Psychology - The Self Concept

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Psychology – the self concept

“I really cannot bear to be with someone who is fat. To me they represent everything
that shows greed, a lack of control, ugliness. Yes, I do try and control what my eight-
year-old daughter eats because I don’t want her to be plump like I was and always
being teased.”

(Yvonne. A young mother)

The wording of the above statement is very strong and extremely personal. Yvonne says she cannot even bear to be with anybody who is fat which obviously shows her strong dislike to over-weight people. To Yvonne, a fat person represents ‘greed, a lack of control, ugliness’ which clearly shows that obesity is linked with greed in her mind. Yvonne hates fat people to such an extent she is controlling what her eight year old daughter eats to ensure she does not become fat.

Yvonne is not just advising and allowing her daughter to make her own mind up, but actually controlling what she eats. Yvonne is doing this an attempt to stop her daughter getting fat and being bullied like she because she was over-weight when she was younger.

In order to understand why Yvonne feels she has to control her daughter in this way, we must look at how Yvonne’s self concept has been formed.

The self concept is defined by Baumeister (1995 cited in Eysenck 2002) as “The total organised body of information that any given person has about him or herself.”  Both the terms ‘self’ and ‘self-concept’ can be used interchangeably to explain about an individual’s overall self-awareness.

The self concept contains three components, namely the self-image, self-esteem, and ideal-self. The term self-image refers to what we believe we are like and how we describe ourselves. “While the self-image is essentially descriptive, self-esteem (or self-regard) is essentially evaluative. It refers to how much we like and approve of ourselves. Self-esteem is also partly determined by how much the self-image differs from the ideal self.” (Gross 2005). Lastly, there is the ideal self, which is how we would like to be.

There are many factors which influence the self-concept, but relationships between people are seen as extremely important. Every situation that an individual is exposed to throughout life helps mould our “self.” As humans we have the ability to see ourselves from the outside, and all through life we try to see what others see and our “self” revolves around the generalized other.  We observe how others perceive us and we make conclusions depending on our observations. How we act around others depends on the image we feel they have towards us.

    Charles Horton Cooley, a symbolic interactionist, concluded that our sense of “self” develops from interactions with others. Cooley described this process as the looking -glass self. The looking- glass self consisted of three elements. We first imagine how we appear to those around us. We may feel that others see us as boring or quiet. Therefore we try to interpret the reactions of others when we are around them to confirm if what we think is true. If others seem to avoid talking to you or if you really can’t keep a continuous conversation, this may prove to you that you are indeed boring and not so conversational, maybe making you a little uncomfortable when being around people.

On the other hand if you see yourself as an individual who can communicate without a problem and you see that you can keep others interested in a given conversations, your reaction is more positive. Through this looking- glass self we develop a “self” concept. Depending on the observations we make concerning the reactions of others we develop feelings and ideas about ourselves. The reflection we see in the mirror is either negative or positive depending on the feedback we get back from those around us. Misjudgements of the reactions of others become part of our “self” concept also the misinterpretations of how others think of us. Self concept begins in childhood but it continues to develop throughout life. As we observe how other people react to us, we modify our “self.”

    The “self” is never a finished project, and it continues to change as our life takes different turns. Our “self” reacts to the environment that we are in. As the “self” expands we put together the different reactions making us a unique individual. Every individual has a different way of thinking and therefore they make their own choices about certain situations. Going through different life changes, means the “self” is expected to change to accommodate the life stage we find ourselves in. The way we perceived things when we were adolescents changes when we become adults. We perceive things differently and take in reactions with a different attitude. Even though the family sets basic fundamentals of our personality, we are not destined to keep those characteristics if we don’t like them. We can expose ourselves to different groups and ideas that we prefer. Therefore our “self” transforms depending on the circumstances that we are in.

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    Cooley concluded that “our sense of self develops from interactions with others,” therefore we modify our “self” depending on those people around us. For example if we perceive the reactions of others towards us as negative, we tend to change the way we act and sometimes think. There are times when we might try to fit in to a crowd were our “self” does not reach the groups ‘standards’ and we focus on the generalized other. The way society expects an individual to be, also tends to bring about change in a person’s self over the course of ...

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