Archive for the ‘Social Psychology’ Category
Self-Enhancement: A Universal Process with Culture-Specific Content?
The individual is the smallest entity, that can arise from any group-division. The word individual actually means “that which is un/(in)-dividable”. Thus the meaning of the individual is closely connected to the group, because the individual only gets meaning in the context of the group. In the same way that the individual gains meaning from the group, the self gains meaning from the culture. As the experiences of our daily life shape your thought and realities, it makes sense to assume that the mental representation of our-selves are shaped by those experiences. Because the self is related to the group, the “independent self” is also an expression of a social mode of interaction. Although the content of the term seems non-social, the implicit context of the term is social.
For a long time the constructs of social psychology have been assumed to be universal. Especially the highly appreciated concept of self-esteem was seen as a basic cognitive process that extends to all humanity. However in the recent past this view has changed. In the same way that Newton’s mechanic does not make sense in a quantum universe, some constructs of (European) social psychology make no sense in an intercultural, globalized world. And so we find ourselves in the middle of a fierce empirical battle between two opposing views: Universalism and Panculturalism. The one side, Universalism claims that self-enhancement is a basic cognitive process that is shared by all humans. The Panculturalists claim that self-enhancement is a cultural process that is functional in some contexts (cultures), but not in others. This one example can be seen as a battle within a much greater war, namely: Does the structure of the mind, as we know it today, also apply to different (non-European) cultures or do we need an own way of psychology for every kind of culture there is? Those that still cling to the Cartesian system of science will be afraid psychology will lose it’s status as “real science” when it cannot provide universal laws. How 20th century is that…
The concept of self has gone through a transformation phase in the last years. Whereas before it was defined as an independent entity that stresses the role of the subject, later definitions of the self also allow a definition in more interdependent terms, which better represent the way people in the eastern world experience being an individual. However the role of the self is still not defined conclusively. Recent studies have shown that independent / interdependent are not the two extremes of one dimension, but that individuals incorporate both constructs within themselves. The meaning of the term enhancement is even more unclear: Usually if you want to enhance something you want to make something better. However as the object of the enhancement, “the self”, is not clearly defined, the process also remains somewhat undefined. I believe the main point where the two views differ from each other depends on the definition of the self. Whereas the Universalists resolve the unclearness by moving to a more abstract level, saying that the self defined by the culture can be enhanced in ways specific and natural to that culture, the Panculturalists implicitly still hold on to the independent, western view of the self. For them enhancement = good = more self-esteem.
If you take the meta-perspective on the discussion at hand, one could wonder if there can ever be an answer to the problem at hand, because both groups argue on a different level of abstraction. Whereas Panculturalists seem to discuss the content of self enhancement, the Universalists discuss the more basic aspects of the process itself. I believe that both views are right in some regard. There definitely is a universal human wish to be a good and appropriate person and there are cognitive processes to make sure that we behave accordingly. However what is considered good and appropriate differs between cultures, thus the deducted goals and ultimately the behaviour might be very different. When we look at self-enhancement on an abstract level, we see its the universal components. If we look at the content of the process, we see the cultural boundaries of the process. In order to really see the big picture and the underlying processes we will need multicultural psychologist. They will be able to distinguish between universal process and culture-specific content much better than most researchers today, because they will live in a multicultural environment and their sense of self will be different from that of a person who grew up with one dominant perspective.
Through the evolution of human societies from early hunter groups to cyber-communities there has been one constant: The need for social acceptance and support. Notwithstanding the differences between the two positions, Panculturalists and Universalists have highlighted the diversity in which humans choose to live together and the diversity of self-concepts and related processes that are used to adhere to the standards of the group. Being able to perceive oneself as an object of social interaction and reflect on that interaction is a key prerequisite for the development of elaborated and fine tuned rules that guide our social interactions: culture. It remains to be seen how new cultures and new ways of social interaction brought about by digital communication technology and globalization will influence the self-concept of generations to come. Maybe the discussion about the nature of the self and the related cognitive processes can never end as long as human culture and interaction styles evolve, because our self-concepts will also keep on evolving.
Written by Martin Metzmacher
October 7, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Posted in Social Psychology
Tagged with Culture, Panculturalists, Self-Enhancement, self-esteem, universal process, Universalists
The Influence of Aging Self-Stereotypes on Strategy Change from Goal Assimilation to Goal Accommodation
The processes of goal assimilation and goal accommodation refer to different strategies in dealing with goals, that have become unavailable or extremely difficult to reach. Whereas the process of assimilation can be seen as a more active approach to reach a goal, accommodation refers to a more passive, internal cognitive process that changes the valence of goals. Thus the location of the focus on where to find a solution for a given problem differs for those two strategies: Whereas assimilation directs the focus towards the external world, accommodation directs the focus on the internal world.
Goal assimilation provides persistence by adjusting the strategy to reach a goal in changing environments. However goals might become unreachable or so difficult to reach that the amount of energy spent is in no relation to the possible benefits. At that point goal accommodation starts to change the underlying valence of the goal structure. The changed structure will then provide different motivation patterns that are more ecological in the perspective of the changed environment. In that sense it helps people to retain a sense of control and keeps them moving forward.
If both processes are needed for a healthy development of an individual (as has been suggested recently), there must be a critical point in time during which goal assimilation is abandoned and goal accommodation starts. This is the point at which the internal, subjective heuristics detect that for personal health, safety, happiness, etc. it is better to accommodate than assimilate a specific goal. Finding variables to predict this point in time might be very helpful in order to build a good model of goal strategies. A simple decision heuristic could look something like that:
Expected utility – Expected energy = Motivation (X)
whereas Expected utility is defined as personal value*chance of goal achievement.
As long as the motivation (X) remains positive, the course of action is “business as usual”. When the internal check reveals that the X (motivation) has become negative, the alarm rings and the assimilation process is made to check for different solutions to the equation, firstly concerning the expected energy needed for goal achievement (for example finding an easier way of achieving something by asking someone else to help). If no possible solution is found to the equation that renders X positive, the process of accommodation is activated. It checks if the variable “Goal achievement” can be redefined in such a way as to make X positive. Changing the goal valence might actually take some time and so accommodation starts working on the goal valence until motivation can be restored. This implies that there might be a period of temporary stop within the system, when there is not enough motivation to pursue a goal.
However the heuristics depend on the assumptions made by different processes and are therefore subject to possible biases. The self-view might be one of those processes that influence the information on which the heuristic decision is based. Especially for older people self-stereotyping might be an influencing factor in making the switch from goal assimilation to goal accommodation. Self-stereotyping refers to the process of applying a stereotype to the own self. In this regard it is important to differentiate between implicit and explicit stereotypes. It has been shown with many different implicit stereotypes that they are active in members of the stereotyped group on an implicit level, even if they can not be found using explicit experimental paradigms. This might be especially true for aging stereotypes, as one study reviewing the correlation between explicit and implicit beliefs found the lowest correlation between explicit and implicit beliefs on aging beliefs. One possible explanation could be that aging stereotypes are internalized during the whole life, from very early on. Those implicit knowledge structures might be difficult to access explicitly in later life. This would also imply that implicit aging stereotype are resistant to change. Implicit stereotypes have consistently shown to influence old people’s behaviour, such as their performance on a memory tests. The predominant (implicit) stereotype in the western world is that aging is a bad thing, that old people are weak and have decreased cognitive an physical abilities. How could such cognitions implicitly influence behaviour?
Let’s first have a look at the left part of the equation “Expected utility”. Older people have less time to live, so the expected utility of a goal, in which value accumulates with time, should be lower. For example if you feel that death is waiting around the corner, you might not be so motivated to stop smoking or put on sunscreen, because the possibility that you will earn the fruits of the seeds planted is very low, therefore expected value is low. Since you might already have gone through a lot of episodes of goal valence change, some goals will not be interesting anymore right from the start, like drinking and dancing all night in the club. In that way the valence of all goals are changed, as you go along, until they do not prove problematic anymore. This could also explain, why life satisfaction remains quite constant in elderly people: Since most goals have been accommodated there are not so many things to be depressed about anymore. Another point would be the expected possibility to reach a specific goal. Self-stereotyping might make it harder to imagine specific outcomes, that are not conform to the stereotype. This could lead to an underestimation of the chance of reaching a goal.
Now let’s turn to the right side of the equation that reads “Energy needed”. The amount of energy that can be invested in the achievement of any given goal is limited by the resources available, which change during lifetime. Usually when we are young we have a lot of time, physical and mental strength and a good social network. Those resources might decrease when we grow older (or am I just stereotyping?). Thus goals that require those resources become harder to reach. For some goals a minimum of a specific resource is necessary, but in most cases a lack of resources can be compensated by other resources. However, exchange of resources is probably not 1:1 and the price you pay might be related to how many resources you are missing. For example if you want to walk somewhere, but you are very slow at foot and you do not have time, you can take a taxi. But that costs you money. The slower you get, the less time you have, the more money general transport will cost you. Taking a taxi once a week to visit someone in a different city might be okay with your pool of resources, but taking a taxi several times a day, for example to go to the letterbox, might not be okay. However this could be compensated by having a good social network, someone who brings the mail along…The point I want to make is this: Resources can be exchanged, but with growing age there might be tasks, especially those that rely heavily on depleted resources, that become extremely costly. Thus the goal might still be very valuable to you, but the costs too high, which will decrease motivation. As different streams of resources become diminished there might also be a problem with choices. If you have plenty of resources available to you there might be a lot of ways in which you can assimilate a goal, thus you have a lot of opportunities to reach your goal in a different way. When your resources become more concentrated in one dimension (for example you can barely think, move, have no friends, but a few million dollars left) it might be harder to identify different solutions to the problem, or there might be less solutions available to you.
Thus having less resources available might prompt you to make the switch earlier on. The aging stereotype might suggest that one has less resources available than actually is the case. It might also be the case that the aging stereotype reduces the positive bias that people normally have about their own resources. On top of that, solutions to the motivation-equation that do not fit stereotypical behaviour of elderly people might not reach consciousness. In the same light the process of accommodation might be more stereotypical for elderly people, and thus more accessible. Over time, it might become the predominant process.
So can we propose some kind of action that would optimize the process of goal optimization and goal accommodation? The process itself should, in my view, not be the target of any change. However one could look at the implicit self-stereotype and see if it is a protective factor, by holding back older people to launch dangerous endeavors, or if it is holding them back to live a fulfilled life. Some studies have lately suggested that implicit attitudes might be open to change, for example using the AAT. Systematic search patterns for available resources and possible causes of action could also contribute to cancel out the negative side-effects of self-stereotyping in older people.
Supplementary
I would like to finish with a slightly different, but related thought, that came to my mind while writing the essay. Most old people explain that with old age they come to understand what is really important to them. However there is an alternative explanation to the change in goal valence suggested by the heuristic model. Imagine that you perceive yourself doing something. You might infer that you are actually motivated to do so, and even more if there are obstacles to your goal that you have to overcome. When you are old, activities usually bear more obstacles than before and the total range of activities is limited. Thus the perceived motivation (and probably the increased goal value) might be due to the obstacles you encounter and not to some late insight into the own emotions.
Written by Martin Metzmacher
September 30, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Posted in Social Psychology
Tagged with aging, Aging Stereotype, elderly, Goal Accomodation, Goal Assimilation, Goals, implicit stereotypen, Motivation
Questions about “The Self”
In recent times there has been a lot of discussion with regard to social psychology constructs such as self-esteem, self-determination and self-affirmation. Due to rapidly changing societies and new insights into cognitive processes of memory formation some old theories of self-psychology have recently been challenged. For example Heine, Lehman, Markus and Kitayama (1999) postulated that self-esteem, conceptualized as positive self-regard, is not a universal value and should be replaced by the concept of self-enhancement. However, all those theories are closely connected to the concept of self, which in itself still remains unclear. Since there are many different interpretation of the self, many discussions end in despair, each side holding on to their specific conceptualization of the self, which are not interchangeable. But can there be any definition that fits them all? Does “talking about myself” and “exercising control over myself” relate to the same objects?
Terms such as self-esteem suggest that there is stability of that process on the influence of behavior. However people can switch between different roles (selves?) with relative ease. Reinders et al. (2003) showed that in patients with Multiple Personality Disorder, there are specific cerebral blood flow patterns mainly in the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior associative cortices that can produce different senses of self. It is parsimonious to assume that the same process also mediates the different senses of self in healthy persons, however to a lesser extend in the sense that every self is aware of its coexistence within one person. Different selves have been postulated, such as the social self, the future self, the past self, the material self, the spiritual self… But do constructs such as self-esteem relate to all the selves in the same way or do they apply differently to different selves? Are there processes that extend through all the possible selves? Should we specify a specific self when looking at a process such as self-esteem?
People who have grown up in different cultures report that their self-concept differs in relation to the environment, as shown by Markus and Kitayama (1991). Chinese Canadians completed different measures with regard to the self, such as a measurement of independent, interdependent self-construal. When the test was conducted in a European setting (English researcher, English questions) their self-construct was predominantly independent. However if the setting (environment) was different (Chinese researcher, test in Chinese) their self-construct was more interdependent. Ross, Xun and Wilson (2002) replicated those findings and extended the method to other self-related constructs. They conclude that identities of bicultural persons may be stored in separate knowledge structures, which can be activated by the associated language.
At that point let’s take a look at different theories about the self. Descartes thought that the self was some entity that existed outside of the material body. William James defined the self as an object of knowledge consisting of whatever the individual views as belonging to himself (Epstein, 1973). George Mead noticed that the self-concept arises in social interaction as product of the individuals concerns of how others will react. Rogers saw the self as an organized fluid, but conceptual pattern of perceptions of characteristics and relationships of the ‘I’ or the ‘Me’, together with values attached to these concepts. Allport used the term proprium instead of self to stress the aspects of the individual that he or she regards of central importance and which contribute to a sense of inward unity. Furthermore the self has been described as a self-theory (Epstein, 1973),and as a cognitive knowledge structure. Sarbin remarked that behavior is organized around cognitive structures. Recently neurobiological pathways (especially the CMS, cortical midline structures) have been found to play an important role in self-referential processes. Those processes, distinguishing stimuli related to one’s own self from those that are not relevant to one’s self, might be the computing basis for the different kinds of self-concepts that have been observed.
I believe that the concept of self entails different cognitive processes, which should be looked at in the most abstract way still meaningful. Arguing from a philosophical, mechanical perspective I believe that having cognitive processes that assign a self / non-self marker to different knowledge objects should be enough to construct a theory of self. I assume that “the self” is a cognitive object that is constructed on-line, depending on the task and environment at hand. The content of those temporary self-representations is drawn for the knowledge that has been marked by the reflexive process as possessing the self-attribute. Those knowledge objects frequently used for the construction of the self should over time become chronically accessible. Such a definition of self would allow many degrees of freedom and would fit many definitions of the self previously given. Thus I propose that whenever “the self” is involved, it is necessary to specify which cognitive processes are suggested to be involved. I also propose that the environment for which the theory or hypothesis is formulated should be explicitly described. Ultimately it might be better to talk about reflexive processes instead of the self.
References
Epstein, S. (1973). The self-concept revisited. American Psychologist, 28, 404-414.
Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Markus, H. R. & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for positive self-regard? Psychological Review, 106, 766-794.
Markus, H. R. & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, (98), 224-253.
Reinders, A. A. T. S., Nijenhuis, E. R. S., Paans, A. M. J., Korf, J., Willemsen, A. T. M., & Boer, J. A. (2003). One brain, two selves. NeuroImage, (20), 2119-2125.
Ross, M., Xun, W. Q. E., & Wilson, A. E. (2002). Language and the bicultural self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1040-1050.
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