Showing papers in "Advances in Experimental Social Psychology in 1988"

The Psychology of Self-Affirmation: Sustaining the Integrity of the Self

Abstract: Publisher Summary Self-affirmation processes are being activated by information that threatens the perceived adequacy or integrity of the self and as running their course until this perception is restored through explanation, rationalization, and/or action. The purpose of these constant explanations (and rationalizations) is to maintain a phenomenal experience of the self-self-conceptions and images as adaptively and morally adequate—that is, as competent, good, coherent, unitary, stable, capable of free choice, capable of controlling important outcomes, and so on. The research reported in this chapter focuses on the way people cope with the implications of threat to their self-regard rather than on the way they cope with the threat itself. This chapter analyzes the way coping processes restore self-regard rather than the way they address the provoking threat itself.

Toward a Self-Evaluation Maintenance Model of Social Behavior

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses social behavior through self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model. It describes several studies to provide a feel for the kind of research that has been completed in an attempt to explore the predictions of the model. The SEM model is composed of two dynamic processes. Both the reflection process and the comparison process have as component variables the closeness of another and the quality of that other's performance. These two variables interact in affecting self-evaluation but do so in quite opposite ways in each of the processes Model establishes the comprehensiveness of the research and the interactive quality of its predictions. Next, the SEM model is fit into the perspective of related work, including self-theories, social comparison theory, and Cialdini's BIRGing research. The chapter reviews the epistemological status of the model. It discusses some of the implications of the research for a variety of areas in psychology.

Narrative and the Self as Relationship

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter explores the nature of stories of self, both as they are told and lived in social life. It examines the story form—or more formally, the structure of narrative accounts. It then describes the way narratives of the self are constructed within social life and the uses to which they are put. As story advances, it become increasingly clear that narratives of the self are not fundamentally possessions of the individual; rather they are products of social interchange—possessions of the socius. This analysis set the stage for a discussion of lived narrative. The chapter proposes the traditional concept of individual selves is fundamentally problematic. What have served as individual traits, mental processes, or personal characteristics can promisingly be viewed as the constituents of relational forms. The form of these relationships is that of the narrative sequence. Thus, by the end of story it can be found that the individual self has all but vanished into the world of relationship.

A Model of Behavioral Self-Regulation: Translating Intention into Action

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes the model of behavioral self-regulation. The notion that behavior-specifying information is coded in memory along with many interpretative schemas provides one simple way for behavioral goals to become salient in a given situation. The Self-Consciousness Scale was designed to tap the same psychological state as was produced by self-awareness manipulations. Providing for the existence of behavioral goals and standards and their activation in a given situation constitutes the first step in a model of self-regulation. There are two prominent approaches for self-regulatory phenomena. They are the self-efficacy theory and attributional versions of helplessness theory. The chapter outlines some of the past studies that substantiate different aspects of these theories. Some portions of relatively recent work to which the theory had led are described in the chapter. In describing the model of behavioral self-regulation, the general utility of the control-theoretic ideas is described in the chapter.

Content and Process in the Experience of Self

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the experience of self by the person at particular reflective moments, on the ways the content and process of the phenomenal sense of self are affected by situational and dispositional variables. Content issues concern when one's myriad aspects are salient (available) in thought and when one asks oneself who one is; process issues concern the person's modes of thinking about this self content. The chapter discusses the content and process, by the nouns and verbs, respectively that occur in free self-descriptions. Some of the ways in which methods differ from the usual reactive approach to study the self is described in the chapter. The present research program employs tedious content analyses of open-ended responses for the rich content and process information they yield, justifying the greater effort. The chapter explains the way the salience of these physical characteristics in spontaneous self-descriptions is affected, not only by their distinctiveness but also by other factors such as gender and age.

Information processing and the study of the self

Abstract: Publisher Summary The self is an important concept in personality and social psychology. The mental representation of the self includes both abstract information about the person's attributes (semantic knowledge) and concrete information about the person's experiences, thoughts, and actions (episodic knowledge). Mental representations fall into two broad classes. Those representations that are perception based contain details extracted from stimulus information processed by the sensory-perceptual system. Representations that are meaning based contain the gist of an object or event, which has been abstracted from stimulus information by higher mental processes. The basic architecture of the cognitive system is briefly described in the chapter. Autobiographical memory is interesting in and of itself, but it also may be able to shed important light on various other aspects of information processing about the self. In addition to analyzing the structure of mental representations of the self, information-processing concepts may be useful in the study of the involvement of the self in social judgment and behavior.

Self and Others: Studies in Social Personality and Autobiography

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter is concerned primarily with the content and organization of habitual self. The significant components of this content are the characteristics that a person perceives as relatively enduring aspects of self and other. These characteristics include perceived physical traits and attractiveness, personality traits, attitudes, competencies, and so on. This overview of the antecedents of social personality, although necessarily brief, is not intended simply as a historical exegesis. The resurgence of interest in self in social psychology is reflected in the chapter. It provides a new zeitgeist for reclaiming the conceptual links to an American past in which the study of self in personality and in social psychology was unified in a mutually enlightening way. A new set-theoretical model is described in the chapter for representing the organization of the socius of an individual; new data-analytic tools are described that are tailored to this model. The chapter discusses recent empirical applications of this set-theoretical model, using both laboratory data and naturalistic materials, particularly autobiography. These empirical applications, although idiographically based, are detailed information for fleshing out nomothetic principles about the content and organization of the socius.

The Self: A Dialectical Approach

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter examines a number of intrapersonal and interpersonal processes within a dialectical framework, where interpersonal congruency theory posited as influencing stability and change in persons and their relationships with others. In the chapter, a brief description of interpersonal congruency theory as originally formulated and a discussion of some of the recent modifications of the theory seem in order. It examines the manner in which a number of congruency-producing processes operate in the context of a relationship—creating, maintaining, and, at times, changing its character and those aspects of the two personalities embedded in it. Interpersonal congruency theory can provide some leads as to why children are able to effectively modify the parent–child relationship to the extent that they do, only further research within a development framework will provide a definitive explanation of these findings. The expanding interface between social and developmental psychology provides some basis for the hope that such answers will be forthcoming.