THE SELF

ALYSSA MARI A. REYES

WHO ARE YOU?
THE SELF

 a symbol- using social being who can reflect on his or her own behavior.
 arises in communication and is a multidimensional process of
internalizing and acting from social perspective
 Individuals do not posses a self or have a self but become a self through
maturation and socialization.
TWO ASPECT OF THE SELF

“I” - The subjective self.

 Active perceiver, initiator and regulator of action.
 It has an executive function, it makes decisions; initiates behavior exerts control over
the self and the environment.
 Ideal self.

“Me”- The objective self.

 Anything that symbolizes and affirms who and what one is.
 The self as seen from the imagined perspective of others.
 Knowledge one has about oneself.
 Real self.

George Herbert Mead
The self develop as children
learn to engage in symbolic
interaction and role taking.
SELF THEORIES
William James
Focused on the mature self and its
effective or emotional aspects. The
way things become part of the
“me”. James argued through our
emotional identification with them.
Contemporary Theories
Expanded on the insight of the
theories. The subjective self
has the “executive function”: all
cognitive and affective
processes that initiate and
regulate behavior. Describe the
objective self as the “Self
Concept”.
Self Concept-
The sum total of a person’s beliefs about his or her own attributes. It is a
cognitive component of the self.
Self Esteem-
refers to a person’s positive and negative eveluation of the self
-comes from the Latin word “aestimare” which means “ to estimate” or
“appraise.
IMPROVING SELF-CONCEPT

1. Make a firm commitment to personal growth.

2. Gain and use knowledge to support personal
growth
 Self-disclosure – revealing information about
ourselves that others are unlikely to discover on
their own.
IMPROVING SELF-CONCEPT

3. Set goal that are realistic and fair.

4. Seek context that support personal change
SELF-SCHEMAS
Schema
-mental templates by which we organized our worlds:
- organized repeatedly exercised patterns of thought about some stimulus, which are built up from
experience and which selectively guide the processing of new information.

Self-Schemas
- the many beliefs people have about themselves that constitute the “ingredients” of the self concept;
beliefs about the self that organize and guide the processing of self relevant- information.
-Any particular self-schemas is a generalization about the self established through life experiences.
-According to Hazel Markus (1997), people are self-schematic for qualities that are important to them,
of which they think of themselves as extremes (high or low). In contrast, if people are not self-schematic
for a particular quality, they are not invested in or concerned about it: it is not relevant to their self
concept, they are a schematic.
GENDER IDENTITY AND GENDER SCHEMA ARE
IMPORTANT ASPECT OF SELF-SCHEMA.
Gender Identity
-The knowledge that one is a male or a female and the
internalization of this fact into one’s self-concept.

Gender Schema
- A mental framework for processing information based on its
perceived female of male qualities. (culture based)
SELF-ESTEEM

 how we see ourselves, including both positive

and negative evaluative components.
TYPES OF SELF-ESTEEM

 Physical appearance – what we look like anxiety which lead to better emotional well-being
 Athletics – how good we are in sports  Personal self – Our evaluation of our personality
independent from the physical body or others
 Academics – our general performance in school
 Self-satisfaction – Our measure of happiness with
 Social Acceptance – our friendships, peer
oneself as a person
relationships, and social approval
 Moral-ethical self-concept – Our perception of
 Family – Our family can serve as a source
moral-ethical attributes and how satisfied we are
support and help affirm our beliefs about our
with our religion or lack of one
own self-worth
 Behavioral conduct – includes our perception of
how socially unacceptable our behavior is
 Affect – Feeling happy, satisfied, and free from
LOCUS OF CONTROL

 Our sense of competence is affected by the degree to which we blame

internal or external forces for our success and failures.
 internal locus of control if we believe we are in control of our own
destiny,
 if we believe outside forces determine our life, we have an external locus
of control.
SELF AWARENESS

 A psychological state in which you take yourself as an object of

attention.

2 Types of Self Awareness

 Private self awareness- the temporary state of being aware of hidden
private self aspects.
 Public self- awareness- the temporary state of being aware of public
self aspects.
JOHARI’S WINDOW
Things about me that Things about me that
I know and others only others know.
know.
BLIND SPOTS
COMMON
KNOWLEDGE
Things about me that I Things about me that
know but others don’t others and I don’t know
know
SECRETS UNKNOWN SELF
SELF CONSCIOUSNESS
The habitual tendency to engage in self awareness.
Becoming aware of one’s positive and negative characteristic.
A personality trait.

SELF REGULATION
 The self’s most important function.
 refers to the ways in which we control and direct our own actions.
self regulation provides people with the capacity to forgot the immediate
gratification of small rewards to later attain larger rewards (Mischel, 1996)
CONTROL THEORY OF SELF REGULATION

 A theory contending that through self awareness,

people compare their behavior to a standard and if
there is a discrepancy they work to reduce it.

 TOTE (Test- Operate- Test- Exit)

TEST EXIT

OPERATE
SELF DISCREPANCIES
Discrepancies between our self concept (our sense of who we are)
and how we would ideally like to be (ideal self) or believe others
think we should be (ought self).

Self- discrepancies produce strong emotions:

Dejection
Agitation
WHAT DETERMINES THE DEVELOPMENT OF
SOCIAL SELF

1. The roles we play in the society.

2. Social Comparison
3. Social Identity
4. Success & failure experience.
5. Judgment of other people.
6. The self and the culture.
SYMBOLIC INTERACTION THEORY

people as selves creatively shape reality through social

interactions.
 2 TYPES OF
SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
 INDIVIDUALISM
 independent self
 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 identification
 goal of social life is to enhance one’s individual self
 focus on the self
 COLLECTIVISM
 interdependent self
 the concept of giving priority to the goals of one’s
group (often one’s extended family) and defining
one’s identity accordingly
 goal of social life is to harmonize with and support
one’s community
 focus on the group
SELF PRESENTATION
SELF PRESENTATION

The process through which we try to

control the impressions of people from
us.
WHY DO PEOPLE SELF PRESENT ?

To obtain desirable resources from

others .
A way of constructing self-image.
Serve as a social purpose.
 DRAMATURGICAL PERSPECTIVE

The perspective that much of social

interaction can be thought of as a play
with actors, performers ,props and
roles.
STRATEGIC SELF PRESENTATION
1. Self promotion – show competency
2. Exemplification – expects others to feel guilty
3. Modesty – appear simple
4. Intimidation – appear dangerous and ruthless
5. Supplication- appear helpless
6. Ingratiation- uses flattery and favors to make
others like them
IDENTITY

A relatively clear and stable sense of who

one is and stands for.
IMPRESSION FORMATION

 is an aspect of social cognition and it is the

processes involved in an observer integrating
information regarding an individual or a group and
constructing an overall social judgment about
them.
MODELS OF IMPRESSION FORMATION
 primacy effect This refers to the process by which early information
of our perception of subsequent information.

 recency effect is the tendency for individuals to be most influenced by

what they have last seen or heard, because people tend to retain the
most complete knowledge about the most recent events.
PERSONALITY JUDGMENT

 A realistic approach to a person in judging

personality is important in clinical assessments,
applied settings, and in everyday life.
ATTRIBUTION
 is a concept in social psychology referring
to how individuals explain causes of
events, other's behavior, and their own
behavior.
ATTRIBUTION THEORY (WEINER, 1980, 1992)

 It incorporates behavior modification in the

sense that it emphasizes the idea that learners
are strongly motivated by the pleasant
outcome of being able to feel good about
themselves.
ATTRIBUTION BIAS
• Self-serving bias

• People’s tendency to attribute positive events to their own character but attribute
negative events to external factors.
• Just-world hypothesis

• Cognitive bias that a person’s actions are inherently inclined to bring morally fair
and fitting consequences to that person, to the end of all noble actions being
eventually rewarded and all evil actions eventually punished
• Self-effacing bias

• Tendency to downplay our successes by attributing them to external causes and

blame ourselves for our failure.
Thank You