Unit II SP Discussion

PSY 3140, Social Psychology 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit II Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

2. Evaluate the underlying principles in the field of social psychology. 2.1 Identify the differences between intuition and logic thinking systems. 2.2 Describe the roles and functions of biases and heuristics in the intuition thinking system.

6. Explain how social environments influence the understanding of individuals.

6.1 Apply theories and principles regarding self-knowledge to indicate how our self-concept is socially determined.

Course/Unit Learning Outcomes

Learning Activity

2.1 Unit Lesson Chapter 4 Unit II Assessment

2.2 Unit Lesson Chapter 4 Unit II Assessment

6.1 Unit Lesson Chapter 3 Unit II Assessment

Reading Assignment Chapter 3: The Social Self Chapter 4: Social Cognition

UNIT II STUDY GUIDE

Perceiving Ourselves and the World

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Unit Lesson The Social Self Who are you? How did you determine who you are? Do humans differ in this respect from other animals? The concept of the self has been something that psychologists and laypeople alike have attempted to explain. Early investigation into these questions led Gordon Gallup to place animals in front of a mirror with red dye on part of their faces. Some animals, like great apes and dolphins, noticed that their image had changed when placed in front of a mirror, indicating that they have self-recognition, or an understanding that one is a separate entity from others and objects in the world (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). When does self-

recognition occur in human infants? Self-recognition develops in human infants at around the age of 2, and it continues to develop across the lifespan. At first, this concept is concrete and focused on observable characteristics (e.g., I have brown hair) then becomes more abstract (e.g., I consider myself religious) and focused on psychological characteristics (e.g., I am nice) in childhood and adolescence. How would you describe yourself right now? Now think about how you would have described yourself when you were four. It might be hard to remember, but at age 4, many of you probably described yourselves in terms of observational characteristics.

How do you come to even know what descriptors fit you? This relates to the term self-concept, which is the personal summary of who we believe we are, and it can be acquired through many sources as noted by Heinzen and Goodfriend (2019). For example, you can rely on other people to provide self-knowledge. You can come to know yourself by comparing yourself to others on abilities, traits, and attitudes. This is known as social comparison theory. You make social comparisons when you have little information available, and you typically compare yourself to others who are similar to you. However, you do not always do this. Sometimes you compare your traits and abilities to people who are better than yourself, which is known as upward social comparison. Other times, to boost your ego, you might compare yourself to people with worse traits and abilities than yourself, known as downward social comparison. Can you think of situations in your life in which you engaged in upward and/or downward social comparisons? If so, what was the situation or situations? Do you think that different situations might help to determine whether you engage in either upward or downward social comparisons? Do you think that you really engage in downward social comparison to boost your ego? Culture can also influence one’s self-knowledge. In many Western cultures, including the United States, people hold an independent self-construal, in which they come to view themselves with more internal, personal qualities; in contrast, people from many non-Western cultures have an interdependent self-construal, in which they come to view themselves with more social or relational qualities (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). You might be asking yourself, “I am from the United States, but I think I have more of an interdependent view of the self.” It is important to understand that there are individual differences within cultures. In addition, as many cultures come into contact with each other, it is likely that differences across cultures might decrease over time. Think about it: How might the adoption of various American attitudes influence the values in other cultures? Do you think this information would be beneficial, detrimental, or neutral? Even with a developed self-concept, the social environment can influence one’s self-perceptions. Humans focus on themselves a lot, but social entities and situations can provide the opportunity to notice something about themselves that they had not noticed before. Self-perception theory suggests that observing one’s own behaviors in the social world aids in noticing behavioral trends and incorporating that into one’s self-concept

Self-reflection and self-understanding begin in infanthood (Aviahuismanphotography, 2014)

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(Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). Imagine that your friend asks you what your favorite type of movie is, but you do not have an answer immediately. After careful reflection of what movies you always stop to watch on television, no matter what, you may determine that your favorite genre is historical drama. Focusing on oneself can also lead to comparison of your behaviors to your own standards and values. This is known as self-discrepancy theory (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). Sometimes, discrepancies arise between who you think you are right now, who you want to become, and who you feel expected to be. To reduce discrepancies, you may change your behaviors to achieve your self-goals and expectations, but if you cannot change your behaviors, you may feel uneasy. In particular, if who you think you are right now does not match who you want to be, you may feel disappointment or embarrassment, while if who you think you are right now does not match who you feel expected to be, you may feel guilt or anxiety. Have you ever tried to get someone to view you the way you view yourself? Have you tried to get them to view you in a specific manner in order to gain some kind of social influence? Social psychologists use the term impression management to describe these types of behaviors (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). Some people engage in less or more impression management when compared others. Think about the people in your life. Can you identify those people who are quite concerned with impression management? What are some ways that these people try to alter others’ perceptions? There are many types of impression management strategies, including ingratiation (i.e., using flattery or praise to get someone to like you) and self- promotion (i.e., taking undue credit for or enhancing one’s accomplishments). Now that you are aware of these strategies, have you or anyone you know utilized these strategies in an effort to control others’ perceptions? Keep in mind that humans tend to be biased in a positive manner and interpret information in a way to promote that viewpoint. There are very few people who enjoy thinking of themselves as overly bad, mean, and ill equipped rather than overly good, nice, and competent. Finally, people vary in how they feel about or evaluate their self-concept, which social psychologists refer to as self-esteem (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). As part of one’s self-concept, social identity can influence one’s self-esteem as well. Think about groups in which you consider yourself a part. How does the social environment in which you live view those groups? Do you think that contributes to how you evaluate yourself? You may find yourself becoming more distant from social groups that are less desirable and becoming more connected with social groups that are more desirable. While self-esteem can be measured directly or indirectly, holding one’s self in high regard does not always lead to positive outcomes. In fact, boosting self- esteem can go too far in creating individuals who feel they are better than others and avoid helpful negative feedback. Social Cognition Have you ever thought about why you do certain things? Are you curious about why your neighbor takes the trash out at exactly the same time every night? Why does your co-worker eat lunch at the same time every day? Such thoughts are common to all human beings. Humans hold a desire to think about themselves and the social world around them. This process is known as social cognition, which includes both intuition and logic. When you make quick judgments about behaviors, you make such judgments with minimal cognitive effort or based on gut feelings. This is known as intuition (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). When you carefully consider evidence before reaching a conclusion, you make such judgments with more cognitive effort and purposeful reasoning. This is known as logic (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). While it may appear that

Self-promotion is one type of impression management strategy. (Young, 2011)

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considering all information available is the best route to take, it can lead to information overload; thus, humans also tend to be cognitive misers who take mental shortcuts in order to streamline their thinking processes (you will learn more about mental shortcuts later in the lesson). Keep in mind that overreliance on one thinking system over the other may result in negative consequences, but humans are quite adept at switching back and forth to fit the amount of information (or cognitive load) they are able to handle in a given situation. Does culture affect social thinking? Think back to the environment or culture in which you were raised. How might the culture in which you grew up influence your decisions, attitudes, and behaviors? What might set your thinking apart from others? The best way to describe the influence of culture on your thoughts is that culture determines the tools you take from your toolbox and can influence what aspects of a situation you focus on when making a decision. In Western cultures, you may focus more on uniqueness or nonconformity, while in East Asian cultures, you may focus more on conformity or putting group needs first (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). As a human being, one can aid memory of social information by organizing his or her knowledge concerning the social world based on these experiences. These organized pieces of knowledge are mental structures known as schemas. Your schemas help you to organize and make sense of the world through categorization, and they allow you to relate new experiences to old ones (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). You may also recognize this concept because scripts and stereotypes are considered specific types of schemas that help guide expectations and behaviors toward social situations and other people. To understand a schema, you can think about many routine tasks that you do. For instance, ask any 3-year-old child what he or she does at the grocery store. Many 3-year-olds will talk about getting into the cart, seeing their parent looking at the list, tasting some free samples, and perhaps getting a treat in the checkout line. The information that the 3-year- old tells you about what happens at the grocery store is an example of a schema. Can you think of any other schemas that we might have? Despite the many schemas one holds in his or her mind, sometimes one mentally changes aspects of his or her past according to what he or she imagines could have occurred. This is known as counterfactual thinking (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). When you ruminate over and over, such thinking can contribute to depression. However, when people are able to focus their attention on either what they can do to improve in the future or how things could have been worse, they are better able to cope with their emotions and address future actions. Just be sure to set realistic expectations! As noted above, humans are cognitive misers who use mental strategies to take shortcuts when they make decisions. This allows one to make decisions more easily so that he or she does not devote too much time and energy to every decision that must be made. Heuristics, of which there are many, are mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently, often as a tradeoff against slower, but more accurate judgments (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). Sometimes decisions are made based on how easy it is to make judgments. This mental shortcut is called the availability heuristic. Sometimes, decisions are made based on comparing various decisions to similar situations that have been previously encountered. This mental shortcut is known as the representativeness heuristic. Sometimes, decisions are made based on initial information or estimates presented within a situation. This mental shortcut is known as the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. Thinking about these heuristics, can you see any potential issues with relying on them? How might understanding these heuristics influence your trust in your own intuition versus logical reasoning? Humans cannot avoid using their intuition, so how can one improve his or her thinking? Psychologists have focused extensively on this question, and there are many empirical answers to the question. One way psychologists have proposed to improve thinking is to help people become more modest in their reasoning abilities and understand where limitations may apply (Heinzen & Goodfriend, 2019). This will help avoid various biases in our assessment of intuitive judgments, whether that be through confirming what we already think or believe, thinking we knew it all along, or more easily recalling negative information.

References

Aviahuismanphotography. (2014). Laughing baby looking in mirror (ID 47574311) [Photograph]. Retrieved from www.dreamstime.com

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Heinzen, T., & Goodfriend, W. (2019). Social psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Young, L. F. (2011). Businessman – Mr. Bigshot (ID 18617946) [Photograph]. Retrieved from

www.dreamstime.com

Suggested Reading The PowerPoint presentations below serve as a companion to the chapters in this unit. You are encouraged to view them for a deeper understanding of the material presented in this unit. Click here to view the Chapter 3 PowerPoint Presentation. Click here to view the presentation as a PDF. Click here to view the Chapter 4 PowerPoint Presentation. Click here to view the presentation as a PDF. In order to access the following resources, click the links below: This unit touched on the idea of self-promotion; it is an important skill to be able to master. However, where is the line drawn between self-promotion and bragging? The article below explores this concept. Scopelliti, I., Loewenstein, G., & Vosgerau, J. (2015). You call it “self-exuberance”; I call it “bragging”:

Miscalibrated predictions of emotional responses to self-promotion. Psychological Science, 26(6), 903–914. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/gpRyrV7DWyhJI6MaCAqV/full

In this unit, you also learned about heuristics, or mental shortcuts that help with decision-making. To learn more about some of these heuristics and the biases that come from them, take a few minutes to read the article below. Dale, S. (2015). Heuristics and biases: The science of decision-making. Business Information Review, 32(2),

93–99. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/9mMC5VPITUTAVcfgZIUr/full

Learning Activities (Nongraded) Nongraded Learning Activities are provided to aid students in their course of study. You do not have to submit them. If you have questions, contact your instructor for further guidance and information. Activity 1: Let’s learn more about self-esteem! On page 79 of your textbook, follow the instructions to answer and score your responses on the ten items of Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale. After determining your overall score, respond to the following prompts: Do you agree or disagree with your score? Why? How do you think your self-esteem has affected you or a situation you have been in (either positively or negatively)? Activity 2: Test yourself on concepts covered in Chapters 3 and 4. Mastering this material will help you complete the assessment in this unit. Click the links below to view the flashcards and quizzes for each unit. Click here for the Chapter 3 Flashcards. Click here for the Chapter 3 Quiz. Click here for the Chapter 4 Flashcards. Click here for the Chapter 4 Quiz.