Self esteem
We devote much time to finding out who we are,
we also have a important evalution component
which is briefly described in the SE model. A persons self esteem is their subjective appraisal of themselves as
intrinsically positive or negative and can have significant implications for
psychological functioning-it changed due to context we are in, many individual
differences.
Development of self esteem
How positive our
self concept is in later life appears to depend-to some level on the parenting style of our primary
caregivers (Baumrind 1991). 3 parents styles- 2 dimensions: how demanding
(control/enforcing rules and punishments) and responsive (positive-supportive) a parent is towards a child. Child
with highest SE- authoritative parents- style high in both of these
dimensions, lots of demands on child however responsive, punish bad behaviour
but support.
Lowest SE Authoritarian
parents are over strict and demanding and permissive parents are
responsive but not strict enough. SE in children 6-11 is unstable- still in
process of development of self concept and most stable in 20’s and steadily
declines in 60’s-Robins explains how it reflects life changes later i life such
as retirement.
Consequences of Self Esteem
Baumeister and colleagues
(1989) low self esteem individuals in most studies don’t have low SE in absolute terms just relative terms. People with low Se deal with life events quite
differently than high SE.
Mood regulation
People want to feel
positive about themselves and doing everything to maintain a positive outlook.
Joanne Wood shows people with lower SE are less likely to make the effort. 2
studies-
Wood, Heimpel and michela- low SE people more likely to ‘dampen‘ the good feelings they experience,
trying to make themselves feel less good than those with high SE.
Heimpel, Wood,
Marshall and Brown found participants with lower SE were less likely to express
goals to improve their mood than participants with high SE. Also found having a
goal to improve one’s mood was associated with a greater improvement in the
mood found.
These findings
indicate that people with lower self esteem make less effort to regulate their
mood and don’t try to maintain a good mood after a positive life event or
elevate mood after a negative life event.
Narcissism
Major Critism of
study of SE has been the over-emphasis on the negative consequences of lower
self esteem. Lower SE is frequently citied as an antecedent of anti social
behaviour and general abusive violence however there is very little supportive
evidence for this claim. Baumeister, Smart and Boden (1996). Say other way round although only under
certain circumstances, specifically those with higher SE who have their ego
threatened in some way and react violently to protect it, although not all do
this. Individuals who do react violently are narcissistic so extremely
high SE believe they are superior to others and SE is also unstable. They are reliant on validation from others in order to
maintain their fragile positive self concept; this explains why critism may
generate such a explosive response from these individuals. Study by Bushman and
Baumeister, p’s wrote a one paragraph essay in praise condition given positive feedback
and in threat condition they were told it was the worst. Then finally a
competitive test with a confederate participant where if won the person could
blast a load noise at the other one which varied in intensity, it found that
there was a positive relationship between Narcissism and aggression and the
more you were the more aggressive you would be.
Self Motives
Self concept is also
a key guiding principle in motivating our behaviour.
1. Motive for self
assessment a desire to know who we truly are, regardless if it’s good or
bad. We are motivated to have an accurate SP to reduce uncertainty about our abilities
or personal characteristics. For this reason, people like to complete diagnostic
tests which evaluate the performance of an individual.
2. Motive to seek
information which allows self-verification basically aims to show who we
really are, search for information which confirms what we already believe.
3. Motive for self
enhancement which is to seek out information about ourselves that allows us
to see the self in a positive light. The three can be contradictory e.g.,
people with lower SE might seek for a compromise between self verification and
self involvement like individuals who make them feel better without completely
disconfirming their existing negative self concept.(Morling and Epstein,1997).
Sedikides study
showed that Self-enhancement appears to be the most powerful self motive.
Self enhancement
How to we maintain
positive SE? Split into two strategies.
Self-affirmation theory- When SE has been damaged, people compensate
by focusing on and publically affirming positive aspects of themselves, keeping
positive Self concept. Steele did a study on Mormon community and split
into two conditions the threatened one who damaged there ego by saying they
believed there community was uncooperative in projects and unconcerned with
driver safety, few days later participants had a phone call asking if they
would be willing to list contents of kitchen in order to develop a community
food cooperative. 65% agreed who was in the affirmation agreed compared to 95%
in threat condition who wanted to reaffirmed a positive aspect of there
self-concept.
Self-serving attribution bias when people make attributions about
themselves on the basis of there behaviour, they show self-serving bias attribution
our success to internal characteristics eg i got a A because IM clever. When we
fail we show self protecting bias, attributing our failure to external
characteristics eg I failed because I was ill on the day of exam. We also have
a memory bias, we are better memory for positive information than negative
information and more critical of information that criticises them than praises
them.
Strategies to enhance the
social self
According to the social identity approach (Tajfel &Turner,1979), when
a persons social self is salient, they incorporate in their self-concept any
traits that are thought by the group, therefore important that there group is
evaluated positively, in the aame way that people try and maintain a positive
PI by compared themselves favourably to other individuals. Group members are
also motivated to hold a positive social or collective identity by comparing
themselves favourable with other members of other groups.
The desire to maintain a positive social identity can explain why group
members show in-group bias, to like overdo other groups where the members do
not belong, by expressing how good your group is compared to others and by
implication the self as a group member reaps the benefits of this positive
intergroup comparison. Researchers have focused on forging as link between the
self and out-group which may improve intergroup relations and lower issues such
as discrimination.
So groups to which we belong can provide an important source of SE,
therefore motivated to create a positive image of them because this then
reflects well on us. But our in-groups can sometimes be seen as either positive
or negative, depending upon factors beyond or control, if this happens group
members use a number of strategies to both maintain a positive social identity
and buffer themselves from the potentially damaging self-esteem implications of
being a member of a low status group. Easy for high status to maintain a
positive social identity because they can compare themselves favourable with
low status groups. However low status group members have to attempt a Social
change strategy, where they compete with the high status group to improve
their status relative to that group or try a social creativity strategy where
they find new dimensions on where they compare better e.g. if they are poorer
than other groups but better on sport they will compare themselves that way and
finally they might dis-identify with the group, disregarding that member shop
as an important part of their identity.
Robert Cialdini showed
this dis-identification strategy, 1973 university football season, students
from universities who were more successful were more likely to be seen in
apparel with their own university name on. Cialdino et al called this basking in reflected glory,
where people get a positive self concept from the achievements of other group
members even if they wasn’t involved however when the group is performing
poorly, however group members often use a different strategy. And if a members
is part of a group who fails they are more likely to distance themselves from
the group and members of it, this is called cutting off reflected failure.
Cultural differences in self
and identity
To some level there are some broad cultural differences in peoples self
concept, depending on the society in which they were brought up in and some
people belong to more than one culture and have two different self concepts
living along side each other.
Two types of cultures individualistic cultures such as United
States child from an early age are encouraged to think of themselves as unique
individuals and have more traits like freedom and independence, in collective
cultures there are encouraged to be obedient and respectful of their family
and to conform to societal norms. These two cultures are reflective in the
self.
Biculturalism is where people from one culture or country
move to another therefore inherit some of their values and some struggle to
deal with the presence of two different identities, either assimilating to the
identity of the host society or retaining their original immigrant
identity. Some however are able to maintain their old identity while sharing an
identity with the host society, this is bicultural. The alternation model suggests
that it is possible for an individual to deal with multiple identities by
understanding the cultural assumptions that guide behaviour and using the
knowledge to think and behave appropriately in each. They change their identity
depending on the situation and by doing this they are able to have a sense of
belonging in two cultures without compromising the sense of cultural or their
own identity. People who can do this have a number of benefits such as problem
solving and interpersonal skills. Not everyone is so optimistic though, some suggest
they will never be fully committed to just one group therefore get negative
reactions from both, also suggested that the immigrant culture must be strongly
represented in the host society to offer a support system and to bugger the
bicultural individual from stress.
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