Monitoring my Presentation

Being a relatively high self monitor, I constantly check how I present myself to others through my self-presentation. Self-monitoring being the tendency to regulate one's own behavior to meet the demands of social situations and self-presentation being the processes we use to shape how others think of us and what we think of ourselves (Snyder, 1987; Shlenker, 2003). This constantly makes me feel like I'm being watched by those around me, even though I know in all actuality that they are not. Essentially, what I'm speaking of is the spotlight effect (Gilovich and Savitsky, 1999).

I'd like to believe that everyone suffers from the spotlight effect. I mean, how many times have you ever been sitting in class and your tummy rumbles? Or how about you're walking somewhere and you trip on something, but not really and pass it off as a slight hop in your stride then look around to see if anyone saw this? Perhaps you were in class like the person in this here comic and did something similar to them...

http://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic1-020810.php

Overall, I constantly check myself and look around to see what others are doing at the same time, especially when meeting new people or even talking with current friends and acquaintances. Self-presentation means a lot to me. Recently, I've been applying it everything my friends have been doing. My roommate, Matt, and friend, Cameron, are both applying for RA spots next year. Between Matt and myself we've been sitting around making jokes about how you could use ingratiation to get this or self-promotion to get that. Matt is a big fan of exemplification if you haven't already read his blog. However, when we were going over intimidation in class the first thing that came to my mind was the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. Before every game they perform a ritual called the Haka to get them ready for battle. So I leave you with a video that would sure as hell intimidate me if I were part of the opposing team.







Gilovich, T. & Satvisky, K. (1999). The spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency: Egocentric assessments of how we are assessed by others. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8, (165-168).

Schlenker, B. R. (2003). Self-presentation. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp. 492-518). New York: Guilford.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances private/realities: The psychology of self-monitoring. New York: Freeman.

Brawling with Others

So as we were going over the three premises of Festinger's Social Comparison Theory, the first things that came to my mind were Super Smash Bros Brawl and Guitar Hero. The social comparison theory states that people constantly evaluate their abilities and opinions by comparing themselves to others (Festinger, 1954). Super Smash Bros Brawl-- Brawl for short--is a video game that features classic and new Nintendo characters duking it out against each other on various stages. I'm going to assume at this point in Guitar Hero's popularity that everyone knows what it is--again with the false-consensus effect.

Being a relatively avid gamer, I constantly have to test my abilities against those that are similar to me. This is the third premise of the theory that we learned in class and displayed in the study done by (Gilbert, Giesler, and Morris, 1995). This is true, because I only ever compare myself to my friends that are really good at playing either game. For the longest time, I was the best in my group at playing Guitar Hero, but then my friend Cameron came along and knocked me off that pedestal of domination. This is fine though because I still judge myself as best among us when playing Brawl.

When playing these games other effects of psychology come into play as well. Every time I play, my self-serving bias comes along for the ride. The self-serving bias just basically means that we attribute our successes to our own abilities, whereas our failures are attributed to external factors (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, and Hankin, 2004; Schlenker, Weigold, and Hallam, 1990). I say this because anytime I win its almost always because of my skill at playing that character, although sometimes there is luck involved with my wins. However, the opposite is true about when I lose. Very rarely do I actually blame myself for my loss. More often than not, I will attribute the loss to a bad day or my opponent being better than me with the particular character he had than I am with the character I used. I've even blamed the controller for not responding as well as it should.

In any case, I constantly feel the need to compare myself to similar others to evaluate my abilities as a player of any game we play. This also extends to my life as well, as one would expect. I just figured I'd give you an insight to how competitive I am/we are when playing games.



Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117-140.

Gilbert, D. T., Giesler, R. B., & Morris, K. A. (1995). When comparisons arise. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 227-236.

Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 711-747.

Schlenker, B. R., Weigold, M. F., & Hallam, J. R. (1990). Self-serving attributions in social context: Effects of self-esteem and social pressure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 855-863.

Good Intentions...Bad Narcolepsy

Okay, have you ever been in class and for some reason, whatever it may be, you start to feel sleepy and start nodding off? Well regardless if I had a good night's sleep, the subject is interesting, or I am near the front of a classroom, I have a terrible tendency of nodding off in class.

Anyone who has ever taken a class with me could probably name a few times where they've seen me nod off. This can especially be said for my morning classes. I can't even begin to count the times I've been in one of my classes and was paying attention, then suddenly I felt drowsy, followed by the inner monologue of telling myself to stay awake or to start drawing doodles or to sit up, then my eyes get heavy and BAM 15 seconds or more have passed. I'll kinda go "damn it..." then look around to see if anyone saw me, then go back to listening to the lecture. I always feel bad about doing that, because I know the professor must HATE seeing a student fall asleep in front of them...I know I would. Which is why I think I qualify most as the Second-Row Sleeper in conjunction with the photo up above.

When I look at my behavior following Kelley's Covariation Theory, I've come to realize that my dozing off in classes is a personal attribution (Kelley, 1967). My Consensus is low, because I hardly ever notice anyone else nodding off in most of the classes I've taken here. Additionally, my Distinctiveness is low as well because I nod off in most of my classes, not just the morning ones. Furthermore, because I will nod off in the same classes on different days, I also have a high Consistency. Overall, I have low Consensus, low Distinctiveness, and high Consistency which all indicate a personal attribution instead of a Stimulus or Circumstance attribution.

Anywho, feel free to try and pin yourself as one of the stereotyped students in the photo or create a new one that should be included. Also, on the topic of dozing off in class, I felt I should include the link to this video because I know it happens to everyone. The topics discussed are definitely not the same for everyone, but I would at least like to think that other people have inner monologues with themselves in class. Also I'm gonna hope that no one gets offended by the video, because I find it rather funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7hzcLZ7uRc

PS--I just applied the false-consensus effect by assuming that everyone in the class will find this funny, which I hope you all do...because I sure do. The false-consensus effect being the tendency for one to think others share the same opinions, attributes, and behaviors based on their own (Krueger, 1998; Ross, Greene, & House, 1977)




Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution in social psychology. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 15, 192-238.

Krueger, J. (1998). On the perception of social consensus. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 163-240.

Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The false consensus phenomenon: An attributional bias in self-perception and social-perception processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 279-301.