Psychology 324

Contents
Chapter 1....................................................................................................1
Chapter 2.................................................................................................5
Chapter 3..................................................................................................12
Chapter 4..................................................................................................18
Funder – debate – are our social perceptions often inaccurate? NO..........26
Ross and nisbett – debate – are our social perceptions often inaccurate
YES............................................................................................................30
Kelly and Duckitt – experiment – self esteem and ethnic identity in SA,
status, power, legitimacy..........................................................................32
Shutts and Kinzler – experiment – self esteem and ethnic identity in SA,
status, power, legitimacy..........................................................................35
Baumeister – debate – are self esteem programs misguided? YES...........38
Dubois and Tevendale – debate – are self esteem programs misguided? NO
..................................................................................................................38

Chapter 1
Social psychology

Distinguished by dealing with those who are present / implied presence of

others

Behaviour is studied as function and difference within presence of others

Also thoughts, feelings, emotions

Unit of analysts is person within group

- Cognitive psychology
- Economics
- individual psychology
- social anthropology
- sociology
- sociolinguistics language communication

Gordon Allport
Scientific investigation of the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that
individuals are influenced by actual, imagined or implied presence.

Highlights scientific method used

Kurt Lewin

Father of experimental social psychology

Study of group processes

- social behaviour understood as perception of world and how to

manipulkate these percenptions
- thought and cognition

Floyd Allport

For social psychology to flourish it would need to become an experimental

science

Not unique to social psychology

scientific method

no theory on behaviour is true simply because of logic

rather based on research, data and analysis

Hypotheses should be able to be tested empirically to disprove

- confidence is raise when trying to prove something already proved

Replication is key as it guards against fraud and exhaustion

Experimental method / non-experimental method

Determined by hypothesis nature

Ethics of the nature

Resources available (money, time, participants

Experimental method

- hypothesis test to see effect on something else

- common way to learn about world
- determine cause of events and control destiny and what we do in
life
- casual experimentation used
1. Manipulates 1+ independent variables
a. Dimensions that may have affect and be varied
b. Predictor variables
2. Measure the effect of treatment on one or more dependent variables
 a. Will vary as consequence to previous
b. Dependent on first variable
c. Outcome variables

2 groups

Experimental group / condition

Exposed to the independent variable and then seen the effect

coming after the effects

Control group / condition

Unexposed to the independent variable and still studied after

experiment to see the controlled conditions.

Study group = independent variable

Exam mark = dependant variable

Finer details will be exactly the same such as lectures attended

AVOID CONFOUNDING

Cannot eliminate unmeasured influence on the variable when

experimenting

Thus all the variables have to be identical across all

Gather groups accordingly and match participants correctly

Isolate and manipulate a single aspect of the variable

Demand characteristics

o Features that seem to demand a response

o Give information on hypothesis and assist in proving

Evaluation apprehension

o Anxiety and stress due to studying of performance

Social desirability

o Tendency to respond to manipulation that is socially welcomed

Experimental effects

o Aware of hypothesis and may communicate cues to force a

behaviour

Non-experimental methods
Examination of correlation between natural occurrences and does not
allow us to draw structured conclusions from data gathered. No causal
conclusions

Archival research

- Large scale wide phenomena to find the comparisons between

different groups or cultures
o Researcher has no control over primary date collection

Case study / focus group

- Single event and based on feedback from specific people

- Unpacking of discourse and identify underlying narrative or themes
that there may be

Survey research

- Structured interviews and using set questions while noting

responses
- Questions can be open ended or more specific such as a rating scale

Experimental VS non-experimental

lower external validity higher external validity

Higher internal validity Lower internal validity
Cut off Closer to real world
Causality Correlational
Fewer confounds More confounds

Research ethics

Review proposals and ensuring the extent as the rights of participants are
protected.

1. Protection from harm

a. This is physical harm or psychological distress
b. Unethical to expose to any form of harm
c. Substantial motivation should there be any stress
2. Privacy
a. Asked intimate questions or observed without knowledge
b. Addressed by identification is removed form data
c. Anonomys data
d. Means for large groups rather than individual
e. Useless data destroyed
3. Deception
 a. Conceal true purpose of experiment to protect hypothesis
b. Motivation for this level of research
4. Informed consent
a. Give their consent to study freely, in writing
b. Full disclosure as to what it is
c. Allow to withdraw at any point without penalty
5. Debriefing
a. Fully explained to ensure people understand what happened
and allow security in understanding
b. Any deceptions are explained.

Chapter 2
Social psychology is the science of human thought, feeling and behaviour
as they are influenced by and have influenced on other people

Thought has always occupied a pivotal position in social psychology,

people think about their social world and on the basis of thought they act
in certain ways.

Thought and cognition

Thought

- Internal language and symbols to understand

Cognition

- Automatic processing

Social psychology

- How people think and feel about, relate to, and influence other
people

Social cognition

o How cognition is affected by wider and more immediate social

contexts and how cognition affects social behaviour

Cognitive psychology

- Scientific study of basic mental abilities such as perception, learning

and memory

Cognition in social psychology

1960

- People are motivated to reduce discrepancies between cognitions

 - People strive for consistency as long as they are motivated to
produce said consistencies
- People are remarkably aware
- The computer revolution encouraged and enabled psychologists to
stimulate highly complex human behaviours

1970

- Naive scientist
- People need to attribute causes to events in order to make sense of
the world
- Rational in their understanding of the world
- Bias or inaccuracy is linked back to past experiences and past
knowledge
- Many cognitive shortcuts due to shortcomings
- Not driven by motivation to reach true underlying cause of
behaviours

New

- Motivated tacticians
- Fully engaged thinkers with many strategies stores
- Chooses depending on situation we are sitting in and what is around
us

2000s

- Social neuroscience / cognitive

- Computing and medical sciences
- Studying cognitive activity thanks to fMRI
o Detect and localise electrical activity linked to cognitive
activity or function
o Different part lights up depending on thoughts or when
determining causality

Impression formation

Communicate those first impressions and this will ultimately decide how
we feel or act in relation to those around us and how we perceive those
people or environments.

Solomon Asch

- Configural model
- Latch on to certain information when we first meet someone
- Central traits and have disproportionate influence on final (warm /
cold)
- Then peripheral traits (polite / blunt)
 o Less impressions on traits we once found

More: Susan Fiske – Amy Cuddy – Peter Glick

Other factors on impression formation

Range of bias

Order of information presented

Primacy effect

- Positive information first and then impression lessens as more bad is

learnt
- As we pay more attention at first we find the good traits first that
are presented

Recency effect

- When you are distracted and meet new person then first impression
may not truly matter as then it will grow over time

But science proves that first impressions stick and last

Negative information

- Bias to notice negative information first

- Once formed harder to change to positive information no matter the
actions or the feelings
- We are so sensitive
o Unusual, extreme, uncommon, catch attention
o Information may signify potential danger (survival)

Personal construct systems

- Create own idocentric ways to judge and place people in our world
 - Two people can form 2 different impressions
- Develop over time with person perception
- Strong to change
- Discover what characteristics go together to form a person
- Implicit personality construct does not change

Physical appearance

- First information gathered and therefore of key importance

- Can be surprisingly accurate
- Physically attractive or not
o Warm, social, good, outgoing
- Can affect careers even if you cannot change anything about it
- Bias and stereotypical view

Stereotypes

- Group membership judgement

- Engage consistent impressions
- Ethnicity, sex, race, class, will form impression
- Impression formed faster when fit in with stereotype

social judge ability

- Who can be judged and who cannot

- Laws / conventions prove its wrong
- Social settings may change these opinions in people as they go with
the crowd

Cognitive algebra

- How we assign positive or negative valence to certain attributes and

how we process these plusses and minuses into evaluation
- 1 = summation
o Process where impression is simply sum of all the information
you have gained on someone
o Each information counts equally
o Present all positive even small and hide negative
- 2 = averaging
o Positive overall is combined average of all information over
time
o Only present single very best trait
- 3 = weighted
o Weight relative importance before averaging said scores
o Varies in different contexts
o Central traits may be weighted more rather than peripherals
traits
Cognitive structures

Reliance on personal schema = clinical judgement

SCHEMAS

- Make sense of social world around us

- Represents knowledge you have on person, stim, place or self
- Interrelated cognitions, thoughts, beliefs that make us able to
assumptions quickly depending on whatever our surroundings may
be
- Useful when limited information and some cues activate them and
allow us to try and make sense
- Stereotype can be a schema

Top-down processing

- Schemas activated
- Concept driven processing
- Make more assumptions
- Little cognitive efforts
- Using prior knowledge from active schemas
- EG
o Person schemas
o Role schemas (social groups)
o Scripts (events)
o Content free schemas (little rules to process)
o Self schemas (what we know of self)

Bottom up processing

- Time taken to draw conclusions

- Requires cognitive effort
- Make fewer assumptions
- Pay attention to details
- Data driven processing

CATEGORIES

- Able to apply schemas to categrory

- Family resemblance
- Prototype = fuzzy representative of category

Dog = category

Fuzzy = Prototype

Schema = dog breed

Exemplars = dog rather than schema

- Categories find a sweet spot that are not too exclusive nor inclusive
as this could be cognitively draining in mass
- Rely on the middle rather than the extremes
- Optimally distincitive

CATEGORISATION AND STEREOTYPING

- Stereotype
o Widely shared general of group that are derogatory to persons
in the outgroups
o Not consensual belief but can also be seen as general theories
or attribute of other groups
o Truth may exist
o Reduce uncertainty and are not always wrong or inaccurate
o Social roles can also be controlled
o Intergroup processing and understanding
o Means to justify status que
o Extrapolates the judgement to out of the group
o Subjective importance relevance or value
o Characterise common groups due to simplistically
o Readily usable from early age
o Respond to social context and has inertia

Immediately considering someone has a trait and running with it is called

anchoring

Acquiring schemas

Can be acquired or modified second hand

Or

Direct experiences that create our schemas

- Fuzzy and concrete

- Vague prototypes
- Schema more abstract and not tied to concrete moment
- Each interaction makes it more complex and becomes length
- Compact schemas that can be activated in all or nothing manor
- More resilient and can incorporate exceptions

Changing schemas

Very resistant to changing a schemas

Disregard to maintain the original schema

 1. Bookkeeping
a. Slow change with accumulating evidence
b. Process
2. Conversion
a. Rapid, substantial change with critical mass of disconfirming
evidence
3. Subtyping
a. Reinterpreting evidence as exception to the rule to create a
new subcategory
b. Protect original schema while taking in the new evidence

Social encoding

1. Pre attentive analysis

a. Non-conscious scanning of the environment
2. Focal attention
a. Stimuli are consciously identified
3. Comprehension
a. Stimuli you gathered are given meaning
4. Elaborative reasoning
a. Stimuli linked to other knowledge you have

Depends heavily on what catches our attention

3 factors

1. Salience
a. Property of stimulus that makes it stand out
b. Variety of reasons (behaviour is different to normal)
c. Important to your goals or visual field or told to pay attention
d. Salient people more influention
e. More responsible and less influences
f. More extreme as positively or negatively
2. Vividness
a. Intrinsic property of stimuli itself
b. Emotionally evoking feelings
c. Concrete images produced
d. Close to you
3. Accessibility
a. Readily and automatically primed to make sense of domain
b. Often use, recent, consistent currently
c. Assimilate into primed category
d. Ambiguous category
e. Contract stimuli with category
i. Incongruent to categories
Person memory

We store information linked by relationships of ideas – once piece can

spread to attract more information

Some links are stronger than others – recall makes it stronger

- Activation from one node to another

Likely to recall inaccurate information to our nodes as it triggers deeper

thought

Exceptions

- Well established impression

- Inconsistent information is descriptive
- Making complex judgement
- Have time to consider our impressions

Different information stored different way

- Clusters of negative or positive are created

- Traits are abstract
- Behaviour gets stored differently

Appearance = directly observable and concrete

Prefer to remember people based:

- Cluster of traits cha

- Behaviour
- Appearance
o Richer and more accurate memory and easily recalled
o Also cluster into groups and organisation via groups is brought
with strangers meetings

Chapter 3
People occupied of seeking, constructing and sorting their experiences

Uncomfortable with not knowing

Social explanations

- Attribution theories describe how we make casual inferences about

their own and others behaviours
- Antecedents and consequences also considered
- Powerful bases for control

Prominent attribution theories

1. Heider’s theory of naïve psychology
a. Study influence of naïve or common sense psychological
theories on everyday perceptions or experiences
b. Such theories influence everyday perception and behaviour
c. People are intuitive psycholoogists that construct causual
theories on human behaviuoyr
d. Tend to look for causes and reasons to discover motives
e. All societies construct origin myth that everyone creates
f. Personal factors / environmental factors
g. Internal causes or intentions are hidden, only infer if no
external forces available
i. Bias regarding preferring the internal causes
2. Jones and Davis theory of correspondent inference
a. People refer making dispositional (internal) attributions to
understand the behaviour of others
b. Stable and predictable causes
c. Dispositional cause is stable cause, makes predictable and
enables understanding
d. 5 sources of confidence in inference
i. Freely chosen behaviour
ii. Behaviour with effects exclusive to that behaviour
(outcome bias)
iii. Socially desirable behaviour tells us little (society)
iv. Confident inference when behaviour has important
consequence for self
v. Behaviour seems directly intended to benefit or harm us
3. Kelley’s covariation model
a. Best known
b. Covaries closely with behaviour and assign casual role
c. Act as scientist
d. Decide whether to attribute to internal or external
e. Asses 3 classes of information linked to specific person
i. Consistency
1. Is this common in this persons behaviour
2. Low when seldom behaves like this
ii. Distinctiveness
1. Is this behaviour different now to then
2. Low when general behaviour
iii. Consensus
1. How do other people behave
2. Low when few others behave like this
f. Draw back
 i. Correlation is not causation just as covariation does not
mean causation
ii. Multiple observations are required and why people do
not have enough observations to draw infrerence
4. Schachters theory of emotional lability
a. 2 distinct components
i. Undifferentiated state of arousal
ii. Cognitive state of arousal of what emotions present
b. Initially unexplained arousal that can be different emotions
depending on the experiences
c. If emotions depend on cognitive label then it might be
transformed from depression to happiness
d. Emotions may be less label than originally thought
e. Emotional ques is not valid explanation
f. Intrinsically unpleasant, and often assign it a negative label
5. Weiner’s attribution theory
a. Extended attribution to task performances
b. Causes and consequences of attributions related to task
success or failure
c. Making an achievement attribution will consider 3 dimensions
i. Locus
1. Performance caused by actor (internal) or
situation (external)
ii. Stability
1. Internal / external cause a stable or unstable
cause
iii. Controllability
1. What extent will future task performers under the
actors control
d. Extend judgement of responsibility
i. Latter judgement of the responsibility that affect
behavioural reactions and experiences

Applications of attribution theory

Julian Rotter

- Differ control depending on the reinforcement of punishment or

reprimand
- Internal VS external locus control
o Internal
 Feel we are in charge of ourselves and circumstances
o External
 Picture a force outside ourselves that control our fate

Interpersonal relationships

- Play an important role as attributions need to be communicated to

fill functions
- Justify / excuse / blame / guilt
- 3 basic phases
o Formation stage
 Reduce ambiguity and facilitate understanding
o Maintenance
 Need to make attribution weans
 Stable relationships been established
o Dissolution
 Increase attributions to regain understanding in the
relationship
- Attriutional conflicts occur
o Divergent causal interpretations of behaviour and disagree
over what attributions to adopt
o Often cannot even agree on cause effect sequence
o Conflict strongly correlated with relationship dissatisfaction
- Happy married or non distressed couples site internal stable factors
to explain them
- Negative behaviour explained by describing two causes external
and uncontrollable

Women VS men

- Women often think causal about relationship men only do so when

dysfunctional
- Men may be better at telling when the relationship is going off

Biases of attribution

Instead of viewing as naïve scientists or statistics now have to think of

motivated tactician = done by heuristics

Correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error)

 - General tendency for people attribute stable, underlying personality
dispositions even when clear external causes exist.
- Originally called fundamental attribution error
o used interchangeably
- tendency to attribute road accidents to driver VS vehicle or road
conditions
- tendency to attribute poverty to person
- closely related to:
o outcome bias
 behaviour from person tended all outcomes of that
behaviour
o essentialism
 underlying and mutable / innate options of behaviour of
groups
 troublesome when negative attributes of groups are
enforced
 groups can also use strategically to discriminate
- focus of attention
o actor VS background
o salient in cognition and overrepresented causally
- differential forgetting
o people tend to forget situational causes more than
dispositional causes
o causes shift in their attributions over time
- developmental factors
o late childhood mainly
- cultural factors
o reflect different cultural norms to social explanation
o western VS non western conceptions

actor – observer effect

- attribute behaviour of others to be stable, underlying personality

dispositions
- tend to make more dispositional attributes for desirable behaviour
- abolished if actor is encouraged to take role of observer for the role
to be attributed
- actor then more dispositional VS more behavioural
o perceptual focus
 actor and actor behaviour figural on the background of
situation
 actor cannot see themselves behaving
 different perspectives on the behaviour
  explain in different ways
o information differences
 actors have wealth of information to draw on depending
on behaviour in other circumstances
 knowledge of their own behaviour as they will attribute
it to situational control
 observers do not have this information as they do not
see the actor in all behaviours
 not unreasonable to make dispositional attribution

false consensus effect

- view own behaviour as typical and assume others would behave the
same way
o seek out similar others
- own opinions so salient to us and at the forefront it eclipses
possibility of other opinons
- ground our opinion and actions in perceived consensus
o important beliefs and ones we are certain of

self serving bias

- ego serving bias that leads us to exaggerate the amount of control

we have over our successes and exaggerate the lack of control we
have over our favours
- give our own success to ourselves only
o but no failure as that will show us badly thus we plane the
environment
- self handicapping
o protection for future favour
o publically making advance on upcoming failure in next
adventure
- attribution of responsibility
o attribute greater responsibility to others depending on level of
consequences
o tendency of people to cling to illusion of control
o like to believe that bad things to bad people and good things
to good
o idea of karma and that you still can control your outcomes
o can be then deduced that victims are cause of their own
tragedy
o stable meaningful controllable and just society
o illusion of control brought back by taking responsibility

intergroup attribution
 - process of signing the cause of ones own or others behaviour to
group membership
- ethnocentrism
o ingroup bias that operates inter group
- socially desirable or positive behaviour by ingroup members VS
socially undesirable behaviour are independently attributed to the
outgroup
- processes responsible
o cognitive process
 stereotypes and schemas and categorisation
o self esteem process
 social identity

Chapter 4
Self and identity

- who you are = what you do and think

- others = they think and argue
- ability to think about ourselves thinking that differs us from animals
o reflexive thought
 who we are / want to be / seen / how we think
- highly developed sense of self and fundamental parts of being you
- relatively new idea and has evolved over last 1000 years

medieval times

- prescribed social
- birth order / rank / job
- 3 driving forces
 o Secularisation
 Fulfilment does not only occur in afterlife, actively
pursue fulfilment in this life
o Industrialisation
 Increasingly seen people as products of production with
a portable person identity not locked to social structures
o Enlightenment
 Allow to construct different identities to overthrow other
social structures

Psychoanalysis

- Freud
o Self is unfathomable because it is in the unconscious
o Self only truly known by self or others when special
procedures are employed to bring repressed thoughts
o Largely subconscious influence of authoritarian
o Personal and private and epitome of individuality

Types of self

- Individual self
o Based on personal traits that differentiate from all others
- Relationship self
o Connections and role relationships with significant others
- Collective self
o Group membership that splits us and them
o Group mind / hive mind
o This influences our individual self
o Muzafer Sherif and Solomon Asch
 Emergence of group norms and conformity to norms

Symbolic interactionism

- How self concept is constructed and shaped by social interaction

- See ourselves as others see us
o Healthy human functioning
o Strongly aligned with how we think others view us
- Constructing a sense of self

Wilhelm Wundt

- Founder of psychology as experimental science proposed that social

psychology was study of mental products from community of human
life
- Merely inexplicable of human consciousness
Cultural differences

- Western = individualistic VS Eastern / Africa = collectiveness

o Independent self VS interdependent self
o Need for self discovery is universal
o Autonomous VS natural
- Developed economic system based on labour ability as persons
seen as humans of production expected to organise lives based on
their work and mobility
o Transnet and ability relationships
o Independence and uniqueness more common
o Not important for long term relationships

Self presentation and impression management

- Try and control the self we present

- How we present ourselves

impression management

- People play different roles for different audiences

- Who we interact with will change how we interact

Self presentation

- 2 motives
o Strategic
 High self monitors
 Shape behaviour to impress audience or situational
demands
 1. Self promotion
 Pursued others for competence
 2. Ingratiation
 Style to get others to like you
 3. Intimidation
 Think you are dangerous
 4. Exemplification
 Morally respectable individual
 5. Supplication
 Take pity on you
 Manipulating other perception of you
o Expression
 Low self monitors
 Less obligated to change depending on demands
 Demonstrate and validate the self concept with your
actions
  Any identity is worthless unless recognised and
validated by others

Self awareness

- State in which you are aware of self as an object

- object of self aware comes and goes
- Can be uncomfortable
- Anxious / tongue tied / mistakes / paranoia
- Can improve introspection, emotions and improve performance on
tasks
- No single brain system / area of brain responsible for self, rather
from widely distributed brain activity

Deindividualization

- fail to monitor behaviour and how you behave in social unrest

objectual self aware

- How you actually are and how you’d like to be

- Often comes with negative emotions
- And reflection
- Bring closer inline with ideal
- Anything that focuses your attention on yourself as an objects
- 2 types
o 1. Private self
 Thoughts feeling and attitudes
 Attempt to match behaviour to internal standard
o 2. Public self
 How others see you
 Presenting towards as positive light

Self knowledge

- Stored in a similar way to schema

- Much more complicated though
- Believe to have clear di/’mensions on self in some places
o Schematic on some but a schematic on others
o On what they think are extreme / important to them
- Complex concept of self with large number of discrete self schemas
o Intricate schemas are preferable
- Driven to find and maintain a picture of who we are despite various
schemas
- Coherent sense of self needed
o Manage to find own ways to construct lives
o Examine private thoughts and feelings about the world
 o Dispositional or internal attribution
o Situational or external attribution

Regulatory focus

- Promotion system
o Ideals and focus on achieving
o Sensitive to presence of positive events
o Approach strategic means to achieve
o Positive role models brought in
o Elevated motivation and persistent on task with gains
- Prevention system
o Fulfilment of duties and obligations (ought)
o Generate sensitivity to presence of negative events
o Avoidance strategic means to achieve goals
o Recall information later to avoidance of failure of others

Bems self perception theory

- Proposes gaining knowledge of self is only made by self attributions

- Infer own attitudes from own behaviour
- Same way we construct others personality is the same for internal
- Being able to attribute our own behaviour internally
- Simply imagining ourselves behaving in a way

types of self schemas Higgins self discrepancy theory

- Active
o How we currently are
- Ideal
o How we would like to be
- Ought
o How we think we should be
- Through self regulation the discrepancies can be motivated to
change and reduce it
o General notion elaborates into regulatory focus theory

Self attribution or over justification effect

- Motivation to perform is reduced

- Minimal or no external factors performance attributed, we link it to
internal
- External rewards may backfire as it may be already motivated and
have no need
Self knowledge and social comparison

- How people learn about themselves in comparison to others

- Seek similar others to validate our perceptions and attitudes
- Anchor self concept to group they feel they belong
- Try to compare ourselves to those that worse than others
o Downward social comparison
o Upward comparison
 Could have bad effect on self esteem
 Try to downplay our similarity to other person
o 1992 Olympics
 Bronze more satisfaction than silver medals
 As silver constrained to make upward comparisons
 Bronze could make downward

Social identity theory (self concept in collective sense)

- Major influence on how ot conceptualise social categories and self

concept
- We have as many social identities as groups we believe we belong
to
- Personal as well with attributes we link with self
- Group and intergroup behaviours
o Solidarity, bias, discrimination, normative, stereotyping
- Group membership to given group could result in discrimination to
outgroup

up and down comparison also occurs

- Make one group better than them

- Struggle for evaluative scenario depending on group
- Influences self conception as group or social identity

Personal identity

- Defines self in terms of personal relationships and traits

Social identity

- Group memberships

Henri Tajfel

- Grounds for social identity theory

- Social categorisation, comparison, prejudice, stereotyping

Social categorisation

Extension of social identity theory

 - Categorise self and others of members of groups
- Helps reduce uncertainty about self and others
- Limited perceptual ques
o Looks / speaks/ attitudes / behaviours

Structural fit of categorisation

Normative fit of categorisation

then becomes psychologically salient to categorisation of self and others

- Self organisation of traits from the group internally

- Group positive = attributes positive = internal positive

Person based social identities

- Emphases way group properties internalised as part of concept

Relational social identities

- Define self in relation to other people who you interact with in

contact

Group based

- Social identity concept

Collective social

- Group members share self defining and engage in social action to

forge image of what group stands for and how represented by
others

Social identity

- Feelings, attitude, behaviour rests on what the social identity is

salient in psychology
- Strive for membership in prestigious groups or enhance
- Psychological boundaries between groups may be impermeable or
impassable

Consequences

- Categorisation is psychological salient

o Become depersonalised in sense of self or others
o Think, feel, behave in terms of prototype
- Self knowledge
o Dismayed when finding stuff you didn’t want to

Self motives and construction of self knowledge Sedikides 1993

1. Self assessment
 a. Desire to learn about yourself
b. Pursuit of information about self
c. Truth about self no matter how bad it may be
d. Increased self reflection on peripheral traits
2. Self verification
a. Pursuit of information persistent with self image
b. Satisfies need of validation
c. Underpins what we already know about ourselves
d. Central rather than peripheral
3. Self enhancement
a. Learning favourable things about self
b. Guides pursuit on how we see ourselves
c. Guides to revisit bad views
d. Self affirmation theory
i. Publicly affirm positive assets
ii. Subtle in rationalisation

Self esteem

- Strong need for positive self

- Overestimate good points / control of events and unrealistic
o Self enhancing triad
- Terror management
o Death and attempt to best ourselves before then
o High self esteem will allow escape from contemplation of own
death
o Makes people feel good about selves / immortal
o Acquire symbolic immortality
 Cultural institutions and world views
- Need to form relationships with sense of belonging
o Internal monitor of social acceptance and belonging
o Strongly correlated with reduced anxiety and exclusion

Differences in self esteem

- Most people feel relatively positive about themselves

- Low self esteem can link to many different problems outside of self
o Spawned huge industry to attempt to boost these self esteem
issues
o Especially in school and child concepts
o This may be caused by modern society
- Violence can be associated with high self esteem
o Erupt in violence when positive self esteem is threatened
o Can also be arrogant
 - Maladjusted to interpersonal problems should someone be
narcissistic
o Prone to violence when felt threatened

Above average effect

- Bias towards self

- Unable to do so then mental illness
- Self conceptual positivity bias is psychologically attributed
- Can be off putting and maladaptive
- Small enough to not effect conceptual analysis

Readings
Funder – debate – are our social perceptions
often inaccurate? NO
Introduction

- “error” in social judgement influences accuracy issues

o Error = judgment of experiment stimulus that departs from
model
o Mistake = incorrect judgment of real world stimulus
- Not necessarily relevant to the content or accuracy of particular
judgements
- Detection of error implies existence of mistake

Evolution of research on accuracy and error

Ebbesen and Konecni (1980)

- Judgments not the same

- Common with certain specialised occupational groups

Vernon (1933)

- How well subjects can predict performance of themselves and

others

Estes (1938)

- Judge stimulus persons viewed on film and assessed accuracy

Dymond (1949) MOST COMMON

 - Accuracy of judgements made by group members about others

Cronbach (1955)

- Some complexities in data interpretation neglected

- Keeping separate components of judgement

Asch (1946)

- People combine social information on data how subjects evaluate

lists

Jones and Davis (1965)

- Correspondent inference theory

o Psych theory proposed and systematically accounts for
perceivers inferences

Kelley (1967)

- Attributional cube
o Tend to attribute behaviour to internal dispositional causes

- Human judgement often changes from perceptions

- Model departs from prescribed conventions of theory known as error

2 meanings of error

1. Done, said, believed incorrectly

2. Difference between observed value of magnitude and true meaning
of value
- Departures from the experimenters standard for true response

Errors in visual perception

- One domain which the distinction between errors and mistakes

usually kept clear

PONZO’S ILLUSION

- Two lines that converge upward, two lower lines yet one appears
longer than the other (it is not)

MILLER-LYER ILLUSION

- Reversed arrowheads appear to lengthen middle line (do not)

Production of errors and illusions

- Gregory (1971)
o Effective visual system can be fooled
  Dual reality keeps visual errors from being mistakes
 Perceptual research can be constructed so as to not only
be artificial but impossible

social errors in a wider context

OVER ATTRIBUTION

- Jones and Harris (1967)

o Subjects assumed that pro-Castro essays were written by the
correct authors, they committed an attribution error
o Judgmental flaw
- Nisbett and Ross (1980)
o Perfectly straightforward and error made is clear
o Experimenter provides subject with info that is normally
irrelevant then asks them to make judgement
- Jones and Harris (1967)
o Given essay then asked to judge writers true attitude
o Writer was told what to write, judge true attitudes instead

PROCESSING INCONSISTENT INFORMATION

- Herman, read, Kenny (1983)

o 2 word descriptions of hypothetical stimulus (consistent or
not)
o Tendency to rate higher traits when consistent
- Asch and Zukier (1984)
o How subjects integrate information about person when
congruent vs in
o Each serves to strengthen the other
- Bernman et al (1983)
o Subjects made error or wrong judgement as applied own
meanings

SOCIAL ROLES

- Ross, Amabile, Steinmetz (1977)

o 2 experiments
 1. Pairs of subjects were randomly assigned to
questioner and contestant and latter tried to answer –
contestant rated himself inferior to the questioner
 2. Uninvolved observers watched realistic reenactment
of same situation and manifested same energy
o What does this say about those who do / don’t
 Males (less females) least vulnerable to role effect, least
socially competent
  Individual differences in role effect correlated with self
esteem
 Not symptom of social maladjustment

THE INFORMATION GIVEN AND BEYOND

- Subjects are presented with essay written by stimulus person, given

description of someone or placed into the encounter
- Wider contextualising leads to judgement that’s incorrect
- Also apply to human judgments

Getting fix on accuracy

Two questions

1. Research on process of judgement does not address the differences

between errors and mistakes – what sort of empirical research
addresses the accuracy issue
2. Are judgements right or wrong?

3 ways to follow this advise

1. Simplest approach note the general success which may negotiate

social worlds
2. Research presenting subjects with social stimuli in lab, fairly
representative
3. Research goes directly to heart of accuracy issue

2 meanings of accuracy

1. Agreement, ordinary discourse assumed that two observers must

generally agree
2. Pragmatic definition of accuracy, ability to predict behaviour

Some evidence on accuracy of judgements

CORRELATIONS BETWEEN SELF-JUDGMENTS AND OTHERS

- Agreement between judges, might agree that it’s wrong or right

- Interpretation is more certain when 2 judgments fail to agree: at
least one must be wrong
- Degree of argument is necessary for accuracy
- Proper care taken to use valid rating scales and peer judges “see
ourselves as others see us”

CORRELATIONS AMONG OTHERS JUDGMENTS

- Studies on self other agreement just cited also demonstrate

substantial correlations among different persons

CORRELATIONS BETWEEN BEHAVIOUR AND JUDMENTS OF PERSONALITY

 - Domain of person perception we cannot hope for correlations of .99
follow Brunswik and calculate the correlations
- Peer ratings are well respected
- Typically correlations between personality ratings and overt
behaviour significant

SIZE OF THE RELATIONS

- Actual correlation coefficients usually in .30 to .40

- Rosenthal and Rubin (1979, 1982)
o No, invented method for displaying sizes vividly
o Binomial effect size display

Remaining questions

- Errors not mistakes, judgments incorrect in terms of limited

experimental context
- Judgments usually made have real life consequences

Ross and nisbett – debate – are our social

perceptions often inaccurate YES.
Aim / goal

- Social psychology rivals philosophy as it challenges people to

believe that they do not understand the nature of the world

Weakness of individual difference

Scenario

- John walks across campus, he finds a man in a doorway asking for

help
o Will john offer help or will he continue on his way?
- Youd want to know more about john first
o What kind of person is john
o With this information – people assume they can make a
confident prediction as to how john will respond
- However
o Nothing you learn will be helpful in this situation
o One cannot accurately decide how john will react
 At least not based on past
- Precedence of scientific research
o Predictability ceiling is normally a max of 0.30
 o Correlation between measured individual differences on given
trait and behaviour in situation = test the dimension
o 0.3 still leaves great bulk of variance in peoples behaviour
unaccounted for
o Regardless of the science behind it we still believe we can
accurately make predictions only based on our culture

Power of situations

- We know we cant predict his behaviour, this also means we

disregard the need for additional information leading up to the
moment he runs into the person
o What was the appearance
o Clearly intoxicated / ill
o Clothing status

Empirical parables are important in social psych

- Pick a generic situation

- Identify and manipulate the situational or contextual variable
- Note the difference

Lay personology and lay social psychology

Lay disposition and the fundamental distribution error

- Evidence that people are inclined to offer dispositional explanations

for behaviour instead of situational ones
- They would make inferences bout characteristics of actors then also
make inferences

Inferring dispositions from situationally produced behaviour

- Failing to discount the behaviour in the constraints

o SCENARIO
 College asked to read essays from other students, writer
assigned one side of issue while the reader assigned the
other
 Subjects cannot make inferential use of
information without situational constraints
 Not to demonstrate that lay perceivers fail to be
appropriately sensitive to constraints
 Study indicates that observers are too willing to
take behaviour at face value, even when there are
extreme constraints
- Attribution volunteering to disposition rather than compensation
offered
 o SCENARIO
 Watch actors take on a decision making study, make a
real decision, some offered good money, others not, 1/5
took low pay 2/3 took high pay
 Study shows obvious widely appreciated factor,
slighted in explanation and prediction as it is in
dispositional terms
 Volunteering actors predicted to be more likely to
partake even if not compensated
 Misled by actors behaviour, assumed it was a
dispositional tendency rather than suitably
compensated opportunity
- Ignoring role determinants in favour of dispositional inferences
o SCENARIO
 Brief game of college bowl, quiz and answer games,
challenging but not impossible questions, took
advantage to show esoteric knowledge in questions,
both were observers and rated the other depending on
knowledge level
 People fail to perceive the extent to what subtler
factors can determine nature of behaviour
 Expect that it was clear to observers that
questioner might have substantial role advantage
but not clear
 Adv of questioner did not provide obvious to
anyone to prevent them from being seen as
unusually knowledgeable

How could we be so wrong?

Question is framed in terms of evolutionary theory

- Judgment about others is key to survival and we can not be terribly

wrong about them
- Dangerous arguments in psychology
- Does not serve organism that must have it

Whether personality judgment of the sorr discussed are all that important

- Social psychology of strangers and asserts the errors and

categorised our judgement about strangers, this may have nothing
to do with the judgment about intimates

Lay personality theory can be applied to most judgements regarding

people we don’t know well
 - Evolutionary pressures more likely to have been applied to
judgement of intimates than strangers
- Error of lay is that there are not mere foibles

Kelly and Duckitt – experiment – self esteem

and ethnic identity in SA, status, power,
legitimacy
Abstract

- Discrimination against black minority was originally viewed as

causing them to see their own group negatively = impaired self
esteem
- Inconsistent finding
- Higher self esteem in their older age rather than younger

Introduction

- Initial research showed that the awareness existed in both groups 3

years old and developed by 6 years
- Consistently confirmed
- Clark and Clark (1947) showed both races preferred white dolls and
rejected black dolls, younger black children misidentified
themselves
- Hraba and Grant (1970) said that clark took this as black children
would prefer to be white
- Asher and Allens (1969) was that children negatively evaluate POC
and positively evaluate white
- Associated with poor self esteem
- Fanon (1952/1991) disalienation of black people shows the
immediate recognition of black people

- Gregor and McPherson (1966) inescapable implications that attend

identification with a group has ascribed negativity can be expected
to lower the self esteem

- Direct relationship between outgroup and ingroup preferences that

tend to be associated with lower self esteem in group preference
 - Historical changes make this research and findings inconsistent

- Ward and Braun (1972) consistent that black children preferring

black dolls meant higher self esteems

- George and Hoppe (1979) positive correlation of racial identification

and preference with self esteem

- Branch and Newcombe (1980) unexpectedly found that more white

doll preferences were made by children with activist parents

Objectives of research

- Primary
o Out group preference, associated with lower self esteem in
minority children
- Examine age trends in group and out group
- Correlation between in group and outgroup may vary at different
ages

Hypothesis

- Tentatively hypothesised that this corelation would be powerful in

younger children but weaker in older

Method

Subjects

- 78 black SA in segregated school

- Middle childhood and late childhood 22 girls and 15 boys
- Lower socioeconomic backgrounds
- No significant political activity or violence
- Tswana as first language, English main instruction

Instruments

- Kats-Zalk projective test (measure racial preference)

o Slides of children in ambiguous situation, recipient of positive
or negative event
o Simply choose while child had this event
o 21 depict negative 17 positive 17 buffer
o Degree of racial identification coefficient typically 0,75
o Strong support for construct validity of test as measure for
preference
- Piers-harris childrens self concept scale (measure self esteem)
 o 80 simple descriptive items addressing self evaluation on
behaviour, status, intellect, appearance, anxiety, popularity,
satifisfaction
o Simply yes or no responses
o High content validity of the scale

Both tests translated to Tswana and then back to English

Both appeared on paper an by audio

Problems

- Length of piers-harris scale, impractical for group admin to young

children
- Not individual interpretation, scale was reduced to 40 items only
- 30 items left in the scale

Results

- Differences between two groups on racial preference scores were in

expected direction, overall ethnocentrisms and own group racial
pride being significant
- F test also showed significance difference between two age groups
on self esteem
- Proportion of own-group favouring responses for older group was
close to 0.5 “suggesting non-preference”
- Subjects not responding with much consistency coefficients for all
three racial measures
- Coalesced into clear cut attitudinal dimensions

Relevant theories

Tajfel and turners 1979 social identity theory

- Proposes that intergroup and interpersonal behaviour, attitudes may

not be directly linked and may be independently determined

Simmons, crocker and major 1978, 1989 comparisons theory

- Argued that self esteem derives primarily from comparisons with

family, peer, friends
- Ingroup outgroup status and power differentials may generally have
little relevance for minorities persons self esteem
- Minority children who have frequent interpersonal contact with
majority members in settings that make differentials clear

Conclusion
 - Findings suggest that both ingroup preference and self esteem of
black SA children increase with age , not directly linked
- Own group and outgroup preference and identification of black
minority children in SA do not appear to impact on self attitudes

Shutts and Kinzler – experiment – self

esteem and ethnic identity in SA, status,
power, legitimacy
Abstract

- Minority race children in NA and EU often show less own race

favoritism, than children of majority race, yet asymmetry is
unresolved
- SA children in order to probe influences of group size, familiarity and
social status on children’s race based preferences
- SA preference for members of country main base, compared to
other groups
- POC 3-13 tested in black township preferred people of own gender
but not race
- Showed group bias by gender but not by race (all favoured were
white)
- Relative familiarity and numerical majority/minority status therefore
do not fully account for children’s attributes with relative social
status

Introduction

- Prefer members of groups that are larger, familiair and higher status
- Personal encounters, exposure to media, observations around them
- Primary underlying factors of childrens asymmetric race preferences
are unresolved
- SA unique profile and history can shed light
- IF social status was primary force then white should prefer their own
more than poc

Study 1
Participants

- Probed race preferences of POC and white attending diverse primary

school
- Children viewed Xhosa paired with different faces and asked what
they preferred

Design

- Viewed a photo and paired to same gender of adult of different race

or nationality
- 8 pairs of each type intermixed and blocked by gender
- Lateral position of Xhosa face was counterbalanced both within
gender and pairing condition across children

Result

- Preferred faces that were not Xhosa, choosing the face only 36% of
the time
- Showed high similar race preferences: all preferred white coloured
to POC
- Not exhibit systematic own-race favouritism as POC children
- Findings cast doubt on thesis statements

Study 2

Participants

- Preference of study 1, categorisation task to children living in

township in CPT area
- Tested in Xhosa home by Xhosa tester speaking in Xhosa, single
testing session, assessed social preferences and their group
categorizations of people in photographs

Results

- More accurate at distinguishing Xhosa faces from coloured and

white
- Xhosa lack of own race favouritism did not stem from failure to
categorise or from lack of motivation
- Both studies suggest that social status may play a role in guiding
children race preferences

Study 3

Participants

- Xhosa children in Langa with pairs of photos of SA adults and

children who differed in race or gender
- Studied the same as study 2
Results

- Race condition, no preference between black and white faces

- Preferences for white when showing opposite gender
- Showed own gender preference
- Suggest that these children prefer other children and adults of their
own gender but not of their own race

Study 4

Participants

- Method of study 3 to test the race and gender preferences of the

children from CPT school

Results

- Race trails, significant preference for white children

- Children showed preferences for own gender

Study 5

Participants

- Reveal very similar gender preferences among children of different

races tested in different communities
- POC showed preferences for people in own gender
- Patterns of race preferences
- Showed preference for white children whereas black children in right
area showed no preference

Results

- 4 primary conclusions
o Group size and familiarity not primary determinants
o Children racial preferences reflect the relative status of
different groups
o Race based social preferences even when raised in diverse
country
o Social status not the only factor that contributes to the
children guide on groups

Baumeister – debate – are self esteem

programs misguided? YES
Aim
 - Awareness and vision, leadership, advocacy for improving human
condition through enhancement of self esteem

Introduction

- Intuitively recognize importance of self esteem to psychological

health
- Americans who see self as central all positive
- Low self esteem at root of individual and dysfunctional
- High levels of self esteem promote emotional well being and
stability, social and behavioural adaptation academic achievement
and even resilience to the emergence of disorders

In the eye of the beholder

- Most investigations just ask people what they think of themselves,

naturally answers often coloured by common tendency to make self
look good
- 1995 Edward Diener and Brain Wolsic in USA and Frank Fuijita
o Obtained self esteem scores from broad sample of population
and then photographed everyone, presenting to panel of
judges to evaluate for attractiveness.

School daze

- Potent tool to help students would be to increase self esteem

- Correlation between self esteem and academic performance
- Modern efforts have cast doubt on the idea of high self esteem that
includes students to do better
- Some purpose for self esteem ? nope
- High self esteem only truly means who you associate yourself with
that will keep your self esteem high and allow you to remain on the
path that you want

Dubois and Tevendale – debate – are self

esteem programs misguided? NO

Aim

- Is self esteem really a powerful influence on youth adjustment?

 - Adaptive implications of self esteem during childhood and
adolescence instead appear to be complex and differentiated,
ranging from highly beneficial to possibly even negative

Abstract

- Consider:
o Multiple distinct facets of self esteem
o Moderating influence of youth characterises, environmental
exp, processes the formation and maintenance of self esteem.
o Bidirectional, recursive linkages between self esteem and
adaptive functioning throughout development
- Implications for interventions designed to enhance youth self
esteem are discussed

Self esteem debate

- Assumptions underlying such practises have become the subject of

increased scrutiny and crisism
o Damon 1995 Kohn 1994
 Several scholars adopted highly sceptical stancetoward
the presumed importance of self esteem and instead
argued that likely consequence for healthy
developmental factors “social vaccine”
o Seligman 1993
 Asserted that low or high self esteem is reflection that
your commerce with world going bad or good
- Contrasting perspective, self esteem makes significant contribution
to adaptive outcomes of children, adolescences = always in
literature
- Disparate viewpoints are referred to in the present article
o Empirical support for each side
o Recent findings show complex, differential relationship
between self esteem and adaptive outcomes in development
o Self esteem debate is revisited and recommendations are
offered for both future research and intervention

self esteem as “vaccine”

- Empirical support for views emphasising the adaptive significance of

self esteem during childhood in literature
o High level of self esteem among youth been linked to variety
of favourable outcomes, mood, satisfaction, physical, health,
behaviour
o Lacking have shown opposite things
 - Longitudinal studies, relatively few, potential to shed light to degree
of levels self esteem exp by youth influence
o High levels, academic performance and adaptive benefits
o Several investigations have also found levels of self esteem to
have utility in prediction of functioning in adulthood

Self esteem as epiphenomenon

- Influences adaptive way of developing youth

- .22 correlation was found between academics and self esteem
- Patterns have been inconsistent
- Can show maladaptive functioning linked with self esteem

Beyond the self esteem debate

- Neither views of self esteem enjoys a particularly strong or

convincing support

Several promising trends in research move beyond these:

- Adaptive significance of multiple facets of self esteem

o Research reflects a growing interest in refined ass that target
multiple, in youth
 Domain specific self evaluations
 Strong support for multidimensional frameworks
 Exhibit relationships with youth adjustment even
when controlling for levels of global self esteem
 Profile reacting with relatively more favourable
views of self in school, family, peer relations and
associated domains
- Neg and pos dimensions of self evaluation
o Closely examine the relations between positive and negative
dimensions of self esteem and relevant outcomes or
correlates, cannot simply assume
- Presented self esteem
o Dimensions of self esteem corresponding to exp and
presented self have been distinguished in this regard with
former encompassing
 Findings of studies included measures of both
experienced and presented, concluded that the two
could be reliably distinguished with estimated degree
 Nearly exclusive reliance on self report measures of self
esteem in research investigating adaptive correlates,
available findings primarily addresses exp aspects of
self esteem rather than presented
SCENARIO
 o Elementary school children self perception of academic
competence and objective measure obtained, see a issue with
over raters = greater self reported and teacher reported
anxiety, lower self esteem, poorer coping
 Appears even when self reported high levels of self
esteem are unfavourable, relationships in expected
directions revealed
 Observational ,measures may be particularly useful
- Self esteem stability
o Correlational estimates have indicated considerable overall
stability in levels of self esteem, yet implicated by:
 Masking important patterns
 Contrasting down longitudinal trajectories in self esteem
 More short term day to day fluctuations
 Lack in stability = fragile or vulnerable feelings
- Moderating influences
o Youth characteristics
 Age, gender, race, associations with self esteem,
consistent with disidentification hypothesis,
 Types of complex patterns of results in which linkages
have been revealed to be dependant on various
combinations seem to be likely more commonplace as
researchers expand
o Environmental stress and disadvantage
 Among children and teen exposed to stressful life,
corresponding to self esteem accordingly
 Deserves special consideration as a factor to adaptive
outcomes
o Processes in the formation and maintain self esteem
 Emphasis on normative and realistic sources of feelings
of self worth in development – this can promote self
esteem
 One mechanism suggested to contribute to neg
outcomes in the absence of normative or realistic bases
for self esteem is the lack of fit, views and expectations
from surroundings
- Bidirectional recursive effects
o Self esteem may influence adaptive outcomes during
development, not preclude potential for patterns of
adjustments
o Adaptive functioning proved to promote positive feelings of
self worth
 o Potential for mutually reinforcing ongoing patterns of
influence, bidirectional effects could prove to be self-
sustaining
o Important mechanism whereby short-term immediate effects
of self esteem are maintained and accelerated
- Self esteem as mediator of other influences on youth adjustments
o Most studies of adaptive correlates of self esteem,
incorporated relatively little, if any factors of self worth were
derived
o Prevailing views of self esteem as having favorable role in
child, other investigations have been examined self esteem as
outcome of various influences without exploring nature of
relationship
o Exception, studies broadened to systematically examine self
esteem as mediator of other influences
o Self esteem has been conceptualised in research “intervening
process” when many factors effect different aspects of
adaption
- Self esteem and the developing system
o Primary is that implications of self esteem for adaptive
outcomes are dependent on extent and nature of linkages
o Consistent with possibility of key interdependencies between
self esteem and other areas

Conclusions and recommendations

Debate revisited: vaccine or epiphenomenon

- Self esteem debate = has pitted view of self esteem as social

vaccine and casual agent, but merely epiphenomenon
- Available findings indicate that neither position provides particularly
accurate or enlightening account
- Results instead point to complex and differentiated relationship
between self esteem and adjustments

Directions for future research

- Further study is needed to clarify the fully complex role of self

esteem in child and teen development
o Multifaceted construct within context of developing self
system
o Investigation of influences moderating relationship to self
esteem youth adjustments
o Long term, prospective studies
 o Examining the role of self esteem as mediator of other
influences of adjustment

Implications for intervention

- Increased critics of such programs in recent years

- Evaluation outcome data indicate only modest, short lived increases
in self esteem for youth
- Attention to this concern in both design and evaluation of esteem
enhancement for youth can bring positivity

Relationship between self esteem and youth adjustment

suggested by empirical research

- Design interventions to enhance multiple facets of self esteem and

relevant other self esteem components
- Target programs to specific populations
- Intervene to directly promote adaptive functioning

Concluding comments

- Overall picture that is conveyed, however is much less

straightforward than typically been assumed, neither of these
options seems defensible to us
- We are reminded in this regard of the observation that “for every
problem there is a simple answer that is wrong”
- Further investigation of promising developments in research careful
consideration of their implications for intervention will be necessary
in order to ensure that this admonition does not go unheeded.