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Psych/Soc 8A: Self-Identity

The self drawn as a structure: schemas that reorder by room, three control beliefs that move separately, and six developmental theories animated end to end.

17 topics · 63 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

8A. Self-Concept and Self-Schemas

  1. How it worksHow do self-schemas file everything you believe about yourself into a structure new information gets checked against?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the working self-concept switching which parts of a person light up as the setting changes.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the self-concept a single fixed description that stays the same in every room?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a self-concept when two of its pieces, star athlete and injured patient, start contradicting each other?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A participant completes an open self-description task and writes 22 statements. 9 of them name a personal trait such as curious or impatient, and the rest name a group membership or a relationship. What percentage of the statements are group or relationship based?

8A. Self-Identity and the Hierarchy of Salience

  1. How it worksHow does a hierarchy of salience rank the identities a person is carrying at any single moment?
  2. How it worksWalk me through one student's identity stack reordering between a chemistry exam and a family funeral.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't identity salience the same thing as how much an identity matters to someone overall?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A third-year medical student who reports holding 9 distinct identities is admitted to hospital overnight as a patient. What does a hierarchy of salience predict for the next twelve hours?

8A. Social Identity and Group Membership

  1. How it worksHow does social identity theory build part of a person's self-worth out of the groups they belong to?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through the minimal group study where coin-flip teams start handing out rewards to their own members.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a social identity just a label that somebody else assigned from the outside?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to self-esteem when the group a person identifies with suddenly loses status?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
In a minimal-group study each participant divides 24 points between one in-group member and one out-group member, both anonymous strangers assigned by a coin flip. The average participant gives 18 points to the in-group member. How many more points does the in-group member receive?

8A. Self-Esteem

  1. How it worksHow does the gap between the real self and the ideal self set where self-esteem lands?
  2. How it worksHow do upward and downward social comparisons push self-esteem in opposite directions?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to self-esteem when a person protects it by blaming the exam instead of their studying?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't high self-esteem the same as actually being good at the thing that feels good?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A clinician rates her ideal self on clinical competence at 89 out of 100 and her real self at x out of 100. Write an expression, in terms of x, for the self-discrepancy as a percentage of the ideal rating.

8A. Self-Efficacy

  1. How it worksHow do mastery experience, watching others, verbal persuasion, and arousal each feed a person's self-efficacy?
  2. How it worksWalk me through self-efficacy being pinned to one task while self-esteem floats over the whole person.
  3. Worked exampleFind which student quits the problem set first when one rates efficacy 3 out of 10 in calculus and the other rates 8.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't low self-efficacy in one subject evidence of low self-efficacy everywhere else?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A student rates her self-efficacy for organic chemistry at 3 out of 10. She then watches a classmate she considers equal in ability work a synthesis problem through to a correct answer, and afterwards rates her efficacy 7 out of 10. Which source moved it?

8A. Locus of Control

  1. How it worksHow does an internal locus of control route an outcome back to effort instead of to luck?
  2. How it worksWalk me through learned helplessness forming once an animal's actions stop changing the outcome.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't an external locus of control just pessimism wearing a technical name?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a patient taking daily medication when their locus of control sits on the external end?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Two students fail the same exam. One studied 18 hours and says the questions were unfair; the other studied 7 hours and says she should have started earlier. Which pair of descriptions fits?

8A. Racial, Ethnic, and National Identity

  1. How it worksHow do race, ethnicity, and nationality carve up one person's identity along three different lines?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't ethnicity the same category as race when a form asks a person to check both?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to ethnic identity across three generations of a single immigrant family?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A health system asks 609 patients for race, ethnicity, and citizenship in three separate fields, and 72 of them enter combinations the form's designers had not anticipated. Which statement about the three fields is correct?

8A. Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation

  1. How it worksHow does gender identity sit on a different axis from sex assigned at birth and from who a person is attracted to?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't gender identity settled by the chromosomes a person happens to carry?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to the picture when gender expression is added as a third axis that moves on its own?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A survey of 1287 adults records sex assigned at birth, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation as four separate items, and 138 respondents give combinations that cannot be predicted from any one of the other three answers. Which conclusion follows?

8A. Class and Age Identity

  1. How it worksHow does class identity get assembled out of income, education, occupation, and taste all at once?
  2. How it worksWalk me through age identity shifting as one person moves from 18 to 40 to 75.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens when a person's actual class position and their class identity stop matching?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A sociologist scores class position by averaging three equally weighted percentiles: income at 69, education at 65, and occupational prestige at 85. What composite percentile does this respondent receive?

8A. Freud's Psychosexual Theory of Development

  1. How it worksWalk me through libido moving through the oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital stages.
  2. How it worksHow does fixation happen when the conflict at one psychosexual stage never gets resolved?
  3. Worked exampleFind the psychosexual stage of a 4-year-old who copies the same-sex parent and competes for the other parent's attention.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't Freud's psychosexual theory testable the way a modern developmental study is?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A child aged 5 imitates the same-sex parent closely and competes for the other parent's attention. In Freud's scheme, which stage is the child working through?

8A. Erikson's Psychosocial Stages

  1. How it worksWalk me through all eight psychosocial crises as forks between a strength and its failure.
  2. Worked exampleFind which Erikson stage a 45-year-old who has started mentoring younger colleagues is working through.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't losing one of Erikson's crises a permanent verdict on everything that comes after?
  4. Ties togetherHow does the identity versus role confusion crisis connect to the identities a teenager tries on and drops?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A physician aged 50 has cut her clinical hours to run a mentoring programme for junior colleagues, saying she wants to leave the department better than she found it. Which crisis is she working through?

8A. Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Reasoning

  1. How it worksWalk me through the three levels and six stages from avoiding punishment up to universal principles.
  2. Worked exampleFind the Kohlberg stage of someone who says Heinz should steal the drug because a life outranks a property law.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't calling stealing wrong automatically a sign of advanced moral reasoning?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to Kohlberg's ladder in a culture that ranks group harmony above individual rights?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Asked about the Heinz dilemma, a respondent aged 27 says the druggist's property claim is real but that a law protecting property has to yield when a life is at stake. Which stage does Kohlberg assign?

8A. Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development

  1. How it worksHow does the zone of proximal development sit between what a learner can already do and what they cannot do at all?
  2. How it worksWalk me through scaffolding getting added and then pulled away while the zone slides outward.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the zone of proximal development just a friendlier name for a difficulty setting?
  4. Ties togetherHow does internalizing the voice of a more skilled partner connect culture to the shape of a child's thinking?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Given 19 puzzles of graded difficulty, a child solves 5 working alone and 15 when a tutor supplies hints. How many of the puzzles fall inside this child's zone of proximal development?

8A. Mead's Social Behaviorism and the I and the Me

  1. How it worksHow do the I and the me split the self into a spontaneous actor and an internalized audience?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the preparatory, play, and game stages assembling the generalized other.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't Mead's me simply Freud's superego under a sociological name?
Your turneasy1 of 3
During a case presentation a resident blurts out a question and, 5 seconds later, feels a wave of embarrassment about how it sounded to the room. Which parts of Mead's self are these?

8A. Cooley's Looking-Glass Self

  1. How it worksWalk me through the three steps of the looking-glass self, from imagined appearance to the feeling it leaves.
  2. Worked exampleFind what the looking-glass self predicts for a child who reads a nervous teacher's smile as disappointment.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the looking-glass self a reflection of what other people actually think of you?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to the looking-glass self when the mirrors are thousands of strangers online instead of one small town?
Your turneasy1 of 3
After presenting to a panel of 7 clinicians, a student pictures how she looked to them, decides they judged her as underprepared, and leaves the room ashamed. Which sequence has she run through?

8A. Imitation, Role-Taking, and Reference Groups

  1. How it worksHow does a reference group act as the yardstick a person measures their own life against?
  2. How it worksHow do imitation and role-taking let a child rehearse an identity long before they hold it?
  3. Worked exampleFind how a 70000 dollar salary reads against a reference group averaging 45000 versus one averaging 120000.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens when someone starts using a reference group they have not joined yet as their standard?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A resident earns s thousand dollars a year and takes as her reference group a specialty whose members average 119 thousand. Write an expression, in terms of s, for the percentage by which her salary falls below that average.

8A. Culture and Socialization in Identity Formation

  1. How it worksHow do family, school, peers, and media each deposit a different layer of a person's identity?
  2. How it worksWalk me through an independent self-construal and an interdependent one drawn beside each other.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't socialization something that finishes the day childhood ends?
  4. Ties togetherHow does the culture a person grows up in decide which identity sits at the top of their salience hierarchy?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Asked to complete twenty sentences beginning I am, respondents in sample A produced 80 percent trait statements and respondents in sample B produced 33 percent. Which reading fits?

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