ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Social Psychology. Daniel W. Barrett
Читать онлайн.Название Social Psychology
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781506310626
Автор произведения Daniel W. Barrett
Издательство Ingram
One compelling perspective defines the self as that something that allows us to even ask the question, “what is the self?” According to this view, the self is the psychological apparatus that gives a person the capacity to consciously think about him or herself (Leary & Tangney, 2003; MacDonald, 2007). The self is defined as the ability to think about the self! It is almost impossible to imagine that a being can be said to have a self if it lacks the capacity for self-reflection. If a creature can’t ask, “what is the self?” then it doesn’t have one! Because the self lies at the center of our very being, as you’ll see in this chapter, social psychologists have exerted enormous effort toward developing a better understanding of its nature.
Table 4.1
The self, then, is your experience of who you are. This encompasses your beliefs about yourself, what you present to other people, and how you regulate your self (see Table 4.1). These three components of the self are called the self-concept, the interpersonal self, and the executive self (Baumeister, 1987, 2011; Baumeister, Schmeichel, & Vohs, 2007; Cavallo, Holmes, Fitzsimons, Murray, & Wood, 2012). An additional component is self-esteem or how you feel about yourself. In this chapter we will review each of these aspects. We will also revisit several of the core themes of social psychology introduced in Chapter 1, including free will, rationality, sociality, and of course, the self. The self is the place where all of these themes intersect: Each is a constituent of the self, and together they comprise the fundamental dimensions of the self.
Self: The psychological apparatus that gives a person the capacity to consciously think about him or herself
Think Ahead!
1 What is the purpose of the self?
2 How do you come to know yourself?
3 What influences your self-esteem?
What Is The Self: The Self As Thinker And The Thought
Knowing Oneself: The Self-Concept
Over 2,000 years ago the Greek philosopher Socrates encouraged people to “know thyself,” important advice that on its face seems pretty straightforward (although we’ll see later it may not be). As we’ve said, the very fact that we have a self means that we engage in some level of self-reflection. Thus the self is both the thinker and the thought: It is that which ponders the self—the thinker—and that which is pondered by the self—the thought. The self begins to emerge at a very young age, and as we transition through adolescence and into young adulthood, we tend to be much more preoccupied with knowing ourselves (Erickson, 1950). Unfortunately, although the desire to know ourselves is strong, there are limits to our ability to uncover certain aspects of the self, such as our motivations, desires, preferences, and behavioral tendencies, as well as the reasons for our behavior (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; T. D. Wilson, 2002). Before we discuss these, let’s investigate several key features of the self, including our self-concept and possible selves.
Over 2000 years ago Socrates encouraged people to “know thyself.”
©iStockphoto.com/GeorgiosArt.
The answer to the question “Who am I” is called our self-concept: the set of beliefs we have about the characteristics we possess (Amiot, de la Sablonniere, Smith, & Smith, 2015; Burkley, Curtis, Burkley, & Hatvany, 2015). The self-concept is at the core of everything we think, feel, or do, and it serves as a framework for understanding the social world (Slotter, Winger, & Soto, 2015). For instance, my self-concept includes such elements as father, psychology professor, textbook author, husband, and so on. The set of all of my beliefs about myself is my self-concept, and each of these beliefs is known as a self-schema. Schemas are cognitive structures that serve to organize knowledge about particular objects of thought, such as concepts, experiences, or roles (Brannon, Markus, & Taylor, 2015; H. Markus, 1977). We have schemas for people, things, places, and events that are automatically activated when we think about each of these (H. Markus & Wurf, 1987). For instance, what is your schema for a library? I expect that when you think of a college library you likely imagine the presence of books, computers, students working quietly, and so forth. What is your schema for a grocery store?
Self-schemas are one kind of schema that organize information about yourself with respect to specific domains of your life (such as work, school, family, a sport, etc.) and are particularly important when they are clear and unambiguous (H. Markus, 1977). Self-schemas affect how you process information relevant to you and often guide your behavior. Go back and look at what you wrote down about your self. Did you list any roles that you play? Perhaps a student, store clerk, or restaurant worker? Or a son, daughter, or uncle? Each of these roles serves as a self-schema and, when activated, affects how you think, feel, and act.
Who you are in one domain of your life will in some ways be different from and in others the same as who you are in another domain. In my case, who I am varies depending on whether I am leading discussion in a social psychology class, at home playing games with my daughter, or at a pub playing pool with a friend. These selves are of course interrelated and have much in common (McConnell & Strain, 2007). Many of my “professor” traits—such as the tendency to be responsible, take initiative, and provide sound guidance—will mirror my “father” traits. Yet there are other traits that would be manifest in one self but not another. For instance, I can get pretty silly when goofing off with my daughter, and although I try to inject humor into the classroom (albeit, with mixed success), it is not generally of the silly variety. Because we hold many self-schemas, it makes sense for us to think about the self not as a single unit but rather as multiple distinct yet overlapping elements (Swann & Bosson, 2010).
Another crucial feature of the self is its cultural embeddedness (Lee, Leung, & Kim, 2014). In Chapter 1 we discussed the individualism-collectivism (IC) dimension that, in a nutshell, reflects the extent to which individuals and cultures view the self as separate from others or closely tied to them. In relatively individualistic cultures, the self is seen as independent: as defined by its inner attributes, traits, and characteristics, and as stable over time and place (H. R. Markus & Kitayama, 1991). In contrast, people in collectivistic cultures understand the self as interdependent: It is largely derived from its connections to others and the groups to which it belongs. The independent self is considered to be unique, and in fact individualists seek to affirm its separate identity. The interdependent self overlaps with the selves of others and prefers to blend in rather than stand out. Although psychologists commonly refer to these two types of self-construal as distinct, in reality people are more flexible and fall somewhere in between. Moreover, situations may prime one or the other self-construal and hence lead people to think more about their own needs and goals or those of others, and this in turn can affect social behavior (Trafimow & Clayton, 2006). We will return to this fundamental dimension at various places in this text.
Self-Concept: Set of beliefs a person has about the characteristics she or he possesses
Schemas: