独立的自我构造定义
自我建立是指一个人思考和定义自我的方式。重要的是,自我建构不仅是一种观察自己的方式,而且是一种理解与更大社会世界的关系的方式。当人们以独立的方式解释或思考自己时,他们可能首先要思考性格特征(例如“我正在外向”),能力(例如“我是一个很棒的厨师”)和偏好(例如,“我喜欢紫色的果冻,但讨厌绿色的果冻”),结合使用,它创造了一个独特的自我的概况。因此,一个独立的自我建构,因为它强调了内部和独特的个人特征,因此自我被视为独特的个人,从根本上与他人分开。有趣的是,以这种独立的方式思考自我对认知和行为都有深远的影响。
独立的自我建构背景
鉴于将自我视为独特的个性以及独特的能力和态度是传统上被认为是自定义的,因此人们可能会争辩说,对自我的许多现有研究都探索了独立的自我建构。Indeed, the recognition that an independent construal of the self might be just one of several types of self-views wasn’t widely accepted until the early 1990s, after cross-cultural research by Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama revealed that describing the self in terms of unique attributes was a typical North American and European construal of the self but did not adequately portray the self-views of members of East Asian and Latin American cultures, because they typically describe the self in a more social fashion through referring to important relationships and groups. The recognition that thinking about the self as unique was a distinct type of self-construal opened the door to research that would better reveal its cognitive and behavioral consequences.
随后的研究还通过揭示了每个人都可以在每个人中激活独立的自我构造,而不论文化如何。独立的自我建构可以理解为将自我视为“我”,而不是较大的“我们”的一部分。研究人员发现,可以直接要求参与者以使他们与他人不同的方式形容自己,或者通过间接启动他们来以这种方式来以这种方式来思考自我,从而鼓励独立的自我建构我,我和我的话。这一方法论发现可以进行研究,该研究可以专门评估具有独立约束的影响,无论文化背景如何。
认知效果
关于独立自我构造的最有趣的发现之一是其对整体感知和认知的影响。研究人员发现,以独立的方式定义自我会鼓励人们以更独立或无上下文的方式感知世界。在一系列巧妙的研究中,Uli Kuhnen和Daphna Oyserman表明,当人们将自己视为独特的个人,无论社会关系如何,人们也会以独特的对象而不是其关系来参加并处理物理世界。换句话说,拥有独立自我构造的人确实通过对树木过多的关注来忽略森林!This finding has implications for social perception—and may explain why North Americans so easily fall prey to the fundamental attribution error, or failing to think about the pressures of the social situation when explaining another person’s behavior (e.g., assuming someone who is late to a meeting is irresponsible, rather than considering that he may have been caught in traffic). Interestingly, this focus on other people’s dispositions rather than the situation as the cause of their behavior could be simply a social side effect of the more general cognitive processing style of paying attention to individual actors and objects rather then considering their broader context.
价值观和社会行为
当人们将自我视为独立时,它会增加维持他人自治的重要性。Values like freedom, choosing one’s own goals, and leading a pleasurable life take precedence, and independent people are uncomfortable with punishing people who engage in negative interpersonal behavior and break social norms to the extent that it could interfere with the individual right to “do your own thing.” In addition, the construal of the self as separate from others means that personal pleasures and accomplishments are the primary basis for life satisfaction and well-being. Researchers who study the influence of self-construal on well-being have consistently found that for people with an independent self-construal, personal self-esteem has much more of an impact on their reported life satisfaction than does the quality of their social relationships. Moreover, when individuals are thinking of the self in an independent fashion, they pay more attention to, and more actively pursue, tasks that seem to offer a high likelihood of personal success.
至于社会行为,有关独立自我建构的数据是混合的。一方面,一些研究人员表明,以独立的方式思考自我似乎对社会互动和行为产生了不利的后果。许多研究表明,独立的解释会导致人们相互竞争性地表现,在小组任务上努力工作,对他人的帮助较小,并且在小组问题和社会困境中表现不佳。但是,Sonja Utz最近的一项研究透露,独立的自我建构和社会行为之间的关系可能比最初出现的更为复杂。她的工作指出,一个独立的自我建构从根本上侧重于内向,激活自我概念,并激励人以与他或她独特的个性一致的方式行事。因此,在某人对合作具有强大而核心的价值的范围内,使人认为自我是独立的,实际上可能会导致合作,而不是竞争行为,因为行为与人自己的自我概念具有一致性。换句话说,似乎比独立的自我建构可以鼓励一个人的核心性格特征,无论是亲社会还是自私,可以推动行为。
参考:
- Gardner,W。L.,Gabriel,S。,&Lee,A。Y.(1999)。“我”价值自由,但“我们”的价值关系:自我建构的启动反映了判断中的文化差异。心理科学,10,321-326。
- Kuhnen,U。和Oyserman,D。(2002)。思考自我影响一般的思维:显着自我概念的认知后果。实验社会心理学杂志,38,492-499。
- Markus,H。和Kitayama,S。(1991)。文化与自我:对认知,情感和动机的影响。心理评论,98,224-253。
- Utz,S。(2004)。自我激活是一把两刃剑:I素数对合作的影响。实验社会心理学杂志,40,769-776。