PSY 1A:
Understanding
the Self
Midterm: Points of View on the Self
• Tripartite Composition of Self
• Bio-Ecological Perspective
• Socio-Anthropological Perspective
• Psychological Perspective
• Cultural Concept of the Self
Units and
Finals: Facets of the Self
• Physical Self
Modules
• Sexual Self
• Material/Economic & Social Self
• Spiritual Self
• Digital Self
Managing and Caring for the Self
• Setting Goals
• Caring for oneself
PSY 1A:
Understanding the Self
Module 01
The Tripartite
Composition
of the Self
“I think therefore I am” which means that a
rational thinking person and being self
conscious is the proof that there is a self.
- Rene Descartes
“conscious awareness and memory of
SELF
precious experiences are the keys to
understanding his self”.
John Locke
The self is nothing else but a bundle of
impressions. If one tries to examine
experiences, he finds that they can all be
categorized into two: impressions and ideas.
David Hume
The Self of…
o Thoughts
o Feelings
o Behavior
Tripartite
Composition
Of the Self
To understand the self as a
holistic being with interconnected
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
PONDER ON THESE…
WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?
THE THINKING WHY DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT?
SELF HOW DO YOU ASSESS ABOUT HOW
YOU THINK?
Your nephew describes his new girlfriend as a
student who is artistic and loves poetry. With
no other information to go on, it is more likely
that she is studying:
A.) Chinese Literature
B.) Business Management
THE THINKING How did you arrive at that thought?
SELF
*Even if every female student of Chinese
Literature is artistic and loves poetry, the
population of Business Management
students is so much larger. ( Burkeman ,
2011)
Imagine you’re a doctor, faced with the choice
of operating on a cancer patient or
recommending a course of radiation instead. In
the long term, operating is best. But in this
case, there is a 10% risk of mortality in the first
month following the operation.
THE THINKING Do you take the risk? Why?
SELF
*Only half the doctors asked a similar
question would operate. But when the
10% mortality rate was rephrased as
“90% survival rate,” 85% of the doctors
chose to operate. ( Burkeman , 2011)
DANIEL KAHNEMAN’S
TWO THINKING SYSTEMS
-SYSTEM ONE
-SYSTEM TWO
Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel Laureate
Daniel Kahneman is the founding father of modern
THINKING behavioral economics. His work has influenced
how we see thinking, decisions, risk, and even
happiness.
In Thinking, Fast and Slow, his “intellectual
memoir,” he shows us in his own words some of his
enormous body of work.
Part of that body includes a description of the
“machinery of … thought,” which divides the brain
into two agents, called System 1 and System 2,
which “respectively produce fast and slow thinking.”
SYSTEM ONE
SYSTEM ONE
System 1 is capable of making Fast
quick decisions, based on very Intuitive
little information. Emotional
Requires less cognitive effort (due to
practice)
Fleeting impressions, and the many Will not take a lot of time in trying to figure
other shortcuts you’ve developed out what to do
throughout your life, are combined Requires minimum attention
to enable System 1 to make these Automatic
decisions quickly, without
deliberation and conscious effort.
SYSTEM ONE
SYSTEM ONE
SYSTEM ONE
SYSTEM TWO SYSTEM TWO
System 2 is usually engage in types Slow
of decisions that require attention Deliberate
and slow, effortful, considered Reflective
Analytical
responses.
Complex
Effortful
Situations like choosing which Requires more attention
college to attend, which house to Intense focusing
buy, or whether to change careers
would likely require much more
thoughtful and rational approach than
just using your gut feeling
SYSTEM TWO
SYSTEM TWO
SYSTEM TWO
STROOP EFFECT
ARE THE
HORIZONTAL
LINES STRAIGHT
OR NOT?
TWO SYSTEMS OF
THINKING
INTERACTION OF
SYSTEMS 1 & 2
When making decisions or
judgments, we often use
mental shortcuts or "rules of
thumb" known as heuristics. Sometimes these mental
shortcuts can be helpful,
For every decision, we don't but in other cases, they
always have the time or
resources to compare all the
can lead to errors
information before we make a or cognitive biases.
choice, so we use heuristics
to help us reach decisions
quickly and efficiently.
• Thinking may be prone to
systematic errors.
COGNITIVE • Some beliefs might not be based
on evidence, but we continue to
BIASES consider them as “truths.”
• Even though you know what the
objective reality is,
it does not change the way you
see the lines.
1. PEAK END RULE
People judge an experience largely
based on how they felt at its PEAK and
its END...
COGNITIVE
BIASES Total sum of pleasantness or
unpleasantness is entirely disregarded!
“When people assess an experience,
they tend to forget or ignore its length.
Instead, they seem to rate the
experience based on two key moments:
(1) the best or worst moment, known as
the peak and (2) the ending [..]
A bad flight experience on the 1. PEAK END RULE
way home from a vacation can
take away from the overall trip, A classic example is childbirth.
even if the vacation was
essentially positive.
If you attend a concert with poor
A breakup of a relationship is sound quality or performance, yet
also a common example, as we the concert ends with your
may vividly recall a favorite song, your memory of
heartbreaking or painful the experience overall will be
breakup. more positive.
◦Short period of intense joy >
What would long period of moderate
you rather go happiness
through: ◦Short period of intense, but
tolerable suffering > longer
period of moderate pain
2. REPRESENTATIVENESS
When people are asked to judge the
probability that
an object or event belongs to a category
COGNITIVE
BIASES
Assumption that any object (or person)
sharing characteristics with the members
of a particular category is also a member
of that category.
"the probability that Steve is a librarian is
assessed by the degree to which his
is representative of, or similar to, the
stereotype of a librarian," (Tversky and
Kahneman)
2. REPRESENTATIVENESS
When we make decisions based on
representativeness, we may be likely
COGNITIVE to make more errors by
BIASES overestimating the likelihood that
something will occur.
Just because an event or object is
representative does not mean its
occurrence is more probable.
Tom is a college student in a state
university. He is of high intelligence,
although lacking in creativity. He has a
need for order and clarity, and for neat
and tidy systems in which every detail
PONDER ON finds its appropriate place. His writing is
rather dull and mechanical, occasionally
THIS… enlivened by corny puns and flashes of
imagination of the sci-fi type. He has a
strong drive for competence. He seems
to have little sympathy for others & does
not enjoy interaction with others. But he
does have a deep moral sense.
What course in Tom most likely enrolled
in?
-Consider how members of a jury
might determine a defendant's guilt
or innocence because of his/her
PONDER ON physical appearance.
THIS… -A farmer, for example, might be
seen as hard-working, outdoorsy,
and tough.
-A librarian, on the other hand, might
be viewed as being quiet, organized,
and reserved.
3. ANCHORING AND
ADJUSTMENT
“How old is person A?” / “What is person
A’s weight?” “Was Mahatma Gandhi more
COGNITIVE or less 144 years old when he died?”
BIASES Decision is based on: -ANCHOR based on
the given reference point. -ADJUST the
anchor (either higher or lower)
◦ In making judgments under uncertainty,
people start with a certain reference point
(anchor), then adjust it insufficiently to
reach a final conclusion.
3. ANCHORING AND
The anchoring effect as a ADJUSTMENT
powerful Imagine that you are buying a new car. You
impact on the choices we ma read online that the average price of the
ke vehicle you are interested in is $27,000
, from decisions about the dollars. When you are shopping at the
local car lot, the dealer offers you the same
things we buy to daily vehicle for $26,500, which you quickly
preferences about how to live accept—after all, it's $500 less than what
our lives. you were expecting to pay.
Except, the car dealer across town is
So the next time you are
offering the exact same vehicle for just
trying to make an important d $24,000, a full $2,500 less than what you
ecision paid and $3,000 less than the average
, give a little thought to the price you found online.
possible impact of the
THE FEELING
SELF
a conscious mental reaction (such
EMOTION as anger or fear) subjectively
experienced as strong feeling
James-Lange theory of emotion (1880s) proposed that bodily
changes come first and form the basis of an emotional experience.
Thus, emotions are caused by bodily sensations (you become
happier when you smile, you are afraid because you run).
Cannon-Bard theory of emotion, we react to a stimulus and
experience the associated emotion at the same time. The physical
reactions are not dependent upon the emotional reaction, or vice
versa.
EMOTION Schachter-Singer theory, emotions are a result of two factors:
Physical processes in the body (such as activation of
the sympathetic nervous system, for example), which researchers
refer to as “physiological arousal.” These changes can include
things like having your heart start beating faster, sweating, or
trembling.
A cognitive process, in which people try to interpret this
physiological response by looking at their surrounding
environment to see what could be causing them to feel this way.
EMOTION
EMOTION
EMOTION
EMOTION
Emotion regulation may be broadly
EMOTION defined as the way in which a person
REGULATION uses emotional experiences to provide
for adaptive functioning (Thompson,
1994).
Skills necessary for effective Emotion
Regulation
(a) flexibility and responsiveness to
changing situational demands (Cole et
al., 1994; Thompson, 1994).
(b) Awareness of one’s emotional
state,
EMOTION (c) the capacity to detect emotions in
REGULATION other people,
(d) knowledge of cultural display rules
for emotions,
(e) and the ability to empathize with
others’ emotional states (Saarni, 1990; cited
in Underwood, 1997).
Indicators for Adaptive
Emotion Regulation
(a) a high self-esteem
Dielman, 1997),
(Haney & Durlak, 1998; Zimmerman, Copeland, Shope, &
(b) a positive self-concept and stable
sense of identity (Harter, 1990; Nurmi, 1997),
(c) a high level of ego development
EMOTION
(Allen,
Hauser, Bell, & O’Connor, 1994; Hauser & Safyer, 1994),
(d) social competence
REGULATION
(Bustra, Bosma, & Jackson, 1994; Gullotta, Adams, &
Montemayor, 1990),
(e) a positive mood or emotional tone
(Larson & Richards, 1994; Petersen et al., 1993),
(f) school engagement
& Eccles, 1994),
(Sandler, Ayers, Suter, Schultz, & Twohey, in press; Wigfield
(g) and feelings of attachment to
parents and friends
McLaughlin, 1998; Paterson, Pryor, & Field, 1995)
(Allen, Moore, Kuperminc, & Bell, 1998; Greenberger &
The cognitive model hypothesizes that
people’s emotions and behaviors are
influenced by their perceptions of
COGNITIVE events. It is not a situation in and of
itself that determines what people feel
BEHAVIORAL but rather the way in which they
THERAPY construe a situation’ (Beck, 1964).
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY