Self-Concept (Я-концепция): Who Am I?

“ The self ” is one of the most heavily researched topics. In 2009 the word “self” appeared in 6,935 book and article summaries in PsycINFO (the online archive of psychological research)— more than four times the number that appeared in 1970.

How, and how accurately, do we know ourselves?

Self-concept is a person’s answers to the question, “Who am I?”

What determines our self-concepts? Among these influences are the following:

Ø the roles we play(роли, которые мы играем) (While playing our roles we may support something we haven’t really thought much about. Role playing becomes reality.)

Ø the social identities we form (социальная идентичность) (When we belong to minority that is included into a more numerous group then we quite often realize our social identity. When we belong to majority on the contrary then we less often realize it. Example: The only woman among men realizes its own social identity.)

Ø the comparisons we make with others (социальные сравнения) (How do we decide if we are rich, smart, or short? We compare ourselves with them and consider how we differ.)

social comparison is evaluating one’s abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others.

Ø our successes and failures (Успех и неудача) Compared with those with low self-esteem, people with a sense of self-worth are happier, less neurotic (обладают более устойчивой нервной системой), less troubled by insomnia, less prone to drug and alcohol addictions, and more persistent after failure (более мужественно переносят неудачи) (Brockner & Hulton, 1978; Brown, 1991; Tafarodi & Vu, 1997). (The success-feeds-self-esteem principle (принцип «успех питает самоуважение») has led several research psychologists to question efforts to boost achievement by raising self-esteem with positive messages (“You are somebody! You’re special!”). But critics argue that it’s at least as true the other way around: Problems and failures can cause low self-esteem.

Ø how other people judge us (Суждения окружающих) (When people think well of us, it helps us think well of ourselves. Children whom others label as gifted, hardworking, or helpful tend to incorporate such ideas into their self-concepts and behavior.)

Ø the surrounding culture (Cultures shape the self, too. How will you complete the “I am _____ ” statement? Will you give information about your personal traits, such as “I am honest,” or “I am tall,”? Or will you also describe your social identity, such as “I am a MacDonald,” or “I am a Muslim”? For some people, especially those in industrialized Western cultures, individualism prevails. Identity is self-contained (личность в значительной степени самодостаточна). Adolescence (Юность) is a time of separating from parents, becoming self-reliant, and defining one’s personal, independent self).

Social psychologist Richard Nisbett contends in his book “The Geography of Thought” (2003) that collectivism also results in different ways of thinking. When shown an underwater scene, Asians often describe the environment and the relationships among the fish. Americans attend more to a single big fish (Nisbett, 2003).

Individualism is the concept of giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.

Collectivism - giving priority to the goals of one’s groups (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly.

Many people in individualistic Western cultures assume an independent self. Others, often in collectivistic cultures, assume a more interdependent self.

Interdependent self (Взаимозависимое «Я») - construing one’s identity in relation to others.

With an interdependent self, one has a greater sense of belonging. If they were uprooted and cut off from family, colleagues, and loyal friends, interdependent people (взаимозависимые люди) would lose the social connections that define who they are. They have not one self but many selves: self-with-parents (Я с родителями), self-at-work (Я на работе), self-with-friends (Cross & others, 1992).

When Kitayama (1999), after ten years of teaching and researching in America, visited his Japanese alma mater, Kyoto University, graduate students (аспиранты) were “astounded” (поражены) when he explained the Western idea of the independent self. “I persisted in explaining this Western notion of self-concept—one that my American students understood intuitively—and finally began to persuade them that, indeed, many Americans do have such a disconnected notion of self. (Я, как мог, втолковывал им эту западную идею Я-концепции, которую американские студенты понимали интуитивно, и в конце концов стал убеждать их в том, что это правда, что многие американские студенты действительно имеют такое изолированное представление о своем Я). Still, one of them, sighing deeply, said at the end, ‘Could this really be true?’”

Cultures can also change over time, and many seem to be growing more individualistic. Chinese citizens under 25 are more likely than those over 25 to agree with individualistic statements such as “make a name for yourself” and “live a life that suits your tastes” (Arora, 2005).

Self-concept consists of two elements: the self-schemas that guide our processing of self-relevant information, and the possible selves that we dream of or dread.

Self-schema - beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information.

The elements of your self-concept, the specific beliefs by which you define yourself, are your self-schemas (Markus & Wurf, 1987). Schemas are mental templates by which we organize our worlds. Our self -schemas—our perceiving ourselves as athletic, overweight, smart, or whatever—powerfully affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate other people and ourselves. If athletics is central to your self- concept (if being an athlete is one of your self-schemas), then you will tend to notice others’ bodies and skills. You will quickly recall sports-related experiences. And you will welcome information that is consistent with your self-schema (Kihlstrom &Cantor, 1984). The self-schemas that make up our self-concepts help us organize and retrieve our experiences.

The possible selves: are images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future.

Our self-concepts include not only our self-schemas about who we currently are but also who we might become—our possible selves. Hazel Markus and her colleagues (Inglehart & others, 1989; Markus & Nurius, 1986) note that our possible selves include our visions of the self we dream of becoming—the rich self, the thin self, the passionately loved and loving self. They also include the self we fear becoming—the underemployed self, the unloved self, the academically failed self. Such possible selves motivate us with a vision of the life we long for.

We tend to see ourselves at center stage, so we intuitively overestimate the extent to which others’ attention is aimed at us. Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec, and Kenneth Savitsky (2000) explored the spotlight effect by having individual Cornell University students don embarrassing Barry Manilow T-shirts before entering a room with other students. The self-conscious T-shirt wearers guessed that nearly half their peers would notice the shirt. Actually, only 23 percent did.

What’s true of our dorky clothes and bad hair is also true of our emotions: our anxiety, irritation, disgust, deceit, or attraction (Gilovich & others, 1998). Fewer people notice than we presume. Keenly aware of our own emotions, we often suffer an illusion of transparency. If we’re happy and we know it, then our face will surely show it. And others, we presume, will notice. Actually, we can be more opaque than we realize.

Practical advises:

Ø If you want a child to remember better a character of a story, fairy-tale or a poem, you can ask him to compare himself with this character. When we think about something that relates to us directly we remember it better. More precisely, when we process information with reference to ourselves, we remember it well (the self-reference effect).

 

Worth to remember conclusions:

Ø Concerned with the impression we make on others, we tend to believe that others are paying more attention to us than they are (the spotlight effect).

Ø We also tend to believe that our emotions are more obvious than they are (the illusion of transparency).