PSYCSOC FINALS REVIEWER

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PHILIPPINE CONTEXT

- Filipino psychologists in the 1960’s began to confront the issue of applicability of
Western theories, concept, and methods to Filipino realities
- Pambansang Samahan sa Sikolohiyang Pilipino (PSSP)

SIKOLOHIYANG PILIPINO
- An indigenous Asian Psychology that emphasizes identity and national consciousness,
social awareness, and involvement, etc
- It stressed the need for psychology to be ethical and respectful of the:
 Filipino (makatao)
 To relevant to Filipino social realities (makabuluhan)
 To be culturally appropriate (angkop sa kultura)

ENRIQUEZ’S KAPWA MODEL

- Enriquez critiqued the extensive focus on hiya (propriety/dignity), utang na loob
(gratitude/solidarity), and pakikisama (companionship/esteem)

HIYA
- Filipino personality
- “shame” in English
- tied to a need to be accepted by others
- the fear or anxiety of losing support approval requires a need to be sensitive to others
- in relation to social expectations and the need to conform to these expectations

UTANG NA LOOB
- reciprocity, debt or gratitude
- conceptualized by Kut and Hollnsteiner as a system of exchange
- individual helping others
- element of Filipino interpersonal relationships that binds a person to his or her home
community

PAKIKISAMA
- SIR (Smooth Interpersonal Relations)
- Social acceptance
- To obtain social acceptance, one must enact SIR by getting along with others, no
conflict
- A person who goes along with the group is described as marunong makisama, whereas
a person who declines invitation is hindi marunong makisama

PAKIKIRAMDAM
- Allows Filipinos to sense what the other is feeling and know when is the appropriate to
practice hiya, utang na loob, and pakikisamma
 - Pivotal value of shared inner reception
- Heightened awareness of sensitivity

THE SELF AND CULTURE

- The set of collections of ideas, images, beliefs, or schemas a person has about the self-
comprises the multidimensional and multifaceted self- concept

DETERMINANTS OF SELF
- roles that we play in everyday life
- social identities
- social comparisons we make when we compare ourselves to others

CULTURE DEFINES THE SELF

- cultural meanings and practices construct psychological process which transform these
cultural meanings and practices
- the individual self develops within a culture and structures how individual selves
transforms the cultural system
- self- concept/self- construal is shaped by our cultural context
- different cultures produce different self- concepts

INDEPENDENT/INTERDEPENDENT SELVES
- Hazel Markus and Shinoba Kitayama
- Focus on how people in different cultures see the self in relation to others
INDEPENDENT SELF
- Defined by unique internal attributes such as traits and dispositions, that are
independent of one’s context
INTERDEPENDENT SELF
- Sees the self-in-relation-to-others as the focus of individual experience rather than the
independent self
- Self with others and looks at how the individual self fits in harmony with others

KAPWA AS SELF WITH OTHERS

- The self as fundamentally related with others, and not separate or distinct as
conceptualized in the West
- Kapwa is the unity of the self and others
- Kapwa or shared inner self corresponds to pakikipag kapwa or relating to others as
fellow human beings (kapwa tao)

FAMILY AS CENTRAL TO FILIPINOS

- Filipino Kinship Structure:
 Filipinos are grouped together and identified as kin, or makakamag-anak by
birth, marriage, adoption, and ritual kinship (makumpare/magkumare)
 By birth, kinship is traced through blood ties
 First defined by the nuclear family that includes the father, mother, and children
SELF- KNOWLEDGE: HOW WE COME TO UNDERSTAND OURSELVES

THE NATURE OF THE SELF

- The self is composed of our thoughts and belies about ourselves
- The “known” or “me”
- Self- concept: the known aspect of the self
- Self- awareness: the act of thinking about ourselves
- Your self is both a book (full of fascinating content collected over time) and the reader
of that book (can access a specific chapter or add a new one)
- Self- recognition develops at around age 2
- As we grow older, this rudimentary self- concept becomes more complex
- As we mature, we place less emphasis on physical characteristics and more on
psychological states (our thoughts and feelings) and on how other people judge us

FUNCTION OF THE SELF

- The self serves both:
 An organizational function
 An executive function

ORGANIZATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE SELF

- The self regulates behavior, choices, and future plans
- We appear to be the only species that can:
 Imagine events that have not yet happened
 Engaged in long- term planning
SELF- SCHEMAS
- Mental structures that people use to organize their knowledge about themselves and
that influence what they notice, think, and remember about themselves
SELF- REFERENCE EFFECT
- The tendency for people to remember information better if they relate it to
themselves

SELF- REGULATORY RESOURCE MODEL

- self- control is a limited source, like a muscle that gets tired with frequent use but then
rebounds in strength
- dealing with stress depletes the “self- resource”
- effort sat self- control are more likely to fail at night

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN DEFINING THE SELF

INDEPENDENT VIEW OF THE SELF

- defining one’s self in terms of one’s own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions and
not in terms of the thoughts, feelings, and actions of other people
- westerners learn to:
  define themselves as quite separate from other people
 value independence and uniqueness

INTERDEPENDENT VIEW OF THE SELF

- defining oneself in terms of one’s relationship with other people; recognizing that
one’s behavior is often determined by the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others
- connectedness and interdependence between people is valued, whereas independence
and uniqueness are frowned on

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN DEFINING THE SELF

- women have more relational interdependence, meaning that they focus more on their
close relationships
- men have more collective interdependence, meaning that they focus on their
membership in larger groups

INTROSPECTION
- the process whereby people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings,
and motives
- even when people do introspect, the reasons for their feelings and behavior can be
hidden from conscious awareness

SELF- AWARENESS THEORY

- the idea that when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate and
compare their behavior to their internal standards and values
- self- focus is not always damaging or aversive
- self- focus can be a way of keeping you out of trouble and reminding you of what is right
and wrong

CAUSAL THEORIES
- theories about the causes of one’s own feelings and behaviors, often we learn from our
culture

REASON- GENERATED ATTITUDE CHANGE

- attitude change resulting from thinking about the reasons for one’s attitudes; people
assume their attitudes match the reasons that are plausible and easy to verbalize

SELF- PERCEPTION THEORY

- when our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or ambiguous, we infer these states by
observing our behavior and the situation in which it occurs
- people judge whether their behavior is really how they feel or it was the situation that
made them act that way
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
- the desire to engage in an activity because we enjoy it or find it interesting
EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION
- the desire to engage in an activity because of external reasons, not because we enjoy
the task or find it interesting

OVERJUSTIFICATION EFFECT
- the tendency of people to view their behavior as caused by compelling extrinsic
reasons, making them underestimate the extent to which it was caused by intrinsic
reasons

TASK- CONTINGENT REWARDS

- rewards that are given for performing a task, regardless of how well the task is done
PERFORMANCE- CONTINGENT REWARDS
- rewards that are based on how well we perform a task

TWO- FACTOR THEORY OF EMOTION

- Stanely Schachter
- Emotional experience is the result of two- step self- perception process in which people:
 Experience psychological arousal
 Seek an appropriate explanation for it

MISATTRIBUTION OF AROUSAL
- The process whereby people mistaken inferences about what is causing them to feel
the way they do
- Residual arousal from one source (caffeine, exercise) can enhance the intensity of how
the person interprets other feelings

APPRAISAL THEORIES OF EMOTION

- Theories holding that emotions result from people’s interpretations and explanations
of events, even in the absence of physiological arousal

*social contact is crucial to the development of a self- concept

*example: if you donate P100 and your friend donates P50, you feel generous

SOCIAL COMPARISON THEORY

- The idea that we learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves
to other people
UPWARD SOCIAL COMPARISON
- If we want to know the top level to which we can aspire
- Comparing ourselves to people who are better than we are on a particular ability
DOWNWARD SOCIAL COMPARISON:
- Comparing yourself to people who are worse than you on a particular trait or ability
SOCIAL TUNING
- The process whereby people adopt another person’s attitudes
IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
- The attempt by people to get others to see them as they want to be seen
INTGRATIATION
- The process whereby people flatter, praise, and generally try to make themselves
likable to another person, often on a higher status
SELF- HANDICAPPING
- People create obstacles and excuses for themselves so that if they do poorly on a task,
they can avoid blaming themselves
 People may create obstacles that reduce the likelihood they will succeed on the
task, so if they fail, they can blame it on an obstacle
 People devise ready- made excuses in case they fail

SELF- ENHANCEMENT
- The tendency to focus on and present positive information about oneself and to
minimize negative information

CONFORMITY: THE INFLUENCING BEHAVIOR

- A change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people
INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE
- The influence of other people that leads us to conform because we see them as a
source of information to guide our behavior
- We conform because we believe that others’ interpretation of an ambiguous situation is
more correct than ours

PRIVATE ACCEPTANCE
- Conforming to other people’s behavior out of a genuine belief that what they are doing
or saying is right
PUBLIC COMPLIANCE
- Conforming other people’s behavior publicly without necessarily believing in what they
are doing or saying

CONTAGION
- The rapid spread of emotions or behaviors through a crowd
MASS PSYCHOGENIC ILLNESS
- the occurrence, in a group of people, of similar physical symptoms with no known
physical cause
- gasoline smell incident

*When will people conform to Informational Social Influence?

- when the situation is ambiguous
- when the situation is a crisis
- when other people are experts
AMBIGUOUS
- the more uncertain you are, the more you will rely on others
CRISIS
- in crisis situations, we usually do not have time to stop and think about exactly which
course of action we should take
EXPERT
- experts are not always reliable sources of information

SOCIAL NORMS
- the implicit or explicit rules a group has for the acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs
of its members
NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE
- the influence of other people that leads us to conform in order to be liked and
accepted by them
- results in public compliance with the group’s beliefs and behaviors but not necessarily
private acceptance of those beliefs and behaviors

SOCIAL IMPACT THEORY

- the idea that conforming to social influence depends on:
 the strength of the group’s importance
 its immediacy
 the number of people in the group

IDIOSYNCRASY CREDITS
- the tolerance a person earns, over time, by conforming to group norms
- if idiosyncrasy credits are earned, the person can behave defiantly without retribution
from the group
MINORITY INFLUENCE
- the case where a minority of group members influence the behavior or belies of the
majority

INJUNCTIVE NORMS
- people’s perceptions of what behaviors are approved or disapproved of by others
DESCRIPTIVE NORMS
- people’s perceptions of how people actually behave in given situations, regardless of
whether the behavior is approved or disapproved of by others