relatively
stable set of beliefs or a course of action.
• Identity Foreclosure: The identity status that
describes individuals who have adopted a
commitment to a set of beliefs or a course of
action without undergoing an identity crisis.
Often, they have adopted the views of their
parents without seriously questioning them.
IDENTITY STATUSES
• Identity Moratorium: The identity status that
describes individuals who are in the throes of
an identity crisis—an intense examination of
alternatives.
• Identity Diffusion: The identity status that
describes individuals who have neither
arrived at a commitment as to who they are
and what they stand for nor experienced a
crisis.
DIVERSITY AND IDENTITY
• Being European American or African
American, or both, is part of one’s identity. As
is being male or female, Christian, Muslim or
Jew.
• Researchers have found that identity
formation is often more complicated for
adolescents from ethnic minority groups.
These adolescents may be faced with two
sets of cultural values: those of their ethnic
group and those of the dominant culture.
PERCEPTION OF OTHERS
Perception of Others
• Social Perception: The process by which we form
understandings of others in our social environment,
based on observations of how others act and
information we receive.
• Primacy Effect: The tendency to evaluate others in
terms of first impressions.
• Recency Effect: The tendency to evaluate others in
terms of the most recent impression.
MANAGING FIRST IMPRESSIONS
• Be aware of the first impressions you make on others.
• Your resume is your first impression.
• Plan and rehearse your first few remarks.
• Smile.
• Be aware of your style of dress and physical mannerisms.
• Ask yourself, what type of clothing is expected for this occasion?
• When you answer essay questions, attend to your penmanship.
• In class, seek eye contact with your instructors.
Body Language
• Body language is an important contributor to forming
person schemas. It provides important cues about a
person’s thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. Examples
of body language are eye contact patterns, body
posture, touching, gazing and staring.
• Body language does vary by culture. The same
gesture may have a different meaning in one culture
than it does in another. For example, people in
Bulgaria shake their heads up and down to signal
“no”.
PREJUDICE
DISCRIMINATION
PREJUDICE
• Prejudice: The belief that a person or
group, on the basis of assumed racial
ethnic, sexual, or other features will
possess negative characteristics or
perform inadequately.
• Types of prejudice include sexism,
racism, and ageism.
Discrimination and Stereotypes
• Discrimination: The denial of privileges to a
person or group on the basis of prejudice
• Stereotypes: Fixed, conventional ideas about
a group that can lead us to process
information about members of the group in a
biased fashion.
Sources of Prejudice and
Discrimination
• Dissimilarity: We are apt to like people who share our attitudes
and we tend to assume that people of different races have
different attitudes.
• Social Conflict: People of different races and religions often
compete for jobs, giving rise to feelings of prejudice.
• Social Learning: Children often acquire some of their attitudes
by observing other people, especially their parents.
• Information Processing: Prejudices serve as cognitive schemes,
filters through which people see the social world. It is easier to
attend to and remember instances of behavior that fit with our
prejudices.
• Social Categorization: People tend to divide their social world
into “us” and “them.” People tend to view others in their group
more favorably than those out of their group.
Combating Prejudice and
Discrimination
•
Role Reversal: Experiencing prejudice and discrimination first hand may lead
children to believe that it is wrong to discriminate on the basis of color. Being
discriminated against may make an individual more sensitive to the feelings of
members of outgroups.
•
Intergroup Contact: Four conditions need to be met for intergroup contact to
reduce prejudice and tension. (1) Social and institutional support (2)
Acquaintance potential (3) Equal status (4) Intergroup cooperation.
•
Seeking compliance with the law: It is appropriate to demand legal support if we
have been discriminated against. People can be compelled to modify illegal
behavior.
•
Self-Examination: We should be mindful that when someone disappoints or
disturbs us, that we attribute the behavior to them as individuals, not as group
representatives.
•
Raising Tolerant children: Reducing prejudice may begin with helping our
children develop more tolerant attitudes.
Attribution Theory
• Attribution Process: The process by which people
draw inferences about the motives and traits of
themselves and others.
• Dispositional Attribution: An assumption that that
a person’s behavior is determined by internal causes,
such as personal attitudes or goals.
• Situational Attributions: An assumption that a
person’s behavior is determined by external
circumstances, such as the social pressure found in a
situation.
Attribution Theory (continued)
• Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency to assume that
others act on the basis of choice or will, even when there is
evidence suggestive of the importance of their situations.
• Actor-Observer Effect: The tendency to attribute our own
behavior to external, situational factors but to attribute the
behavior of others to internal, dispositional factors such as
choice or will.
• Self-Serving Bias: The tendency to view one’s successes as
stemming from internal factors and one’s failures as stemming
from external factors.
To the Instructor:
• The preceding slides are intended to provide
you a base upon which to build your
presentation for Chapter 6 of Nevid’s
Psychology and the Challenges of Life.
• For further student and instructor resources
including images from the textbook, quizzes,
flashcard activities and e-Grade plus, please
visit our website: www.wiley.com/college/nevid
Copyright
Copyright 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York,
NY. All rights reserved. No part of the material protected
by this copyright may be reproduced or utilized in any
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storage and retrieval system, without written permission
of the copyright owner.