Chapter 11 – The Self and Its Strivings

The Self

• Three problems occur when we analyze the self and its strivings
  • Defining or creating the self
  • Ascribed
  • Achieved
• Relating the self to society
• Discovering and developing personal potential
• The problem with Self-Esteem
  • There is almost no scientific evidence that self-esteem causes anything.
  • Achievement produces increases in self-esteem
  • Low self-esteem
  • Inflated self-esteem

Self-Concept

• An individual’s mental representation of themselves
• Over time, people translate their experiences into a general representation of their self
• Self-Schemas
  • Cognitive generalizations about the self that are domain-specific and are learned from past experiences
  • Self-concept is a collection of domain-specific self-schemas
  • Life domains in early childhood include competence, peer acceptance and behavioral conduct
  • Life domains in adolescence include competence at school and sports, physical appearance, peer acceptances, romance, and morality
  • Life domains for college students include intellectual ability, competence at work and sports, physical appearance, close friendships, romantic relationships, relationships with parents
    Self-Concept, cont.
• Motivational Properties of Self-Schemas
  • Once formed, self-schemas direct our behavior to elicit feedback that is consistent with our established self-schema
  • If you act in ways that are inconsistent with your self-schema, people experience tension
  • If you are told you have a self-schema that you disagree with, then that contradictory feedback generates a motivational tension
  • Self-schemas generate motivation to move the present self toward a desired future self
• Consistent Self
  • People actively seek out information consistent with their self-concept and ignore information that contradicts their self-view.
  • People adopt self-presentational signs and symbols to announce who they are or who they think they are
• Selective Interaction
  • People intentionally choose to interact with others who treat them in ways that are consistent with their self-view, and avoid others who don’t
• Self-discrepant feedback can sometimes occur
  • People ask if the feedback is valid, if the source is credible, and how important is what they said
• Self-concept certainty
  • Our confidence that our self-schema is true
• Crisis self-verification
  • Conflict between an uncertain self-schema and discrepant feedback.
    Self-Concept, cont.
• Figure 11.2 – When self-concept certainty is low, feedback can overwhelm us and lead to self-concept change.
  • When self-concept certainty is high, feedback is evaluated individually
  • When self-concept certainty is moderate, feedback leads to a self-verification crisis and we doubt our self-concept
  • In order for self-schemas to change:
    • Self-concept certainty must be low
    • Self-discrepant feedback must be strong and unambiguous
• Possible Selves
  • Self-schemas sometimes change in response to social feedback
  • People make an inference that they could become that desired self
  • A possible self provides the person with an attractive incentive to strive for
  • Disconfirming feedback can lead you to reject and abandon a possible self
  • And, the possible self can energize and direct you to change into the ideal self

Cognitive Dissonance

• The beliefs about who you are and what you do are sometimes inconsistent.
• When strong and uncomfortable enough, dissonance takes on motivational properties
• People seek to reduce dissonance by:
  • Remove the dissonant belief
  • Reduce the importance of the dissonant belief
  • Add a new consonant belief
  • Increase the importance of the consonant belief
• There are 4 specific Dissonance-Arousing Situations
• Choice
  • People often choose between alternatives.
  • Dissonance is resolved by appreciating and accepting the choices you make.
• Insufficient justification
  • Addresses how people explain their actions for which they have little external cues.
• Effort justification
  • The attractiveness of a task increases directly in relation to the effort expended to finish it.
• New information
  • We are always exposed to info that may contradict our beliefs
• Motivational Processes Underlying Cognitive Dissonance
  • Dissonance as a motivational state revolves around eliminating a negative emotional state so that you can think and behave in ways that are nonconflicting.
• Self-Perception Theory
  • Acquiring or changing attitudes by observing your own behavior
  • Cognitive dissonance theory states that beliefs change because of negative affect from cognitive inconsistencies.
• Self-perception theory states that people come to believe what they do and say.

Identity

• The means by which the self relates to society.
  • Who we are within a cultural context.
• Identity directs us to pursue and avoid behaviors
• 5 aspects of identity include relationships, vocations, political affiliations, stigma groups, and ethnic/religious groups.
• Activity – describe your identity based on the above aspects.
• Roles
  • Roles are cultural expectations for behavior from people who hold certain social positions.
• While assuming one role, people change how they act.
  • People have many identities
• Affect Control Theory
  • People act differently from one situation to the next because they have different identities.
• Represented numerically along 3 dimensions, EPA.
  • E = evaluation (how good)
  • P = potency (powerfulness)
  • A = activity (how lively or active)
• 3 constructs explain the motivational processes in this theory:
  • Fundamental sentiment
    • The EPA profile defined by the culture
  • Transient impression
    • The EPA profile implied by your current behavior
• Deflection
  • The difference between who you are according to society and how you are behaving
• Energy and Direction – (According to the affect control theory, motivation and emotion produce 2 types of behaviors:
  • Identity-confirming behaviors
    • Identities direct behavior
  • Identity-restoring behaviors
    • If a person behaves in an identity-inconsistent way
• Why People Self-Verify
  • We prefer feedback that confirms our self-schemas and social identities.
  • We self-verify because we want to be true to ourselves
  • We self-verify because verifications of the self improve our perceptions that the world is predictable
  • We self-verify because we want to avoid interactions where we might be misunderstood or someone holds unrealistic expectations of ourselves.

Agency

• The self includes cognitive structures (self-concept), social relationships (identity) and an intrinsic motivation (agency)
• Self as Action and Development from Within
  • Intrinsic motivation underlies agency.
  • What fosters agency?
    • The organismic psychological needs
  • Differentiation – expands and elaborates the self.
  • Integration – synthesizes the complexity of the self into a cohesive self.
• Internalization and the Integrating Self
  • The self develops toward autonomy and an internalization of society’s values and concerns.
  • Internalization occurs for 2 reasons
    • It occurs from the person’s desire to achieve meaningful relationships
    • It occurs from the person’s desire to interact effectively with the social world
  • Self-worth develops from being open to experience and from valuing our self for who we are.
    • When you are honest and open to experience, you are less likely to active compulsively, use drugs, meet extrinsic motives, look for external validation, etc.
• Self-concordance
  • Self-concordant goals – when people decide to pursue goals that are congruent with their core self
  • Intrinsic goals (goals set out of one’s interest) and identified goals (goals set out of our value) represent self-concordant goals.
    • They generate more effort, which likely leads to goal attainment.
  • Introjected goals (goals set out of social obligation, should) and extrinsic goals (goals set out of a desire to be rewarded) represent self-discordant goals
  • Self-concordant goals are those that the person is fully aware of striving for based on their interests, needs, or values (“wanting to”)
  • Self-discordant goals are those that the person is striving toward based on an obligation or pressure by others (“having to”)