Comparisons Inform Me Who I Am: A General Comparative-Processing Model of Self-Perception

Morina N.

Perspectives on Psychological Science. 

February 2021. 

doi:10.1177/1745691620966788

 

Abstract

People’s self-concept contributes to their sense of identity over time. Yet self-perception is motivated and serves survival and thus does not reflect stable inner states or accurate biographical accounts. Research indicates that different types of comparison standards act as reference frames in evaluating attributes that constitute the self. However, the role of comparisons in self-perception has been underestimated, arguably because of lack of a guiding framework that takes into account relevant aspects of comparison processes and their interdependence. I propose a general comparative model of self-perception that consists of a basic comparison process involving the individual’s prior mental representation of the target dimension, the construal of the comparison standard, and the comparison outcome representing the posterior representation of the target dimension. The generated dimensional construal is then appraised with respect to one’s motives and controllability and goes on to shape emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses. Contextual and personal factors influence the comparison process. This model may be informative in better understanding comparison processes in people’s everyday lives and their role in shaping self-perception and in designing interventions to assist people overcome undesirable consequences of comparative behavior.

Concluding Remarks

Comparisons inform people about their current selves and their progress toward end goals. Comparative evaluations are omnipresent in everyday life, appear both unintentionally and intentionally, and are context sensitive. The current framework defines comparison as a dynamic process consisting of several subcomponents. The segmentation of the subcomponent processes into activation of comparison, basic comparison process, valuation, as well as emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses is not rigid; however, the taxonomy should prove conceptually useful because it breaks down the comparison process into testable constituent subprocesses. A better understanding of comparative behavior processes will enhance the knowledge of self-perception and help identify effective strategies that promote more adaptive comparisons.

The info is here.

Nudging the better angels of our nature: A field experiment on morality and well-being.

Adam Waytz, & Wilhelm Hofmann
Emotion, Feb 28 , 2019, No Pagination Specified

Abstract

A field experiment examines how moral behavior, moral thoughts, and self-benefiting behavior affect daily well-being. Using experience sampling technology, we randomly grouped participants over 10 days to either behave morally, have moral thoughts, or do something positive for themselves. Participants received treatment-specific instructions in the morning of 5 days and no instructions on the other 5 control days. At each day’s end, participants completed measures that examined, among others, subjective well-being, self-perceived morality and empathy, and social isolation and closeness. Full analyses found limited evidence for treatment- versus control-day differences. However, restricting analyses to occasions on which participants complied with instructions revealed treatment- versus control-day main effects on all measures, while showing that self-perceived morality and empathy toward others particularly increased in the moral deeds and moral thoughts group. These findings suggest that moral behavior, moral thoughts, and self-benefiting behavior are all effective means of boosting well-being, but only moral deeds and, perhaps surprisingly, also moral thoughts strengthen the moral self-concept and empathy. Results from an additional study assessing laypeople’s predictions suggest that people do not fully intuit this pattern of results.

Here is part of the Discussion:

Overall, inducing moral thoughts and behaviors toward others enhanced feelings of virtuousness compared to the case for self-serving behavior. This makes sense given that people likely internalized their moral thoughts and behaviors in the two moral conditions, whereas the treat-yourself condition did not direct participants toward morality. Restricting analyses to days when people complied with treatment-specific instructions revealed significant positive effects on satisfaction for all treatments. That is, compared to receiving no instructions to behave morally, think morally, or treat oneself, receiving and complying with such instructions on treatment-specific days increased happiness and satisfaction with one’s life. Although the effect size was highest in the treat-yourself condition, improvements in satisfaction were statistically equivalent across conditions. Overall, the moral deeds condition in this compliant-only analysis revealed the broadest improvements across other measures related to well-being, whereas the treat-yourself condition was the only condition to significantly reduce exhaustion. Examining instances when participants reported behaving morally, thinking morally, or behaving self-servingly, independent of treatment, revealed comparable results for moral deeds and self-treats enhancing well-being generally, with moral thoughts enhancing most measures of well-being as well.

The research is here.

Why Study Philosophy? 'To Challenge Your Own Point of View'

An interview with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex
By Hope Reese
The Atlantic
Originally posted on February 27, 2014

At a time when advances in science and technology have changed our understanding of our mental and physical selves, it is easy for some to dismiss the discipline of philosophy as obsolete. Stephen Hawking, boldly, argues that philosophy is dead.

Not according to Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Goldstein, a philosopher and novelist, studied philosophy at Barnard and then earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University. She has written several books, won a MacArthur “Genius Award” in 1996, and taught at several universities, including Barnard, Columbia, Rutgers, and Brandeis.

The entire article is here.

Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence

Dunning, D., Johnson, K., Ehrlinger, J., and Kruger, J. (2003). Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jun., 2003), pp. 83-87

Abstract

Successful negotiation of everyday life would seem to require people to possess insight about deficiencies in their intellectual and social skills. However, people tend to be blissfully unaware of their incompetence. This lack of awareness arises because poor performers are doubly cursed: Their lack of skill deprives them not only of the ability to produce correct responses, but also of the expertise necessary to surmise that they are not producing them. People base their perceptions of performance, in part, on their preconceived notions about their skills. Because these notions often do not correlate with objective performance, they can lead people to make judgments about their performance that have little to do with actual accomplishment.

The entire article is here.

The Problem With How We Treat Bipolar Disorder

By Linda Logan
The New York Times
Originally published on April 26, 2013

The last time I saw my old self, I was 27 years old and living in Boston. I was doing well in graduate school, had a tight circle of friends and was a prolific creative writer. Married to my high-school sweetheart, I had just had my first child. Back then, my best times were twirling my baby girl under the gloaming sky on a Florida beach and flopping on the bed with my husband — feet propped against the wall — and talking. The future seemed wide open.

I don’t think there is a particular point at which I can say I became depressed. My illness was insidious, gradual and inexorable. I had a preview of depression in high school, when I spent a couple of years wearing all black, rimming my eyes in kohl and sliding against the walls in the hallways, hoping that no one would notice me. But back then I didn’t think it was a very serious problem.

The hormonal chaos of having three children in five years, the pressure of working on a Ph.D. dissertation and a genetic predisposition for a mood disorder took me to a place of darkness I hadn’t experienced before. Of course, I didn’t recognize that right away. Denial is a gauze; willful denial, an opiate. Everyone seemed in league with my delusion. I was just overwhelmed, my family would say. I should get more help with the kids, put off my Ph.D.

The entire story is here.

Growing up drugged

For the first time ever, millions of today's adults were raised on psychotropic medications. What does that mean?

By Kaitlin Bell Barnett
Salon.com
Originally published April 7, 2012

Here are some exerpts:

For the first time in history, millions of young Americans are in a position not unlike Andrew’s: they have grown up taking psychotropic medications that have shaped their experiences and relationships, their emotions and personalities and, perhaps most fundamentally, their very sense of themselves. In “Listening to Prozac,” psychiatrist Peter Kramer’s best-selling meditation on the drug’s wide-ranging impact on personality, Kramer said that “medication rewrites history.” He was referring to the way people interpret their personal histories once they have begun medication; what they thought was set in stone was now open to reevaluation. What, then, is medication’s effect on young people, for whom there is much less history to rewrite? Kramer published his book in 1993, at a time of feverish — and, I think, somewhat excessive — excitement about Prozac and the other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants, or SSRIs, that quickly followed on its heels and were heralded as revolutionary treatments for a variety of psychiatric problems.

For most people, I suspect, medications are perhaps less like a total rewriting of the past than a palimpsest. They reshape some of one’s interpretations about oneself and one’s life but allow traces of experience and markers of identity to remain. The earlier in life the drugs are begun, the fewer and fainter those traces and markers are likely to be. All told, the psychopharmacological revolution of the last quarter century has had a vast impact on the lives and outlook of my generation — the first generation to grow up taking psychotropic medications. It is therefore vital for us to look at how medication has changed what it feels like to grow up and to become an adult.

The entire story is here.

Thanks to Tom Fink for this information.