Psy 311 Nacoste final

Interdependent tension causes us to face the question

"who am I"

Other people cause us to

-experience cognitive dissonance about our own identity -experience objective self awareness

Learning about the basic features of situations: (roles, norms, and relationship cohesiveness)

-makes our social world predicable -makes us feel competent and safe

Psychological dissonance

-painful -the greater the psychological dissonance the greater the pressure to reduce that dissonance -we will find a way to reduce that dissonance (e mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs)

primary group orientation to interdependence

-script for how good interdependence is set up and how it can fit into that good interdependence -primary group orientation is exogenous

How does knowledge of the self develop?

-the self is a looking glass self -we rely on reflected appraisals (a person's perception of how others see and evaluate him or her)

dispositional attribution

-trait label -behavorial trait that is perceived to be stable, internal characteristic of the person

To have any chance of being in a a real healthy relationship:

1. We must develop authentic self-knowledge

3 components of attitude:

1. cognition 2. Affect 3.Conation

2 reasons why psychological inconsistency is important:

1. cognitive economical motivation 2. Nature of attitudes

Basic components of cognitive consistency theories

1. cognitive elements- things a person knows or believes about the world including him or herself 2. cognitive relations- cognitive elements can be related to each other in an inconsistent or consistent way

Kellys covariation model:

1. distinctiveness-the extent to which the person behaves in the same way in similar situations. (low if she smokes at any time and any place) 2. consistency-he extent to which the person behaves like this every time the situation occurs (high if ali smokes every time shes with friends) 3. consensus info- belief on what most people would do -the extent to which other people behave in the same way in a similar situation. (its high if all of ali's friends smoke with her)

Two explanations of attributional process

1. environmental inducement-external- something in the environment pushed the behavior 2.Personal Force- internal-something in the person cased them to act this way

2 types of power

1. fate control power-The ability of person A to influence person B no matter what person B does. (Parent (a) and children (b)) 2. behavioral control power- Behavior Control "negotiation power" The ability of person A to influence person B by changing what person A does

Six steps toward the management of response interference

1. find the time the dyad agrees on to talk about the issue- try not to talk in the heat of your moment 2. admit your tendencies: say "I" not "you" (honest self disclosure) 3. listens for strengths and limitations of your roommate/partner 4. be reasonable- can you live up to standards you are trying to impose on the other person? 5. work toward agreeable behavioral strategies "turn-talking" 6. Not all dyads are viable - no one person is causing the interdependent tension -avoid autistic friendliness -accept that you cant always get what you want

When it comes to studying the self social psychologist have tried to do three things:

1. find useful ways of thinking about the self 2. how does knowledge of the self develop? 3. in what situations and circumstances does the self influence behavior?

Two cognitive biases happen in the attributional process:

1. fundamental attribution error 2. Actor-observer difference

Three principles of human social life

1. humans are constantly searching for safety in interdependence 2. for humans certain forms of interdependence are experienced as being safe 3. as we search for safety we will have to adapt to situations of vague interdependence

What does it take? to be in a relationship

1. learn and acknowledge your own tendencies 2. learn the other persons tendencies

Shaver- 3 stages in attribution process

1. observation of an action 2. Judgement of intention- the observer must decide that an action was intentional before an internal attribution can be made 3. (internal) dispositional attribution- find a label

Attribution goals

1. predict how they will behave interpersonally 2. gauge whether their attitudes for the relationship matches ours so much is at stake: creates two cognitive goals

Vague interdependence causes us to:

1. search for information 2. search for safety

What are we trying to get at?

1. the other persons interpersonal disposition 2. trying to find a trait that influences how the person behaves within a relationship Trying to understand how the person : 1. feels about the relationship 2. will treat me

The self plays a role in how we gauge how well our social interactions and relations are going -How do we do this?

1. the self system is designed to monitor and respond to how other people are reacting to us positively or negatively 2. The self monitors the quality of an individuals actual and potential relationships, specifically the degree to which other people value their relationship with the individual

3 conditions that make groupthink likely to occur

1. there is a provocative situation that involves high stress from outsiders and a feeling of being under appreciated among group members 2. There are structural faults in the organization that lead to insulation from outside information 3. The decision makers are a cohesive group

why do we make attributions?

1. to reduce and simplify all the information 2. attributions are part of a cognitive economic system

Two attributional goals:

1.predict how the other person will behave inter personally 2. we want to gauge whether their attitude toward the relationship matches ours

Basic features of situations

1.roles 2.norms 3. relationship cohesiveness

ways of thinking about the self

The I The me

Actor-observer difference

The tendency to explain our own behavior in the situational terms and the behavior of our partner who we observe in dispositional terms. (internal characteristics)

Interdependent tension brings the social self into focus

True

Management of response interference requires..

a focus on behavior

Children NEED..

a predictable social structure

from learning the dimensions of interdependence children gain what?

a sense of confidence and competence and a sense of safety

The self is...

a theory that the individual has unwittingly constructed about himself or herself

person perception

act of a perceiver encountering another person and forming impressions and possibly making attributions about that other person

Leary and Baumiester (2002) the self is...

an internal psychological monitor of something that's very important to people, namely social belonging

Cognitive shortcuts

any cognition or set of cognition's that lets us summarize something or someone

Conation

behavior towards the attitude object

situations of vague interdependence

characterized by being outside the normal flow of your interdependence interactions and by being without clear roles, norms, and relationship cohesiveness

Duval and Wieklund (1972) said objective self awareness is

consciousness where our attention is focused exclusively on the self

relationship problems are necessary so

each member of the dyad can discover something about themselves

Its even harder to show our true self to others which makes our relationships

even more difficult to manage

relationship cohesiveness

forces that attract people to each other in the situation

Relationship cohesiveness

forces that draw members of a group to each other

fundamental attribution error

general tendency to discount situational causes and emphasize dispositional cause as influences on another persons behavior

What is set in motion by vague interdependence?

group dynamics

Attribution analysis

how we come to give meaning to social events and circumstances -we go through an attribution processes (

Vague interdependence causes us to search for

info about the situation and relationship safety in the situation

Associate safety with?

interdependence with others

we search for safety and home in

interdependence with others

Associate home with?

interdependence with tohers

being alone can cause

interdependent tension

To be in a relationship

is to dance

What does being in a group do?

it pushes us to try to pay attention to the preferences of (and potential relationships with) too many people at the same time -introduces vague interdependence in a situation

Cognitive economical motivation

keep it simple -we reduce and simplify, summarize includes cognitive shortcuts -cognitive heuristics -the self is a cognitive shortcut

Cognitive economics system

made up of those cognitive processes that serve to reduce and simplify the vast amount of info that floods most peoples life, thus allowing efficient processing and avoiding and otherwise overwhelming overload

When we become the object of our own observation we experience

objective self awareness

self esteem

our evaluation of those things we know about ourselves

self definition is critical to

our social interactions

Attitude

predisposition (tendency) to evaluate some object positively or negatively

What can go wrong in our search for safety and home in relationships?

primary group orientation

Elements is an inconsistent relation to each other and creates

psychological tension

Objective self awareness is..

psychologically painful -we see the discrepancy between our ideal self and real self -to avoid objective self awareness we are motivated to look outward to avoid the pain of seeing our real self

Norms

rules for behavior

norms

rules for the behaviors in the situation

The self as "known"- "the me"

self we experience when we become the object of our observation

roles

set of expected behaviors

roles

set of expected powers

Cognitive heuristics

simple, efficient rules, learned or hard-coded by evolutionary processes, that have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments, and solve problems typically when facing complex problems or incomplete information.

Vague interdependence

situations in which the requirements of interdependence are unknown. Situations of vague interdependence have 2 characteristics.

situations in which the requirements of interdependence are unknown are

situations of vague interdependence

Group dynamics occur in:

situations that involve more than the dyad

interdependence tension brings our

social self into focus

childs 1 st motivation is?

survival- to be fed

vague interdependence causes..

tension about response interference

Cognitive consistency theories say

that we are motivated to keep the components consistent with one another

Epstein says

the I and me add up to a self theory

The management of interdependence tension requires

the development of authentic self knowledge

children have to learn

the dimensions of interdependence

affect

the emotion you feel about the attitude object

group dynamics

the idea that group behavior is a system of reciprocal interactions between groups and individuals

bystander effect

the more people present at the scene of an emergency the less likely is the person in need of help to receive that help

What kind of social motivation is set in motion by vague interdependence?

the motivation to find a role for self

The who am i question is threatened so we tend to focus on

the other member of the dyad by asking who are they and why do they act that why?

The self as knower- "the I"

the process of actively experiencing a moment and the sense of continuity of experience that develops over time

Attribution process

the process through which perceivers interpret the actions of other people and in some cases their own actions

self concept-

things you know about yourself

Cognition

thoughts about the attitude object

Our own inconsistency causes us

to blame to other persons inconsistency -causes us to engage in person perception

Childs 2nd motivation is?

to learn to manage interdependence

Authentic self-knowledge

we are honest with ourselves about our strengths and limitations, And requires that with our partners we be honest in revealing our strengths and limitations -requires that we make ourselves vulnerable to sharp teeth

What are we trying to get at by making these attributions?

we are trying to figure out the other person's dispositions

How can primary group orientation go wrong?

we assume absolute truth

Attributional Fire

we create it in our relationships -a set of hot emotions that result when two people make negative, internal dispositional attributions of about each other

Baumeister and Leary (1995) said

we have a need to belong : 1. requires a few people with who we have had mostly positive frequent interactions 2. We must believe that 1 or more of those interaction partners will be in contact with us over time with real emotional concern for us

groupthink

when a group is faced with a stressful decision and is more concerned with reaching a unanimous agreement than with evaluating the facts of the situation.

Diffusion of responsibility

when several potential helpers are available, responsibility for acting is divided into the group so each individual is less likely to assume personal responsibility for acting

Why do we do this?

whenever another person tries to explain the behavior of another person, the observer is engaging in an distributional analysis of behavior

It is only in encountering response interdependence that we are forced to look beyond our ideal self to our real self -olny in a real relationship do we get to know who we are

yes