Self Esteem and Self Concept (explained)

Self Concept: the sum of total beliefs that people have about their own attributes and characteristics.

Self Esteem: an affective component of the self consisting of a person's positive and negative self evaluations; an overall sense of self worth.

Self is an important object of our attention in our lives.

There are two big effects that happen from day to day that affect our self.

1. The Cocktail Party Effect : We are so self-aware that when we are at a party or in a crowded place when someone says our name, we immediately realize that our name has been mentioned and block out all of the other fuzz to focus on this realization. 
2. The Spotlight Effect : You know when you go out wearing a new shirt that you're not really 100% on? Or maybe when you head out and your hair is a little messy? Most of us start to think, "OMG EVERYONE IS GOING TO NOTICE this disaster that is my hair/clothing/stain/etc.". The truth about this phenom is that no-one notices as much as you think they do. You could wear the same sweater a few days in a row or out of the week and no-one (maybe one person but it's unlikely) will notice. We think people are paying more attention than they really are. 

Did you know? When you see yourself in a mirror you are less likely to break your own moral code.

Social Comparison: we actively choose our standard for reference.

• downward comparisons: we feel better about ourselves because we see someone that is worse off so we must be doing super great!
• upward comparisons: we feel shittier but more motivated (most of the time) to be better because so-and-so is better than me at that? better try harder to be better!

We tend to take credit for success and then distance ourselves from failure and most of us are overly optimistic about our lives. What do I mean by that? The majority of people expect themselves to be well-off money wise, house wise, and family wise in the future. Not many of us predict mediocrity in our lives. In fact, the people that are the most realistic about life are the clinically depressed people. (go figure)

We also fall into false consensus and uniqueness thoughts when it comes to successes and failures. False consensus is us thinking, "Oh shit that was dumb, but I bet loads of people have done it.". Uniqueness is the opposite where we think to ourselves, "Oh wow I did great, I'm super clever!" Basically anything that you are proud of you single yourself away from the general population. Anything you're not so proud of  you shove yourself back into the general population.  

Speaking of success and failures - Do you ever find yourself birging? How about  corfing? We as humans tend to bask in reflected glory (associate with the successful) and cut off reflected failure (distance ourselves from low status). ----think hockey: for my side of the world particularly it's the Canucks bandwagon that people keep getting onto them off of again and again. 

Because we are so concerned with other people judging us, we tend to judge ourselves first before anyone can do it for us. (so we think) We self-handicap without even thinking half the time that we're doing it. What happens is that we innately do not want to fail. And if we do fail and it's due to our own abilities or lack thereof we get cranky. So we sabotage our own performance to make sure that we have a subsequent excuse if we fail at what we're trying. Example: staying up super late before a huge exam; oh I was super overtired and couldn't focus because of it. 

There are those super confident people though. In social psychology those are called "High Self-Esteemers". That can get dangerous though. It's good to have a HighSE but if it's only explicit (external) then problems can emerge.

High Explicit + High Implicit (internal) = Secure human being
High Explicit + Low Implicit = Defensive human being ---- we call these guys "Kanye Westers" because they tend to score high on the narcissism scales.


These my dear readers are things that I have learned in my Social Psychology class that I think would benefit more than just a few of us. It's important to have self-awareness so that you can understand your person a little better. 

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