Subject: Understanding the Self Instructor: Lerramie J.

Bato

Section: BSED ENGLISH 1

LESSON 3

THE SELF AS A COGNITIVE CONSTRUCT

SELF- It is the sense of personal identity and who we are as individuals (Jhangiani and Tarry 2014).
 ON SELF WITHIN
WILLIAM JAMES (1890) -one of the earliest psychologist to study the self. He conceptualize the self as
having two aspects, the “I” and the “ME”.

TWO ASPECTS OF SELF:

I -the thinking, acting and feeling self (Gleitman,Gross, and Reisberg 2011;hogg and Vaughan 2010).

ME -the physical characteristics as well as psychological capabilities that makes you who you are
(Gleitman,Gross, and Reisberg 2011;hogg and Vaughan 2010).

Other similar concepts to self:

IDENTITY- is composed of personal characteristics, social roles and responsibilities, as well as affiliations
that define who one is.

SELF-CONCEPTS- is what basically comes to your mind when you are asked about who you are (Oyserman,
Elmore and Smith 2012).

Components of self:

SELF-SCHEMA- refers to the impressions that you have of yourself and how they influenced your behavior.

What is the function of Self-Schema?

- These categories of knowledge reflect how we expect ourselves to think, feel, and act in particular
settings or situations.

CARL ROGER- Captured an idea in his concept of SELF-SCHEMA, for him it is our organized system or
collection of knowledge about who we are.

 Theories generally see the self and identity as mental constructs, created and recreated in memory
(Oyserman, Elmore and Smith 2012).
 Several psychologist, especially during the field's earlier development, followed this trend of thought,
looking deeper into the mind of the person to theorize about the self, identity and concept and in turn,
one’s personality.
 The most influential of them is Sigmund Freud. Basically Freud saw the self, its mental processes, and
one's behavior as the result of interaction between the Id, Ego and Superego.
 Social interaction always has a part to play in who we think we are. This is not NATURE VS.
NURTURE but instead a NATURE-and-NURTURE Perspective.
  INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL
Under the Theory of Symbolic Interactionism, G.H. Mead (19340 argued that the self is created and developed
through human interaction (Hogg and Vaughan 2010).
There are 3 Reasons why self and identity are Social Products:
 We do not create ourselves out of nothing.
 Whether we like to admit it or not, we actually need others to affirm ad reinforce who we think we are.
 What we think is important to us may also have been influenced by what is important in our social or
historical context.
There are times that we are aware of our self and it is called Self-Awareness.

Carver and Scheier(1981) identify Two Types of Self that we can be aware of:
o The private self or your internal standards and private thoughts and feelings.
o The public self or your public image commonly generated toward having a good presentation of yourself
to others.(Hogg and Vaughan 2010).
SELF-AWARENESS also presents us at least three other Self-Schema.
1. Actual- self is who we are at the moment.
2. Ideal- self is who you like to be.
3. Ought- Self is who you think you should be. (Higgins 1997 in Hogg and Vaughan 2010).
 SELF-AWARENESS can be POSITIVE and NEGATIVE depending in the circumstances and our next
course of action. SELF-AWARENESS can keep you from doing something dangerous.in other instances,
SELF-AWARENESS can be too much that we are concerned about being observed and criticized by
others , it is also known as SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.

 ON SELF-ESTEEM
Our group identity and self-awareness also has greater impact on our self-esteem. It is define as our own
positive or negative perception or evaluation of ourselves.
One of the ways in which our Social Relationship affects our Self-Esteem is through SOCIAL COMPARISON.
According to Social Comparison Theory, We learn about ourselves, the appropriateness of our behaviors, as
well as our social status by comparing aspects of ourselves with other people.
2 types of Social Comparison:
1. Downward Social Comparison- we create a positive self-concepts by comparing ourselves with those
who are worse off than us, by having the advantage we can raise our self-esteem.
2. Upward Social Comparison- we compare ourselves with those who are better than us, it can form self-
motivation for some, but a lot actually felt lower self-esteem as they highlight their weakness or
inequalities.
Social Comparison also entails what we called Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory, which states that we can
feel threatened when someone out-performs us ,especially when that person is close to us(i.e. a family or a
friend)(Tesser 1988 in Jhagiani and tarry 2014).
In this case, we usually react in 3 ways:
 We distance ourselves from that person or redefine our relationship with them (Jhagiani and tarry 2014).
 We may also reconsider the importance of the aspect or skill in which we out-performed (Jhagiani and
tarry 2014).
 We may also strenghten our resolve to improve that certain aspects of ourselves (Jhagiani and tarry
2014).

In attempt to increase or maintenance of self-esteem, some people become NARCISSISTIC.

Narcissism- is a “trait characterized by overly high slf-esteem, self-admiration, and self-centeredness”.
-they are often charismatic because of how they take care of their image.
-taking care of that image includes their interpersonal relationships thus they will look for better
partners, better acquaintances as well as people who will appreciate them a lot.
-This make them a bad romantic partner or friend since they engaged in relationship only to serve
themselves.

Sometimes, there is a thin line between high self-esteem and narcissism and there are a lot of test and
measurements for self-esteem like the Rosenberg scale but the issue is that the result can be affected by the
desire of the person to portray herself in a positive and advantageous way.
In case you want to take a test and find a numerical value or level of yourself-esteem, try to be honest and
objective about what you feel and see about yourself.
Although self-esteem is a very important concept related to the self, studies have shown that it only has a
correlation, not causality, to positive outputs and outlook.
It can be argued that high or healthy self-esteem may result to an overall good personality, but it is not, and
should not be the only source of a person's healthy perspective of herself.

People with high self-esteem are commonly describe as outgoing, adventurous and adaptable in a lot of
situations. They may also be bullies and experiment on abusive behaviors with drugs, alcohol and sex.
This Duality in the behavior and attitudes only proves the above mentioned correlation. Baumeiser, Smart and
boden(1996) in their research on self-esteem concluded that programs, activities and parenting styles to boost
self-esteem should only be for rewarding good behavior and other achievements and not for the purpose of
merely trying to make children feel better about theme selves or to appease them when they get angry or sad.