On John Stamos and Self Perception

I wrote a long introduction but deleted it in an attempt to curb my long-winded story telling style.

I met my ex-boyfriend, John Stamos* on swim team when I was fifteen. I was an awkward and introverted child who remained incapable of positive social interactions and felt very uncomfortable being around boys in a swimsuit. Therefore, when he approached me and tried to talk, I gave him a cold stare and walked away without speaking. This impression lay the ground for an unfortunately hilarious conformation bias that existed for the first two years of our relationship. Conformation biases exist when people form an initial impression and then construe events and actions in a way that supports their initial impression, regardless of how complete or accurate this impression may be.

I am the awkward one in the back being extremely uneasy around people,
if you needed confirmation on how socially anxious/awkward I was/am.

A couple years after that initial interaction we reconnected and began dating. We came from very different social circles and there was an inordinate amount of his friends that I was forced to meet in a short period of time. I was still fairly social inept and painfully reserved, so was often very withdrawn around these new people. I strongly self-identified as a shy individual, and considered my behaviour to be very much in line with (and easily explained by) this characteristic. Unfortunately, when John Stamos saw my stilted and painful interactions he, having a painfully cold first interaction with me, attributed my actions to me being prideful. Rather than seeing me failing to find words and warm body language as the result of my terror of being around a strange group of friends, he saw me refusing to participate and interact with his friends as a function of my presupposed prideful nature. It did not take long before we realized that we had two very different interpretations for my actions.

Throughout the course of our relationship, there was a constant debate over whether my actions were motivated by introversion or pride. John Stamos was always quick to find events and interactions that supported his hypothesis, a pattern that could be explained by the trait negativity bias: a tendency for people to notice, remember, and support negative attributes about others more often than positive attributes (Rozin & Royzman, 2001; Skowronski & Carlston 1989). Now that he had identified a negative trait about my personality, it was ever-present to him in ways that positive traits he recognized were not.

Troubled by my pride and his mullet both.

I, on the other hand, was continually affronted by the notion that I could be prideful, because that jeopardized my self-constructed implicit personality theory. As studied by Bruner & Tagiuri (1954) people tend to have a network of overlapping and complimentary assumptions when conceptualizing one's personality; that is, if someone is recognized to be helpful they are also assumed to possess related traits such as gratefulness, friendliness, and charitable. By considering the inclusion of the "prideful" trait into my self-concept, I was forced to consider that I also possessed many other traits I associated with a prideful person (was I selfish? conceited? MALEVOLENT, EVEN???).

I suppose the benefits of long-term relationships include having ample time to overcome these biases and stumbling blocks one faces when confronting impressions and perceptions of individuals in the relationship. Luckily, after both of us fighting blindly to maintain our conformation biases by interpreting my actions in vastly different manners, we were able to realize that my behaviours were driven by both shyness and pride. Either way, it would have definitely been beneficial to understand these biases and stumbling blocks we face in perceptions of self and others before having to confront them in real life.

catscatscatscatscats!

*Not actually John Stamos.


Bruner, J. S., & Tagiui, R. (1954). The perception of people. The handbook of social psychology, 1(2), 634-654.

Rozin, P. & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality & Social Psychology Review, 5, 296–320.

Skowronski, J. J., & Carlston, D. E. (1989). Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: A review of explanations. Psychological Bulletin, 105, 131–142.

Pilot (Or, I Think I Remember How to Blog?)

Like most of you, I am unsure in terms of what to put in this "welcome" blog. Despite having ran two blogs in the past, I am ever-so uneasy about what other people are expecting when it comes to blog presentation (it took me at least twenty minutes to fret over what my url should be*). So forgive me if I ramble, but it is what my vainglorious nature does best!

Since our class is comparatively large, I do not expect anybody to remember my introduction. Nevertheless, if you do, I am Sam, the business/psychology double major who works with children and horses.

From left to right: me, horse

Also, I feel that i should give everyone a fair warning: I will include an excessive amount of pictures in my blog posts. After this welcome post, the amount will most likely wane, but pictures are some of my favourite things in the world. Other favourite things include these things: cats, reading, volunteering, cats, drawing, drawing cats, singing poorly, horses, driving, music, music about cats, pictures, pictures of cats, food, cat food, and misadventures in photoshop.

Most of my photoshopping looks like this. Note the cat background.

I am extremely excited to be in Social Psychology this year! I took Research Methods I & II with Dr. Giuliano and am really excited to be in a class of hers again (the lack of a research paper was a nice bonus as well). This is the first semester in college I am taking under 18 hours for, so I am relieved to be able to have enough time to do well in all of my classes and have some fun on the side. When not photoshopping cats, I am also active in the fraternity Alpha Phi Omega. For those who have not heard of it, it is the campus-wide co-ed service fraternity. In high school I spent a lot of time volunteering through the Leo Club and the Math Club and was really excited to find an organization on campus that encouraged volunteering. Last year I earned the most service hours in our fraternity with an exciting 207 hours!

I was excited, anyways. But not as excited as my cat was when he first tried on the cat headband unicorn horn we got him for Christmas!

Excited was not an adequate word choice.

Besides my cat, I also have two siblings: Malinda and Joseph. Malinda is a little over a year younger than me and is studying to become some sort of scientist at Texas Tech. Joseph is finishing up middle school this year and towers at least two inches over me despite only being thirteen. We all inherited my German father's height (my sister is the short one of the family at 5'8'') and my Slavic mother's obnoxious amounts of hair (so much unfortunate shedding).

Surprisingly, I am the least country of the bunch.

I have an apartment in Georgetown, but my family's home base is down in the small town of Buda, Texas. If you are into weiner dog races, you have definitely heard of us. Buda boasts of three things: the annual weiner dog races, a giant Cabela's, and the fact that JUST THIS YEAR we managed to ban the confederate flag from school grounds. Dixie, however, is still our fight song.

I think that is all the self-indulgent rambling I can stomach for now; I am going to sleep.

THIS HAS BEEN A SUCCESSFUL POST.

*After spending fifteen minutes having my various url ideas rejected by my friends ("What if I make my url someone else's name in this class?" "No, Sam." "Are you sure? I like that idea. What about wearingyourskin.blogspot.com because then I might be able to tie it in to how using social psych conce-" "NO.") I proposed the idea of sambeingsocial.blogspot, which was met with a slight tittering and a general consensus that I was not a social individual. Adding PSYCH onto that url made it perfect, because then not only was it truthful, but it also contained the phrase "social psych." But most importantly, it was better than wearingyourskin.blogspot.com.