Module 02 · The Self-Concept
What Does the Self-Concept Do for Us?自我概念的作用
Overview 概述
At this point, you should understand the basics of what the self-concept is. One topic that we haven’t addressed yet is why the self-concept is so important. Why does it get so much emphasis compared to our conceptualizations of other people or of other situations? While the mental representations of those other targets are certainly important, the self-concept stands above them because it has strong effects on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Let’s take each of these in turn and explore how the self can impact each of these areas.
在这个阶段，你应该已经理解了自我概念的基本概念。我们还没有讨论的一个问题是为什么自我概念如此重要。为什么与我们对他人或其他情境的概念相比，它得到了如此多的重视？虽然那些其他目标的心理表征当然很重要，但自我概念因其对我们思想、情感和行为产生的强烈影响而高于它们。让我们逐一探讨这些方面，并了解自我如何影响这些领域。
Thoughts 思考
We’ve already talked about the fact that the self-concept contains our collection of thoughts about ourselves. However, it also affects the thoughts that we generate when we’re processing information from the world around us. Let’s talk about two ways in which this happens.
我们已经讨论过自我概念包含我们对自身的思考集合这一事实。然而，它也影响我们处理来自周围世界的信息时产生的思考。让我们谈谈这种影响发生的两种方式。
First, we will focus on the way the self-concept can impact our memory. In particular, there is a long tradition of research suggesting that relating information to the self makes that information more memorable (Rogers et al., 1977). For example, Rogers and colleagues showed adjectives, such as “intelligent,” to participants one at a time. Some of the time, the participants were shown a second word, such as “smart,” and asked if the two words were synonyms. Other times, participants were shown the initial adjective and asked if that word described them well or not. After completing this task, participants were given a surprise memory test and asked to recall as many of the adjectives as they could.
首先，我们将关注自我概念如何影响我们的记忆。特别是，有长期的研究传统表明，将信息与自我联系起来会使该信息更容易记住（Rogers 等人，1977 年）。例如，Rogers 及其同事一次向参与者展示一个形容词，如“聪明的”。有时，参与者会被展示第二个词，如“聪明的”，并询问这两个词是否是同义词。其他时候，参与者会被展示最初的形容词，并询问这个词是否很好地描述了他们。完成这项任务后，参与者接受了意外的记忆测试，并要求尽可能回忆起尽可能多的形容词。
Researchers found that participants remembered about twice as many of the words that they compared to themselves versus words that they did a synonym judgment on. Put another way, thinking about whether a word describes you or not is a quick and easy way to make that word more memorable. Note that we’re not just saying that people are better at remembering traits that they have. When people were asked whether an adjective described them and they said “no,” those adjectives were still made more memorable by comparison. Summing up, it seems that simply comparing information to the self enhances its memorability.
研究人员发现，参与者记得的与自己比较的单词数量是他们进行同义词判断的单词数量的两倍左右。换句话说，思考一个词是否描述了你，这是一种快速简单的方法来使这个词更容易记住。请注意，我们并不是说人们更擅长记住他们拥有的特质。当人们被问及一个形容词是否描述他们，并回答“不”时，这些形容词通过比较仍然变得更加容易记住。总的来说，似乎仅仅是将信息与自我进行比较就能增强其记忆性。
While this finding is interesting because it gives us information about how the self works, it also has important practical applications for people trying to learn information. An effective way to help yourself learn information is to relate the information to yourself. For example, if you’re in a psychology class learning about how punishment and reinforcement work, applying examples of these phenomena to your life will be more memorable to you than studying the abstract concepts or applying them to generic other people.
尽管这个发现很有趣，因为它让我们了解了自我是如何运作的，但它也对那些试图学习信息的人有重要的实际应用。帮助自己学习信息的一个有效方法是把自己与信息联系起来。例如，如果你在心理学课程中学习惩罚和强化是如何工作的，将这种现象的例子应用到你的生活中，对你来说会比学习抽象概念或将其应用于其他人更有意义。
A second way that the self can affect our thoughts is by affecting what our attention focuses on. We’ve already talked about how being schematic on a dimension (e.g., schematic on the concept of compassion) makes us focus on that dimension more than other dimensions or portions of the self-concept (Markus, 1977). So, people whose selves are schematic on different dimensions will generate different thoughts about the same situations. For example, imagine two people, one of whom is schematic on compassion and the other who is schematic about security. If they both hear a story on the news about a military conflict in another country, they’re likely to have very different thoughts. The first person will be more likely to focus on the human costs of the conflict and think about how people’s suffering could be addressed or could have been avoided. The second person might focus on how the conflict will increase or decrease the security of their own country. In this way, differences in the self-concept can explain how two people can come away from the same situation with very different thoughts.
自我影响我们思考的第二种方式是通过影响我们的注意力焦点。我们已经讨论过，在某个维度上具有图式化（例如，对同情概念的图式化）会使我们比其他维度或自我概念的各个部分更关注该维度（Markus，1977 年）。因此，自我在不同维度上具有图式化的人会对相同的情况产生不同的想法。例如，想象两个人，其中一个人对同情具有图式化，另一个人对安全具有图式化。如果他们都听到关于另一个国家军事冲突的新闻故事，他们很可能会产生非常不同的想法。第一个人可能会更关注冲突的人道成本，思考如何解决或避免人们的苦难。第二个人可能会关注冲突如何增加或减少他们自己国家的安全。通过这种方式，自我概念的不同可以解释为什么两个人可以从相同的情况中得出非常不同的想法。
Feelings 感觉
Just as the self has a profound influence on our thoughts, it is also intimately tied to our emotions. We will focus on two of these effects. The first is concerned with how we react to receiving feedback. In the What Is the Self-Concept? video, we introduced the idea of comparing the self to a standard that we want to reach (called the ideal self) and to a standard that we don’t want to fall beneath (called the ought self). It turns out that whichever of these alternate selves is our focus has a strong influence on what emotions we experience when we fail to reach our goal (Higgins, 1987).
正如自我对我们思想有深远的影响，它也与我们的情感紧密相连。我们将关注其中的两种影响。第一种是关于我们如何对收到反馈做出反应。在《什么是自我概念？》视频中，我们介绍了将自我与想要达到的标准（称为理想自我）和不想跌落的标准（称为应当自我）进行比较的想法。结果发现，无论我们关注的是哪种替代自我，都会对我们未能达到目标时体验到的情绪产生强烈影响（Higgins，1987）。
Imagine a situation where you are trying to get a promotion at work. You talk to your supervisor about it, they consider your request, and they ultimately decide not to promote you. This is very likely to generate negative emotions, but which negative emotions? If you were focusing on your ideal self (thinking things such as, It would be great if I got this promotion), you’ll likely respond to the rejection of your request with low-arousal negative emotions such as disappointment and sadness. On the other hand, if you were focusing on your ought self (e.g., I can’t stay in this role forever; it’s beneath me) when you were denied the promotion, your reaction will be much more likely to involve high-arousal negative emotions such as anxiety and anger. Notice that, as in the previous schematicity example, the outward stimulus is the same (being denied a promotion), but people’s reaction to it depends on what part of their self-concept is being used as the comparison standard.
想象一下，你正在努力争取工作中的晋升。你和你的上司谈论这件事，他们考虑了你的请求，但最终决定不晋升你。这很可能会产生负面情绪，但具体是哪些负面情绪呢？如果你专注于你的理想自我（比如想，如果能晋升就好了），你很可能会对请求被拒绝的反应是低唤醒度的负面情绪，如失望和悲伤。另一方面，如果你在晋升被拒绝时专注于你的应然自我（例如，我不能永远待在这个职位上；这对我来说太低级了），你的反应更有可能涉及高唤醒度的负面情绪，如焦虑和愤怒。请注意，正如在前一个图式性例子中，外在刺激是相同的（被拒绝晋升），但人们对它的反应取决于他们用来作为比较标准的自我概念的部分。
This promotion-related example focuses on how the part of our self-concept that is activated can affect our emotional reaction to failure. The way our self-concept is structured can also affect our reactions to failure. Imagine two different people. One has a self-concept that contains many different roles, groups, and domains. For example, this person may define herself as a mother, a doctor, a friend, a chess player, and a hiker. A second person may have all of these same attributes, but be entirely focused on her career as a doctor without any other prominent self-definitions. What happens when these two people each encounter the same professional setback (such as, again, being denied a promotion)? Who do you think will have a more measured response to the failure? If you said the woman with multiple self-definitions, you’re correct.
这次晋升相关的例子关注的是我们自我概念中激活的部分如何影响我们对失败的感性反应。我们的自我概念的结构也会影响我们对失败的反应。想象两个不同的人。一个人有一个包含许多不同角色、群体和领域的自我概念。例如，这个人可能将自己定义为母亲、医生、朋友、棋手和徒步旅行者。第二个人可能拥有所有这些相同的属性，但完全专注于她的医生职业，没有任何其他突出的自我定义。当这两个人各自遇到同样的职业挫折（比如，再次，被拒绝晋升）时会发生什么？你认为谁会对失败有更冷静的反应？如果你说是拥有多重自我定义的女性，你就对了。
Linville (1985) demonstrated that people whose selves have multiple different aspects (called complex selves) tend to have more predictable, less negative reactions to failure. She reasoned that, because their self-concepts are diverse, these people can cope with failure involving one self-definition by focusing on another self-definition. It’s not so bad that I didn’t get that promotion, one might think, because I did really well at my last chess tournament or because my children are thriving at school. On the other hand, people who define themselves in only one way (called having simple selves) don’t have these alternative self-definitions to turn to when they experience failure, so their negative emotional reaction to this failure will be much stronger than if they had a complex self-concept.
林维尔（1985）证明，那些自我具有多个不同方面（称为复杂自我）的人，对失败的反应往往更加可预测，负面情绪较少。她认为，由于他们的自我概念多样化，这些人可以通过关注另一个自我定义来应对涉及一个自我定义的失败。一个人可能会想，我没有得到那个晋升并没有那么糟糕，因为我上次的象棋比赛表现得很好，或者因为我的孩子们在学校里表现优异。另一方面，那些只以一种方式定义自己（称为拥有简单自我）的人，在经历失败时没有这些可替代的自我定义可供选择，因此他们对这种失败的负面情绪反应将比他们拥有复杂自我概念时更强。
Behavior 行为
Finally, let’s apply the concept of being schematic to our behavior. Just like being schematic on a dimension can affect the way we perceive the world, it can also affect our behavioral reactions (Markus, 1977). For example, imagine a person who has a free afternoon and needs to decide how she should spend her time: either working out or working on a class project. Among the factors that will influence her decision is whether she is schematic on being physically active or being a good student. If she is schematic on either of those dimensions, the related activity will come to mind first, and that thought will be more likely to be acted upon. For example, someone schematic on being physically active will ask herself what she’d like to do with her free afternoon, and, because her active self-definition is chronically in mind, she will first consider if she wants to go work out. The possibility of working on her classwork is less likely to come to mind, and, therefore, less likely to be acted on. Simply put, being schematic on a dimension guides us toward behaving in ways that are relevant to that dimension.
最后，让我们将图式化的概念应用到我们的行为上。就像在某个维度上进行图式化可以影响我们感知世界的方式一样，它也可以影响我们的行为反应（Markus，1977）。例如，想象一个有自由下午的人，需要决定她应该如何度过她的时间：要么锻炼，要么完成一个课堂项目。影响她决策的因素之一是她是否在身体活动或成为好学生这两个维度上具有图式化。如果她在任何一个维度上具有图式化，相关的活动就会首先出现在脑海中，这种想法更有可能被付诸行动。例如，一个对身体活动具有图式化的人会问自己她想在自由下午做什么，由于她的活跃自我定义一直存在于脑海中，她会首先考虑是否想去锻炼。完成课堂作业的可能性不太可能出现在脑海中，因此，不太可能被付诸行动。简单来说，在某个维度上的图式化引导我们以与该维度相关的方式行事。
Overall, one of the main reasons it’s good to understand how the self-concept works is that its contents and structure can have profound effects on our lives.
总体来说，了解自我概念如何运作的好处之一是，其内容和结构可能对我们生活产生深远影响。