PSY 1A:

Understanding
the Self
 Midterm: Points of View on the Self
• Tripartite Composition of Self
• Bio-Ecological Perspective
• Socio-Anthropological Perspective
• Psychological Perspectives
• Cultural Concept of the Self

Units and Finals: Facets of the Self

• Physical Self

Modules •
•
Sexual Self
Spiritual Self
• Material Self
• Digital Self
• Political Self
 PSY 1A:
Understanding the Self

Module 01
The Tripartite
Composition
of the Self
 “I think therefore I am” which means that a
rational thinking person and being self
conscious is the proof that there is a self.
- Rene Descartes

THE “conscious awareness and memory of

SELF
precious experiences are the keys to
understanding his self”.
John Locke

The self is nothing else but a bundle of

impressions. If one tries to examine
experiences, he finds that they can all be
categorized into two: impressions and ideas.
David Hume
 The Self of…
o Thoughts

o Feelings

o Behaviors
Tripartite
Composition
Of the Self
To understand the self as a
holistic being with interconnected
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
 PONDER ON THESE…

WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?

WHY DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT?

THE THINKING HOW DO YOU ASSESS ABOUT HOW

SELF YOU THINK?
 Your nephew describes his new girlfriend as a
student who is artistic and loves poetry. With
no other information to go on, it is more likely
that she is studying:

THE THINKING A.) Chinese Literature

B.) Business Management

SELF ➢ How did you arrive at that thought?

 Imagine you’re a doctor, faced with the choice
of operating on a cancer patient or
recommending a course of radiation instead. In
the long term, operating is best. But in this
case, there is a 10% risk of mortality in the first
month following the operation.

THE THINKING ➢Will you take the risk? Why?

SELF
 DANIEL KAHNEMAN’S
TWO THINKING SYSTEMS

-SYSTEM ONE
-SYSTEM TWO

Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel Laureate

THINKING
Daniel Kahneman is the founding father of modern
behavioral economics. His work has influenced
how we see thinking, decisions, risk, and even
happiness.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, his “intellectual

memoir,” he shows us in his own words some of his
enormous body of work.

Part of that body includes a description of the

“machinery of … thought,” which divides the brain
into two agents, called System 1 and System 2,
which “respectively produce fast and slow thinking.”
 SYSTEM ONE
SYSTEM ONE

Fast
Intuitive
System 1 is capable of making Emotional
quick decisions, based on very Requires less cognitive effort (due to
little information. practice)
Will not take a lot of time in trying to figure
Fleeting impressions, and the many out what to do
other shortcuts you’ve developed Requires minimum attention
throughout your life, are combined Automatic
to enable System 1 to make these
decisions quickly, without
deliberation and conscious effort.
SYSTEM ONE
SYSTEM ONE
SYSTEM ONE
 SYSTEM TWO
SYSTEM TWO

Slow
Deliberate
System 2 is usually engaged in
Reflective
types of decisions that require Analytical
attention and slow, effortful, Complex
considered responses. Effortful
Requires more attention
Situations like choosing which Intense focusing
college to attend, which house to
buy, or whether to change careers
would likely require a much more
thoughtful and rational approach than
just using your gut feeling
SYSTEM TWO
SYSTEM TWO
SYSTEM TWO
STROOP EFFECT
 ARE THE
HORIZONTAL
LINES STRAIGHT
OR NOT?
TWO SYSTEMS OF
THINKING
INTERACTION OF
SYSTEMS 1 & 2
When making decisions or
judgments, we often use
mental shortcuts or "rules of
thumb" known as heuristics. Sometimes these mental
shortcuts can be helpful,
For every decision, we don't but in other cases, they
always have the time or
resources to compare all the
can lead to errors
information before we make a or cognitive biases.
choice, so we use heuristics
to help us reach decisions
quickly and efficiently.
 • Thinking may be prone to
systematic errors.

COGNITIVE • Some beliefs might not be based

on evidence, but we continue to
BIASES consider them as “truths.”

• Even though you know what the

objective reality is,
it does not change the way you
see the lines.
 1. PEAK END RULE
People judge an experience largely
based on how they felt at its PEAK and

COGNITIVE
its END...

BIASES The total sum of pleasantness or

unpleasantness is entirely disregarded!

“When people assess an experience,

they tend to forget or ignore its length.
Instead, they seem to rate the
experience based on two key moments:
(1) the best or worst moment, known as
the peak and (2) the ending [...]
A bad flight experience on the
way home from a vacation can
take away from the overall trip,
even if the vacation was
essentially positive.
A breakup of a relationship is
also a common example, as we
may vividly recall a
heartbreaking or painful
breakup.
1. PEAK END RULE
A classic example is childbirth.
If you attend a concert with poor
sound quality or performance, yet
the concert ends with your
favorite song, your memory of
the experience overall will be
more positive.
 ◦Short period of intense joy or
long period of moderate
Which would happiness
you rather go ◦Short period of intense, but
through? tolerable suffering or longer
period of moderate pain
 2. REPRESENTATIVENESS
When people are asked to judge the
probability that
an object or event belongs to a category
COGNITIVE
BIASES
Assumption that any object (or person)
sharing characteristics with the members
of a particular category is also a member
of that category.

"the probability that Steve is a librarian is

assessed by the degree to which his
is representative of, or similar to, the
stereotype of a librarian," (Tversky and
Kahneman)
 2. REPRESENTATIVENESS

When we make decisions based on

COGNITIVE
representativeness, we may be likely
to make more errors by
BIASES overestimating the likelihood that
something will occur.

Just because an event or object is

representative does not mean its
occurrence is more probable.
 Tom is a college student in a state
university. He is of high intelligence,
although lacking in creativity. He has a
need for order and clarity, and for neat
and tidy systems in which every detail
PONDER ON finds its appropriate place. His writing is
rather dull and mechanical, occasionally
THIS… enlivened by corny puns and flashes of
imagination of the sci-fi type. He has a
strong drive for competence. He seems
to have little sympathy for others & does
not enjoy interaction with others. But he
does have a deep moral sense.

What course in Tom most likely enrolled

in?
 -Consider how members of a jury
might determine a defendant's guilt
or innocence because of his/her
PONDER ON physical appearance.

THIS… -A farmer, for example, might be

seen as hard-working, outdoorsy,
and tough.

-A librarian, on the other hand, might

be viewed as being quiet, organized,
and reserved.
 3. ANCHORING AND
ADJUSTMENT
“How old is person A?” / “What is person
A’s weight?” “Was Mahatma Gandhi more
COGNITIVE or less 144 years old when he died?”

BIASES Decision is based on: -ANCHOR based on

the given reference point. -ADJUST the
anchor (either higher or lower)
◦ In making judgments under uncertainty,
people start with a certain reference point
(anchor), then adjust it insufficiently to
reach a final conclusion.

The anchoring effect as a
powerful impact on the
choices we make, from
decisions about the things we
buy to daily preferences
about how to live our lives.
So the next time you
are trying to make an
important decision, give a
little thought to the possible
impact of the anchoring bias
on your choices.
3. ANCHORING AND
ADJUSTMENT
Imagine that you are buying a new car. You
read online that the average price of the
vehicle you are interested in is $27,000
dollars. When you are shopping at the
local car lot, the dealer offers you the same
vehicle for $26,500, which you quickly
accept—after all, it's $500 less than what
you were expecting to pay.
Except, the car dealer across town is
offering the exact same vehicle for just
$24,000, a full $2,500 less than what you
paid and $3,000 less than the average
price you found online.
THE FEELING
SELF
 a conscious mental reaction (such
EMOTION as anger or fear) subjectively
experienced as a strong feeling.
PAUL EKMAN Dr. Ekman traveled to Papua New
Guinea to study the nonverbal
behavior of the Fore people. He
chose these people as they were
an isolated, Stone Age culture
located in the South East
Highlands. Ekman's research
“Emotions are a process, a provided the strongest evidence
particular kind of automatic
to date that facial expressions are
appraisal influenced by our
evolutionary and personal past, in universal.
which we sense that something
important to our welfare is occurring,
and a set of psychological changes
and emotional behaviors begins to
deal with the situation." - Paul
Ekman, PhD
https://www.paulekman.com/about/paul-ekman/
 James-Lange theory of emotion (1880s) proposed that bodily
changes come first and form the basis of an emotional experience.
Thus, emotions are caused by bodily sensations (you become happier
when you smile, you are afraid because you run).

Cannon-Bard theory of emotion, we react to a stimulus and

experience the associated emotion at the same time. The physical
reactions are not dependent upon the emotional reaction, or vice
versa.
EMOTION Schachter-Singer theory, emotions are a result of two factors:
Physical processes in the body (such as activation of the sympathetic
nervous system, for example), which researchers refer to as
“physiological arousal.” These changes can include things like having
your heart start beating faster, sweating, or trembling.
A cognitive process, in which people try to interpret this physiological
response by looking at their surrounding environment to see what
could be causing them to feel this way.
EMOTION
EMOTION
EMOTION
EMOTION
 Emotion regulation may be broadly
EMOTION defined as the way in which a
REGULATION person uses emotional experiences
to provide for adaptive functioning
(Thompson, 1994).
 Skills necessary for effective
Emotion Regulation
(a) flexibility and responsiveness to
changing situational demands
(Cole et al., 1994; Thompson, 1994).

(b) Awareness of one’s emotional

EMOTION
state,
(c) the capacity to detect emotions
REGULATION in other people,
(d) knowledge of cultural display
rules for emotions,
(e) and the ability to empathize with
others’ emotional states (Saarni, 1990;
cited in Underwood, 1997).
 Indicators for Adaptive
Emotion Regulation
(a) a high self-esteem
Shope, & Dielman, 1997),
(Haney & Durlak, 1998; Zimmerman, Copeland,

(b) a positive self-concept and

stable sense of identity (Harter, 1990; Nurmi, 1997),

(c) a high level of ego development

EMOTION (Allen, Hauser, Bell, & O’Connor, 1994; Hauser & Safyer, 1994),

(d) social competence

REGULATION
(Bustra, Bosma, & Jackson, 1994; Gullotta,
Adams, & Montemayor, 1990),

(e) a positive mood or emotional

tone (Larson & Richards, 1994; Petersen et al., 1993),

(f) school engagement

press; Wigfield & Eccles, 1994),
(Sandler, Ayers, Suter, Schultz, & Twohey, in

(g) and feelings of attachment to

parents and friends
Greenberger & McLaughlin, 1998; Paterson, Pryor, & Field, 1995)
(Allen, Moore, Kuperminc, & Bell, 1998;
 The cognitive model hypothesizes
that people’s emotions and
behaviors are influenced by their
COGNITIVE perceptions of events. It is not a

BEHAVIORAL
situation in and of itself that
determines what people feel but
THERAPY rather the way in which they
construe a situation’ (Beck, 1964).
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
Think about a personal challenge
you are experiencing at present -
this may be a challenge in a
relationship, in school, at work, or
some other problem that is
affecting your thoughts, feelings,
and behavioral responses or
actions.