4.

3 PERSONAL IDENTITY VS SOCIAL

IDENTITY
• Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner 1986) , we can perceive
ourselves differently at any given moment in time, depending on
where wee are on the personal versus social identity continuum.

At the personal end, we think of ourselves primarily as individuals.

At the social end, we think of ourselves as members od specific
social groups. We do not experience all aspects of our self-
concept simultaneously; where we place ourselves on this
continuum at any given moment will influence how we think about
ourselves.
 PERSONAL IDENTITY VS SOCIAL
IDENTITY
PERSONAL IDENTITY SOCIAL IDENTITY

• when our personal identity is • end of the continuum, perceiving

salient and we think of ourselves ourselves as members of a group
as unique individuals, this results means we emphasize what we
in self-descriptions that share with other group members.
emphasize how we differ from • description of the self at the
other individuals. social identity level are
• personal identity self-description intergroup comparisons in nature
can be thought of as an - they involves contrasts
intragroup comparison - involving between groups.
comparisons with other
individuals who share our group
membership.
 THE PERSONAL-VERSUS-SOCIAL IDENTITY
CONTINUUM
Depending on whether we
define ourselves in terms of
our personal or social
identity, self-content will be
the result of an intragroup
comparison. Our identity
experience will be either as
an individual or as a member
of social group.

Despite such potential variability in self-definition, most of us manage to maintain a coherent image of
ourselves.
This can occur either because the domains in which we see ourselves as inconsistent are deemed to be
relatively unimportant, or they simply are not salient when we think of ourselves in terms of ant particular
identity (Patrick, Neighbors, & Knee, 2004).
 4.3.1 Who I think I am depends on the social context
 People do describe themselves differently depending on whether the question
they are asked implies a specific situation or is more open-ended.

 People differ across time and place in the extent to which they emphasize the
personal self and its uniqueness form others.

 Important differences in self-descriptions emerge primarily when a particular

group identity is activated as it was in this example, when thinking of the self in
English versusu Chinese.

 Context shifts in self-definition can influence how we categorize ourselves in

telation to other people, and this in turn, can affect how we respond to others
 aspect of the self might other people, including
be especially relevant to a how they refer to us
particular context linguistically, can use us
to think of ourselves in
personal-versus-social
When and why some identity terms
aspects of the self are more
salient than others

features of the context

can make one aspect of
the self highly some people may be more
distinctive, with that ready to categorise
aspect of identity themselves in terms of a
forming the basis of self particular personal traits
perception or social identity
4.3.2 Who I am depends on others treatment
How others treat us, and how we believe they will treat us in the
future, have important implications for how we think about
ourselves.

This point was illustrated in research conducted by Jetten,

Branscombe, Schmitt, and Spears (2001).

• Young people who elect to get body piercings in visible parts

of the body other than earlobes, a practice that has gained
in popularity
• How we dress and alter our bodies can be conceptualized as
important identity markers-ways of communicating to the
world who we are.
• These identity markers were the vvisible indicator of a
“hippie” identity, reflecting a self-percerption as a rebel
against the establishment.
 The important of belonging and group ties
Personal self-esteem is higher when
more groups are highly identified with

Among university students, many do form strong

identification with and value their university
sports teams, their gender group, and national
identity. Jetten (2015) found that among
American students personal self-esteem was
greater as they highly identified with more of
those groups. As the Figure reveals, not feeling
highly identified with any of those groups was
associated with lower self-esteem, while
increasingly identifying with more of them
resulted in higher self-esteem.
 4.3.3 The self across time : Past and future selves
 Sometimes people think about the ways they have developed and
changed across time.
 Studies of autobiographical memory (Wilson&Ross,2011) have
revealed that by strategically comparing our present selves with our
own past selves, we can feel good about ourselves by perceiving
improvement over time.

FUTURE SELF
PAST SELF
Thinking about a positively valued possible
criticism of the “distant” past self was
self can inspire people to forego current
greater than the self that was perceived as
activities that are enjoyable but will not
“nearer” to the present. These researchers
help, or might even hinder, bringing about
argued that by derogating our distant past
this improved future self
selves, we can feel like we have really grown.
(Markus & Nurius, 1986)
4.3.4 Why self-control can be difficult to achieve
People often want to change themselves by , for example,
quitting smoking, goin on a diet, or studying more effectively
- but they may find it dofficult to stick with such long-range
goals.
People often succumb to the lure od an immediate reward
and break with their prior commitment. In other words, we
fail to control ourselves in some meaningful way.

 The act of controlling ourselves is taxing and makes

exercising subsequent self-control more difficult.

 Vohs and Heatherton (2000) have claimed that we have

a limited ability to regulate ourselves and if we use our
control resources on unimportant tasks, there will be
less available for the important ones.

 So, not only is controlling ourselves sometimes difficult

to do in the first control themselves.
4.4 SOCIAL COMPARISON : HOW WE EVALUATE OURSELVES
Objective : Examine the health implications of being unrealistically optimistic about the self

How do we evaluate ourselves and decide whether we’re good or bad in various
domains, what our best and worst traits are, and how likeable we are to others?

 Social psychologists believe that all human judgment is relative to

some comparison standard (Kahneman & Miller 1986)
 Downward social comparison - where your own performance is
compared with someone who is less capable than yourself.
 Upward social comparison - compare yout performance on tha same
task to a puzzle expert you might not fare so well and not feel so good
about yourself.
 Social comparison theory of Festinger, 1954 suggests that we compare
ourselves to others because for many domains and attributes, there is
no objective yardstick to evaluate ourselves against; other people are
therefore highly informative.
TWO INFLUENTIAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE SELF

SELF-EVALUATION SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY

MAINTENANCE MODEL  Tajfel &Turner, 1986
 Tesser, 1988  applied when we categorize
 applied when we categorize the ourselves at thr group level
self at the personal level  the comparison other is
 we compare ourselves as an categorized as sharing the same
individual to another individual. category as ourselves.
 4.4.1 Self-serving Biases and Unrealistic Optimism

 Most people want to feel positively about themselves, and there are a
number of strategies that can be used to ensure we see ourselves
favorably much of the time.
Many of us shiw the above avarege effect - we think we are better
than the average person on almost every dimension imaginable (Alicke,
Vredenburg, Hiatt & Govorun, 2001; Klar,2002)
 Even people who are known to be objectively low on certain traits
show self-enhancement.
 When we are directly provided with negative social feedback that
contradicts our typically rosy view of ourselves, people show evidence
of forgetting such instances and emphasizing information that
supports their favored positive self perceptions (Sanitioso &
Wlodarski,2004)

In contrast to our resistance to accepting responsibility for negative

outcomes, we easily accept information that suggests we are
responsible for our successes.