Personal and Social Life of an Individual - Essay Example

? Concept of the Self Introduction The concept of the ‘self’ is a very important part of human consciousness. People identify with themselves througha multifaceted idea of who they are which they call their ‘self’ (Myers & Spencer, 2006). This self includes their evaluations and assessments about their abilities, feelings, attitudes and choices. It even includes aspects of their personality, their physical characteristics, and their occupations (Myers & Spencer, 2006). The self concept starts to develop in early childhood, and continues to develop and evolve for most of the individual’s life. When an individual’s self concept changes, they can undergo a significant personality crisis during times of rapid change like puberty (Myers & Spencer, 2006). This is demonstrated in many major theories of development during the stage of adolescence, including Freud’s psycho-analytic theory of personality development, and Erikson’s eight stage theory of development. The self-concept is closely associated with the person’s self-efficacy, self esteem and self awareness, but is distinct from them in the way it is understood in theory and the manner in which it is used by people. Understanding Self-concept The human self concept draws information from a number of sources, including internal assessments, external feedback, and personal and social expectations. Some theorists believe that there is more than one self that people identify with. Each individual has an image of their ‘actual self’ which is a generalized understanding of who they actually are (Myers & Spencer, 2006). Besides the ‘actual self’, people can have any number of possible selves, which are associated with different turns that their lives may take. Typically, individuals in their adolescence and youth have more possible selves then individuals older or younger, since they are attempting to explore multiple personal and professional options. An individual is also likely to have an ‘ideal self’ (Leary & Tangney, 2011). The ideal self is an embodiment of all that the individual wishes they were, but are not. Some researcher believe that the gap between the actual self and the ideal self is related inversely to the person’s self esteem and self image so that the lesser the gap, the better the person is likely to feel about themselves. The Self and Emotions Self concept is not based solely on facts. Often, an individual’s perceptions of themselves are very emotional, and may be inaccurate. While some people are unable to perceive their flaws, others may be unable to perceive their strengths. Emotions – although most useful when coping with significant events, can occur even in response to thoughts (Tracy, Robins & Tangney, 2007). Thus, people are able to think about themselves and how they would react to different situations. They are also able to think of what feedback these actions of theirs would provide, and thus, they are able to feel an emotional response to a situation without it actually occurring. This means that people are likely to receive emotional feedback for events disproportionate to the actual number of such events they experience. When the person has an experience (or constructs one) that provides them with positive feedback, they are likely to experience positive emotions and create positive self appraisals; while an event that provides negative feedback would elicit negative emotions and would thus also lead to negative self assessment (Tracy, Robins & Tangney, 2007). Self esteem is an appraisal of one’s own worth, and is constructed using feedback from activities and events as well as from significant others (Tracy, Robins & Tangney, 2007). Like the self concept, it relies on the feedback that the individual receives and on personal evaluations of one’s own actions. But while the self concept is a generalization of who the individual is, self esteem is a generalized evaluation of what one’s worth is. People often also use information from social comparisons and from their social identity to determine their self worth, and thereby, their self esteem (Tracy, Robins & Tangney, 2007). Self esteem is relatively stable, but can change with time. Emotions and self esteem seem to have a cyclical relationship (Tracy, Robins & Tangney, 2007). A person with low self esteem is more likely to expect negative outcomes, and thus experiences more negative emotions, which a person with high self esteem is more likely to believe that they deserve positive situations, and thus would experience more positive emotions. The Self and Behavior The way an individual views themselves can affect a number of choices they make. For example, Someone who believe that they are good at singing would volunteer to sing in public, while someone who doesn’t would refrain from singing even if asked to. A number of conscious and unconscious behavioral choices are made based on the self-concept that the individual holds (Leary & Tangney, 2011). Behavioral consequences also provide feedback to reinforce aspects of the self concept and help establish patterns in an individual’s functioning. The relationship shared by self-concept and behavior is particularly important to self-presentation (Leary & Tangney, 2011). Self-presentation is the manner in which an individual behaves in social situations in order to present a particular image of themselves to others. People have a concept of the ‘right image’ that they need to or want to present in social situations. They achieve this image by altering and choosing their behavior in social situations. Self-presentations can occur through a wide spectrum of behaviors that depends on the person’s self-concept and on the image that they wish to convey to others (Leary & Tangney, 2011). Although self-presentation implies conscious choices, it is not uncommon to have unconscious choices manifest themselves in behavior as well. Conclusion It may be seen from this essay that an individual’s understanding of the self plays an important role in the personal and social life of that individual. Self-concept fuels the person’s identity and aspirations, through the use of evaluations based on information collected from social settings, feedback and the extent to which the individual complete set expectations. This concept then helps develop a sense of worth and ability that is consistent with the evaluations that the individual makes of themselves. It further helps in depicting oneself to others in a manner that the individual believes best. Even if the self-concept held by an individual is inaccurate, it nevertheless feels accurate to the individual; and often, information to the contrary is misinterpreted to maintain evaluations that are consistent with the self-concept. Thus, it would seem that it is important to understand how a person evaluates themselves in order to understand his/her behavioral choices and emotional responses. References Myers, S. & Spencer, D. G (2006). Social psychology (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Leary, M. R. & Tangney, J. P. (Eds) (2011). Handbook of Self and Identity (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Tracy, J. L. Robins, R. W. & Tangney, J. (2007). The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research. New York: Guilford.  Read More