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Introduction
In this content summary we will dive into social self, perceiving person, attribution
theories, social comparison, effects on social media pertaining to children and adolescents. All
these concepts have couple things in common, how we view the world and how does the world
view us. Self can be viewed in many ways how we think, feel, and view ourselves as a person.
It’s our idea of how we think people should view and understand our person. We can think one
way about ourselves, but others may have a different view. That view or judgment can either be
positive or negative based on that person and their character. Can correlate with the younger
generation, how they view and expose themselves for the present world. The younger generation
have it the hardest with figuring out that they like and who they want to be growing up. In
today’s world where everything is online and at a touch of a button you are connect with others
across the world. Children see this and love to make comparisons of what their life is not this
way or judging others because they feel as though it’s their job to point out what others don’t
have. Can tie in with a business who has put themselves out there on the internet/ or just a local
business hoping to get positive feedback but instead having a negative WOMC and up crushing
their sales and business. As can you see people have the power of self and the power of world
self.
Self-Perception and Perceiving Persons
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Oneself is a hard concept to gather, what do you know about yourself? When you go on
an interview and the hiring person asks you can you tell me about yourself, at that moment that
questions is one of the hardest ones to answer. The self-concept is made up of cognitive
molecules she called self-schemas: beliefs about oneself that guide the processing of self-
relevant information (Kassin el al 2021). These beliefs are what we build out foundation of what
we think we are as person. Each person does have their own way of thinking, perceiving, loving,
talking, etc. That what makes us different from one person to the next, relates to how we feel
about ourselves and how others feel about us. In this developing theory of mind, we
see the importance of intentionality judgments, of the mind contrasted with
observable behavior, and of specific mental states, such as beliefs and
desires, that are used to explain intentional behavior (Chadee 2022). People want
to understand behavior in other people but a lot of them fail or they get close but lose interest.
Understanding other behavior through yourself idea and then sending it out to the world of others
then people can pick up on certain behaviors that correlate with yours. Also, it’s important to
understand others that don’t share common likes or behaviors like yourself. It’s hard for people
to want to explore outside the realm of what makes them comfortable.
Social comparison, people love to compare others around them. Most of the time its
either what they have and who they are. Social comparisons—comparisons between the self and
others—are a fundamental mechanism influencing people’s judgments, experiences, and
behavior. Psychological research supports the notion that people constantly engage in social
comparisons (Chadee 2022). That’s makes it much easier for the mind to wander and think
outside the box but can also hinder them by filling their heads with negative emotions. Whether
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people want to believe it or not we are constantly judging others, even if we don’t mean to. It’s
just human nature to take an idea and run with it. We as human based that on behavior and
experiences.
Social Media and Adolescents
The younger generation is all over social media, they were literally born into a world
with not but technology. All they know is nothing but seeing and interacting with others from all
over the world. With that comes challenges, for things like mental health, status, and overall self-
identity. These studies have typically reported mixed findings, yielding either small negative,
small positive, or no effects of the time spent using social media on different indicators of well-
being, such as life satisfaction and depressive symptoms (Ines el al 2020). Adolescents at a
young age are questioning whether their life is meaningful, or how can be more exciting at a
young age. At the same worrying if they really depressed because they see others online that are
suffering from this condition. This makes it hard for parents to deal with because they never had
this issue when they were growing up. Or parents are aware of the world and do nothing to
prevent their kids from straying too far on social media. In line with the proposition of media
effects theories that each adolescent may have a unique susceptibility to the effects of social
media17, a viable explanation for the small and inconsistent findings in earlier studies may be
that the effect of social media differs from adolescent to adolescent (Ines el al 2020). Every
teenager is different and will experience life differently. Social media affects each people
differently, some teenagers use social media but don’t involve themselves in all the extravagant
details while others do. With that can lead to negative effects on various people.
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An Attribution Theory Perspective
Attribution can be mental or physical in this case it its physical. The reason why is
because people are using WOMC (Word Of Mouth Communication). They are using WOMC for
a study on a business to see if the spread of negative reviews gest around easier than positive. If
anything, people do love to talk, people love to gossip more than they love giving a compliment.
Negative WOMC potentially has a more powerful influence on consumer behavior than print
sources, such as Consumer Reports, because individuals find it to be more accessible and
diagnostics (Laczniak el al 2001). Negative WOMC is much easier to track because everybody
will be talking about it. If you ask someone about the business, they automatically have an
response to that business even though they have never visited it or went online potentially. That
tells you about people and what type of behaviors they are willing to put out there for others to
see. The central theme underlying attribution theory is that causal analysis is inherent in an
individual's need to understand social events, such as why another person would communicate
negative information about a brand (Laczniak 2001). People want to be seen as knowledgeable
for passing around negative information. The causal way of attribution is wondering why they
think that about the business, surely there has to be a reason why everyone such negative
reviews. They only way you’re going to find out if that information is correct is to experience it
for yourself. That when your true self, internal way of thinking kicks in doesn’t fall for such
attributions.
Conclusion
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As humans we ideas, feelings, and thought processes of how the world is laid out. Our
self-image, attributions and the presence of social media test those concepts every day. We spend
more time on thinking about how we should behave and monitoring others’ behaviors that we
can’t fully be who we want to be. Our perspectives of not only ourselves but others can be
beneficial, or it can crumble in just a blink of an eye.
References
Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2023).Social psychology(11th ed.). Cengage
Learning US. https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9798214352909
Malle, B. F. (2022). Interdependence in Social Interaction. InChadee, D (Ed),
Theories in Social Psychology(2nd ed., pp 250–270). Wiley Blackwell.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2019.1596058
Laczniak, R. N., DeCarlo, T. E., Ramaswami, S. N. (2001). Consumers’ response to
negative word-of-mouth communication: An attribution theory perspective.Journal
of Consumer Psychology, 11(1), 57–73. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1480311
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Beyens Ine;Loes, Pouwels J;van Driel Irene I;Keijsers Loes;Valkenburg, Patti M. The
effect of social media on well-being differs from adolescent to adolescent Scientific
Reports (Nature Publisher Group); LondonVol.10,Iss.1,
(2020).DOI:10.1038/s41598-020-67727-7
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