“In its search for truth, the mind sometimes constructs a falsehood” (Myers, 2012)

Gambling - People like to feel in control, and will create the illusion of predictability to confirm – wins to skill, losses

•Science is not purely objective- interpret nature using their own mental categories

•Psychological Concepts contain hidden values

•Professional advice- reflects personal values; will often defer to the “professional”

•Labels in everyday language

-we should keep our eye on the prize or we should keep our nose to the grindstone

Spotlights and Illusions

·         Spotlight effect- center stage, age group?

·         Illusion of transparency- fewer people notice than we presume

·         Pros and cons?

Other examples:

-Social surroundings

-Self interest

-Self concern

-Social relationships

Self-Concept- Who am I?

·         I am ________

·         Self-schemas- templates for organizing our worlds, perceptions

·         Potential self- includes both fantasy and fear

·         Social self

Self-Concept Continued

·         Social comparison- how much does this go on- enhances as well as diminishes our satisfaction, “look up”

·         More inclined to praise than criticize, overestimates others appraisal and inflate self-image

·         Self and Culture

-individualism vs collectivism

*independent self vs interdependent self

·         Names in American culture, research by Twenge et al, 2010

·         Culture and cognition- Asians more often see relationships, Americans more centrally focused on an object vs background figures- Communication patterns “express yourself vs connecting/social engagement

·         Tafarodi et al, 2004- “the beliefs that you hold about who you are (your inner self) remain the same across different activity domains” 

Self-Knowledge

·         Self-Knowledge- “Know thyself” how is this possible??

·         What makes us happy? How much insight do we have into this?

-Daniel Gilbert (2007, 2011) “We seem to know less about the worlds inside our head, than about the world our heads are inside”

·         Predicting our behavior

·         Planning fallacy- underestimating how long it will take to complete a task

·         Predicting our feelings- “affective forecasting” (Wilson and Glibert, 2003) people have greatest difficulty predicting intensity and duration of their future emotions

·         People overestimate how much well-being is affected by both bad events and good events- psychological immune system

·         Want vs “Miswant” (Gilbert and Wilson, 2000) leads to impact bias- overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events

·         State vs trait dependent decisions

Self-Analysis

·         Illusions of Self Analysis

·         Perception and memory studies- more aware of the results of our thinking than of its process.

·         Dual attitude system (Wilson et al, 2000)- automatic implicit attitudes vs consciously controlled explicit attitudes

·         Practical implications: self-reports are often untrustworthy, sincerity with which people report and interpret experiences is no guarantee of validity of reports 

Nature and Motivating Power of Self Esteem

·         Self-esteem-overall self-evaluation or sense of self worth

·         Enhance esteem- specific vs general, reflect ability and performance vs unrealistic optimism

·         Self-esteem study (Bushman et al, 2011)

-people more motivated to maintain esteem than other pleasurable activities

Self Esteem Continued…

·         Dark side of self-esteem- more issues, drug abuse, depression

·         Higher self-esteem: teen males engaging in early sexual activity, gang leader, extreme ethnocentrists (KKK), men in prison for violent crimes, terrorists

·         Narcissism- inflated sense of self, compared to high self esteem

·         Bauminster (2005) endorses self-control over self esteem

·         Narcissism- correlated with materialism, desire to be famous, inflated expectations, fewer committed relationships, more gambling, more cheating, lack of empathy (Konrath et al, 2011)

·         Generation Me- more narcissistic, Any ideas???

·         Secure self-esteem- one rooted more in feeling good about who one is- is conducive to long term well being

·         Self-compassion- “There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is being superior to your previous self.”

Perceived Self Control

·         Self-control like a muscle, depletes limited willpower and reserves

·         Self-efficacy- sense that one is competent and effective, it grows with hard-won achievements (esteem- liking yourself) grows with success

·         Locus of Control- extent to which people perceive outcomes as internally controllable by their own efforts or as externally controllable by chance or outside forces

·         Internal associated with more positive outcomes (Wang et al, 2010) more productive at work, do well in school, more life satisfaction, achieve long-term goals, healthy relationships

Self-Control

·         Learned helplessness- learned responses of hopelessness and resignation when no control over repeated negative events

·         vs Self Determination

·         No control, oppressed or depressed people become passive, “paralysis of the will” 

Self-Serving Bias

·         Tendency to perceive oneself favorably

·         US self-esteem amongst college students was maximum, “perfect” (Gentile et al, 2010)

·         Self-serving attributions- Positive (internal) and negative events (external)- self-serving activates brain areas associated with reward and pleasure (Seidel et al, 2010) Real life examples? Use of language “I” opposed to “the Prof”

Self-Continued….

·         Defensive pessimism- adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one’s anxiety to motivate effective action

·         Illusory and optimistic optimism- research says it’s on the rise. Increases vulnerability

·         The cost of excessive choice-

·         False consensus effect- tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions and one’s undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors

·         “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

·         False uniqueness effect- the tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or successful behaviors

Self Esteem

Adaptability- people with high self-esteem savor and sustain good feelings (Wood et al, 2003)

Protects people from depression while also acting as a buffer against stress

Death anxiety- reminding people of mortality motivates them to affirm their self-worth

·         Practical wisdom- may be strategic to believe we are smarter, stronger and more socially successful than we are

·         Maladaptive- people who blame others are often unhappier than those who acknowledge mistakes (Anderson et al, 1983)

·         Group serving bias- explaining away outgroup members positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions, i.e. politics, athletics, sororities

Managing Self Presentation

·         Self-handicapping- protecting one’s self image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure-

·         Why is this the case?

·         Human desire for social acceptance is so great- can lead to risky behavior and harm

Self

·         Self-presentation- usually without conscious effort, but can change in unfamiliar situations

·         Applicability to social media

·         Self-monitoring-

·         Generally desire to be modest, yet competent- requires social wherewithal

Attitudes

•       “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”     - Buddha

•       Attitude- favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone, think ABC’s (affect, behavior, cognition)

•       Wicker (1969): People’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their behaviors.

•       Are we hypocrites?

•       Implicit association test (IAT) - computer driven assessment of implicit attitudes. Test uses reaction times to measure people’s automatic associations between attitude objects and evaluative words        

•       Implicit biases are pervasive

•       People differ in implicit bias

•       People are often unaware of their implicit biases

•       Predicting behavior is very challenging with limited data- when accumulated over time, becomes easier

•       “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” –Alfred North Whitehead

When Does Behavior Affect Attitudes?

•       Roles- a set of norms that defines how people in a given social position ought to behave

•       Stanford Prison Experiments- further implications for this? Longer time period?

•       Saying becomes believing- we adapt to our audience and begin to believe what we say, provided no coercion   i.e. going public

•       Foot in the door phenomenon- the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request, often seductive: financial, political, sexual

•       Lowball technique- tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who agree to an initial request still comply when the requester ups the ante

Evil and Moral Acts

•       Harmful, as well as moral acts shape the self-character is who we are when not monitored

•       Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced affects moral thinking

•       “We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.”   -Aristotle

Why Does Behavior affect attitudes?

•       Self-presentation theory- assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that make us appear consistent

•       Self-perception theory- assumes that our actions are self-revealing (when uncertain about feelings, we look to behavior)

Cognitive Dissonance

•       Cognitive dissonance- assumes that to reduce discomfort, we justify our actions to ourselves

•       Selective exposure- seeks information that agrees with one’s views and avoid dissonant information

•       Attitudes follow behavior for which we feel some irresponsibility

•       After making important decisions, we usually reduce dissonance by upgrading the chosen alternative and downgrading the unchosen option

•       Decisions, once made will often grow self-justifying legs of support

Expressions and Attitude

•       Facial feedback effect- the tendency of facial expressions to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness

•       Smiley face/ happy expressions- induces more happy memories, similar for sad, angry emotions

•       Botox- smoothes emotional wrinkles- “frozen face” slows emotion-related brain circuits and slows reading of emotion

•       Walk/ gait- can also affect how one feels

Intrinsic Motivations

•       Over justification effect- the result of bribing people to do what they already like doing; they may then see their actions as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing

•       Can turn play into work

•       Unnecessary rewards to control behavior

•       When rightly administered, can increase creativity

•       Self-affirmation theory- people will often experience a threat to self-image after engaging in undesirable behavior and will compensate by affirming another aspect of the self

•       Justifying who we are protects and supports our sense of integrity and self-worth

A Quote

•       To make anything a habit, do it.  

To make it not a habit, don’t do it

To unmake a habit, something else in place of it.

                                            -Epictetus