The Self from Sociological Perspective

Guide question:
What is the difference between “I” and “me” when you interpret Mead’s Theory of the Self?

George Herbert Mead: George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) was an American philosopher,
sociologist, and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was
one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of social
psychology and the American sociological tradition in general.

From a classical sociological perspective, the self is a relatively stable set of perceptions
of who we are in relation to ourselves, others, and to social systems. The self is socially
constructed in the sense that it is shaped through interaction with other people. As with
socialization in general, the individual is not a passive participant in this process and have a
powerful influence over how this process and its consequences develop.
Sociological theories of the self-attempt to explain how social processes such as
socialization influence the development of the self. One of the most important sociological
approaches to the self was developed by American sociologist George Herbert Mead. Mead
conceptualizes the mind as the individual importation of the social process. Mead presented the
self and the mind in terms of a social process. As gestures are taken in by the individual
organism, the individual organism also takes in the collective attitudes of others, in the form of
gestures, and reacts accordingly with other organized attitudes.
This process is characterized by Mead as the “I” and the “me.” The “me” is the social self
and the “I” is the response to the “me.” In other words, the “I” is the response of an individual to
the attitudes of others, while the “me” is the organized set of attitudes of others which an
individual assumes. The “me” is the accumulated understanding of the “generalized other,” i.e.
how one thinks one’s group perceives oneself. The “I” is the individual’s impulses. The “I” is
self as subject; the “me” is self as object. The “I” is the knower, the “me” is the known. The
mind, or stream of thought, is the self-reflective movements of the interaction between the “I”
and the “me.” These dynamics go beyond selfhood in a narrow sense, and form the basis of a
theory of human cognition. For Mead the thinking process is the internalized dialogue between
the “I” and the “me.”
Understood as a combination of the “I” and the “me,” Mead’s self proves to be noticeably
entwined within a sociological existence. For Mead, existence in a community comes before
individual consciousness. First one must participate in the different social positions within
society and only subsequently can one use that experience to take the perspective of others and
become self-conscious.

George Herbert Mead suggested that the self develops through a three-stage role-taking
process. These stages include the preparatory stage, play stage, and game stage.

Stage 1: The Preparatory Stage

The first stage is the preparatory stage. The preparatory stage lasts from the time we are
born until we are about age two. In this stage, children mimic those around them. This is why
parents of young children typically do not want you to use foul language around them. If your
two-year-old can “read,” what he or she has most likely done is memorized the book that had
been read to him or her. In the video, Will Ferrell Meets His Landlord, Ferrell’s landlord is
played by Adam McKay’s two-year-old daughter. She uses quite foul language and carries a
beer. Does she have any idea understanding of what she is saying or doing? No. She is
mimicking. She is in the preparatory stage. If she had been an older child, the skit would cease to
have any humor. It works because she doesn’t understand the meaning behind her words,
actions, or tone of voice.

Stage 2: The Play Stage

From about age two to six, children are in the play stage. During the play stage, children
play pretend and do not adhere to the rules in organized games like soccer or freeze tag. Have
you ever played a game with children of this age? It is far easier to just go with any “rules” they
come up with during the course of the game than trying to enforce any “rules” upon them. I
played many neverending games of Uno when my daughter was in this stage. I still do not
actually know the rules of Uno as we have yet to play the game while adhering to them. During
this stage, children play pretend as the significant other. This means that when they play house,
they are literally pretending to be the mommy or the daddy that they know.
 Stage 3: The Game Stage
The third stage is the game stage, which is from about age seven onwards. In this stage,
children can begin to understand and adhere to the rules of games. They can begin to play more
formalized games because they begin to understand other people’s perspective–or the
perspective of the generalized other. In this stage, when children play pretend, they may still play
house but are pretending to a mommy or a daddy independent of the one that resides in their
home. The generalized other refers to the viewpoint of the social group at large. The child begins
taking this perspective into account during this stage.

Activity:
1. Describe an experience from your childhood that illustrates one of Mead’s three stages of
role-taking. Explain your answer.
 As far from what I remember, One of my memorable experience when I was a
child was when me and my sister used to play as teachers in our younger friends
we wrote letters and number as we felt like we are real teachers, and it was one of
the happy moments of my child hood
2. Explain how knowing the different stages in the role-taking process might be important
to your future career
 The Self from Anthropological Perspective

Guide Question:
How does anthropology view the self?

Brian Morris is the author of several books on anthropology and natural history including
Anthropological Studies of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1987) and Western
Conceptions of the Individual (Berg 1991). He teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College,
University of London.

Anthropology of the Self

Anthropology has important contributions to make in extending the study of the self. An
integrated and cumulative body of anthropological theory relevant to the self has yet to be
realized. Nevertheless, it is possible to connect several lines of theory to suggest converging
general orientations and research strategies bearing on the study of the self and related ideas. In
addition, the ever-expanding comparative ethnographic record constitutes a valuable resource
that can be exploited to examine the broader applicability or inapplicability of Western
conceptions of the self—as well as to investigate, in their own right, self-concepts that have
developed independent of Western influence.

The Individual in Cultural Perspective

Western society is individualized; we feel at ease talking about individuals and we study
individual behavior through psychology and psychoanalysis. Yet anthropology teaches us that an
individual approach is only one of many ways of looking at ourselves.

In this wide-ranging text Morris explores the origins, doctrines and conceptions of the self in
Western, Asian and African societies passing though Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism,
Confucianism, Tao and African philosophy and ending with contemporary feminism.

Scholarly and written in a lucid style, free of jargon, this work is written from an anthropological
perspective with an interdisciplinary approach. Morris emphasizes the varying conceptions of the
self-found cross-culturally and contrasts these with the conceptions found in the Western
intellectual traditions.

In the conceptualization of the self, the “Western” self, characterized as autonomous and
egocentric, is generally taken as a point of departure. Non‐Western (concepts of) selves—the
selves of the people anthropology traditionally studies—are defined by the negation of these
qualities. Similar to anthropological conceptualizations of identity, this understanding of non‐
Western selves points exclusively to elements shared with others and not to individual features.
Consequently, anthropological discourse diverts attention from actual individuals and selves. A
different approach is exemplified by a case from northern Pakistan in a social setting
characterized by a plurality of contradictory identities. It is argued that an analysis of how a
particular individual acts in situations involving contradictory identities requires a concept of a
self as it emerges from the actions of individuals that is capable managing the respectively
shared identities. Besides any culture‐specific attributes, this self is endowed with reflexivity and
agency. This concept of self is a necessary supplement to the concept of culture in anthropology
and should be regarded as a human universal.
Activity:
Analyze the paragraph below and give your ideas as to what the author is saying about
the self in terms of anthropological perspective?

“All clowns are masked and all personae Flow from choices; sad and gay, wise, Moody
and humorous are chosen faces, And yet not so! For all circumstances, Given, like a tendency
to colds or like blond hair and wealth or war and peace or gifts from the ground, stick to us in
time, surround us: Socrates is mortal.”

“All Clowns are Masked” Delmore Schwartz, 1938

 The Self from Psychological Perspective
Guide Question:
1. How should we conduct and govern ourselves?
Humanist psychologist, Carl Rogers believed that there were three different parts of self-
concept:
1. Self-image, or how you see yourself. Each individual's self-image is a mixture of
different attributes including our physical characteristics, personality traits, and social
roles. Self-image doesn't necessarily coincide with reality. Some people might have an
inflated self-image of themselves, while others may perceive or exaggerate the flaws and
weaknesses that others don't see.

2. Self-esteem, or how much you value yourself. A number of factors can impact self-
esteem, including how we compare ourselves to others and how others respond to us.
When people respond positively to our behavior, we are more likely to develop positive
self-esteem. When we compare ourselves to others and find ourselves lacking, it can have
a negative impact on our self-esteem.

3. Ideal self, or how you wish you could be. In many cases, the way we see ourselves and
how we would like to see ourselves do not quite match up.

Self-concept is our personal knowledge of who we are, encompassing all of our thoughts
and feelings about ourselves physically, personally, and socially. Self-concept also includes our
knowledge of how we behave, our capabilities, and our individual characteristics. Our self-
concept develops most rapidly during early childhood and adolescence, but self-concept
continues to form and change over time as we learn more about ourselves.

Self-concept is active, dynamic, and malleable. It can be influenced by social situations and even
one's own motivation for seeking self-knowledge
Self-concept is an individual's knowledge of who he or she is.

Theories
Like many topics within psychology, a number of theorists have proposed different ways
of thinking about self-concept. According to a theory known as social identity theory, self-
concept is composed of two key parts: personal identity and social identity.

Personal identity includes the traits and other characteristics that make each person
unique. Social identity refers to how we identify with a collective, such as a community, religion,
or political movement.
Psychologist Dr. Bruce A. Bracken suggested in 1992 that there are six specific domains
related to self-concept:
1. Social: the ability to interact with others
2. Competence: the ability to meet basic needs
3. Affect: the awareness of emotional states
4. Physical: feelings about looks, health, physical condition, and overall appearance
5. Academic: success or failure in school
6. Family: how well one functions within the family unit3

Congruence and Incongruence

As mentioned earlier, our self-concepts are not always perfectly aligned with reality.
Some students might believe that they are great at academics, but their school transcripts might
tell a different story.
According to Carl Rogers, the degree to which a person's self-concept matches up to
reality is known as congruence and incongruence.
While we all tend to distort reality to a certain degree, congruence occurs when self-
concept is fairly well aligned with reality. Incongruence happens when reality does not match up
to our self-concept.

Rogers believed that incongruence has its earliest roots in childhood. When parents place
conditions on their affection for their children (only expressing love if children "earn it" through
certain behaviors and living up to the parents' expectations), children begin to distort the
memories of experiences that leave them feeling unworthy of their parents' love.

Unconditional love, on the other hand, helps to foster congruence. Children who
experience such love feel no need to continually distort their memories in order to believe that
other people will love and accept them as they are.

ASSESSING SELF-IDENTITY

Within the literature, self-identity is assessed in a number of ways. Initially, researchers

used direct and explicit statements to measure the extent to which a particular role or behavior
was integrated as part of the self. For example, researchers working within the theory of planned
behavior have asked people to indicate their level of agreement with statements such as, “I think
of myself as the sort of person who is concerned about the long-term health effects of my food
choices” (Sparks and Guthrie 1998), “Blood donation is an important part of who I am” (Charng
et al. 1988), or “I am not a type of person oriented to engaging in contraception” (Fekadu and
Kraft 2001).
Such measures have been found to be reliable and to predict behavioral intention;
however, several criticisms have been noted. First, explicit statements require people to declare
in public his or her identification with a particular role and behavior, therefore increasing the
salience of that behavior (Sparks, Shepherd, Wieringa, and Zimmermanns 1995). Second, it has
been argued that measures of self-identity serve as measures of past behavior, with people
possibly inferring their self-identities from an examination of their past behavior (Sparks 2000).
Finally, Fishbein (1997) has argued that self-identity measures may essentially constitute
measures of behavioral intention.

In the past decade, however, researchers have developed alternate measures of self-
identity. Drawing on marketing research, Mannetti and colleagues (2002, 2004) have used an
identity-similarity measure that reflects the degree of similarity between the person’s self-image
and that of the stereotypical or idealized person who engages in the target behavior. After
obtaining independent descriptions of the two images, the distance or nearness between them is
computed as a difference score, which is then used as an identity-similarity measure. This type of
measure, which is less direct and explicit as well as more specific than other measures, does not
increase the salience of behavior, and is independent of behavioral intention, has been found to
be a large and significant predictor of behavioral intention (Mannetti, Pierro, and Livi 2002,
2004).
Activity:

With the following guide questions make your own autobiography (consider this as your
developmental plan after graduation)
1. Where do I want to be in the next two years to three years?
2. Where will my life be if I continue doing what I am today?
3. What am I grateful for?
4. What are my values, and am I being true to them?
5. Am I living a lifestyle that promotes physical, mental and spiritual well-being?
6. Do I care more about how my life looks or how it feels?
7. What will be my biggest regret If I were to stop my schooling today?
8. What is my why? What am I going to do about it?
 The Self in Western and Eastern Philosophy
Guide Question:
1.
Individualism & Collectivism
Individualism is highly praised in the west but a lot of people get better the borderline of
individualism and conformity. Mostly in the west, there is a great amount of importance on being
your own person and deciding things for yourself.

Meanwhile in the east collectivism and connected is more apparent. The ideas such as
social obligation to moral righteousness. Things like helping people and respecting other is a
great reflect on Confucian and Taoist ideals. Taken from the Son of Heaven text "...obligations to
serve the ruler, obligations to work for the family, obligations to obey elders, obligations to help
relatives, obligations to do well to glorify the name of ancestors, obligations to defend the
country in times of trouble, and obligations to oneself to cultivate one's own virtue. But the
western idea of individualism got out of hand in the past, but the eastern idea of collectivism has
in the past became damaging. Communist leaders have attacked people from Cambodia to
Korea.

Western Philosophy (Ancient Greeks, Europeans and Americans) usually focused on five
categories:

Metaphysics - the study of existence

Epistemology - the study of knowledge
Ethics - the study of action
Politics - the study of force
Aesthetics - the study of art

In western philosophy the philosophers tend to use a lot of logic, reasoning and
categorization. They tend to break down the ideas as much as they could. They also focused on
the ideas in parts rather than the whole idea.
Eastern Philosophy

Eastern Philosophy (Mostly China and India) also explored the five main categories, but
they didn't really make a distinction between certain categories.

They didn't really make a distinction on the following:

Metaphysics and Epistemology
Philosophy and Religion
Famous Eastern Philosophers
Famous Western Philosophers

Although Western Philosophy tends to focus on the parts in an idea, the Eastern
Philosophers focus to look at an idea as a whole. Rather than breaking down ideas and concepts
into categories, Eastern Philosophy preferred to generalize the ideas and show how they ll reflect
the same truths. Western philosophy focuses on the finding the differences in ideas, while
Eastern philosophy focuses on the similarities.
Example
The Tao Te Ching written by Lao-Tzu contains all five main Western philosophy
categories in a small book. You can find passages and verses epistemological, ethical, political
and aesthetic natures. But these ideas are not specifically defined but rather they are revealed.

The Difference between Western and Eastern Philosophy

Fragmentary vs. Holistic

In western philosophy, people like to emphasize important parts in an issue rather than
the look at the issue as a whole. They see things like the brain and body as separate identities,
rather than viewing the two parts as equal. The mentality has now been passed on into politics an
even religion. In eastern philosophy people like to look at issues at a whole scale. That is why the
Chinese and Indian Philosophers’ never really had a different between religion and philosophy.
Their teachings are not meant to take you to separate truths but the parts would eventually lead to
one truth.
Conflict vs Harmony
Western philosophy is often drawn to the different individual parts of a whole idea
(Politics, Race Relations, Religion, etc.), but in the east, emphasis is placed on the whole itself.

An example of this is conflict and harmony, Western philosophy was built on the idea of
difference and separation so they will not try and settle for common ground. Some philosophers
will use heavy debate to try to convince the audience which opinion is superior. Meanwhile in
East they will usually find common group, a perfect example of this is the Ying and Yang. Yin
symbolizes feminine, dark, cold, and yielding. Yang symbolizes masculine, bright and
advancing. These might be separate ideas in Western Philosophy, buy in the East equal amounts
of both ideas are of importance that together create a whole.

Conclusion
Eastern Philosophy have more different approach on viewing certain ideas and how both
sides of an idea is needed for the answer. Both western and eastern philosophy has lots of
similarities too. For example, Western Existentialism is similar to Taoism and Western
Hermeticism is similar to Hinduism.
However, Western Philosophy does look at the ideas more closely giving a more specific
answer. Finding answers is what a philosopher does and vague answers from Eastern Philosophy
does not provide that. But there are so many bias opinions from Philosophers that trying to stick
with answers.

Broadly, speaking,
Western society strives to
find and prove "the truth", while Eastern society accepts the truth as given and
is more interested in finding the balance.
Westerners put more stock in individual rights; Easterners in social responsibly.

We need to understand cultural differences not just to reduce conflicts, but also to leverage

diversity and achieve cross-cultural unity. That's what we do.
Activity:

1. In a diagram give the specific differences of self-concept of the East and West in terms of
the following: Philosophy, Cultural Values, and mindset.

2. Cite an example of sayings/adage from the Philosophers that are worth emulating. (At
least 5 each from them).