High end psychological knowledge

1. Mirror me effect

I believe many friends have encountered such a situation: the evaluation of others is far from their understanding of themselves. In this case, we may wonder: which is the real self-evaluation or the evaluation of others?

I'm sure some of you here are confused about this. After all, a correct understanding of ourselves has many benefits to our work and life. If we can't understand ourselves correctly, it will inevitably have a lot of negative effects on our work and life.

When it comes to solutions, we have to mention a term in psychology, which is called "mirror me effect". The "mirror me effect" was proposed by Charles Horton Cooley, an American sociologist, in 1902. This theory holds that "a person's self-concept is formed in the interaction with others, and a person's understanding of himself is the reflection of others' views on himself. This self feeling he has is determined by others' thoughts and attitudes towards himself."

In his book human nature and social order, Cooley made a vivid metaphor: "everyone is a mirror of another person, reflecting another passer-by." Therefore, this theory is also called "mirror effect".

As the name suggests, the meaning of "mirror me effect" is that just like we can only see our own appearance in the mirror, our cognition of ourselves is also derived from the views of others on me. Therefore, contrary to the view of "don't care about others' views" advocated by general social psychology theory, the "mirror me effect" points out that everyone's "self-concept" is formed through interaction with others.

First, we imagine how others "know" themselves. Secondly, we will imagine how others "evaluate" themselves on this understanding. Finally, we will have certain feelings based on others' understanding and evaluation of ourselves, which will dominate our understanding of ourselves.

For example, you donate 50 yuan to charity, and then, through the various evaluations and reactions of others, imagine their understanding of you - a person who participated in charity activities. Then, through others' oral comments or other feedback channels, you will think that others' evaluation of you is "warm-hearted and kind-hearted person".

Then, you will be very happy with this understanding and evaluation, and therefore further know yourself, and believe that you are indeed a warm-hearted and kind-hearted person. After that, you will continue to demand yourself by this standard - this is the formation process of a person's self-concept.

But in the mirror, I will only affect, not completely determine our self-awareness. In the same example, you donate 50 yuan to charity, and then you find that others' evaluation of yourself is "a hypocritical person who pretends to be enthusiastic about charity". This evaluation will make you examine your heart and believe that your participation in charity is not due to hypocrisy. Then, you will have anger and rejection, and at the same time, you will further recognize yourself in this emotion - you are by no means a hypocrite.

There is often such a plot in the novel: a person who does all kinds of evil seems to have a devil in his heart and evil blood in his bones. One day, he came to a strange place and did something good by chance, so everyone praised him and regarded him as a saint.

Slowly, he really believed that he was a good man. Then, he began to demand himself with the standard of "good man", and gradually discovered the goodness of his human nature. At the end of the novel, in order to protect those who think he is a "Saint", he often turns against his evil partners in the past, redeems his past sins with his life, and becomes a saint completely.

This is a process in which "I in the mirror" shapes "the real me". Although the story is stereotyped, the psychological basis contained in it is very sufficient. Now, in order to facilitate your understanding, I will tell you another story:

A woman got on the train with a child in her arms, and the carriage was already full of people. Among them, a young man was sleeping on the seat, but one person occupied two seats. The child was crying to sit down and pointed at the young man. But the young man pretended not to hear and still lay asleep. At this time, the child's mother said in a comforting tone, "this uncle is too tired. Let him sleep for a while. He will definitely make room for his seat when he wakes up."

A few minutes later, the young man opened his eyes and looked like he had just woken up. Then he sat up straight and gave another seat to the woman holding the child.

The child cried and wanted to sit, but the young man ignored him. His mother's comforting words made the young man politely give up his seat. The secret of this is that the young man's "self-evaluation" of himself has changed.

It is conceivable that at the beginning, young people's perception of themselves was a rogue mentality of "I occupy two seats, what can you do with me". However, when he heard the woman's evaluation of himself, his understanding of himself quietly turned into: "I'm a reasonable person, but I'm too tired and need a rest."

His "self-concept" changed, and then his corresponding behavior changed.

It can be seen that individuals are so related to society that individuals often need to pass the judgment of others in society in order to complete their understanding of themselves.

This tells us that what kind of people we are is often determined by social feedback. We can become what people think we are.

2. Self service bias

Do you think you know enough?

Maybe after listening to this question, you may feel that there is nothing wrong with it. You don't have this problem. After all, others don't know themselves, that's because they are not Ascaris lumbricoides in our stomach, can't read minds, and so on. But if you say you don't know yourself, is it funny? This is really not funny. Many of us can't understand ourselves comprehensively, and this is still based on science.

There is a psychologist in Australia. He once conducted a self-awareness survey on the executive level executives working in a company. The results showed that 90% of the executives' evaluation of their performance exceeded the average level. Among them, 86% rated their work performance higher than the actual average level, and only 1% thought their performance was lower than the average level.

Then, psychologists made up an average bonus level of the whole company and asked those executives to evaluate the relationship between their remuneration and ability. The results showed that when their bonus was higher than the average level, they often thought it was deserved, and felt that it was a reasonable reward for their hard work and outstanding achievements.

When the bonus is significantly lower than the average level, they often feel that they have worked hard, but they have not been treated fairly. In a word, they rarely accept that they are inferior to others, and rarely find ways to make changes; The fact is that most of them complain and find various excuses to excuse themselves.

Why is there such a result? Is it because the executives of this company are arrogant? In fact, this is actually a common problem of all people, which is called "self-service prejudice" in psychology.

In his book social psychology, American psychologist David miles defines self-service bias as: when we process information related to ourselves, there will be a potential bias. We will readily excuse our failure and readily accept the praise of success. In many cases, we think we are better than others. This sense of self beautification makes most people intoxicated with their good side, but only occasionally glimpse their dark side.

Generally speaking, this is a kind of potential prejudice that people will appear when processing information related to themselves. People often look at themselves from a good perspective. When they achieve some success, they are often easy to attribute it to themselves, while after doing something wrong, they complain about others and external factors, that is, they attribute the credit to themselves and blame others for their mistakes.

For example, after winning, many athletes will generally think that this is due to their own efforts. For the failure, it is attributed to other factors, such as wrong suspension, unfair punishment, too strong opponents, referee whistles, etc

Not only athletes, but also drivers who encounter traffic accidents behave similarly. They always describe the cause of the accident as follows:

"A car came out of nowhere, hit me and ran away."

"As soon as I got to the intersection, something suddenly appeared, blocking my view, so that I didn't see other cars."

"A passer-by hit me and got under my wheel."

When the company's profits increase, many CEOs will attribute this extra income to their management ability, and when the profits begin to decline, they will think: how can these frustrated employees have a little sense of responsibility?

Even when describing success and failure, the subject we use will change, for example, "I got an a in my history exam."

On the contrary, once the result is not ideal, it is: "the history teacher actually gave me a C!"

Some psychologists in Canada have also done research on people's self-service bias in marriage. In a national survey, they found that 91% of wives thought they took on most of the food purchasing work, but only 76% of husbands agreed.

Among them, an interview case mentioned that every night, the respondent and his wife would throw the clothes to be washed out of the dirty clothes basket. The next morning, one of the couple will pick up the clothes and put them in the basket. When the wife asked her husband to pick clothes, what the husband thought was that he should not let himself pick them, because he felt that he had picked them in nine out of ten cases. So he asked his wife how many times she chose clothes. Surprisingly, her answer was that almost nine times out of ten she chose clothes by herself.

In our memory, we will unconsciously exaggerate the information that is beneficial to us and ignore the part that is unfavorable to us. This is also a form of self-service prejudice. Therefore, self-service prejudice is also known as "self-interest prejudice".

Because of this, this self-service bias will cause many interpersonal conflicts. In team cooperation, self-service bias will make people in cooperation feel that they, rather than other collaborators, have made major contributions, and tend to criticize collaborators when cooperation is not smooth, which can easily lead to the termination of cooperation.

And the self-service prejudice between husband and wife can easily lead to endless quarrels between husband and wife on housework, resulting in discord between husband and wife

It can be seen that self-service bias is an attribution error and a major factor affecting interpersonal communication. Therefore, in the process of communication with others, we should try to avoid this basic attribution error in order to maintain a harmonious and good interpersonal relationship.