Understanding the Social Self: Self-Awareness, Self-Concept, and Social Comparison, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Social Psychology

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3 The Social Self

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W

ho are you if you have lost your memory? Consider the following movies about memory loss:

Memento (Todd & Todd, 2000): A man finds mysterious tattoos on himself after sustaining brain damage that prevents him from accessing any new memories. 50 First Dates (Giarraputpo, Golin, Juvonen, & Producers, Segal, 2004): A woman has difficulty falling in love because she can’t remember the romantic events from the previous day. The Bourne Ultimatum (F. Marshall, Crowley, Sangberg, & Greengrass, 2007): A CIA agent tries to figure out who he is after suffering long-term amnesia and brainwashing. Total Recall (Moritz, Jaffe, & Wiseman, 2012): A man in the future discovers his memory has been altered and starts an adventure to discover his true self and history. Finding Dory (Collins & Stanton, 2016): A friendly but forgetful blue tang fish struggles to be reunited with her long-lost parents.

The characters in these memory-loss movies had to imagine their probable selves into existence. Hollywood scriptwriters are not the only ones using memory loss to imagine the self into existence. The rest of us also have imperfect memories, so we con- struct our sense of who we are by piecing together fragments of memory, interpreting uncertain evidence, and hoping for the best. The self is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. William Swann and Michael Buhrmester (2012) call the self a “functional fiction” because it’s a story with a purpose. And even though it’s a made-up, pieced-together tale that has an audience of only one person, this solitary self is also a social self. That’s because the plot of our self-story always involves family, friends, neighborhood, culture, and much more. To understand how each of us live, think, and behave in a social world, we have to first understand how we define and perceive ourselves.

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to answer the following questions:

Core Questions

1. What is the “self?”
2. How do we know the self is social?
3. Why do we present different selves in different situations?
4. Is the truth always the self’s friend?
5. What is self-esteem and how can we measure it?

Learning Objectives

1. Explain how social psychology has defined self-awareness and the self-concept.
2. Analyze how our self-perceptions are influenced by others.
3. Explain how we adjust our public self-presentation to influence others.
4. Articulate why we sometimes benefit from positive illusions and moderate self-deceptions.
5. Apply both explicit and implicit methods to the many facets of self-esteem, including its dark side.

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Testing Self-Awareness: The Mirror Self-Recognition Test. Imitation is interesting to see in infants, but does it really mean that they have self-awareness? To more directly test this, scientists—including Darwin— wanted to come up with a way to test whether people (and animals) seem to realize they are independent, unique entities. Do all animals have a sense of self, or is this perception unique to humans? Darwin (1872) tried to answer that question with an experiment. He reported that

many years ago, in the Zoological Gardens, I placed a looking- glass on the floor between two young [orangutans].... They approached close and protruded their lips towards the image, as if to kiss it, in exactly the same manner as they had previously done towards each other. (p. 142)

Those orangutans acted as if the creature in the mirror were another animal, not themselves, suggesting that they did not possess self-awareness. Almost 100 years later, in 1968, Gordon Gallup followed Darwin’s lead by attempting to find out whether some animals respond to their mirror image “as if their image represented another animal” (Gallup, 1968, p. 782). So he created a more controlled version of Darwin’s original experiment by first anesthe- tizing some chimpanzees, macaques, and rhesus monkeys. While they were unconscious, Gallup marked each animal with a nonodorous, nonirritating red dye just above the eye- brow. The animals could not smell, feel, or see the red dye without the help of a mirror. What would it mean if an animal looked into the mirror, saw the unmistakable red dye, but did not touch the red dye? The animal probably perceived that the creature in the mirror was just some other animal that happened to have a red splotch on its forehead. But what if an animal looked into the mirror and touched the unusual red dye on its own face—not on the mirror? In that case, the animal was telling us, “That’s me in the mirror: I am—and I know that I am the one with the red mark.” The mirror self-recognition test (also called the mark test) creates an opportunity for animals to demonstrate self-awareness. In Gallup’s first study, the four chimpanzees (but not the other primates) did indeed touch the red mark on their foreheads. Voila! Gallup had scientifically demonstrated self-awareness among chimpanzees.

Charles Darwin noted early signs of mental development in his infant son, William. His “eyes were fixed on a candle as early as the 9th day... on the 49th day his attention was attracted by a bright-coloured tassel” (Biographical Sketch of an Infant, p. 286)

Do non-human animals have a sense of self? A YouTube .com search for “animal self-recognition” results in videos on elephants, lions, chimpanzees and others toying with their image in a mirror.

Dogs seem to be aware when they have misbehaved. They appear to demonstrate something like shame - but only when they are caught.

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More recently, mirror self-recognition studies have also documented self-awareness among Asian elephants (Plotnik, de Waal, & Reiss, 2006), killer whales (Delfour & Marten, 2001), and dolphins (Marino, 2002). Self-awareness among animals is no sur- prise to dog owners. Misbehaving dogs will slink about and put their tails between their legs in ways that suggest awareness of a guilty self.

Defining and Measuring the Self-Concept

The self-concept is the personal summary of who we believe we are; it is how we answer the question, “Who am I?” It includes our assessment of our positive and negative qualities, our relationships to others, our beliefs and opinions, and more. We acquire a self-concept in several ways, including the following:

• • We compare our self to others (social comparison theory).
• • Culture creates expectations about how the self should behave (social identity theory).
• • We create mental structures that direct the self ’s attention (self-schema theory).

Let’s consider each of these theories in more detail.

Social Comparison Theory. Social comparison theory proposes that we use social comparisons to construct our self-concept, especially when we have no other objective standard available to us (Festinger, 1954). How do you know if you are shy, competitive, rich, anxious, or anything else? These subjective ideas only become mean- ingful in comparison to others. For example, if you are walking alone on the beach, you may not even be thinking about your physical appearance. But when someone much more attractive walks by, the unflattering social comparison can deliver a small shock to your previously contented self-concept (Bachman & O’Malley, 1986; Marsh, Köller, & Baumert, 2001). At a basic level, there are two types of social comparisons we can make.

• • Upward Social Comparisons. When we make an upward social comparison, we compare ourselves to someone who is better than us. This type of comparison can be useful when we want to improve on a particular skill. Most people who like to watch cooking shows with celebrity chefs enjoy getting tips on how to make their own food taste or look better. The same is true for people who get ideas about home decorating from Martha Stewart or by reading magazines with ideas, or when athletes learn from coaches. However, constantly comparing ourselves to people who have excelled can lead to frustration or even depression—why can’t my cupcakes look as good as the ones on Pinterest?
• • Downward Social Comparisons. That’s where the second type of social comparison comes into play: downward social comparison. This occurs when we compare ourselves to someone who is worse than we are. This might not help us improve, but it sure feels better. My cupcakes might not win any cupcake reality show contests, sure, but it’s better than the cupcake my daughter tried to make, for example. My tennis skills aren’t on a professional level, maybe, but I’m better than the guy in the next court who can’t hit a single ball over the net.

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The Regional Self. One social identity is based on where you are from. The well-known social psychologist Roy Baumeister (1986) pointed out that in Medieval times, a person’s region was sometimes part of his or her name; “Leonardo da Vinci” means “Leonardo, from Vinci.” Regional identity is also apparent in many of the World War II cemeteries in France for soldiers from different countries who died during the Normandy invasion. The cemetery designers organized the soldiers in death—as in life—in regional groups organized first by country and then by region within that country. Regional affiliations influence how others perceive us and how we, in turn, perceive ourselves. For example, one research team found that within the United States, people from Massachusetts are often perceived as intelligent but snobbish, Iowans as hard- working but hicks, Georgians as hospitable but racist, and New Yorkers as ambitious but rude (Berry, Jones, & Kuczaj, 2000). Do you feel proud when someone from your coun- try, especially from your region of the country, wins at the Olympics? You probably didn’t train, sacrifice, donate money, or even care very much who won until you turned on the television. Nevertheless, our national and regional identity influence our self-concept.

The Cultural Self. The tricky thing about our cultural self is that we are mostly unaware of it until we happen to bump into another culture. Cultural collisions create humorous situations that have produced some great comedic films such as My Cousin Vinny (Launer, Schiff, & Lynn, 1992), Bend It Like Beckham (Chadha, Nayare, & Chadha, 2002), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Goetzman, Hanks, Wilson, & Jones, 2002, 2016), and even Elf (Berg, Komarnicki, Robertson, & Favreau, 2003). If you have ever traveled to another country, your assumptions, way of life, clothing, and more may have suddenly become salient to you in new ways because you may suddenly realize that your view of the world is changed due to your cultural self.

Independent and Interdependent Self- Construals. By placing Western and Asian cultures on a cultural continuum, Figure 3.2 adds an additional layer to Tajfel’s social identity theory. This continuum is anchored by a personal, independent self-construal (many “Western” cultures) at one end and a social, interdependent self-construal (many Asian cultures) at the other end. This means that the ideal self in one culture is very different from the ideal self in another culture. The rugged individualist so valued in the United States will likely be perceived as rude and insensitive in Japan. The concil- iatory team player so valued in Japan may be perceived as wimpy and nonassertive in the United States. Table 3.1 helps us understand how cultural norms influence how we think about the self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

The social self is influenced by cultural expectations and traditions that show up in surprising ways in controlled experiments.

Personal Identity (Western)

Autonomy Individualism Independence Assertiveness

Relatedness Collectivism Interdependence Self-Effacement

Social Identity (Asian)

FIGURE 3.2 Identity can be shaped by culture.

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Self-Schema Theory. A third way to think about how the self-concept is formed is through self-schemas, memory structures that summarize and organize our beliefs about self-relevant information (Markus, 1977). A schema in general is a cognitive and memory structure for organizing the world, so self-schemas transform the raw material from cultural social comparisons into the building blocks of our self-concept (Hewitt & Genest, 1990), creating what Cervone (2004) calls “the architecture of personality.”

For example, let’s say that you wake up late on Wednesday morning. Is your late- ness because you are lazy or because you work so hard that you’re exhausted? You then speed in traffic heading to your job. Is your speeding because you are a dangerous, care- less driver or because you are responsibly trying to get to work as quickly as possible? When you get to work, the first thing you do is get some coffee from the breakroom. Are you addicted and trying to procrastinate, or are you simply trying to get focused so you can be efficient? Instead of chatting with coworkers, you head straight to your desk. Are you rude or simply motivated to accomplish that day’s tasks? Your self-concept creates a coherent self by activating particular self-schemas that help you interpret your own behavior. In this example, your efforts to get to work could lead you to think of yourself in two very different ways: (1) you are lazy, dangerous, addicted, and rude, or (2) you are hard-working, responsible, highly motivated, and determined to succeed. How you interpret the flow of everyday events in your life depends on which self-schemas have been activated, as the schemas create cognitive frameworks for you to interpret the events of your life.

The Main Ideas

1. Self-awareness is the understanding that we are a separate entity from other people and objects in our world. One way that scientists have attempted to measure self-awareness is called the mirror self-recognition test.
2. Our self-concept is the personal summary of who we believe we are.
3. Social comparison theory proposes that our sense of self is influenced by different types of social comparisons, including upward (comparing the self to someone who’s better) and downward (comparing the self to someone who’s worse).
4. Social identity theory describes the self as a mixture of personal and social identities, and self-schema theory suggests that we organize our beliefs about ourselves into mental structures in memory.

To guide group behavior

To get children to finish their food

To improve worker productivity American culture recommends that...

... the squeaky wheel gets the grease. ... children think of the starving children in Ethiopia and how lucky they are to be American. ... workers stand in front of a mirror and repeat: “I am beautiful.”

Japanese culture recommends that...

... the nail that stands up gets pounded down. ... children think about the farmer who worked so hard to produce the rice for you and how disappointed he or she will be if it is not eaten. ... workers hold a coworker’s hand and repeat: “He or she is beautiful.”

TABLE 3.1 Some Examples of How Culture Affects Views of the Self

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Self-perception theory proposes that we get help answering the question, “Who am I?” by making inferences about ourselves based on observing our own behaviors (Bem, 1967; Bem & McConnell, 1970). To understand this theory, first think about how you form perceptions of other people. You watch their behaviors and infer—or guess, really—about their motivations, attitudes, values, and core traits based on the behaviors they display to you. You never really know what’s going on behind the metaphorical curtain of these outward behaviors. Self-perception theory proposes that we form our self-concept in very similar ways. Perhaps we don’t really have special, privileged access to our inner thoughts and choices all the time—and we thus try to infer our own motivations, attitudes, values, and core traits based on observing our own behaviors. If you regularly volunteer at a local dog shelter, then you must be someone who cares about animals. If you love to travel and eat exotic foods, then you must be open to new experiences. We define our self, in part, by how we observe ourselves as we interact with others. In this way, self-perception theory is the idea that our self-concept forms by observ- ing our own behaviors in a social world. If other people seem to think we’re funny, we will likely incorporate “good sense of humor” into our self-concept. If other people look to us to make decisions about where to eat every Friday night, we might come to believe we’re decisive leaders. And if you always order waffles when you go to brunch with friends, you probably love waffles. Again, because the self-concept is abstract and subjective, one of the most straightforward ways to decide who we are is by simply observing what we do.

Self-Discrepancy Theory:

Are We Trying to Juggle Three Selves?

So far, we’ve been talking about the self as if we all have a fully formed and single self-concept. Psychologist Tory Higgins (1987, 2002) suggested that in reality, we all have three simultaneous selves. We juggle these selves all at once, and they frequently change shape while in the air. As you learn about each one, consider how each contrib- utes to your own self-concept.

The Actual Self. Our first self is our “actual self,” which is simply who we think we are, right now. It includes both our good and bad qualities, as well as the qualities we think other people see in us. The actual self is who we are currently, as if someone took a snapshot of our evolving lives. A meaningful actual self can acknowledge our strengths and admit our weaknesses.

The Ideal Self. Higgins hypothesizes that we also have an “ideal self,” which is the person we would like to become in the future. It includes enhancing or adding positive qualities that we don’t think are maximized in the actual self, and it means eliminating or at least reducing negative qualities we have right now. Our ideal self is our dreams and goals, the person we strive to become. Importantly, our ideal self is truly based on what we want, even if that means secret desires we’ve never been able to admit to anyone else. If you could, for example, have any job in the world, or look a certain way, or live a particular lifestyle, what would it be?

The Ought Self. In contrast with the ideal self, our “ought” self is what we think other people expect of us. The ought self is based on our perception of what our social world hopes for us, perhaps what our parents want us to do or be, what our friends believe would be good for us, or even what our culture tells us is proper and correct. The

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ought self may influence how we dress, for example, because we know what is expected of us. Interestingly, our ought self might change based on whom our reference is. For example, what you think your parents expect of you might be very different from what you think a first date expects of you.

When Selves Don’t Align: Self-Discrepancy. Higgins suggests that not only do we have to juggle these three simultaneous selves, but we also have to deal with times when the selves don’t match up. He refers to the mismatch between our three selves as self-discrepancy. How do you feel when your actual self doesn’t match your ideal self? Are these emotions different from those you experience when your actual self doesn’t match your ought self?

Our discrepancies have predictable consequences that Higgins explored in research. He found that when the actual self and ideal self don’t match—in other words, when we don’t live up to our own ideals or we fail to achieve our dreams—we will experi- ence “dejection-related emotions” such as disappointment, shame, embarrassment, and possibly even depression (Higgins, 1987). On the other hand, sometimes our actual self doesn’t match our ought self. When this happens, we’ll feel that we haven’t lived up to others’ expectations—and that kind of failure produces “agitation-related emotions” such as guilt, fear, self-contempt, and anxiety. Of course, the ideal situation would be that all three selves (actual, ideal, and ought) are exactly in alignment, with perfect overlap. As you can see in Figure 3.3, this would be like a Venn diagram of three circles. Each time the selves get closer together, the circles overlap more until only a single, perfect circle remains because they are all the same self. How likely do you think this is to achieve? Can you see discrepancies between your actual, ideal, and ought selves? For more on self-discrepancy theory, see the Social Psychology in Popular Culture feature on “Self-Discrepancy Theory and Wonder Woman.”

Self-Expansion Theory:

Inclusion of Others in the Self

While self-discrepancy theory suggested that we might have more than one self-concept, other social psychologists have suggested that our self-concept might even include other people. Certainly, social identity theory noted that our sense of self includes our group memberships and our relationships with other people. But could our abstract sense of self also actually include specific other individuals in our social world? Self-expansion theory is the idea that all of us have a basic motivation to grow, improve, and enhance our self- concept; we all want to reach our greatest potential (Aron, Aron, & Norman, 2001; Aron & Aron, 1996). While other theories have noted that we can do that through things like identifying our flaws or working toward our ideal self, self-expansion the- ory specifically suggests that one common way we attempt to “expand” our self-concept is through close social relationships. If we psychologically bond with others and feel that these indi- viduals now become part of who we are, then their strengths, resources, knowledge, and skills can help us grow and have new opportunities.

Ideal Self Ought Self

Actual Self

FIGURE 3.3 Three selves might exist for each of us, according to self-discrepancy theory.

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The Main Ideas

1. Self-perception theory proposes that we form our self-concept by observing our own behaviors, then making assumptions about our internal values, attitudes, and so on based on those behaviors.
2. Self-discrepancy theory suggests that instead of a single self, we all have three selves: (1) the actual self (who we are right now), (2) the ideal self (who we’d like to become), and (3) the ought self (who others expect us to be). When our actual self doesn’t match our ideal self, we experience dejection- related emotions. When our actual self doesn’t match our ought self, we experience agitation-related emotions.
3. Self-expansion theory is the idea that we all want to grow and improve, and one way to do that it to cognitively include other people into our self-concept. One way to measure this cognitive self-expansion is through the Inclusion of the Other in the Self Scale, which shows a series of seven progressively overlapping circles; participants choose the one that best represents how they include someone else in their self-concept.

CRITICAL THINKING CHALLENGE

• • Think of at least two times when you realized something about your self- concept by observing your behaviors. Why did you not have this self-insight before you noticed your own behaviors?
• • Make a list of traits that make up your actual self, then one for your ideal self, and finally one for your ought self. Mark the traits that match across lists, and mark the traits that don’t match. How do you feel about the traits that don’t match? Are the emotions you experience in alignment with what self- discrepancy theory hypothesized you would feel?
• • Do you think it’s healthy for two relationship partners to circle the most- overlapping set of circles, or does this somehow indicate codependency? What do you think would be the “best” pair of circles for couple members to choose, and why?

WHY DO WE PRESENT DIFFERENT

SELVES IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS?

Learning Objective 3: Explain how we adjust our public self-presentation to influence others. In the quaint, olden days before mobile phones, a sociology researcher observed that it was not unusual for a college woman living in a dormitory to impress her dorm mates with her popularity by arranging for “herself to be called several times in order to give all the other girls ample opportunity to hear her paged” (Waller, 1937, p. 730). That kind of shallow affirmation probably still happens today when, for example, we may subtly broadcast the number of our social media “friends” to signal our popularity. Both cases represent behavior that Erving Goffman (1959) describes as a performance—even when we are not fully self-aware that we are performing. People perform in slightly different ways for family, friends, peers, supervisors, professors, and store clerks. This tendency is called self-presentation theory or impression manage- ment, ways that we adjust the self to gain social influence by managing the impressions that we make on others_._

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This is not a startling insight, but the routine use of impression management needs to be acknowl- edged. We do not behave the same way at a funeral as we would at a rock concert or a job interview. Put simply, in different settings, we present different parts of our self-concept. As Kurt Lewin learned while serving as a foot soldier in World War I, our behavior often depends on how we perceive the immediate situ- ation (see Goffman, 1959).

We Use Impression Management

to Get What We Want

We employ impression management tactics as social power. We might act disappointed to get more attention, pretend to be surprised at a high price hoping for a discount, or even buy a conspicuously fancy sports car to signal sexual availability (Sundie et al., 2011). There are specific tactics associated with impression management. Ingratiation: Other-Enhancements and Opinion Conformity. Cynthia Stevens and Amy Kristof (1995) were interested in how job applicants try to influence interview- ers by presenting certain aspects of the self_._ One common tactic was ingratiation. This short-term impression management tactic is designed to increase liking and attraction by complimenting the other person and seeming to admire him or her_._ One form of ingratiation is other-enhancement, praising the interviewer. A variation with the same goal is opinion conformity, endorsing the interviewer’s perceived attitudes or values. You can probably think of some of the cruder terms used to describe people who try to ingratiate themselves with people in power by praising everything they do and agreeing with everything they say. No matter what term you use, ingratiation is explicit attempts to present a version of the self that you think the other person will like in an attempt to benefit yourself somehow—such as getting a job offer. Self-Promotion: Self-Enhancements and Entitlements. Self-promotion is another short-term impression management tactic that uses positive statements about the self to convey competence_._ One form of self-promotion is self-enhancements; that’s when you imply that your actual accomplishments are more significant than they first appear to be. Another common form of self-promotion is entitlements; that’s when you take credit for positive events even if you had nothing to do with them. These may be effec- tive short-term tactics, but they can backfire. For example, taking credit for someone else’s work may turn a friend into a long-term enemy and damage your reputation with important people.

Conspicuous Consumption. Depending on the type of job, gaining an advantage during a job interview is a short-term tactic. But there are impression management strat- egies with long-term goals. A young politician with ambitions may carefully calculate the right kind of marriage partner to influence future voters. Others will attempt to influence the impression they make on others by spending money on flashy or high-status items, such as expensive homes, cars, clothes, and jewelry. Publicly displaying the use of expen- sive products in an attempt to impress others is called conspicuous consumption.

In the 19th century, the Norwegian American economist Thorstein Veblen (1899/

1918. recognized that some conspicuous consumption is as un subtle as a male peacock showing off its extravagant feathers to females (see Darwin, 1871; Møller & Petrie, 2002).

Can a smiling face mask your real feelings when pulled over by police?

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iron rod somehow slipped from his fingers, sparked against the rock, and ignited the blasting powder. The long iron rod shot upward, entered beneath and through Gage’s left cheek, passed behind most of his left eye, continued through the front left portion of his brain, and exited out the top of his head. It landed about 23 meters (or 75 feet) away, greasy with Gage’s brain matter—and it was still greasy the next day even after some railroad workers rinsed it in a nearby stream. Gage was knocked over, of course, but then sur- prised everyone by getting up, walking to an oxcart to be taken to a doctor, and writing a note in his foreman’s log book—despite a very large hole in his head! Dr. Harlow cleaned the wound, shoved pieces of Gage’s skull back into place, and started recording what would become one of the most famous case studies in brain science.

Say Goodbye to Self-Presentation. Was Phineas Gage harmed? Well, he could still recognize his mother and uncle. He understood what had happened to him. And, only a few days after his accident, Gage made plans to return to work. But his physical health cycled between recovery, infection, and delirium for several weeks. As his condi- tion slowly stabilized, Dr. Harlow noticed some odd features about his patient.

Gage’s memory was “as perfect as ever” but now the once shrewd businessman “would not take $1000 for a few pebbles.” That was odd. Had Gage lost his ability to understand money? About a month after the accident, Harlow wrote that Gage had become “exceedingly capricious and childish... will not yield to restraint when it conflicts with his desires.” His self-governing mental habits had disappeared. The once effective foreman had been replaced by someone with crude speech and childish impulses. The change in his personality was so great that Gage’s friends described the postaccident man as “no longer Gage.” Apparently, the damage to Gage’s left frontal lobes was linked to a profound change in his self—but not all of his self. It is easy to imagine Gage’s acquaintances saying, “Why doesn’t Phineas just stop saying such profane things? Doesn’t he know what he’s doing?” The answer seems to be no; Gage seemed to have minimal self-insight, the ability to self-observe and evaluate our own behavior_._ Certainly, self-insight is essential if we want to be aware of how we’re presenting ourselves in public situations and especially if we want to use impression management to get other people to like us. In addition to his seeming lack of self-insight, the new Gage was probably less able to notice and adjust his behavior across different social situations_._ Curiously, patients with similar brain damage (usually due to brain surgery) tell a similar story. When Beer, John, Scabini, and Knight (2006) allowed patients with similar brain damage to see themselves on a video recording, they discovered that they were disclosing personal and inappropriate information. What we call the “self” appears to be connected to particular regions and neural pathways within the brain—and our tendency to display different aspects of our self can be affected by brain damage.

Self-Monitoring: Social Chameleons

After his brain damage, Phineas Gage seemed to lose his ability to self-monitor, or change how he acted in different social situations in an attempt to fit in. Self-monitoring suggests an awareness that we have a complicated self that needs monitoring. Some people excel at being “social chameleons” that can blend into almost any environment. Others just don’t seem to care. There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches.

Low Self-Monitors. Some people act the same way no matter where they are or who is around them—they are always shy, for example, or always sarcastic. People who

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appear to have little change in their personality or self-presentation across time and situations are consid- ered low in self-monitoring. They pay little attention to how they “come across” to other people and act consistently no matter where they are.

High Self-Monitors. However, other people are high in self-monitoring, and their behavior is the opposite: They change how they act all the time, depending on the situation. In a cooperative environ- ment, they cooperate; in a competitive environment, they compete. High self-monitors are people who look around and assess their environment, then adapt their self-presentation to get whatever they want out of that particular situation.

Adaptability Versus Authenticity: Which Way Is Best? There are advantages and dis- advantages to being high in self-monitoring. Certain careers such as sales, politics, and acting require people who can change how they act and appear on cue. It also seems reasonable that people who can easily and comfortably fit in with anyone will be more popular and may advance more quickly in their workplaces. However, sometimes peo- ple who are high in self-monitoring can seem inauthentic to others. If they are always changing how they act, others will wonder who is the “real” person?

The Symphonic Self: The Poetry of Science

Let’s take a two-paragraph pause to reflect on Phineas Gage from an artistic perspective. Gage’s life illustrates how the self constantly tries to create coherence out of the scattered experiences of our lives. Fernando Pessoa (2002) wrote in The Book of Disquiet that “my soul is like a hidden orchestra; I do not know which instruments grind and play away inside of me, strings and harps, timbales and drums. I can only recognize myself as a symphony” (p. 310). The self simultaneously draws on brain regions and neural pathways the same way that a symphony conductor simultaneously draws on multiple sections of an orchestra to produce an overall effect. Gage’s self after his accident was like an orchestra missing a few instruments. One brain scientist, however, believes that what our brain does every day is far more impressive than the most beautiful symphony orchestra. Damasio (2010) continued the metaphor, writing that “the marvel... is that the score and conductor become reality only as life unfolds” (p. 24). The self is a symphony orchestra that plays magnificent music only once, without a score, and without any rehearsal—and then flows smoothly into its next performance. What a magnificent, creative self!

The Main Ideas

1. Self-presentation (also called impression management) refers to the ways we adjust our self in public to gain social acceptance or influence. Specific ways we alter self-presentation include ingratiation, self-promotion, and conspicuous consumption.
2. Phineas Gage’s famous accident revealed a connection between the self and the brain. After Gage suffered brain damage, his personality changed, but his ability to change his self-presentation also went away.

Chameleons can change color to disguise themselves and fit into their environment. Are people capable of similar changes, based on their social environment?

20 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

illusions help us manage such chronic stress by main- taining an illusion of more control over our driving fate than we really have (Taylor, Kemeny, Reed, Bower, & Gruenewald, 2000). Shelley Taylor and her col- leagues assert that we use three types of self-deceptions that promote our own positive mental health. We

(1) cling to the belief we can control our own lives more than we can (control), (2) believe in an unrealistically optimistic view of the future (optimism), and (3) discover meaning in critical life events, such as bereavement (meaning).

For example, one way that many older people use positive illusions to feel more optimistic and in control is called subjective age, our sense of how old we feel com- pared to our chronological age. For example, the chronological age range was between 60 and 95 in a study of more than 800 French retirees (Gana, Alaphilippe, & Bailly, 2004). The researchers wanted to test (a) whether self-deception about their subjec- tive age was harmful or helpful and (b) whether the possible benefits of self-deception stopped when people deceived themselves too much—when they, so to speak, “went off the deep end” of the self-deception continuum. Optimal margin theory suggests that, like wine, a little self-deception can be a good thing—too much, however, can become dangerous. For the French retirees, those with positive illusions about their age “reported more satisfaction with daily pursuits (leisure time), higher self-worth, and less boredom proneness” (Gana et al., 2004, p. 63). But the people in this sample may not have gotten too close to the edge of unhealthy self- deception. The 85-year-olds, for example, may have thought of themselves as closer to 70 but probably did not think of themselves as 20-year-olds. Subjective age is not the only way we use moderate amounts of self-deception to improve the quality of our lives.

Self-Serving Cognitive Biases

Research has established that a little bit of self-deception—making us feel slightly more intelligent, attractive, funnier, more talented, and so on—has a lot of benefits. These benefits include less anxiety (Brockner, 1984), better coping with stress and setbacks (Steele, 1988), lower levels of depression (Tennen & Herzberger, 1987), and general life satisfaction (Myers & Diener, 1995). Cognitive distortions that enhance our self- concept by making us perceive that we’re a little better than we are, objectively, are called self-serving cognitive biases. Let’s look at three specific examples of how we distort reality, just a little, to maintain these self-serving views.

Biased Views of Our Own Traits. On a piece of scrap paper or in the margin of this book, quickly jot down three of your best traits or qualities and three of your worst. Now, for each trait you wrote down, estimate on a scale from 0 to 100 the percentage of students at your college or university who also possess this trait. When Marks (1984) had college students do this exact task, people underesti- mated how many of their peers shared their positive traits and overestimated how many people shared their negative traits. How does this cognitive bias enhance our self- concept? It works because if you think that your positive qualities are rare, that makes

Age can just be a number – how old you feel is subjective.

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you really special. And if your negative qualities are common—hey, everyone has this problem!—then your worst qualities are bad, sure, but not really a big deal. We underestimate how many people share our talents (Goethals, Messick, & Allison, 1991) and we normalize our negative attitudes or traits so that we don’t feel singled out or stigmatized (Suls & Wan, 1987). We can admit fears, such as speaking in front of a group, but we tell ourselves that everyone else shares our anxieties and, thus, these problems are not “fatal flaws.” We comfort ourselves by simply framing our “best” and “worst” qualities in this way that makes us feel just a little better.

Biased Views of Our Own Behaviors. Another self-serving cognitive bias emerges when we consider causes for our own successes and failures. Like admitting negative traits we possess, we can admit that we’ve done bad things or failed at something—but we often pro- tect our view of the self by coming up with an excuse or justification for bad behaviors. In a review of over 20 studies on this topic, Miller and Ross (1975) found that often, people engage in self-enhancing views of success. When people succeed at a task, they are more likely to per- ceive that this success is due to their own behaviors, effort, and talent than when they fail. Failures are due to some external, situational factor instead. Did you get an A on the test? You must have studied hard or be really good at this subject! Did you fail the test? It’s probably because you were sick, or you stayed up late helping a friend with a crisis, or the test was unfair. By attributing successes to our own efforts—but failures to something we can’t control or to something about the situation—we can take credit for doing well and simultane- ously avoid blame for doing badly.

Biased Views of Feedback About the Self. A third self-serving cognitive bias is the tendency for people to view feedback about themselves in a skewed manner. Many people enjoy taking little quizzes about themselves on websites like Facebook, for exam- ple. When you like the outcome, you might think, “Hey, that was a great quiz! Really insightful.” But if you don’t like the outcome, it’s easy for you to see how the questions were flawed.

People often “discover” validity problems in tests that depict them in a negative or unflattering light; however, they are far less critical of evidence that portrays them positively (Baumeister, 1998; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Holt, 1985). For example, one study led participants to either “succeed” or “fail” at a fake social sensitivity test. After seeing their results, participants then saw information that indicated that the test itself was either valid or invalid. Participants who had “succeeded” evaluated the valid conclusion significantly more favorably than people in the invalid condition, and the opposite occurred for people who had “failed” (Pyszczynski et al., 1985). As usual, more research is needed. But it’s interesting that we have several studies with different methodologies that seem to be telling the same story. Optimal margin theory might be right: A little bit of self-deception seems pretty common, and moderate levels can be helpful to maintaining a positive self-concept. To learn about how positive illusions can be applied to social relationships, read the Spotlight on Research Methods feature on “Positive Illusions in Dating Relationships.”

Sometimes, our view of our self isn’t quite accurate. But is that a bad thing?