Why do we often overestimate the attention of others?

Spotlight effect: Humans tend to be self-centered together and intuitively overestimate the attention of others.

Transparency illusion: We always tend to think that our emotions are always more obvious than the actual situation. If we realize that we are happy, our faces will show clearly and others will notice.

We are always keenly aware of our emotions and can't help showing them. In fact, research shows that these troubles we suffer are often ignored by others, and even if we notice them, we will soon forget them.

The following are some common manifestations of spotlight effect and transparency illusion:

The above examples show that our thoughts and feelings about ourselves will affect our interpretation and memory of events and our reaction to others.

Self-schema: the constituent elements of self-concept and some special beliefs that define self.

The popular point of self-schema is to know yourself. For example, if you think you are smart and powerful, self-knowledge will strongly affect our social behavior.

Possible selves: the dream self and the fear of becoming self. These are both things that we can be.

The influence of society on self includes:

When we play different roles (students, parents, children), we usually have self-awareness, find ourselves in a certain role and act accordingly according to the established role route.

Social comparison

When establishing our own evaluation system, the most common way for us to judge things is through social comparison. In contrast, you know whether you are poor or rich; By comparison, you know whether you are beautiful or ugly. When people's wealth and social status improve, they will also improve their evaluation standards accordingly. Therefore, when people are successful, they usually only look up, not down.

Others' comments

All these show that we will adjust our self-concept and behavior according to other people's expectations or evaluations. In fact, what is related to our self-concept is not how others actually evaluate us, but how they evaluate us in our imagination.

However, we usually feel more comfortable praising others than criticizing others, and tend to praise others instead of laughing at them, so we may overestimate others' evaluation of us and expand our self-image.

The west emphasizes individualism, and the psychological assumptions in western culture define your possible self, thinking that you have strong self-control to make your life colorful; In Asia, Africa and other regions, local culture emphasizes collectivism more, while individuals emphasize self-criticism (what happens to everyone) rather than self-affirmation.

Individualism is growing in culture.

East Asians have a stronger overall thinking and are used to thinking about people and things from the perspective of interpersonal relationships and environment. Westerners, on the other hand, emphasize their own characteristics through certain behaviors or habits.

Culture and self-esteem

In collectivism, self-esteem is closely related to "how others evaluate me and my group"; In individualism, self-esteem is more personal than relational.

How much insight do we have into things that make us happy or unhappy? We are usually a poor prophet about things that can make us happy.

Time fallacy: We often underestimate the time we need to complete a task.

So how to improve the ability to predict your own behavior? The best way is to refer to the behavior in the same situation in the past.

Impact bias: Overestimate the lasting impact of emotional events.

Compared with mild anger (which can't activate our defense mechanism), the pain caused by major negative events (which can activate our psychological defense mechanism) lasts shorter.

We know more about the results of our own thinking than the process of thinking.

Dual attitude system

Our automatic implicit attitude towards people or things is usually different from the explicit attitude of conscious control.

Therefore, for psychological investigation, self-report is often unreliable, and the error of self-knowledge limits the scientific nature of the supervisor's personal report.

Crocker and Wolff believe that there are some special aspects (talent and appearance) that are very important to people's self-esteem.

The threat of self-esteem is more likely to appear between friends than from strangers.

When self-esteem is threatened, people with high self-esteem usually make compensatory responses, such as blaming others or trying harder next time. These reactions help them protect their positive self-feeling. People who feel inferior are more likely to blame themselves or give up their efforts, and then be defeated.

Significance of enhancing self-esteem motivation: When our self-esteem is threatened (rejected in society or failed because of something), we will feel pain, which will drive us to develop ourselves through action.

narcissism

People who scored higher in the narcissistic personality scale also scored higher in the self-esteem scale. Narcissists usually have high self-esteem.

We may think that an arrogant classmate is just trying to hide his insecurity, but it is more likely that they think they are the best from the bottom of their hearts.

Low self-esteem and safety self-esteem

When people with low self-esteem are threatened or feel bad, they tend to look at everything through colored glasses-pay attention to and remember the worst behavior of others, and think that their partners don't love themselves.

People with security and self-esteem usually don't feel good about themselves because of their external (health, grades, looks), but pay more attention to their internal characteristics. They are always in a healthy state.

True Excellence is not to surpass others, but to surpass yourself before.

Baumes pointed out: the ability of self-activity is limited.

Although the strength of the self can be temporarily exhausted (just like muscles, self-control needs energy but can be restored through rest), self-concept does affect our behavior. Imagining more positive possibilities will make you more likely to formulate and implement a successful strategy.

We feel capable of accomplishing a certain task.

Optimistic belief in one's own ability and efficiency can be greatly rewarded.

In daily life, self-efficacy can guide us to set challenging goals and improve our perseverance when encountering difficulties.

The difference between self-esteem and self-efficacy

Self-esteem: I really like myself.

Self-efficacy: Believe that you can achieve something.

The problem dimension discussed above is called control point, the former is called external control point, and the latter is called internal control point.

Individuals who usually consider themselves as internal controllers are more likely to perform well in school, be more creative at work, be more satisfied with life and achieve their long-term goals.

The helplessness of being forced to study.

When you learn how to exert your willpower in one area of your life, it is easier to deal with the temptations in other areas.

Uncontrollable adverse events-> lack of control of perception-> learned helplessness.

"Excessive freedom" sometimes leads to a decline in people's life satisfaction and an increase in clinical depression.

Too many choices may make people feel at a loss-"free autocracy"

More selectivity will strengthen regret.

People are usually happier when decisions are not optional or irrevocable. Because once a decision can be changed, it is easier for people to focus on the positive aspects of other decisions and ignore the negative ones, which will eventually lead to regret. "No choice" also means "no regrets"

Most of us are usually self-satisfied.

Egoistic deviation: people always attribute success to their own efforts and efforts, and attribute failure to uncontrollable factors such as luck.

Motivational reasoning:

Once a belief is established, it is difficult to get rid of it. He will lead us to explore the evidence that affirms him, and at the same time let us rarely doubt the validity of these evidences, and let us ignore or try our best to discredit the opposite information.

This phenomenon is more common in the case of relying on strength and luck.

The general rule is that everyone's total evaluation of their contribution to the same job always exceeds 100%.

Defensive pessimism

Self-doubt can stimulate students' learning motivation.

Academic achievement needs both optimism to support hope and pessimism to arouse attention.

We overestimate others' recognition of our views to support our position.

Pseudouniversality arises because our inductive conclusion only comes from a limited sample, and this sample also includes ourselves.

Since there is no other information, the way to avoid false universality is to "project" with your own feelings, that is, what will others think when they are in the same situation?

Comparing ourselves with others requires us to pay attention to, evaluate and recall our actions with others, which increases our chances of making mistakes in information processing.

For example, married people always think that they do more housework than their spouses, because it is easy for us to remember what we have done and it is difficult to remember how many times we have not done it.

Self-help deviation is not suitable.

Those who blame others for social difficulties are often more unhappy than those who can admit that they are their own problems.

Self-service deviation can also lead to group service deviation.

According to the severity, the seven deadly sins are:

Self-restriction helps us to attribute our failure to some temporary or external factors ("I don't feel well" and "I didn't have a good rest last night"), rather than our lack of talent or ability, thus protecting our self-esteem and public image.

Some way of self-obstruction. For fear of failure, people will:

Self-disclosure means that we should show an image of praise to external audiences (others) and internal audiences (ourselves).

Self-monitoring means paying attention to one's own image, but also caring about others' views on one's own image, so one seldom relies on one's own attitude in some actions.