The Adaptivity of the ‘Minimal’ Self: Investigating Mechanisms of a basic Self-concept

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dirk Wentura, since 2/2022
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 446221227

As we are constantly influenced by content, which is in any form related to our self, research about this ‘self’ and about its influences on different cognitive processes has a long tradition in psychology. In this regard, the introduction of the self-prioritization effect (SPE; i.e., a prioritization of formerly neutral stimuli which become self-relevant within the experimental situation) was an important further step in understanding how self-associations are built. So far, the results about the SPE suggest that the effect reflects the tendency to integrate stimuli into a particular component of the self-concept – the ‘minimal self’ – which must be distinguished from the explicit, social-psychological self-concept. However, there is an ongoing debate on the mechanisms of the integration of stimuli into the minimal self. This debate originates from the fields of action control and attention, in which feature integration is a core process. The current proposal aims at an investigation of these mechanisms by assessing the adaptivity of the integration of stimuli into the minimal self. The question arises whether there is a prevention mechanism to avoid the integration of negative content into the minimal self; moreover, whether stimuli are disintegrated once they became negative for the self-concept, as well as in how far other people, which are more or less relevant for the minimal self, are integrated. The presented research contributes to a deeper understanding of the structure of the minimal self and is supposed to reveal further insights into the function of feature integration in generating and maintaining the minimal self.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Christian Frings
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Dr. Sarah Schäfer, until 1/2022