Psych of Everyday Life Unit 2

An organized collection of beliefs about the self

(Piaget)

Affected by feedback from others, social contact, cultural values

Thoughts and ideas about the person you might become in the future

Actual self: qualities people think they actually possess

Ideal self: qualities people would like to possess

Ought self: qualities people think they should possess

Mismatches between the actual, ideal, and ought self

Amount of discrepancy experienced

Person’s awareness of discrepancy

Whether or not the discrepancy is important to the person

Change behavior to match ideal self

Rationalize

Avoid self-awareness

We compare ourselves with others in order to assess and/or improve our abilities (Festinger)

Set of people who are used as gauge in making social comparisons

Individualistic cultures put personal goals ahead of the group, want to stand out

Collectivist cultures put group goals ahead of themselves, want to “blend in” with society

One’s overall assessment of worth as a person

An enduring sense of confidence in a person

Dynamic feelings about the self that change with the situation

Strongly connected to happiness

High self-esteem makes people more likeable, cope better, have better relationships

Lots of work in the area of the self, self-esteem, etc

Preoccupied with fantasies of success, believe they deserve special treatment, react aggressively when their ego is threatened

Parental acceptance/responsiveness and parental control/expectations

Authoritative:

Warm and nurturing, high expectations, set boundaries with the child

Permissive:

Allow kids to do what the want, result is generally immature and aggressive

Authoritarian:

Very strict and don’t negotiate, high standards, results in lower self-esteem

Negligent:

Uninvolved, careless, don’t seek to have a close relationship, result is poor social and academic outcomes

Multiple studies used to draw a singular conclusion

How we handle information without much deliberate decision-making

Active thinking required for important decision-making and analysis

Inferences that people draw about the causes of their own behavior

Internal:

Causes of behavior are from personal traits, abilities, feelings

External:

Behavior comes from situational demands

Stable:

The cause of behavior is unlikely to change over time

Unstable:

The cause of behavior is subject to change

Use similar casual attributions for a wide variety of events in one’s life

Optimistic:

Attribute setbacks to external, unstable, and specific factors

Pessimistic:

Attribute setbacks to internal, stable, and global factors

Self-Assessment:

Desire for truthful information about oneself

Self-Enhancement:

Desire to maintain positive feelings about oneself

Downward social comparison:

Compare oneself with someone whose problem’s are bigger

Self-serving bias:

Attribute successes to personal factors and failure’s to situational factors

Basking in reflected glory:

Enhance one’s image by announcing association with successful people

Self-handicapping:

Sabotage performance to make an excuse for possible failure

People have a limited amount of self-control

Belief about your ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes

Associated with Bandura

Master Experiences:

Learning new skills, persisting in face of failure

Vicarious Experiences:

Watching others learn new skills

Persuasion and Encouragement:

From internal and external sources

Interpretation of Emotional Arousal:

Tend to get nervous when trying new things

Seemingly intentional actions that thwart a person’s self-interest

Deliberate Self-Destruction:

Trade-Offs:

Immediate pleasurable outcomes that have detrimental long-term effects

Counterproductive Strategies:

Persisting in ineffective strategies to achieve a goal

An image presented to others in social interactions

Usually conscious efforts by people to influence how others think of them

Ingratiation: Behaving in ways to make oneself likable to others

Self-Promotion: Accenting your strong points in order to earn respect

Supplication: Acting weak or dependent in order to get favors from others

Negative Acknowledgement: Admitting your flaws

Degree to which people attend to and control the impressions they make on others

High: More concerned about making favorable impressions

Low: More likely to express their true feelings or attitudes

An individual’s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits

A durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations

EX: Honest, moody, impulsive, friendly, etc

Extraversion: Retiring, sober, reserved vs. Sociable, fun-loving, affectionate

Neuroticism: Calm, secure, self-satisfied vs. Anxious, insecure, self-pitying

Openness to experience: Practical, routine, conforming vs. Imaginative, variety, independent

Agreeableness: Ruthless, suspicious, uncooperative vs. Soft, trusting, helpful

Conscientiousness: Disorganized, careless, impulsive vs. Organized, careful, disciplined

Focus on unconscious mental forces that shape out personalities

Freud, Jung, Adler

Personality is governed by unconscious forces that we cannot control

Childhood experiences play a significant role in determining adult personality

Personalities are shaped by the manner in which individuals cope with sexual urges and aggression

Id: Primitive, instinctive component of personality that operates according to the pleasure principle

Ego: The decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle

Superego: The moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong

Conscious: One is aware of at a particular point in time

Preconscious: Material just beneath the surface of awareness that can be easily retrieved

Unconscious: Material well below the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exerts great influence on one’s behavior

Largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from painful emotions such as anxiety and guilt

Keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious

Attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another person

Diverting emotional feelings from their original source to a substitute target

Behaving in a way that is exactly the opposite of one’s true feelings

Reversion to immature patterns of behavior

Creation of false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior

Bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary or real alliance with some person or group

Oral: (0-1 years), erotic focus on mouth, weaning

Anal: (2-3 years), erotic focus on anus, toilet training

Phallic: (4-5 years), erotic focus on genitals (masturbating), identifying with adult role models, coping with Oedipal crisis

Latency: (6-12), no erotic focus, sexually repressed, expanding social contacts

Genital: (Puberty onward), focus on genitals (sexual intimacy), establishing intimate relationships, contributing to society through working

Personal Unconscious: similar to Freud’s unconscious layer

Collective Unconscious: A storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past that is shared with the entire human race

Our most important drive is not sexuality, but striving for superiority

Efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one’s abilities

Exaggerated feelings of weakness and inadequacy

Unconscious forces can influence behavior

Internal conflict may play a key role in psychological distress

Early childhood experiences can influence adult personality

People do rely on defense mechanisms to reduce unpleasant emotions

Poor testability - too vague, difficult to measure

Depend too heavily on clinical case studies

Many central hypotheses have been contradicted by empirical evidence

Male-centered, even sexist, view of personality

Theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study observable behavior

A type of learning in which a neutral stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus

The gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response tendency

A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers an unconditioned response

An unlearned, naturally occurring response due to an unconditioned stimulus

A stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning

A learned response due to a conditioned stimulus

Dogs would salivate (UR) when they were brought food (US)

The bell (NS) didn’t do anything until it was presented with the food (US)

The bell eventually causes the dogs to salivate (CS)

Responses to a situation that are followed by satisfaction are strengthened; responses that are followed by discomfort are weakened

A form of learning in which voluntary responses come to be controlled by their consequences

Occurs when a response is strengthened (increases frequency) because it is followed by the arrival of a pleasant stimulus

EX: Given a cookie after being polite

Occurs when a response in strengthened (increases in frequency) because it is followed by the removal of an unpleasant stimulus

EX: Beeping when you don’t use seatbelt

Any event that strengthens the behavior it follows

Occurs when a response is weakened (decreases in frequency) because it is followed by the arrival of an unpleasant stimulus

Adding something aversive

Taking away something desirable

Observational Learning: Occurs when an organism’s response is influenced by the observation of others, who are called models

The belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes

Learning that involves acquiring skills, strategies, and beliefs by observing others

Pay attention to and understand consequences of others’ behavior

Social, cognitive, and behavioral factors influence learning

Emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their free will and their potential for personal growth

Personality only contains one construct (the self)

Our ideas about ourselves match our actual experiences

Our ideas about ourselves do not match reality, which undermines our well-being

Children develop incongruent self-concept because they do not feel worthy of love

Children feel worthy of affection and develop congruent self-concepts

Human motives are organized into a hierarchy of needs

Humans have an innate drive towards personal growth and the highest need is self-actualization

An arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused

Fulfillment of one’s potential

Commitment to personal growth, accurately tuned into reality, balanced personality, thrive on their work, etc

Poor testability

An unrealistic view of human nature

Inadequate evidence

Personality as a hierarchy of traits, function of genetic differences in “conditionality”

Special interest in explaining variations in extraversion-introversion

An estimate of the proportion of trait variability in a population that is determined by variations in genetic inheritance

Examines behavioral processes in terms of their adaptive value for members of a species over the course of many generations

Human cognition is unique and allows us to be aware of our own mortality

Creates great anxiety, can be reduced by cultural worldviews that promote self-esteem and faith

Reminding people of their mortality leads to increased self-esteem as an anxiety buffer

A standardized measure of a sample of a person’s behavior

Refers to the uniform procedures used to administer and score a test

Provide information about where a score on a psychological test ranks in relation to other scores on that test

Personality scales that ask individuals to answer a series of questions about their characteristic behavior

EX: 16 Personality Factor, NEO Inventory

Ask individuals to respond to ambiguous stimuli in ways that may reveal aspects of their personalities

EX: Rorschach test, Thematic Apperception Test

The process of forming impressions of others

Judgments made quickly and based on only a few bits of information and preconceived notions

Used when we are not motivated to form an accurate impression of another person

Require more controlled processing and tend to occur when forming impressions of others that can affects our happiness and welfare

Inferences that people draw about the causes of behavior and events

People attribute the cause of others’ behavior to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, or feelings

People attribute the cause of others’ behavior to situational demands or environmental constraints

Expectations about a person cause them to behave in ways that confirm the expectations