The question who are you? Pertains to answer how an individual interacts and is perceived by themselves. According to Burns (1980), the self is the set of attitudes a person holds towards himself. Psychologists observing individual thoughts, feelings and reactions to the environment from a variety of paradigms derive the summation of these perceptions. This essay will focus on a social psychological viewpoint and will look at how the self-concept is constructed and factors relevant to the development of self- esteem.
According to Mead the development of the self is rooted in childhood through symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interactionism is when an individual is able to look at the world from another's viewpoint. Mead explains how humans act towards others in terms of their meanings. Interacting through communication, primarily language enables the opportunity for transference of another's meanings to be learnt, hence the process of the development of the self.Initially the self-development process is through remembered parental reaction towards an action, which the child often categorizes as good or bad. The next developmental stage of the self is the child's participation of role play, where by acting out as mummy, daddy etc, the child is understanding and incorporating adult attitudes and behaviours from a variety of social viewpoints that are subsequently used to accompany, direct and evaluate their own behaviour.
These viewpoints, from specific others develop into general others, which accordingly provides the individual with a self. This general others viewpoint is an image of the self, seen from the perspective of a judgmental, non-participant observer.The importance of self concept extends beyond childhood and is constantly revised. Self- awareness and self-consciousness permits the individual to analysis and perceive his or her personality. When analysing the self an individual interacts as both object and subject. That is the individual is what is being looked at or thought about as well as what is doing the looking and thinking.
Two components of self-knowledge are self-concept and self-esteem. Self-concept is concerned with what an individual knows and self-esteem about how an individual feels about themselves. Self-concept is constructed by drawing inferences from behaviour, thoughts and feelings, other people's reactions and social comparison. Either negative or positive events, self-knowledge, and the evaluation of personal experiences, self-guides and self-enhancement construct self-esteem.Rhodewalt and Agustsdotir et al (1986) explain how individuals observe behaviour and conclude with personal inferences.
An example is a regular church attendee, concluding they are religious. This process is termed self-perception theory and thought to occur when internal cues are weak or ambiguous. Inferences made are likely to occur from intrinsically motivated tasks. Deci et al (1971) show in their research how extrinsic motivation reveals less about individuals inner qualities and leads to a lessening of pleasure in performing a task.Thoughts and feelings accessible to the individual is thought to be less influenced by external pressures and reveal more about an individual than their overt behaviour.
A study by Andersen (1984) demonstrates this. Observers viewed a group of people describing their thoughts and feelings about everyday tasks and wrote down their impressions. Other observers wrote down their impressions about a second group who only heard behaviour related conversation. A closer congruence between observer's impression and participant's own self-concept emerged with group displaying thoughts and feelings.
Social comparison entails an individual distinguishing their knowledge and skills and comparing to others to construct a self-concept about their distinctive selves Leon Festinger (1954). Differences in individual characteristics' for example being left-handed or being an immigrant is thought to be a noticeable feature to an individual compared to being right handed or belonging to the indigenous population which is taken for granted.Ascribed knowledge about self and ascribed knowledge about others is also thought to be attributed differently. For instance Baxter et al (1987) states individuals describe themselves as variable and flexible and attribute their actions to the properties of the situation, whereas individuals view others as more set in their ways and generally explain others actions by their personal characteristics. Many studies by Gioia and Sims (1985) have confirmed these differences in attribution. Heider (1958) and Storms (1973) explain our own behaviour is viewed by looking out at the world and therefore the environment, which includes others, but not our selves as the salient source.
Different sets of causal alternatives are also considered for the self and others. For example individuals are likely to give a different set of answers to the question why do you like/ why does your friend like the latest Harry Potter book? MC Gill cites the difference is the interpretation of the question. Individuals usually assume the inquirer is asking why they like the book compared to other books (environmental factors) however if asked why their friend likes the book, they assume the inquirer is asking why this friend among all other people likes the book (Personal characteristics).Other people's judgement on an individual contributes to the development of the self-concept. Cooley (1902) described this judgement as using others as a mirror to perceive ourselves termed the looking glasses self. A study supporting the looking glass self concept entails three groups of children who were told either they were tidy, should be tidy or not told anything special.
Researchers observed those who were told they were tidy behaved accordingly, reflecting their new self-concept. Miller and Turnbull (1986) elaborate on this theory and suggest others reactions have the largest effect on young children or those who lack firm self-concepts. Most adults they state rely on other types of evidence such as social comparison.Markus and Wurf (1987) describe the development of the self as an individual acting and feeling differently depending upon the situation and people involved, known as multiple selves. Linville (1985) researched the differences in self-complexity as the number and diversity of self-aspects that develop for different situations, roles and relationships.
The accessibility of self-knowledge is also a factor, which determines the development of self as researched by Fazio et al (1981). Experiments demonstrate that current accessible self-knowledge governs thoughts and behaviour and individuals may be influenced through their environment to remember particular traits about themselves. For example different self-aspects are made accessible to individuals at work and social situations. To develop a coherent and integrated self, individuals are thought to process by selective memory. Coherence through selective memory is thought to involve the erasing of inconsistent personality traits Markus et al (1977). Coherence through attribution refers to an individuals interpretation of their inconsistent behaviour as a result of inconsistent circumstances not of their inconsistent self.
Cultural differences in the development of the self show North American and Western European people tend to see the self as independent whereas peoples of Asia, Africa and South America see the self as connected with others termed interdependent. Kityama et al (1991) demonstrates in their study how those from interdependent cultures describe themselves in their social roles and relationships with others.The constructing of self-esteem include factors such as accurate self-knowledge and periodically the enhancement or in the case of people who have low self-esteem periodically an under estimation of skills, experiences etc. According to psychologists, Individuals are generally said to inflate their contribution to joint projects. Researchers have put this down to memory functioning whereby ones own experiences are more likely remembered. However contradicting this view is research by Ross and Sicely (1979) which show individuals inflate their contributions to a lesser extent when a project ends in failure.
Personality differences are another structural unit of self-concept. High self-complexity individuals tend to produce positive and negative mood with less intensity whereas those with low self-complexity have more intense feelings for both their successful experiences and their failures.Individuals organizing positive and negative aspects of self in separate mental compartments are thought to experience mood swings more intensely than those who integrate positive and negative aspects of self Carolin Showers (1992).Our self-guides are internal standards for the self. According to Higgins self-discrepancy theory, our self-esteem is influenced by who we think we are (our actual self) and who we would like to be (our ideal self or ought self). A discrepancy between the two is thought to produce a lowered self-esteem.
Self-esteem like self-concept is also affected by an individuals culture. North American and Europeans have been found to self-enhance their qualities, which apparently serves to promote self-improvement and guard against stress and threats to the self (Tennen et al (1993). Asian cultures conversely show a greater tendency to accept negative rather than positive information about the self. Kityama et al (1997) argues that whilst individuals of interdependent cultures are more accepting of negative information, they also use this information for self-improvement, for the good of the community which includes themselves.In conclusion our understanding of who we are and how we feel about ourselves enables us to organized our thoughts and feelings and to feel in control whilst seeking connectedness with others.
The evaluation of the self or of an action may be derived in a variety of ways e.g.) biased versus accurate, optimist versus pessimist, or self-enhancement versus criticism. Our experiences often shape our cognitive template and set a pattern of perceptions and reactions, which may work, in our favour or against us. Our preference for the former resulting in sometimes having to re-adjust our reality.
