HOW DO WE SEE AND EXPLAIN OURSELVES

 

We have considered how we explain others behavior paying special attention to the fundamental attribution error. Social psychologists also study how we explain our own behavior and how we select, interpret, and recall information about ourselves. During the 1980s no topic in psychology was more researched tan the self. In 1990 the word “self” appeared in nearly 4000 book and article summaries in Psychological Abstracts more than double the proportion of 20 years earlier. This new wave of research revealed that our ideas about ourselves powerfully affect how we process social information. Our sense of self organizes our thoughts, feelings, and actions, thereby influencing how we perceive, remember and evaluate both other people and ourselves. The self serves as  a sort of mental Dewey Decimal System for cataloging and retrieving information. One example is the self-reference effect: when information is relevant to our self conceptions, we process it more quickly and remember it better. If asked whether specific words, such as outgoing describe us, we later remember those words better than if asked whether they describe someone else. If asked to compare ourselves with a character in a short story, we remember that character better.

But as we process self-relevant information, a potent bias intrudes. We readily attribute our failures to difficult situations  and just as readily take credit for our successes. This feeds what for most people is a favorable self-image, enabling them to enjoy the benefits of positive self-esteem while occasionally suffering the perils of self-righteous pride.

The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known. Current views of the self in psychology position the self as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity. Self following from John Locke has been seen as a product of episodic memory but research upon those with amnesia find they have a coherent sense of self based upon preserved conceptual autobiographical knowledge. It may be the case that we can now usefully attempt to ground experience of self in a neural process with cognitive consequences, which will give us insight into the elements of which the complex multiply situated selves of modern identity are composed.

THE WORKING SELF-CONCEPT -  MARKUS & WURF

The working self-concept suggests the idea that not all self-representations or identities that are part of the complete self-concept will be accessible at any one time (Markus & Wurf, 1987). The working self-concept, or the self-concept of the moment, is best viewed as a “continually active, shifting array of accessible self-knowledge” (Hinkley & Anderson, 1996). The self-concept is active, forceful and capable of change. It does not simply reflect behavior, but rather mediates and regulates behavior. It adjusts to different situations and analyzes and interprets relevant experiences.

Although some ambiguity still exists when trying to define precisely what a self-concept is, many recent models have attempted to describe the self-concept in terms of its structural features, focusing on the “nature of cognitive representations of the self” (Greenwald Pratkanis 1984, Kihlstrom & Cantor 1984). Others categorize the self-concept as a system of generalizations about the self derived from past social experiences, or as a “multidimensional meaning space” (Greenwald & Pratkanis 1984, Hoelter 1985). Nonetheless, all researchers do agree on the dynamic and multifaceted nature of the self-concept. It continually adapts to every unique social situation.

Extensive research on the multidimensionality of the self-concept prompted the theory of the working self-concept. Psychologists and sociologists came to the realization that it was no longer possible to refer to just one, sole self-concept. Instead, it was necessary to refer to the “working, on-line, or accessible self-concept” (Schlenker 1985b, Cantor & Kihlstrom 1986, Markus & Nurius 1986, Rhodewalt 1986, Rhodewalte & Agustsdottir 1986). Individuals possess a great diversity of complex knowledge structures from which different substructures can be activated. These substructures can be creatively combined and used to meet the demands of different occasions (Markus & Kunda 1986). Therefore, the self-concept includes a wide variety of self-conceptions, from the good-selves to the bad-selves, to the feared-selves. The self is perhaps best understood as a “family of selves” with various overlapping resemblances, and with some selves more prominent, elaborated and accessible than others (N. Cantor & Kihlstrom,1987; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984; Linville, 1985; Markus & Wurf, 1987; Niedenthal, Setterlund, & Wherry, 1992; Ogilvie, 1987).

The reason for one self-concept to be prevalent over another in certain situations can be attributed to specific environmental cues combined with one’s own personal agendas and needs. (Harter, 1988, 1990; Linville & Carlston, 1994; Markus& Kunda, 1986;Markus& Wurf, 1987;Rhodewalt, 1986). The content of the self-concept at the present time depends on what has been invoked by the individual as a result of an experience, event, or the current social situation. Markus and Wurf (1987) describe the working self-concept as “a temporary structure consisting of elements from the collection of self-conceptions, organized in a configuration determined by ongoing social events” (Markus & Wurf 1987).

A large body of research has indicated that individuals are influenced greatly in all aspects of judgment, memory, and explicit behavior by their currently accessible pool of thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs (Nisbett & Ross 1980, Higgins & King 1981, Sherman et al 1981, Snyder 1982). For example, research by Higgins and King (1981) showed that individual differences in construct accessibility can cause differences both in people's impressions and in their memory of a target person (Higgins & King, 1981). They set up two studies; in the first session of each study, subjects' accessible traits were elicited by asking them to list the characteristics of different people, with accessibility defined as frequency of output (Study 1) or as primacy of output (Study 2). In the second session, held 1 or 2 weeks later and supposedly investigating a different issue for a different researcher, subjects read an essay describing the behaviors of a target person. The essay contained both accessible trait-related information and inaccessible trait-related information for each subject, with different traits being accessible or inaccessible for different subjects. Both studies found that subjects deleted significantly more inaccessible trait-related information than accessible trait-related information in their impressions and in their reproductions of the target information. Moreover, this effect on impressions and reproductions was evident even 2 weeks after exposure to the target information (Study 1) (Higgins & King, 1981).

Some self-conceptions, because of their importance in defining the self, are enduringly salient while others vary in accessibility depending on the social situation and the individual’s affective or motivational state. The self-conceptions that are constantly available for characterizing one’s self are called “chronically accessible” (Higgins, et al 1982). These conceptions are always prevalent in reflecting one’s behavior and have been labeled as “core self-conceptions,” or “self-schemas” (Markus, 1977). This combination of core self-conceptions with fluctuating self-conceptions allows the self-concept to be both stable and malleable at the same time. Central conceptions affect information processing and behavior more prominently, while more peripheral self-conceptions have a smaller, yet still significant effect on how people present themselves (Hinkley & Anderson, 1996). The working self-concept, therefore, consists of core self-conceptions embedded in a context of more tentative self-conceptions that are tied to the current situation (Markus & Wurf, 1987).

Markus and Kunda Study (1986) To prove the malleability of the self-concept, Markus and Kunda (1986) set up an experiment that either questioned participants’ uniqueness to others, or questioned their similarity to others. They asked participants to answer 18 personal questions and then manipulated the results to suggest that participants were either extremely similar or extremely different from everyone else who has participated in the study. Markus and Kunda (1986) reasoned that when people received information about themselves that threatened a certain core self-conception, they would make every effort to reaffirm that aspect of their selves. Thus, people led to think of themselves as extremely similar to others would experience a threat to their uniqueness and strive to reaffirm their self-conceptions of uniqueness, whereas people led to feel extremely unique would attempt to bolster their self-conceptions as similar to others. Fromkin (1970; Snyder & Fromkin, 1980), in fact, has shown that both extreme similarity and extreme uniqueness are aversive states and lead to behavioral attempts to reestablish the opposite state. To prove that the participants had indeed altered their self-perceptions, they were asked to either endorse or not endorse specific words as self-descriptive. Also, the latencies of participants’ “me” or “not me” responses to uniqueness or similarity words was tested in addition to the number of positive and negative associations to uniqueness and similarity words. Results and Conclusion of Study: The experiment indeed confirmed the malleability of the working self-concept. Individuals led to feel unique were apparently disturbed by this knowledge and, following the preference manipulation, viewed the state of uniqueness as negative and undesirable, whereas the state of similarity to others became correspondingly positive and desirable. Subjects led to feel similar felt the exact opposite effect. It showed that a challenging event appears to initiate a process whereby the individual evaluates the information and then responds by attempting to integrate the self-conceptions offered by the environment with existing self-conceptions. In this case, the working self-concept was quite situation dependent (Markus & Kunda, 1986).

In conclusion, evidence suggests that the self-concept should not be viewed as a monolithic entity or a general sense of self that remains static from situation to situation. It instead should be thought of as an extremely adaptive essence that we use to represent ourselves every day in a creative and unique way.