Course description
This course centers on understanding the self-embedded in the social context. We will integrate knowledge from various areas of psychology (developmental, cognitive, social cognition) with a main focus in social psychology. This course will provide the opportunity to gain an understanding of research in the following areas: the development of self in a social context, the relationship between the self and the broader socio-cultural context. The course will provide surprising insights about basic psychological phenomena centering on the topic of self.This course provides a review of the central concept in the lives of even the most altruistic of us: the self. We begin the course by considering the definition of self and review a set of select topics on it’s on to genetic development.
Learning Outcome
At the end of the course, students should be b able to:
- Examine
the dynamics and cues of social dominance and perceived control
- Discuss
the ways in which making free choices, and thus exercising one’s control,
affects future preferences and well being
- Analyze
the interpersonal socio-cognitive theory of the self
- Discuss
the biases that self-involvement creates, for better or for worse
- Examine
the effects of self-involvement on value, memory, and predictions about the
future
- Explore the concept of personality as it is studied using modern approaches to individual differences
Course Content
- Constructing
the Social Self
- Defining
the self
- Perceiving
one’s own and others’ actions
- Dialectic
of self and other mind perception
- Social
cues to personal agency – power and control
- he
origin and perpetuation of personal preferences
- Making
choices– health benefits of being in control
- Relational
self within and across cultures
- The
self and memory (self-reference and implicit self-esteem)
- Self
and value (ownership and free choice)
- Optimism
Bias
- Personality
in context
- Self-discrepancy
theory
- The self resisting adversity
Compulsory Reading Materials
- Abrams, D., & Hogg, M. A.
(1990). Social identity theory: Constructive and critical advances. London:
Harvester-Wheatsheaf.
- Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy
mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37, 122-147
- Bandura, A. (1995). Exercise of
personal and collective efficacy in changing societies. In A. Bandura (Ed.),
Self-efficacy in changing societies (pp. 1-45). New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Optional Reading Materials
- Klein, S. B. (2012). "What is
the self?": Approaches to a very elusive question. Social Cognition,
30(4), 363-366.
- Swann, W., Stein-Seroussi, A.,
&Giesler, B. (1992). Why people self-verify. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 62(3), 392-401.
- Wilson, T. D. (2002). Strangers to
ourselves : discovering the adaptive unconscious. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press.[Selection: Chapter 9: , pp. 183-202]
- Wheeler, S. C., DeMarree, K. G.,
& Petty, R. E. (2007). Understanding the role of the self in
prime-to-behavior effects: The Active-Self account. Personality and Social
Psychology Review, 11(3), 234-261