https://carleton.codeblu.ca/quizzes/social-psych-quiz1-review
Important
- Attribution Theory and Motivation – Attribution theory describes how individuals explain the causes of behavior along dimensions of locus of causality, stability, controllability, globality, and intentionality. Attributing academic failure to unstable, controllable factors like lack of effort generates guilt and maintains motivation, whereas attributing failure to stable, uncontrollable factors like lack of ability produces shame and helplessness, backing textbook research showing that internal attributions for effort foster self-efficacy and achievement.
- Self-Serving Attributions – Individuals tend to attribute positive outcomes to internal personal traits and negative outcomes to external situational factors. Neuroimaging research reveals that choosing self-serving attributions activates reward-processing brain structures to select the highest rewarding alternative and protect self-esteem, which aligns with textbook findings on how self-serving biases excuse personal failures and accept credit for successes.
- Self-Discrepancy Theory and Self-Regulation – Behavioral regulation relies on ideal selves (wishes and aspirations) and ought selves (duties and obligations) functioning as self-guides. Deviations from ideal self standards produce dejection-related emotions such as shame and depression, whereas deviations from ought self standards trigger agitation-related emotions such as guilt and anxiety, supported by textbook descriptions of the self managing long-term goals and self-restraint.
- Promotion vs. Prevention Focus – Behavioral regulation operates through a promotion focus targeting ideal self standards and positive outcomes, or a prevention focus targeting ought self standards and avoiding negative outcomes. Promotion focus predominates in independent cultures, whereas prevention focus predominates in interdependent cultures, backing textbook evidence on cultural variations in self-construal and social motives.
- Self-Presentation and Self-Monitoring – Self-presentation involves expressing oneself to create desired impressions on internal and external audiences, while self-monitoring reflects the degree to which individuals observe and adjust their performance to fit situational contexts. High self-monitors adjust their behavior as social chameleons, whereas low self-monitors act consistently according to internal traits, reinforcing textbook findings on how impression management regulates social interactions and evaluation anxiety.
Core concepts
- Compartmentalization of the Self: The self is structurally divided into the self-concept (self-schemas, self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-deception), the agent self (executive function, decision-making, active responding, self-control), and the social self (self-presentation, social roles, reputation, group memberships), supported by textbook models integrating self-knowledge, self-worth, social identity, and executive control.
- Better-Than-Average Effect: The systematic tendency for most individuals to evaluate themselves more favorably than the average person across subjective, desirable dimensions like ethics, intelligence, and professional competence, backed by textbook surveys showing that subjective qualities provide leeway to construct self-serving definitions of success.
- Self-Enhancement: The psychological motive to maintain, increase, or protect positive self-views using self-serving attributions, better-than-average comparisons, and self-affirmation, which Chapter 2 supports by documenting how self-enhancing perceptions buffer against daily stress and negative affect.
- Self-Verification: The motivation to confirm pre-existing self-views to maintain a stable, predictable social world by actively seeking, attending to, and recalling self-confirming feedback and choosing verifying relationship partners, backed by textbook research on how self-image confirmation guides cognitive assessments of feedback validity.
- Cultural Differences in Self-Enhancement: Western individualistic cultures display significantly stronger self-enhancement tendencies than Eastern collectivistic cultures, where individuals are more self-critical and relationally embedded, corroborated by textbook findings that independent self-concepts remain stable across contexts while interdependent self-concepts vary by situation.
- Self-Affirmation: A self-enhancement strategy where an individual focuses on an unrelated, valued domain of the self when a specific aspect of identity is threatened, maintaining overall self-worth and reducing defensive responses like denying failure, supported by textbook coverage of self-affirmation theory.
- Impression Management: The aspect of the public social self concerned with orchestrating how one is perceived by others in social settings, which textbook evidence reinforces by demonstrating how people adjust self-presentation on social platforms and in romantic dating contexts.
Theories and Frameworks
- Attribution Theory: A framework explaining how individuals infer the causes of behavior and how those causal attributions dictate emotional reactions and future motivation, supported by textbook models showing that internal attributions for effort enhance self-efficacy and task persistence.
- Self-Discrepancy Theory: Edward Tory Higgins’ model proposing that self-regulation is guided by comparing the actual self against ideal and ought selves, where specific gaps produce distinct dejection or agitation emotions and direct promotion or prevention regulatory foci, backed by textbook analysis of how actual-ideal and actual-ought gaps influence self-worth.
- Dual-Motive Model of Self-Evaluation: A framework contrasting self-enhancement, which governs emotional reactions to feedback (feeling good about praise), with self-verification, which governs cognitive assessments of feedback validity (evaluating accuracy based on pre-existing self-views), corroborated by textbook findings on self-verification in close relationships.
Notable Individuals
- Edward Tory Higgins: Formulated Self-Discrepancy Theory, demonstrating how ideal and ought self-guides direct behavioral regulation and produce dejection or agitation emotions when discrepancies occur, supported by textbook coverage of self-discrepancy and self-evaluation.
- William Swann: Conducted seminal research on self-verification theory, showing that individuals seek feedback confirming their pre-existing self-views and that relationship length determines whether self-verification is preferred over self-enhancement, cited in the textbook for work on self-verification and relationship commitment.
- Seidel et al.: Conducted fMRI research identifying neural activation patterns associated with self-serving attributions during imagined positive and negative social events.
- Zell et al.: Executed meta-analytic research on the better-than-average effect, demonstrating its widespread presence across subjective self-evaluations.
- Ross & Sicoly: Demonstrated how self-serving attributions function to protect and enhance self-image following task outcomes.
- Mark Leary: Researched self-presentation, self-monitoring, and formulated Sociometer Theory, demonstrating how self-esteem acts as a gauge monitoring social inclusion and relational value.
- Roy Baumeister: Researched executive self-control, ego depletion, and the distinction between the self-concept, agent self, and social self.