PSYCH 360 Chapter Notes -Black Sheep, Social Comparison Theory
16 Feb 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Reflected self-appraisal, our beliefs about others appraisals of us. Parents praise accomplishments, teachers assign challenging tasks, peers laugh at jokes. Working self-concept, is the idea that only a subset of a person"s vast pool of self- knowledge is brought to mind in any given context. Women are interdependent - family-oriented, enjoy groups and relationships. Social comparison theory (festinger): when people have no objective standard they can use to evaluate their abilities, they do so largely by comparing themselves with others. Downward self-comparison, comparing ourselves to those who may be. Lesser than us and being favorably better than them. Upward social comparison, when we want to improve on something we look at those who are better off than us. Self-schema, cognitive structures, derived from the past, that represent a person"s beliefs and feelings about the self in particular domains. Self-reference effect: information about the self is more deeply integrated into our self-knowledge which makes it easier for us to remember it.
