Problem 1: Describe something important you learned about yourself and explain how you learned it through introspection and/or self-perception. Now that you have identified something you learned about yourself, how would one of the perspectives from Week 1 explain that part of yourself? These are the perspectives:
- Self-esteem motive
- Social cognition motive
- Evolutionary view
- Culture
- Gender
- Social cognitive learning theory
- Physiological influences
- Media
- Situational explanation
Problem 2: Explain whether you have an interdependent view of yourself, an independent view of yourself, or both and why. Describe your culture(s) and how your culture(s) contributes to this view. Provide one example of how this view influences your behavior or your beliefs. Your example should include but is not limited to how your interdependent or independent self-view influences one of the following:
- What kinds of things make you feel especially proud
- What kinds of things make you feel especially embarrassed
- The way you interact with others
Problem 3: Then, select one specific aspect of your life, such as your role as a student, a spouse, a parent, an employee, or some other role, and explain how you could apply the social comparison theory to the aspect you selected.
Problem 4: Briefly describe a time you engaged in one of the following types of self-justification in response to cognitive dissonance: justification of effort, external justification, internal justification, or justification of a good deed. Explain the source of your cognitive dissonance and how this self-justification reduced that dissonance.