What Is the Nature of Self?
The chapter begins with a consideration of one of our more fundamental characteristics—our idea of self. We all have some sense of who we are and how we are unique from others. Despite considerable contradictory sensory information, we have a unitary experience of self that is continuous over time and space. Our symbolic self seems to be the uniquely human capacity to form an abstract mental representation of oneself through language. The beginning of this sense of self appears to begin at around 18 months with the recognition of self as distinct from others. At least some of the developing sense of self appears to be related to the maturation of the frontal lobes.

According to Higgins's self-discrepancy theory, our self-awareness also appears to motivate our behaviors by calling attention to the differences between who we are, how others see us, and who we would like to be. These discrepancies can lead to such strong emotions as depression, frustration, anxiety, and guilt. Also, different cultures tend to reward the development of different types of selves. Collectivist cultures emphasize connections to family, social groups, and ethnic groups and conformity to social norms and group cohesiveness. Individualistic cultures emphasize personal rights and freedoms, self-expression, and diversity. A quick review of one's daily activities is usually enough to identify where your culture stands on this continuum.

What Is Self-Esteem and What Is It Good For?
The next section of the chapter looks at self-esteem. This is the evaluative aspect of self-concept, referring to whether people view themselves to be worthy or unworthy, good or bad. The idea that children should have a high self-esteem has reached nearly cult status in recent years, leading to unconditional acceptance of children by their parents. More recent research suggests this is a useful idea but only in the context of relatively strict parenting and clear limit setting. Self-esteem seems to have a biological basis as it is moderately heritable and may be related to the neurotransmitter serotonin. We seem to be preprogrammed to view ourselves in a favorable fashion. Most people view themselves as better-than-average in many domains. We maintain positive illusions, bask in the glow of reflected glory, and compare ourselves socially with those who we believe are deficient compared to us (downward social comparison). We also tend to take credit for successes ourselves but blame failures on outside factors (self-serving bias). These ego-defensive distortions appear to make us feel better and prevent rejection from the group.

How Do Attitudes Guide Behavior?
The last half of the chapter concerns social cognition as it relates to how we make sense of other people and our social situations. It seems that we are cognitive misers, who make quick judgment about others based on limited information. Our evaluation of objects or ideas is known as an attitude, and it has affective, cognitive, and behavioral components. The mere exposure effect illustrates that our attitudes about an object or situation can improve simply through the process of greater familiarity. Our implicit attitudes can influence us unconsciously, and those whose associated memories are easily accessible are more predictive of behavior.

One of the classic findings in social psychology was Leon Festinger's discovery that discrepancies between attitudes and behavior can lead to cognitive dissonance. Generally, individuals are motivated to reduce this dissonance by either changing their attitudes or their behavior. Many disciplines are interested in how attitudes can be changed through persuasion. We like to think of ourselves as rational decision makers, but there is a wealth of evidence to the contrary. Richard Petty and John Cacippo's elaboration likelihood model indicated that there are two distinct ways by which persuasion leads to attitude change. The central route to persuasion is one that makes use of rational cognitive processes. The peripheral route to persuasion is one by which people minimally process the message and make decisions by numerous nonrational processes. The ways of influencing both routes continues to be investigated; however, the personal trait of need for cognition is related more to central routes of information processing.

How Do People Form Attitudes about Others?
The final section of the chapter looks at social cognition in terms of how we form attitudes about others. We seem predisposed to making attributions or causal explanations about why events or actions occur. And, rather than employing an objective evaluation, we tend to take shortcuts and attribute others' behaviors to personal traits but attribute our own behaviors more to situational factors (i.e., actor-observer discrepancy). These shortcuts continue in the arena of stereotypes, by which we organize social information about people based on their membership in certain groups. While efficient, negative stereotypes can lead to harmful prejudices and dangerous discriminatory behavior. Fortunately, although the information processing that leads to these attitudes appears to be innate and based on historically adaptive ideas, such as ingroups and outgroups, we can control our behavioral responses to some of our more pernicious stereotypes.

Research has indicated that cooperation with others, particularly in activities that have shared superordinate goals, can reduce the hostility between disparate groups. One educational application of this has been the jigsaw classroom, in which students work together in mixed-race or mixed-sex groups. The future of civilization may rest on how well we apply these ideas to broader races, nations, and cultures.

One precautionary note: It is tempting to believe that this portion of psychological science is just common sense—we all know how we deal with our friends and family. Actively fight that natural tendency. You will find that some of the research is actually counterintuitive (e.g., cognitive dissonance). Also, there are subtle distinctions among several of the social psychological terms. When answering the multiple choice questions, be sure you know why the correct answer is accurate as well as why the wrong answers are incorrect.