 This is lecture five and this lecture we'll be talking about the self and the self is definitely a topic That's worth an entire lecture because we care so much about it We are all pretty much obsessed with ourselves. So if you recognize this then don't worry. You're not alone In this first part of the lecture, we will be talking about our self concept and more about that Later. So in lecture three, I hope you remember we talked about how knowledge is structured in our brain And that certain topics are chronically activated because they are so important to us and the self is one of those topics that is chronically activated and that has several interesting Consequences for example the self reference effect the self reference effect means that we have a very good Motivation we are very motivated to learn about ourselves and that also has implications for how our brain works So we all the information that is relevant to the self is processed very efficiently and also remembered very well So everything you learn about yourself you have a very very good memory for and also you pay a lot of attention to it So that's the self reference effect our extra goods memory and attention for all the information That's relevant for ourselves and the second phenomenon, which I really think is very relatable to probably all of us It's a cocktail party effect and the cocktail party effect is I think I love the name because it's it's something that we've all been through I guess so let's Imagine that you're standing in a party It's pretty crowded and you're standing in a small group You're discussing something can be pretty much anything you're paying attention You're listening you're responding to the people in your little group where the conversation takes place And then all of a sudden in the conversation next to you you hear your name and Even though you were not listening to that conversation at all you were focused Focusing your attention to the conversation in your own group This immediately catches your attention you hear your name and immediately your attention switches to the other Conversation you see that happening here in the slides So this is a phenomenon that occurs when you immediately detect words That are important to you that actually Originate from an unattended stimuli so something that you were not previously paying attention to And yeah, the name cocktail party effect really is Derived from the fact that we can experience this where we're at a busy party and you hear your name So we care a lot about ourselves. We have very good attention for all information relevant to the self And yeah, we remember this very very well At the same time we also mistakenly think that others shared his fascination for us So we think that people are also Focusing their attention on us all the time as well and we have this especially when something is a bit off So let's imagine you have a bad hair day You feel very self-conscious about something in your appearance for example your hair or maybe some you have a A zit on your face or you have something that makes you feel very subconscious and and very very Self-aware Then you feel like everybody is looking at you. This is called the spotlight effect You feel like you're in the spotlight and everybody's looking at you and everybody is maybe even ridiculing you Because of the way of how you look But actually people are not so much paying attention to you We overestimate The the idea that how much people focus our their attention on us Because you have to remember that everybody is mostly focused their attention on themselves So they are not really paying attention to you so much or at least not as much as you think or afraid of Because people are also preoccupied with themselves. So that might be a reassurance sometimes So we have a lot of attention for ourselves, but if we focus on ourselves, what do we see? Well, what we see is our self-concept that is the overall set of beliefs that people have about their own personal Attributes your view of who you are your answer to the question. Who are you? So let's imagine I ask you that question describe yourself for me. What do you know about yourself? How would you describe yourself then you might think to yourself? Well, I am a pretty smart person I care a lot about the people around me I am honest and I'm also a bit lazy So you could come up with a description that looks like this describing your personal unique characteristics But you can also answer this question differently. You might also say well, I am a daughter of my parents I am also a good friend. I am an ice skater. That's my hobby. That's what I do and I'm a student So these are two very different answers to the same question and both are correct And that is because we have different ways of describing ourselves different types of identities as you wish So first of all, we have our personal identity and that is how you think about your own unique personality and your own Qualities that so that will be describing yourself as smart and caring and honest lazy Those are all your personal characteristics part of your personal identity But we also have an identity that relates to others First of all, we have a relational identity and that is how you feel about yourself in relationships to the people around you So for example to the people that are close to you like your friends. What kind of friend are you? Are you the one that makes everyone laugh all the time? How are how are you when it comes to relating to your family? Are you very active? Are you maybe more a wallflower more on the background? So how would you describe yourself in relationship to others? Then finally, we also have a social identity and that is how we feel about ourselves in relations to Groups that we belong to so for example, you are part of the group of students and that is also part of your identity And social identity is actually very important topic that we'll come back to at the very end of this course in lecture 13 so we have these different Identities and it's important to realize that culture plays an important role when it comes to how people view themselves There's a lot of differences between cultures in how they relate to others And I think you've all you're all familiar with the difference between individualistic cultures and more collectivistic collectivistic cultures and these two types of cultures also have a different way of of seeing themselves their relationship Their relationships to others. So if you are living in an individualistic culture, the Netherlands is pretty individualistic country So if you're from here, then chances are that you are also have an individualistic culture Then you probably see yourselves as pretty much independent of others We see the bonds that we have with others are as more or less voluntary Something that we choose to to have or maintain of course our bonds with family members is not voluntary That's something that we are pretty much stuck with but even when it comes to family. We can make a choice to either Have a close relationship with the family or a distant relationship. That's something that we can we can decide So we have an independent self an independent view of who we are This is in contrast to people from collectivistic countries They have a more interdependent self and that means that they see themselves as part of a social group So they have they see that the ties that they have to others not as voluntary That's fixed. That's something that's part of who they are They would never even consider leaving that group because that that's just such a big part of their social identity And if you're a form an individualistic culture and you're describing yourself Chances are that you describe your personal identity as most important So if I ask you a question if you're from an individualistic culture describe yourself You're probably come up with aspects of your own unique Personal characteristics. So the first reply from the girl that we saw on the screen And if you're from a collectivistic country with an interdependent self then your relational and your social identity are way more important So if you ask people from those cultures to describe themselves, they will probably refer to the relationships They have with others like family members or bigger social groups So to get a sense of of where people Where the individualistic cultures and the collectivistic cultures are in the world here? You see a map of the world and the darker red areas are more collectivistic countries So you see in East Asia is pretty much known for being very very collectivistic But also in parts of South Africa and South America Collectivistic cultures are predominant But also within Europe and a lot of people don't realize this There are differences between how people see themselves and the culture that they have so here you see a map of Europe again The red areas are more Collectivistic areas and you see that in the south of Europe and in the east of Europe The the culture is more in the more collectivistic and in the darker Blue areas like the Netherlands and UK for example You see that this is a very individualistic Culture and this really has a huge effect on how you see yourself and your own personal characteristics And you also see this coming back this issue throughout this lecture Okay, so we have a sense of who we are and this is captured in our self-concept But how do we develop this self-concept? There's four different sources of where our idea of who we are stemmed from we have Introspection self-perception Social comparison and feedback from others and I'll walk you through each of these four different sources of a self-concept First of all introspection and with introspection we refer to the process where our people look inwards and Examine their own thoughts feelings and motives. So the moment that you're thinking to yourselves Who am I? Why did I do what I do and why do I love what I love and you try to start thinking coming up with Explanations for who you are I mean that's important for us because we have we have this very strong urge to understand ourselves So we want to have an accurate view of who we are and we sort of inspect ourselves some more than others But introspection is part of all for all human beings as part of who we are And we oftentimes have a lot of theories explaining our own behavior However, a lot of the times these theories are completely wrong We have certain intuitions of why we do what we do but they're often mistaken We are using heuristics for example Mental shortcuts in order to come to terms of with who we are we come up with explanations that seem logical But are actually not the real cause of what is happening and you'll see more and more examples of this in the upcoming lectures But for now just just keep in mind that introspection is not always helping us to really understand who we are Because we are often underestimating situational circumstances that actually caused our behavior. So more about that later So introspection is the first source and then secondly sometimes we don't have a very clear idea of who we are and Let's imagine that I ask you a question. Do you like to cook for some people? This will be a very straightforward question. They can immediately say yes I love to cook or no I hate cooking but let's imagine you don't really know an immediate answer to the question Maybe you lived at home your whole life and never really engaged in cooking much. So you don't really know what you can do then do is Perceive your own behavior a sort of reflect on how you behave So you might think back of the time that you actually did cook you might think back of the moment that you baked an egg and You thought to yourself. Well, this was my endeavor to cook So I tried to bake an egg and it went terribly wrong. I really it was it tasted disgusting I burned the egg and I hated this this whole process and then you think to yourself. Well, I Tried it out. I didn't like it. Well, then I know I don't like cooking so if you engage in a process like this we call this self perception and With self perception you sort of derive your attitudes and your feelings From the behavior that you that you showed earlier So you look at past behavior and you start to sort of try to understand do I like this? Yes or no sounds a bit weird maybe that but that's oftentimes when what people do if they feel ambiguous And they don't really know the answer They start thinking back of moments when they show the behavior and think to themselves did I like this was I good at it? Yes or no So self perception is the second source of self concept And the third cause is social comparison and with social comparison We mean that we learn about our own skills and our own attitudes by comparing them to others So we compare our own Capacities to the capacities of other people and we can do so in two different ways We can use either upward social comparison or downward social comparison And I'll show you I'll illustrate this with an example So let's imagine you want to be you know a little bit fitter you want to you know engage in sports more Maybe you will want to lose a couple of kilos because you feel like you're not really Feeling your body right now So you want to go to the gym and work out and and you want to have a sense of how am I doing that with guards? Am I already you know close to reaching that goal of becoming fitter? So what you can then do is compare yourself to others around you and you can go to the gym and Compare yourself to this guy over here that you probably I don't know what you look like I don't see you but I can imagine that you don't really have a body like this yet If you're wanting to work on on on your appearance So if you compare your own states to the states of the person you see in the screen now You're engaging an upward social comparison. You're comparing yourself to another person That's actually excelling in this domain is better than you in this domain and If you do this this can be beneficial for you because it can lead to self-improvement It can stimulate you and inspire you to also work out and become fitter and you know Maybe at the end look more like this guy over here At the same time it's important to keep in mind that it has to be realistic So looking like this guy even though, you know, some people might want to look at like this guy Some people really don't But for a lot of people this is really not you know a Realistic goal. So what can then happen is that you if you compare yourself to someone that you to a certain person? That has a status or a level of excellence that you can never reach this can be really demotivating So it has to be someone that is sort of within your level then it can motivate you to become better So this is upward social comparison. You can also engage in downward social comparison That is maybe comparing you yourself to a person that doesn't really care about that girl goal And it's not really, you know interested in it. It's not working towards that goal Also, it's clearly not succeeding at the goal of working out And if you do that Then the benefit of that is that it's very good for your self-esteem if you compare yourself to someone that is, you know Scoring lower than you on a certain domain. You feel good about yourself The problem is that maybe if you compare yourself to this guy lying on the couch living his best life with his Cheeto chips Then you might think to yourself why on earth would I go to the gym? I can also just be like him So you can you have to be a bit careful when using social comparison if you want to improve yourself Okay, so then finally we can learn about a self-concept by getting feedback from others Of course sometimes in life We have competitions and you can win prizes Sometimes in school for example, you can get your reports and you can really see how you did compared to the other kids in Your classroom, or maybe you engage in a certain sports competition You run a marathon or you did some kind of competition You win a prize that of course also gives you feedback on who you are also when you come in last that also of course is Informational information on what your skills are and maybe you're not so talented in that domain So success and failure that gives us information about our self-concept, but also just observing people Observing you that can also be helpful So that is when you are for example giving a presentation and your colleagues you see them looking at you like with Pride in their eyes and they give you compliments afterwards and they say to you you really did a very good job there So then you don't really win a prize But you still see from the reactions the responses of other people how you did so if you did really well You sort of you observe yourself from a meta perspective and you think to yourself. Well, I did really well here So this is probably something I can really do very good. So I'm Apparently good at giving presentations So feedback from others can actually stimulate us it can help us to you know feel more confident about ourselves or It can inspire us to improve ourselves but feedback from others can also backfire a little bit and For this to explain this I want to go back to lecture 2 in which I ask you to predict the outcome of the following situation So remember the question right? It was about a young boy Taro who has to be my son He's playing this is a real-life example. This actually happened. He was playing in his room. His room is a bit messy That's you know sort of common when you enter his room. It's a bit messy and from his own, you know, even without me interfering Taro decided to clean up his room and To his own surprise. He was he spent like half an hour maybe 45 minutes on on cleaning up his room and to his own surprise. He actually enjoyed that He actually liked the act of cleaning up way more than he thought he was and he liked the fact that his room was clean And he did this and he felt you know good about themselves Then later his mother me entered the room and I decided to reward him with five euros This last part is fictional. I didn't actually do this because you know, I know psychology So I didn't do this But let's let's you know imagine that I rewarded Taro with five euros For the act for his initiative of cleaning up his room and the question to you in lecture 2 was After this payment, do you think Taro will like the act of cleaning his room less the same or more? And this is one of those sort of counterintuitive Phenomena in social psychology because you probably think to yourself it would be logical Taro cleaned up his room. He liked it and then he also got paid So he probably liked it even more, right? But that's not how it works and that has to do with his motivation There's actually two types of motivations to people can have we can be intrinsically motivated to do something or Extrinsically motivated to do something and if we have an intrinsic motivation We engage in a certain activity because we like it. We enjoy it and we find or we find it interesting So this was actually what what was happening with Taro. He liked the act of cleaning his room way more than anything So he was intrinsically motivated to do so If you do something for an extrinsic motivation You engage in activity because there's external rewards or punishments if you don't do it So that will be when I forced him to clean his room Otherwise he couldn't game anymore or you know or I would reward him with five euros So what is interesting is that feedback from other people can sometimes mess up this motivation? So the motivation that we have so let's imagine a person like Taro is intrinsically motivated to do something But then still gets a reward. So there's an external Action and that changes his view If this happens this then this is called the over-justification effect So Taro is paid for something that he initially already liked doing so this is actually a situation in which we give out a reward Even though a person actually didn't need a reward because the activity itself was already rewarding and if you add an extrinsic motivation an extra external factor To an act that is intrinsically rewarding then people can actually start liking it less and That has to do with how we perceive our actions. So Taro can think to himself. So I actually I cleaned up my room and after that I got paid to do so So why did I actually do it? Did I do it because of the payment or did I do it because I liked it and this can really be sort of confusing to people and This is something we'll come back to extensively in a lecture six So if you don't really get it right now, it will explanation will follow. So just keeping in mind that Over-justifying so giving rewards for something that is actually already rewarding Works paradoxical and it's actually you're not reaching what you want to reach So this is the end of this part first part of the lecture