Concepts (page 63)
- Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is treating your own failures the way you would treat a friend's. Kristin Neff defined it in 2003 as three things: kindness instead of judgment, recognising that failure is common to…
- Self-Completion Theory
People who are pursuing an identity, not just a task, are collecting two things at once: the thing itself, and the standing of being someone who does it. Self-completion theory holds that the…
- Self-Continuity
Self-continuity is the sense that the person you were and the person you are belong to one life. It is one of the functions nostalgia reliably serves, alongside self-esteem, optimism, meaning in…
- Self-Criticism
Self-criticism is the habit of attacking yourself for falling short, as distinct from noticing that you fell short. Its defining move is the jump from "I did a bad thing" to "I am a bad thing"…
- Self-Determination Theory
Self-determination theory is Deci and Ryan's account of why some motivation lasts and most does not. Three psychological needs do the work: autonomy, acting in line with your own values; competence…
- Self-Disclosure
Self-disclosure is talking about yourself, and the finding is that it is rewarding in itself rather than merely useful. Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell reported in 2012 that disclosing information…
- Self-Discretion
Self-discretion is the mechanism Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson prefer in The Elephant in the Brain (2018) to explain how a person can hold a motive without admitting it. There is no active lie…
- Self-Distanced Self-Talk
Self-distanced self-talk is talking to yourself using your own name or the word "you" instead of "I". "Faisal, why are you upset about this?" rather than "why am I upset about this?" The pronoun…
- Self-Distancing
Self-distancing is thinking about your own experience from outside it, as an observer would, rather than from behind your own eyes. It is a change of camera angle, not a change of subject, and it is…
- Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is a person's belief that they can carry out a specific behaviour in a specific situation. Albert Bandura's construct is narrow by design: not general confidence, not self-esteem, but…
- Self-Monitoring
Self-monitoring is a stable individual difference in how much a person reads a social situation and adjusts their behaviour to fit it. High self-monitors notice the cues for what is appropriate here…
- Self-Perception Theory
Self-perception theory is the claim, formulated by the social psychologist Daryl Bem, that people work out what they believe and prefer partly by watching what they do. It is the usual explanation…