The Self- Social Psyclogy

What is the Self?

What is the self? William Jones (1890) claimed that there are 2 aspects: The 'I'- this observes what we do and makes conclusions. This part makes humans unique The 'me'- the part being observed. William Jones also said that "we have as many selves as there are people who have impressions of us"- meaning we partly learn about ourselves from others. This means that the Self is both inside out and outside in: Inside Out- We introspect, and our internal conclusions guide our interactions Outside In- We observe others' conclusions and reflect them onto ourselves and our actions.  

Describing the Self

Categories: In order to describe the self, we use 3 categories, each more personal that the other: Social categories (the collective self)- least unique category, shared attributes (e.g: political belief etc) Social roles and groupings (the relational self)- Mid level category, who we are in relation to other people (e.g:  parent) Unique personal attributes (the personal self)- most personal level, who we are, our individual traits (e.g: i

Impact of culture on describing the self Western and Eastern cultures will focus on different categories to describe their selves. Western cultures are individualist, and so they would more likely describe using the 'Personal Self' category, whereas collectivist cultures (Eastern) would be more likely to use the 'Relational Self' category Supporting Study Ross, M., Xun, W.Q., & Wilson, A. E. (2002)- The effect of language on the bicultural self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin  

Culture and the Self- Continued

Another study following from Ross, M., Xun, W. Q., & Wilson, A. E. (2002) looked at how our language and culture can change how we view ourselves, and also at how the self can change from moment to moment: This one was done by Perunovic, Heller, & Rafaeli. (2007):    

How do we know the self?

The self has been found to change based on what part is being activated. Despite this we still have a fairly solid concept of self. How is this?  Introspection

How do we know the Self- Continued

Looking Outwards? This is the idea that our concept of self is somewhat comparative. This is based on Festinger's Social Comparison Theory 1954  Psychology today: Social comparison theory states that individuals determine their own social and personal worth based on how they stack up against others they perceive as somehow faring better or worse. People sometimes compare themselves to others as a way of fostering self-improvement, self-motivation, and a positive self-image. when situations cannot be measured objectively, then we look for environmental cues to tell us what something is/how to act. How good or bad something is is comparative to what is going on around you, and your preference is also dictated by this.

How do we compare ourselves?

There are two ways we can compare ourselves: One way is to compare with similar others. This is how we mostly compare, for the purpose of self evaluation and inspiration We determine someone as similar via broad social groups (gender, age etc) - Goethals & Darley 1977 Self judgements are often less negative when the standards of our in-group are used (Biernat, Eidelmanand Fuegen 2002) The other way is to compare with dissimilar others. This is less common, and is for self-enhancement. We are more likely to get a more negative outcome from judging others as there are different standards for out-groups, and so we would feel inferior in comparison to advantaged groups. 

Protecting Self against unwanted comparison

Maintaining the positive self concept is a key part of individual motivation - the idea of self-enhancement. In many cases, we can choose who we compare ourselves to tactically so to maintain this, but when we dont have this choice, there are some other tactics we can also use to protect ourselves from breaking the positive self image: