PSY 8: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 2: The Self in a Social World

Spotlight effect
o belief that others are paying more
attention to one's appearance and
behavior than they really are
Illusion of transparency
o Illusion that our concealed
emotions leak out and can be
easily read by others.
Self concept
o a person's answers to the question,
"who am I?"
Self schema
o beliefs about self that organize and
guide the processing of self
relevant info
Possible selves
o Images of what we dream of or
dread becoming in the future.
Social comparison
o evaluating one's abilities and
opinions by comparing oneself with
others
Individualism
o concept of giving priority to one's
own goals over group goals and
defining one's identity in terms of
personal attributes rather than
group identifications
Collectivism
o Giving priority to the goals of one's
groups (often one's extended
family or work group) and defining
one's identity accordingly.
Interdependence self
o construing one's identity in relation
to others
Planning fallacy
o tendency to underestimate how
long it will take to complete a task
Impact bias
o overestimating the enduring
impact of emotion causing events
Immune neglect
o human tendency to underestimate
the speed and strength of
"psychological immune system"

which enables emotional recovery

and resilience after bad things
happen
Dual attitudes
o differing implicit automatic and
explicit attitudes toward the same
object
Self esteem
o person's overall self evaluations of
sense of self worth
Self- efficacy
o Sense that one is competent and
effective distinguished from self
esteem, which is one's sense of
self-worth.
Locus of control
o extent to which people perceive
outcomes as internally controllable
their own efforts or as externally
controlled by chance or outside
forces
Learned helplessness
o sense of hopelessness and
resignation learned when a human
or animal perceives no control over
repeated bad events
Self-serving bias
o tendency to perceive oneself
favorably
Self-serving attributions
o form of self serving bias; tendency
to attribute positive outcome to
oneself and negative outcomes to
other factors
Defensive pessimism
o adaptive value of anticipating
problems and harnessing one's
anxiety to motivate effective action
false consensus effect
False consensus effect
o tendency to overestimate the
commonality of one's opinions and
one's undesirable or unsuccessful
behaviors
False uniqueness effect
o tendency to underestimate the
commonality of one's abilities and
one's desirable or successful
behaviors.
Group serving bias

explaining way out-group

members positive behaviors also
attributing negative behaviors to
their dispositions.
Self handicapping
o protecting one's self image with
behaviors that create a handy
excuse for failures
o

Self presentations
o acting in ways designed to create
a favorable impression or one that
corresponds to one's ideals
Self monitoring
o being attuned to the way one
presents oneself in social situations
and adjusting one's performance to
creat he desired impression