Chapter 3: The Self
- Page ID
- 217734
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Chapter Learning Objectives
1. The Cognitive Self: The Self-Concept
- Define and describe the self-concept, its influence on information processing, and its diversity across social groups.
- Describe the concepts of self-complexity and self-concept clarity, and explain how they influence social cognition and behavior.
- Differentiate the various types of self-awareness and self-consciousness.
- Describe self-awareness, self-discrepancy, and self-affirmation theories, and their interrelationships.
- Explore how we sometimes overestimate the accuracy with which other people view us.
2. The Feeling Self: Self-Esteem
- Define self-esteem and explain how it is measured by social psychologists.
- Explore findings indicating diversity in self-esteem in relation to culture, gender, and age.
- Provide examples of ways that people attempt to increase and maintain their self-esteem.
- Outline the benefits of having high self-esteem.
- Review the limits of self-esteem, with a focus on the negative aspects of narcissism.
3. The Social Self: The Role of the Social Situation
- Describe the concept of the looking-glass self and how it affects our self-concept.
- Explore the impact of the labeling bias, self-labeling, and internalized prejudice on people’s self-concepts, particularly in those from marginalized social groups.
- Define social comparison, and summarize how people use it to define their self-concepts and self-esteem.
- Give examples of the use of upward and downward social comparison and their influences on social cognition and affect.
- Explain the concept of social identity and why it is important to human behavior.
- Describe how self-evaluation maintenance theory helps to explain how we react when other people’s behaviors threaten our sense of self.
- Describe the concept of self-presentation and the various strategies we use to portray ourselves to others.
- Outline the concept of reputation management and how it relates to self-presentation.
- Discuss the individual-difference variable of self-monitoring and how it relates to the ability and desire to self-present.

