Module 3 : Self-Concept: Who Am I

Ebru Ecem

Module 3 : Self-Concept: Who Am I? At the Center of our Worlds: Our Sense of Self * I am ...... -> self-concept * The elements of your self-concept, the specific beliefs by which you define yoursef, are your self-schemas. Our self-schemas -our perceiving ourselves as athletic, overweight, smart, or whatever- powerfully affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate other people and ourselves. * The self-schemas that make up our selfconcepts help us organize and retrieve (yeniden edinmek) our experiences. * The spotlight effect means that we tend to see ourselves at center stage, so we overestimate the extent to which others’ attention is aimed at us. * We often have an illusion that our own emotions are transparent to others. But research shows that what we agonize over(kafa yormak), others may hardly notice and soon forget.

sense of belonging-> they have not one self but many selves: self-with-parents, self-at-work.. embedded in social memberships. * People are more self-critical and have less need for positive self-regard. They complete the “I am” statement with their group identities. * Conservatives tend to be economic individualists(“don’t tax or regulate me”) and moral collectivists(“legislate against immorality”) * Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be economic collectivists(supporting national health care) and moral individualists (“keep your laws off on my body”). * The purpose of language, American students were more likely to explain that it allows self-expression, whereas Korean students focused on how language allows communication with others.

Self and Culture * For some people, especially those in industrialized Western cultures, individualism prevails(yürürlükte). * Identity is self-contained(kendi kendine yeten). Adolescence is a time of seperating from parents, becoming self-reliant(kendine güvenen), and defining one’s personal, independent self. One’s identity- as a unique individual with particular abilities, traits, values, and dreams- remains fairly constant. * Western cultures-> believing in your power of personal control. Individualism flourishes when people experience affluence(servet), mobility, urbanism, and mass media. * Most cultures native to Asia, Africa, and Central and South America place a greater value on collectivism. interdependent self->birbirine bağımlı->

Culture and Self-Esteem * Self-esteem in collectivist cultures correlates closely with “what others think of me and my group.” * Self-concept is malleable(yumuşak) (context-specific) rather than stable(enduring across situations). * The beliefs that you hold about who you are(your inner self) remain the same across different activity domains-> 4/5: Canadian 1/3: Chinese and Japanese * Japanese: happiness comes with positive social engagement- with feeling close, friendly, and respectful.

* Individualist cultures breed more conflict (and crime and divorce) between individuals. Self-Knowledge Explaining Our Behavior * People influenced by the media which they readily acknowledge, affects others. * Recording moods every day for two or three months. Also recording factors that might affect their moods: the day of the week, the weather, the amount they slept, and so forth. * little relationship btw (-)perceptions about Monday and their real moods on Monday. Predicting Our Behavior * If you’re in love and want to know whether it will last, don’t listen to your heart—ask your roommate. * One of the most common errors in behavior prediction is underesti- mating how long it will take to complete a task (called the planning fallacy.) Predicting Our Feelings * Sometimes we know how we will feel—if we fail that exam * We know what exhilarates(neşelendirmk) us and what makes us anxious or bored. Other times we may mispredict our responses. * Studies of “affective forecasting(their predictions of their future emotions)” reveal(meydana çıkarmak) that people have greatest difficulty predicting the intensity and the duration of their future emotions. * People have mispredicted how they would feel some time after a romantic breakup, receiving a gift, losing an election, winning a game,being insulted, Hungry shoopers and doughnut. When natural disasters like hurricanes occur, people predict that their sadness will be greater if more people are killed. * Our intuitive theory: We want. We get. We are happy. But, We often ‘’miswant’’. * The emotional traces(izler) such as good tidings(haber) evaporate(buharlaşmak) more rapidly than we expect.

* We are especially prone to impact bias after negative events. * Impact bias is important because people’s affective forecasts influence their decisions. * People neglect(unutmak) the speed and the power of their psychological immune system, which includes their strategies for rationalizing, discounting(önemsememek), forgiving, and limiting emotional trauma. * Major negative events (which activate our psychological defenses) can be less enduringly distressing than minor irritations (which don’t activate our defenses). The Wisdom and Illusions of SelfAnalysis * When the causes of our behavior are conspicuous(bariz) and the correct explanation fits our intuition(sezgi), our self-perceptions will be accurate. * We are unaware of much that goes on in our minds. Perception and memory studies show that we are more aware of the results of our thinking than of its process. * The mental processes that control our social behavior are distinct from the mental processes through which we explain our behavior. Our rational explanations may therefore omit the unconscious attitudes that actually guide our behavior. * Their attitude reports became useless, however, if the participants were first asked to analyze their feelings. ex: -their happiness ratings were useless in predicting the future of the relationship. * We are often “strangers to ourselves” * We have a dual attitude system. Our unconscious, automatic, implicit attitudes regarding(hakkında) someone or something often differ from our consciously controlled, explicit attitudes. * Although explicit attitudes may change with relative ease, “implicit attitudes, like old habits, change more slowly.” * Verbalized explicit attitudes may change with education and persuasion; implicit

attitudes change slowly, with practice that forms new habits. * M.Millar and A.Tesser have argued that Wilson overstates our ignorance of self. Their research, yes, drawing people’s attention to reasons diminishes the usefulness of attitude reports in predicting behaviors that are driven by feelings. They argue that if, instead of having people analyze their romantic relationships, Wilson had first asked them to get more in touch with their feelings (“How do you feel when you are with and apart from your partner?”), the attitude reports might have been more insightful. * An analysis of reasons rather than feelings may be most useful. * This research on the limits of our selfknowledge has two practical implications(çıkarım). 1. is for psychological inquiry(sorgu).Self-reports are often untrustworthy. Errors in selfunderstanding limit the scientific usefulness. * 2. is for our everyday lives.The sincerity with which people report and interpret their experiences is no guarantee of the validity of those reports.