Chapter 3

WHO AM I?

▪ your answers reflect your “self-schema”

▪ Self-schema (self-concept)
➢ the organized structure of cognition
➢ the thoughts you have about ourselves
THE NATURE AND GENESIS OF SELF

▪ understanding of self is drawn from Symbolic

Interaction Theory.

▪ Self: is the individual viewed as both the source and

the object of reflexive behavior.
➢ both active and passive

▪ Reflexive behavior: the individual who acts and the

individual toward whom the action is directed are the
same

▪ William I. James and George H. Mead:

➢ I: active aspect of self
➢ me: object of self-action
THE NATURE AND GENESIS OF SELF

▪ William I. James and George H. Mead:

➢ I: active aspect of self
➢ me: object of self-action

eg.
1. I want to watch Money Heist’s season 5 (I)
2. If I will not work with my thesis today, I will not be able to
meet the deadline (me)
3. But I want to really watch it, so I will not work on with my
paper (I)
4. If I will watch today, it would affect my score (me)

▪ Internal dialogue – an individual’s engagement in

conversations in their minds as they regulate their
behavior
STEPS INVOLVED IN THE GENESIS OF SELF

1. Self-Differentiation
▪ To take the self as the object of action, we must be able to
recognize ourselves.
✓ Infants are not born with this ability.
✓ Infants acquire this ability very quickly.
➢ children can recognize themselves in a mirror suggest that
most children are able to discriminate their own image from
others’ by about 18 months (Bertenthal & Fisher, 1978)
▪ mature sense of self – ability to recognize one’s thoughts and
feelings as private possession

2. Role Taking
▪ process of imaginatively occupying the position of another
person and viewing the self and the situation from that
person’s perspective.
THE ORIGIN OF SELF

▪ Cooley and Mead recognized that we acquire our Self in

interaction with others.

▪ One must recognize and interpret others responses to

our actions in order to figure out how we appear to
them.
THE LOOKING GLASS SELF

▪ Cooley coined the term looking glass self.

➢ Parents and immediate family and later on the
child’s playmates form a child’s significant others
o significant others – the people whose reflected views
have greatest influence on the child’s self concepts

➢ As a child grows older and interacts with teachers,

clergy, fellow workers, and others, the list of
significant others widens.
STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF

1. Language Stage
2. The Play Stage
➢ Young children imitate the activities of people around them.
3. The Game Stage
➢ occurs when children enter organized activities such as
complex games of house, school, and team sports
➢ role taking requires children to imagine the viewpoints of
several others at the same time
THE SELF WE KNOW

▪ The self we know:

➢ involves specific identities (the meanings
attached to the self by one’s self and others)

➢ primarily influenced by the reactions of others

➢ varies with the situation

1 ROLE IDENTITIES

▪ Identity: view of who we are

▪ Role Identities: concepts of self in specific roles.

▪ For each role we enact, we develop a somewhat

different view of who we are; i.e. an identity.

▪ The role identities we develop depend on the social

positions available to us in society.

▪ Role identities involve role expectations.

2 SOCIAL IDENTITIES

▪ Social Identities: a definition of the self in terms of

the defining characteristics of a social group.

▪ Each of us associates certain characteristics with

members of specific groups.

▪ If you define yourself as a member of the group,

these characteristics become standards for your
thoughts, feelings, and actions.

▪ accentuation effect—an emphasis on perceived

differences and unfavorable evaluations of the
outgroup and its members
THE ADOPTION OF ROLE AND SOCIAL
IDENTITIES
▪ self-schemas are formed in part by adopting
identities

▪ identities depend on whether the culture is

individualist or collectivist.
– Individualist: individual achievement and one’s personal
identities
e.g. student, school president, top athlete
– Collectivist: group welfare and one’s group position
e.g. son, Italian, Catholic, American

▪ Self-categorization: defining of the self as a

member of a social category
REFLECTED APPRAISALS

▪ idea that the person bases a self-schema on

reactions perceived from others during social
interaction.

▪ Research studies support the hypothesis that the

perceived reactions of others are crucial for self-
concept formation rather than their actual reactions
that.
1. others rarely provide full, honest feedback
2. the feedback we receive is often inconsistent and even
contradictory
3. the feedback is frequently ambiguous and difficult to
interpret
3 SITUATED SELF

▪ Situated self: subset of self-concepts chosen from

our identities, qualities, and self-evaluations that
constitutes the self we know in a particular situation.

▪ The self-concepts most likely to enter the situated

self are those distinctive to the setting and relevant
to ongoing activities.

Eg. black woman

▪ self as black: when she interact with white women
▪ self as woman: when she interacts with black men
THE SELF WE ENACT
▪ expresses our identities

▪ We choose behaviors to evoke responses from others that will

confirm particular identities.

▪ To confirm identities successfully, we must share our

understanding of what these behaviors and identities mean

▪ Identity Control Theory (ICT)

➢ an actor uses the social meaning of his or her identity as a
reference point for assessing what is occurring in the situation
➢ focuses on the nature of persons’ identities (who they are) and
the relationship between his/her identities and behavior within
which the identities are embedded

eg.“considerate professor”
1 HIERARCHY OF IDENTITIES

▪ The importance of an identity varies from situation

to situation.
eg. being a rap artist is not important in a math class.

– We organize different role identities into a hierarchy according

to their salience, or relative importance to the self-schema.

– The more salient an identity, the more likely we are to perceive a

situations as an opportunities to enact that identity

Factors which affect the importance we attach to a role identity

1. resources we have invested in constructing the identity
2. extrinsic rewards that enacting the identity has brought
3. intrinsic gratifications derived from performing the identity
4. amount of self-esteem staked on enacting the identity well
2 SOCIAL NETWORKS

▪ may stand or fall depending on whether we

continue to enact particular role identities

eg. role as a student

• relationship with:
➢ friends
➢ classmate
➢ lover
➢ instructors
3 NEED FOR IDENTITY SUPPORT

▪ we enact those of our identities that most need

support because they have recently been
challenged

eg. difficulty of getting a date

▪ we also tend to enact identities likely to bring

intrinsic gratifications and extrinsic rewards that we
especially need or miss at the moment.

eg. long hour of studying relaxation

4 SITUATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

▪ the identity we choose to enact depends partly on

whether the situation offers opportunities for
profitable enactment

eg. identity as musician

➢ regardless of the salience of your identity as musician,
if no one wants to listen to your music, there will be no
opportunity to enact this identity

eg. reputation as the “life of the party”

IDENTITIES AS SOURCES OF CONSISTENCY

▪ Although the self includes multiple identities,

people usually experience themselves as a unified
entity.
– we use strategies that verify our perceptions of ourselves.

▪ Salience Hierarchy: Our most salient identities

provide consistent styles of behavior and priorities
that lend continuity and unity to our behavior
1. basis for choosing which situations we should enter and
which ones we should avoid.
2. influences the consistency of behavior across different
situations
3. influences consistency in behavior across time
SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-DISCREPANCIES

▪ Self-awareness – the self as the object of our

attention and focus is on own appearance, actions
and thoughts
➢ anything that reminds us that we are the objects of
others’ attention will increase our self-awareness

▪ Self-discrepancies – component of the actual

self is the opposite of a component of the ideal self
or the ought self
➢ 3 components of self-schema
1. self as one (actual)
2. self as would like to (ideal)
3. self as ought to be (ought)
SELF-ESTEEM

▪ the evaluative component of self-concept

▪ refers to your overall opinion of yourself

SOURCES:
1. Family Experience

2. Performance Feedback

3. Social Comparison
SELF-ESTEEM

▪ the evaluative component of self-concept

▪ refers to your overall opinion of yourself

SOURCES:
1. Family Experience

2. Performance Feedback

3. Social Comparison
PROTECTING SELF-ESTEEM

❑ Manipulating Appraisals
➢ interpret other’s appraisals as more favorable/unfavorable
than they actually are
❑ Selective Information Processing
➢ processing information that you want, avoiding opposing
viewpoints
❑ Selective Social Comparison
➢ carefully selecting others with whom to compare
ourselves
❑ Selective Commitment to Identities
➢ committing ourselves more to those self-concepts that
provide feedback consistent with our self-evaluation,
downgrading those that provide feedback that challenges
it
SELF-PRESENTATION

▪ The processes by which individuals attempt to

control the impressions that others form of them in
social interaction.

▪ Kinds:
• Authentic is creating an image consistent with
our self view.
• Ideal is our most appropriate public image our
ideal self.
• Tactical is a public image consistent with what
others expect of us
SELF-PRESENTATION IN EVERYDAY LIFE

1. to establish a workable definition of the situation

2. to disclose information about the self that is
consistent with the claimed identity

Symbolic Interaction Theory

➢ In order for the social interaction to proceed
smoothly, people must achieve a shared definition
of the situation.
▪ SHARED DEFINITION OF SITUATION
➢ agreement about our situated identities (what are our
goals, what actions are proper, and what our behaviors
mean)
SHARED DEFINITION OF SITUATION

▪ Frames
➢ agreement regarding the type of social occasion in which
we are participating
❖ Frame of the interaction – type of social occasion that
people recognize themselves to be in
➢ a set of widely understood rules or conventions pertaining
to a transient but repetitive social situation that indicates
which roles should be enacted and which behaviors are
proper.

▪ Identities
❖ Situated Identity – a conception of who he or she is in
relation to the other people involved in the situation
➢ facilitate smooth interaction
SELF-DISCLOSURE

▪ revealing some facts about our self

▪ “revealing the self”

▪ Self-disclosure is usually bilateral or reciprocal.

The “norm of reciprocity in disclosure”;
– weakens the relationship and may lead to disliking each
other.
IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT

▪ impression management
➢ a process by which people manage the setting
(stage), their dress (costumes), and their words
and/or their gestures (script) to correspond to
the impression they are trying to make.
MANAGING APPEARANCES

▪ Appearance – everything about a person that

others can observe

▪ The impression an individual makes on others

depends not only on clothes, makeup, and
grooming, but also on props in the environment.

▪ Irving Goffman draws a parallel between a theater’s

front and back stages and the regions we use in
managing appearances.
▪ back stage: area out of the audience’s site

▪ front stage: area visible to the audience

▪ In the back stage a “person can relax, drop his front,
forgo his speaking lines and step out of character”

▪ Success of impression management is judged:

➢ whether an audience “plays along with the
performance.” If the audience plays along, the
person has successfully projected a desired
definition of situation.
▪ Sometimes we are aware that we are engaging in
impression management; as when we are pretending to
listen in class when we are not. When we really are
listening we are less aware of the “work” behind giving
off that impression.
INEFFECTIVE SELF-PRESENTATIONS &
SPOILED IDENTITIES
▪ Some may recover when their identity is
challenged, while others may have a permanently
spoiled identity.

▪ Embarrassment
➢ People feel embarrassed, show lack of poise,
– fear, and loss of self-esteem when their identity is
challenged and/or discredited.
STIGMA
▪ Stigma is a characteristic widely viewed as an
insurmountable handicap that prevents competent
or morally trustworthy behavior.

▪ Types of stigma include those who have:

1. Physical challenges and deformities
2. Character defects such as dishonesty, or mental
illnesses that are dangerous to society and
themselves.
3. Racial, sexual or religious beliefs that could
contaminate or morally debilitate others.
SUMMARY
▪ Self
▪ source of action/object of action
▪ includes multiple identities which varies depending on
the situation

▪ The self we enact

▪ Expresses our identities
▪ we employ strategies to verify our self-conceptions

▪ Self-presentation
▪ attempt to control the images we project ourselves in
social interaction

▪ Embarrassment and Stigma

▪ product of failed impression management