Midterm 1: the Self
Evidence that the self is important to us:
How we think about ourselves
How we spent 30-40% of our conversations talking about ourselves
How we react to compliments
How we look at our future
Better-than-average effect
How people tend to overestimate themselves and think they're in the top 50% in different skills and tasks.
How much people do it depends on the trait, how desirable it is and how it is measured.
SAT Rankings Experiment and its corresponding concept
After taking the SAT's, 85% of people assume that they are in the top 50% in terms of scores.
Concept: better-than-average effect
Social Media Likes Experiment and its corresponding concept
Participants were told whether or not their social media posts has been liked, and their nucleus accumbus brain activity is measured. They found that they activate more when people are told their post got more liks, indicating that getting likes is pleasureable like any other physical stimuli.
Concept: how we react to simple niceness shows that we care a lot about the self.
Self-disclosure Experiment and corresponding concept
People were asked to talk about either themselves or somebody else. Their nucleus accumbus showed more signs of pleasure when talking about themselves.
Concept: the simple act of self disclosure is pleasurable so our sense of self must be important to us.
Optimism Bias
The tendency for people to assume that good things will happen to them.
What is the self?
It is a made-up concept/story, but it is always in the back of our minds, so it doesn't feel that way. It is at the center of all our emotions and reactions because everything we do and feel are based on how outside stimuli interacts with us.
Self's connections with mental illnesses
Depression: often massively contributed to ruination, repetitive negative thoughts about yourself.
Schizopherenia: one common dillusion is that someone is out to get them.
disassociative states: people lose their sense of self and sometimes take on new identities, showing that the self is changing.
Capgras syndrome: people think someone they love is replaced by and imposter.
Different parts of the self
I-self: the self as the experiencer of events, of body ownership and free will.
Me-self: the self as an object that could be subject to critique and reflection
Rubber Hand Experiment and corresponding concept
People are asked to put their hand underneath a rubber hand and the other on a table. Both hands are stroked, but they feel as though that instead of the rubber hand being stroked, their actual hand is also being stroked.
Corresponding concept: the I-self and how your sense of body ownsership could be changed and manipulated, showing that it is indeed just a made-up concept.
Wrist-flick Brain Signal Experiment and corresponding concept
People are told to make a mental note of whether or not they decide to flick their wrist. Usually, the decision was made 200ms before the actual action, but there was actually a brain signal 500ms before that that could predict whether or not the wrist was going to be flicked.
Concept: the free-will aspect of the I-self is an illusion and your decision-making is more like a signal that something is going to happen.
Aspects of the me-self
Self-concept, self-esteem, autobiographical memory, prospection
Self-concept
Knowledge, whether facts or abstract.
Self-esteem
Your sense of self worth.
There is implicit and explicit self-esteem.
Secure self-esteem
High implicit and explicit self-esteem.
Tends to be relatively stable over time.
Defensive self-esteem
High explicit but low implicit self-esteem.
Tends to fluctuate and waver a lot.
Narcicissm
Behaviour marked by a grandiose sense of self and self-importance.
Contigent self-worth (CSW)
The idea that our self of self-worth is hinged on different things.
Exam Self-Worth Experiment and corresponding concept
Student's self-worths were measured after taking a test, and it is found that those with academic CSW's sense of self-worth are impacted more by their grades, but generally everyone gets impacted negatively by a bad grade.
Concept: Contigent self-worth
Introspection
Seeing memories, feelings and desires by turning your attention inwards to understand the me-self, althought accuracy is overestimated and sources of behaviour are not always concious.
Telling-More-Than-You-Know Experiment and corresponding concept
4 different stockings and participants have to choose one and explain one. People have a perference for the one on the right hand side, but no one mentions it's position when asked why. They always make up a random reason.
Concept: the fact that introspection is unreliable.
Emotion priming
If you are exposed to emotional non-concious content, it still affects your actions.
Chinese Characters Experiment and corresponding concept
People were exposed to happy/sad emotional cues for a moment too quick to conciously comprehend then asked to judge Chinese characters. People judged Chinese characters based on the emotional cues.
Concept: emotional priming
Self-perception
A way of looking at the me-self by infering information from looking at our own behaviours and actions.
Dating Profile Experiment and corresponding concept
People were told whether others were interested in them, unsure or not interested in them based on their dating profile, then asked to rank how much they liked those that gave their opinions. People tended to like those that are unsure of whether or not they were interested becaise they spent more time thinking about them so they infer that they must like them.
Concept: self-perception.
Flow
A feeling of bliss experienced by people at their most happy moment. It is like losing their sense of self.
Marked by: loss of sense of time, action and awareness blurring, loss of self-conciousness, sense of ecstasy.
Psilocybin
Magic mushrooms that induces an ego death where people loose their sense of self-conciousness and I-self so they are left with a sense of contempt.
Non-Attachment to Self Scale
An inventory/index that measures how much we take ourselves seriously. People say that many of our problems come percisely because we do it too much.
Self-regulation
Ability to control our own emotions, both done conciously and unconciously. Mostly done to increase happiness, but sometime done to surpression position emotion and increase negative emotion as well.
This ability is what seperates humans from animals.
Congitive reappraisal
Reinterpreting circumstandces and situations to change hoe we feel about them.
Exam Nervousness Experiment and corresponding concept
People were told before an exam that test anxiety would help prepare them to do better. They had similar levels of bodily arousal as those that didn't get the message, but they reported feeling less nervous and did better on the exam.
Concept: cognitive reappraisal
Free-choice Paradigm and corresponding concept
People were told to rank 6 paintings and given one to take home. When asked to bring back the paintings and re-rank them, they found that the painting they took home got ranked higher in this new ranking.
Concept: cognitive reappraisal
Negative Description Experiment and corresponding concept
People were presented with a negative stimulus and gives a neutral or negative description. Their brains were then measured for signals of negative emotions. More emotional arrousal were present in those that were given the negative description.
Concept: cognitive reappraisal
Mindfulness meditation
A way to self-regulate and control emotions by paying closely to bodily sensation and ignoring thoughts. When thoughts show up, they are awknowledged and floated away.