Author Question: How do people learn about themselves? Discuss the different sources of self-knowledge that people ... (Read 53 times)

iveyjurea · **on:** Jun 22, 2018

How do people learn about themselves? Discuss the different sources of self-knowledge that people have, and how each functions. Are there limits, or weaknesses to these sources of self-knowledge?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Describe Stanley Milgram's classic research on obedience to authority. What was the setup of the study? What were the results? What are the implications?

What will be an ideal response?

softEldritch · **Reply #1 on:** Jun 22, 2018

Answer to Question 1

a . Private self-awareness, and introspection
i. Attending to emotions and other inner states
ii. Assessing the contents of one's mind
iii. Social comparisons
iv. Comparing oneself to standards
v. Weaknesses: With introspection, people may well understand what they think and feel, but are much less often able to recognize why. With social comparisons and standards, the self-knowledge that is gleaned is highly dependent upon the comparison target or standard.
b. The looking-glass self, and the generalized other
i. Weaknesses: People's perceptions of how others regard them tend to be off the mark. This is perhaps because people pick and choose their social environments, and pick and choose the feedback that they attend to and take to heart. Additionally, others are often reticent to give us negative feedback about ourselves.
c. Feedback from the social environment through social comparison and self-perception processes.
i. Weaknesses: Again, people may not receive accurate information because they often select social environments that will reflect well on themselves and because other people tend not to give negative feedback.

Answer to Question 2

a) Setup:
i) Word association task (ostensible study about the effect of punishment on learning)
ii) Learner and teacher; ostensible random assignment to conditions
iii) Exposition of the shock machine; trial shock; revelation of learner's heart condition
iv) Increasing shock levels required across learner errors; machine marked Danger and XXX
v) Participant can hear learner howling and begging for release from the study; learner goes dead silent and refuses to answer after a certain point (from the participant's point of view, he might have died or passed out).
b) Results:
i) 62.5 went all the way despite clear signs of distress and concern for the learner
c) Implications:
i) It should be noted that these results were completely unexpected by psychiatrists who, before the study began, were asked to predict its outcome. And virtually no one who is asked even today indicates that they would go all the way in such a scenario. So a key point here is that people are far more willing to obey authority figureseven when they have serious concerns about harm that they might be inflictingthan they realize. That said, the general tendency of people to obey authority is much more often than not played out for prosocial (or at least not explicitly harmful) outcomes.