Psychology of self

About: Psychology of self is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2020 publications have been published within this topic receiving 74970 citations.

Economics and Identity

Abstract: This paper considers how identity, a person's sense of self, affects economic outcomes. We incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior. In the utility function we propose, identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave. We then construct a simple game-theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions. The paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace, the economics of poverty and social exclusion, and the household division of labor. In each case, the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis.

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.

Who is this "We"? Levels of collective identity and self representations.

Abstract: Cross-cultural perspectives have brought renewed interest in the social aspects of the self and the extent to which individuals define themselves in terms of their relationships to others and to social groups. This article provides a conceptual review of research and theory of the social self, arguing that the personal, relational, and collective levels of self-definition represent distinct forms of selfrepresentation with different origins, sources of self-worth, and social motivations. A set of 3 experiments illustrates haw priming of the interpersonal or collective "we" can alter spontaneous judgments of similarity and self-descriptions. Until recently, social psychological theories of the self focused on the individuated self-concept—the person's sense of unique identity differentiated from others. Cross-cultural perspectives, however, have brought a renewed interest in the social aspects of the self and the extent to which individuals define themselves in terms of their relationships to others and to social groups (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, Bontempo, Villareal, Asai, & Lucca, 1988). Central to this new perspective is the idea that connectedness and belonging are not merely affiliations or alliances between the self and others but entail fundamental differences in the way the self is construed (Brewer, 1991; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Singelis, 1994; Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991; Triandis, 1989; Turner, Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty, 1994). Some of these theories of the social self focus on cross-cultural differences in whether the self is typically construed as individuated or interpersonal. However, all recognize that these different self-construals may also coexist within the same individual, available to be activated at different times or in different contexts. Furthermore, in several theories, achieving an extended sense of self has the status of a fundamental human motivation (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Brewer, 1991). In other words, individuals seek to define themselves in terms of their immersion in relationships with others and with larger collectives and derive much of their self-evaluation from such social identities (Breckler & Greenwald, 1986; Greenwald & Breckler, 1985). The motivational properties of collective identities are systematically documented in Baumeister and Leary's (1995) comprehensive review of the evidence in support of a fundamental "need to belong" as an innate feature of human nature. All of the theories mentioned above draw some kind of distinction between the individuated or personal self (those aspects of the self-concept that differentiate the self from all others) and a relational or social self (those aspects of the self-concept that

The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology

Abstract: The Questions And Their Background Exploring the Infants Subjective Experience: A Central Role for the Sense of Self Perspectives and Approaches to Infancy The Four Senses Of Self The Sense of an Emergent Self The Sense of a Core Self: I, Self versus Other The Sense of a Core Self II, Self with Other The Sense of a Subjective Self: I, Overview The Sense of a Subjective Self: II, Affect Attunement The Sense of a Verbal Self Some Clinical Implications The Observed Infant as Seen with a Clinical Eye Some Implications for the Theories Behind Therapeutic Reconstructions Implications for the Therapeutic Process of Reconstructing a Developmental Past Epilogue.

The Correspondence Bias

Abstract: The correspondence bias is the tendency to draw inferences about a person's unique and enduring dispositions from behaviors that can be entirely explained by the situations in which they occur. Although this tendency is one of the most fundamental phenomena in social psychology, its causes and consequences remain poorly understood. This article sketches an intellectual history of the correspondence bias as an evolving problem in social psychology, describes 4 mechanisms (lack of awareness, unrealistic expectations, inflated categorizations, and incomplete corrections) that produce distinct forms of correspondence bias, and discusses how the consequences of correspondence-biased inferences may perpetuate such inferences. One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones to fear. (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886/1984, p. 59) Despite the homilies of philosophers, no one has yet found a simple formula for understanding others. The problem, of course, is that a person's inner self is hidden from view. Character, motive, belief, desire, and intention play leading roles in people's construal of others, and yet none of these constructs can actually be observed. As such, people are forced into the difficult business of inferring these intangibles from that which is, in fact, observable: other people's words and deeds. When one infers the invisible from the visible, one risks making a mistake. Three decades of research in social psychology have shown that many of the mistakes people make are of a kind: When people observe behavior, they often conclude that the person who performed the behavior was predisposed to do so—that the person's behavior corresponds to the person's unique dispositions—and they draw such conclusions even when a logical analysis suggests they should not. In this article, we describe the causes and consequences of this particular mistake, which we call the correspondence bias. We do not attempt a complete review of the voluminous literature on this topic. Rather, we first define the correspondence