Chapter 3 The Self The Self s Main Jobs Much of the self is designed to enable you to relate to others including claiming and sustaining a place in a cultural system that connects you to many other people One conflict is between selfish impulses and social conscience o On one hand selves sometimes naturally feel selfish and in many situations they have strong impulses to do what is best for themselves o On the other hand selfishness must be kept under control if society is to operate effectively and selves often incorporate the morals and other values of the culture Those morals mostly tell you what is best for the group instead of what is best for you personally or what you feel like doing o Hence the self must be able to understand these social morals and other values and be able to act on them even when it requires overriding one s natural selfish impulses The self has three main parts o Self knowledge or self concept a set of beliefs about oneself Having self awareness enables them to develop beliefs about themselves Ex when someone says Tell me something about yourself you can come up with answers without having to think very hard o Interpersonal self or public self part of self that helps the person connect socially to other people Most people have a certain image that they try to convey to others Sometimes people work hard to present a particular image to others even if it is not exactly the precise truth Ex impressing others dressing up impressing your boss cleaning your home for guests etc Ex feeling embarrassed when you do something stupid feeling guilty when doing something wrong to someone etc The self works in complex ways to gain social acceptance and maintain good interpersonal relationships o Agent self or executive function is the part that gets things done It enables the self to make choices and exert control including both self control and control over other people and things Ex not eating something fattening keeping a promise what classes to take or what job to get voting in an election signing a lease exercising Reveal the self as not just a knower but a doer Who makes the self The individual or society The best accounts of the origins of selfhood is that the self comes into being at the interface between the inner biological processes of the human body and the sociocultural network to which the person belongs The importance of society plays a large role on the self If you grew up on a deserted island and never met any other people you might hardly have a self at all in the usual sense because you wouldn t have any values ethnicity reputation that you could compare to others A true or real self Many people like to think they have an inner true self Social scientists are skeptical of this If the inner self is different from the way the person acts all the time why is the inner one the true one Self as impulse refers to the person s inner thoughts and feelings Self as institution refers to the way the person acts in public especially in official roles Many people recognize that they sometimes put on a public performance that differs from how they feel inside Ex marriage Staying together because of how they feel for each other or divorcing because their feelings change is self as impulse Staying together and playing their roles because of their vows in marriage even though they don t feel the same is self as institution Culture and Interdependence Selves are somewhat different across different cultures The most studied set of such cultural differences involves independence vs interdependence This includes different attitudes toward the self and differet motivations as to what they self mainly tries to accomplish and it results in different emphases about what the self is Two researchers one American and one Japanese proposed that Asians differ from North Americans and Europeans in how they think of themselves and how they seek to construct the self in relation to others They introduced the term self construal self concept which means a way of thinking about the self o Independent self construal emphasizes what makes the self different and sets it apart from others Ex unusual skill traits or hobby o Interdependent self construal emphasizes what connects the self to other people and groups Ex belonging to a family group university coming from a particular place o It is not inherently better to be either independent or interdependent Nor is everyone in one culture independent or interdependent o Easterners tend to be more interdependent whereas Westerners tend to be more independent o Asians see the self as deeply enmeshed in a web of personal family social and cultural relationships outside of which there is meaningless and loneliness o Americans see the self as following its own path to autonomy self sufficiency and unique individuality Social Roles What are selves for One answer certainly is that the self has to gain social acceptance People are not designed to live by themselves They need others to accept them to have friends and lovers and to have a family Another important purpose of the self is to play social roles the different roles a person plays as in a play or a movie Many roles need for one to act a certain way and they also involve a series of steps ex need to have a wedding to be a spouse need a college degree to be an engineer Then after you have the role you must perform duties that define it What is special about the human being is being able to take on new roles and to change Without society the self would not exist in full Society creates and defines roles and individual people seek them out and impose their own style on them roles Self Awareness Self awareness consists of attention directed at the self Private self awareness refers to attending to your inner states including emotions thoughts desires and traits Looking inward Public self awareness means attending to how you are perceived by others including what others might think of you Looks outward to understand self Self awareness usually involved evaluating the self rather than just merely being aware of it Ex Looking at yourself in the mirror and saying My hair is a mess I need to lose weight The essence of self awareness is comparing oneself against these standards good looking hair slimness etc and thereby coming up with good or bad evaluations about the self Standards Standards ideas concepts of how things might possibly be Standards include ideals norms expectations moral principles
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