Self and Personality - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 46
About This Presentation
Title:

Self and Personality

Description:

East Asians may feel differently about themselves when they're with their family ... This study suggests that East Asians are attending to the perspective of an ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:104
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 47
Provided by: psyc95
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Self and Personality


1
Self and Personality
  • Psychology 448C
  • 10/14/08

2
Agenda
  • Lecture
  • Dont need to know Culture Gender or Five
    Factor Model of Personality for exams
  • In-class Activity

3
Self-Concept
  • How we perceive ourselves, and understand our
    identity plays a crucial role in how we think
    about many things.
  • The self-concept is implicated in
  • directing what information we should attend to,
  • it shapes the kinds of meaning that we draw from
    events,
  • it influences the kinds of relationships that we
    have,
  • it affects our emotions, and
  • it influences what we will be motivated to work
    towards.

4
Who Am I?
  • People are asked to describe themselves with a
    number of statements that begin with I am
    _______.
  • The kinds of statements that they list are then
    counted and analyzed.
  • People from some different cultural groups often
    provide different kinds of statements.

5
(No Transcript)
6
Comparisons of European-Americans and Native
Americans (Fryberg Markus, 2003)
  • European-American students described themselves
    more in terms of inner attributes than did Native
    Americans.

7
Independent vs. Interdependent Views of Self
  • Seminal paper by Markus and Kitayama (1991).
  • Argued that much of what is known in social
    psychology, has been studied with people who
    share a primarily distinct view of self - an
    independent self.
  • In much of the non-Western world, in contrast, an
    interdependent self is more common.

8
European American Exceptionalism?
  • A unique way of being in human history?
  • Modern subjectivity?
  • Social alienation
  • Individualism

9
(No Transcript)
10
Independent View of Self
  • Identity is experienced as largely independent
    from others.
  • Important aspects of identity are personal
    characteristics.
  • Identity remains largely constant across roles
    and situations.
  • Considerable fluidity between ingroups and
    outgroups.

11
(No Transcript)
12
Interdependent View of Self
  • Individuals identity is importantly
    interdependent with others.
  • Key aspects of identity include roles,
    relationships, and memberships.
  • As roles change across situations, identity is
    also somewhat fluid across situations.
  • Clear distinction between ingroups and outgroups.

13
Culture and Business
14
1. How should a company determine compensation
of its employees? a) A company should take into
account the size of the employees family. The
company should be responsible for paying
additional compensation for each additional
family member. b) An employee should be paid on
the basis of the work s/he is doing for the
company. Therefore, the company does not have to
take into account the employees family.
15
2. Suppose you, as a manager, are in the
process of hiring a new employee to work in your
department. Which of the two following
considerations is more important a) The new
employee must fit into the group or team in
which s/he is to work. b) The new employee must
have the skills, the knowledge, and a record
of success in a previous job.
16
Determining compensationPercentage of
people who agree with bFamily size of the
employee is not a relevant factor for a company
to consider in determining compensation.
USA
Japan
Italy
England
17
HiringPercentage of People who chose
bThe new employee must have the skills, the
knowledge, and a record of success in a
previous job.
Italy
USA
Germany
France
Singapore
18
Self-Consistency
  • The interdependent self should be more
    contextually variable than the independent self.
  • When people are in different situations they are
    often in different roles
  • if the identity of the interdependent self is
    grounded in roles, then across situations,
    identity should vary.

19
Example
  • In one study, Japanese and American students
    completed the Twenty Statements Test in different
    situations (Kanagawa et al., 2001).
  • There were 4 test-taking situations
  • alone
  • with peers
  • in a professors office
  • in a large class
  • DV how similarly positive peoples
    self-descriptions were across situations.

20
American Data
  • American self-descriptions were highly similar
    across different situations.
  • Their self-descriptions were also uniformly
    positive.

Ratio of Positive to Negative Statements
21
Japanese Data
  • Japanese self-descriptions varied significantly
    across different situations.
  • They were more positive when alone and most
    critical when with their professor.
  • Their self-descriptions were also less positive
    than the Americans.

Ratio of Positive to Negative Statements
22
Why do cultures vary in self-consistency?
  • Often, cultural tendencies are functional
  • People behave according to cultural norms because
    they derive benefits from it.
  • Westerners benefit more than East Asians from
    being consistent across situations.

23
Example
  • Study compared how consistently Koreans and
    Americans described themselves across roles (Suh,
    2002).
  • A consistency score was calculated for each
    participant.
  • Americans described themselves more consistently
    than did Koreans.
  • These consistency scores were then correlated
    with some other variables.

24
Benefits of Consistency
  • For Americans,
  • positive correlations between consistency and
    well-being, social skills, and likability.
  • For Koreans,
  • the correlations were far weaker
  • Americans benefit more from being consistent
    across roles than do Koreans.

Correlations between Self-Consistency and...
25
Self-consistency
  • Note that the East Asian tendency to be less
    consistent across situations does not mean
    unpredictability.
  • East Asians are also consistent but its a
    different kind of consistency than found among
    Westerners.
  • consistency across time within each kind of
    relationship.
  • East Asians may feel differently about themselves
    when theyre with their family than when theyre
    with their friends,
  • The family self remains constant, and the friend
    self remains constant (see English Chen, 2007).

26
A Western Psychology
  • Why doesnt psychology examine role-consistency
    instead of self-consistency?
  • Americans would then be the exception
  • Non-Westerners would be the norm

27
Self-Awareness
  • Think back to your high school graduation, when
    you stood on stage and received your diploma.
  • Is your mental imagery about this event more from
    the 1st person perspective (what you saw from the
    stage) or from the 3rd person perspective (how
    people saw you from the audience)?

28
Example (Cohen Gunz, 2002)
  • Participants indicated whether their memories
    contained 1st person or 3rd person imagery for a
    variety of events.
  • In some of the events they were the center of
    attention (e.g., your birthday party) and some
    they were not the center of attention (e.g.,
    watching a movie with friends).

29
(No Transcript)
30
  • This study suggests that East Asians are
    attending to the perspective of an audience so
    much more than are Westerners that this
    perspective influences their memories.

31
Cultural Differences in Interpreting Social
Events (Chua, Leu, Nisbett, 2005)
  • Main character focus
  • To what extent were the passages about Emma?
    (Scale 1-9)
  • To what extent were the passages about Jason,
    Elliot, Elliots cousin, Michele, Hannah, Amelia,
    Tom, and Professor Lewin, etc.? (Scale 1-9)
  • Agency focus
  • To what extent were the characters actions
    driven by their plans and goals? (Scale 1-9)
  • To what extent were the characters actions
    influenced by the circumstances they found
    themselves in? (Scale 1-9)

32
F(1, 55) 2.14, p lt.01
33
F(1, 54) 4.94, p lt .05
34
Emotion Perception
  • Are there cultural differences between European
  • Americans and Japanese in
  • whether social context influences emotion
    perception of a target? (Masuda, Ellsworth,
    Mesquita, Leu, et al., 2008)


35
Target stimuli
JON
36
Central Happy Background Angry
37
Central Happy Background Sad
38
Central Happy Background Happy
39
Central Happy Background Neutral
40
Emotion of Background Figures Angry, Sad,
Happy, Neutral
Emotions of Central Figures Angry, Sad, Happy
X
Angry Sad
Happy
X
X
X
X
Angry Sad
Happy Neutral
41
Methods
  • Participants
  • 40 Japanese in Japan
  • 40 European American in the US
  • Procedure
  • Rating intensity of center figures emotion(s)
  • Measures
  • Emotion Scales (0-9) anger, happiness, sadness

42
Central Person Happy
Intensity Ratings of Happiness
43
Central Person Happy
Intensity Ratings of Anger
Angry Sad Happy
Neutral Background
Emotions
44
Incremental vs. Entity Theories of Self
  • Incremental theories of self
  • abilities are malleable and are capable of being
    changed, with effort.
  • Entity theories of self
  • abilities are largely fixed, and reflect innate
    features of the self.
  • Interdependent selves more incremental and less
    entity-based theories of self.
  • Independent selves more entity and less
    incremental-based theories of self.

45
What is Intelligence Based On?
Japanese Asian-Americans
Euro-Americans
46
In-class Activity Examples
  • Gender and math
  • Ethnicity and intelligence
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com