Ch. 2: Self and Social Comparison
Self-serving Attributions
A form of self-serving bias; the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other factors.
Self-esteem
A person's overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth.
Self-efficacy
A sense that one is competent and effective, distinguished from self-esteem, which is one's sense of self-worth.
Self-monitoring
Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one's performance to create the desired impression.
Self-schema
Beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information.
Independent Self
Construing one's identity as autonomous self.
Interdependent Self
Construing one's identity in relation to others.
Dual Attitude System
Differing implicit (automatic) and explicit (consciously controlled) attitudes toward the same object. Verbalized explicit attitudes may change with education and persuasion; implicit attiudes change slowly, with practice that forms new habit.
Social Comparison
Evaluating one's abilities and opininos by comparing oneself with others.
Group-serving Bias
Explaining away outgroup members' positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions (while excusing such behavior by one's own group).
Collectivism
Giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly.
Possible Selves
Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future.
Impact Bias
Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events.
Terror Management Theory
Proposes that people exhibit self-protective emotional and cognitive responses (including adhering more strongly to their cultural worldviews and prejudices) when confronted with reminders of their mortality.
Self-handicapping
Protecting one's self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure.
Defensive Pessimism
The adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one's anxiety to motivate effective action.
Spotlight Effect
The belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and behavior than they really are.
Individualism
The concept of giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.
Locus of Control
The extent to which people perceive outcomes as internally controllable by their own efforts or as externally controlled by chance or outside forces.
Immune Neglect
The human tendency to underestimate the speed and the strength of the "psychological immune system," which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen.
Illusion of Transparency
The illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others.
Learned Helplessness
The sense of hopelessness and resignation learned when a human or animal perceives no control over repeated events.
False Consensus Effect
The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one's opinions and one's undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors.
Self-serving Bias
The tendency to perceive onself favorably.
False Uniqueness Effect
The tendency to underestimate he commonality of one's abilities and one's desirable or successful behaviors.
Planning Fallacy
The tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task.
Self-concept
What we know and believe about ourselves.
Self-presentation
the act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one's ideals.
