Lesson 3 Uts

LESSON 3: THE SELF AS COGNITIVE CONSTRUCT
In confidence or in an attempt to avoid further analytical discussions, a lot of people say, “I am who I
am”. Yet, this statement still begs the question “If you are who you are, then who are you that makes you
who you are?”.
As mentioned earlier, there are various definitions of the “self” and other similar or interchangeable
concepts in psychology. Simply put, “self” is “the sense of personal identity and of who we are as
individuals”. (Jhangiani and Tarry, 2014)
William James (1890) was one of the earliest psychologists to study the self and conceptualized the
self as having two aspects – the “I” and the “me”. The “I” is the thinking, acting, and feeling self. The “me”
on the other hand, is the physical characteristics as well as psychological capabilities that makes who you
are.
Carl Rogers’ theory of personality also used the same terms, the “I” as the one who acts and
decides while the “me” is what you think or feel about yourself as an object.
Self, identity, and self-concept are not fixed in one-time frame. They are not also fixed for life nor
are they ever-changing at every moment.
Theories generally see the self and identity as mental constructs, created and recreated in memory.
Current researches point to the frontal lobe of the brain as the specific area in the brain associated with the
processes concerning the self.
Several psychologists, 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, self-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 results of the interaction between the Id, the Ego, and the
Superego.
However, as mentioned earlier, one cannot fully discount the effects of society and culture on the
formation of the self. Even as Freud and other theories and researches try to understand the person by
digging deeper into the mind, they cannot fully discount the huge and important effects of the environment.
As in the earlier definitions of the self, social interaction always has a part to play in who we think we are.
This is nature vs. nurture but instead a nature-and-nurture perspective.
Mead argued that the self is created and developed through human interaction. Basically, there are
three reasons why self and identity are social products:
1. We do not create ourselves out of nothing. Society helped in creating the foundations of who we
are and even if we make our choices, we will still operate in our social and historical contexts in one
way or the other.
2. Whether we like to admit it or not, we actually need others to affirm and reinforce who we think
we are. We also need them as reference points about our identity.
3. What we think is important to us may also have been influenced by what is important in our social
or historical context.
Social interaction and group affiliation therefore are vital factors in creating our self-concept
especially in the aspect of providing us with our social identity or our perception of who we are based on our
membership to certain groups. It is also inevitable that we can have several social identities, that those
identities can overlap, and that we automatically play the roles as we interact with our groups.
There are times, however, when we are aware of our self-concepts; this is called self-awareness.
Carver and Scheier identified two types of self that we can be aware of:
(1) the private self or your internal standards and private thoughts and feelings,
(2) and (2) the public self or your public image commonly geared toward having a good presentation of
yourself to others.
Self-awareness also presents us with at least three other self-schema: the actual, ideal, and ought
self.
1. The “actual” self is who you are at the moment,
2. the “ideal” self is who you like to be, and
3. the “ought” self is who you think you should be.
Our self-awareness also has a great impact on our self-esteem, one of the common concepts
associated with the “self”. It is defined 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. We
learn about ourselves, the appropriateness of our behaviors, as well as our social status by comparing aspects
of ourselves with other people. The downward social comparison is the more common type of comparing
ourselves with others. As the name implies, we create a positive self-concept by comparing ourselves with
those who are worse off than us. Another comparison is the upward social comparison which is comparing
ourselves with those who are better off than us.
Social comparison also entails what is called self-evaluation maintenance theory, which states that
we can feel threatened when someone outperforms us, especially when the person is close to us. In this case,
we usually react in three ways:
1. we distance ourselves from that person or redefine our relationship with them
2. we may also reconsider the importance of the aspect or skill in which you were
outperformed
3. we may also strengthen our resolve to improve that certain aspect of ourselves
However, in the attempt to increase or maintain self-esteem, some people become narcissistic.
Narcissism is a “trait characterized by overly high self-esteem, self-admiration, and self-centeredness”.
They are often charismatic because of how they take care of their image. Sometimes, there is a thin line
between high self-esteem and narcissism. People with high self-esteem are commonly described as
outgoing, adventurous, and adaptable in a lot of situations. They also initiate activities and building
relationship with people. However, they may also dismiss other activities that do not conform to their self-
concept or boost their self-esteem.

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LESSON 3: THE SELF AS COGNITIVE CONSTRUCT

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