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The self-concept is a general term for how someone thinks about, evaluates, or perceives themselves. To be aware of oneself is to have a concept of oneself.It’s formed through experiences, interactions, and reflections, and plays a pivotal role in influencing behavior, emotions, and interpersonal relationships. A healthy self-concept promotes well-being, while a negative one can lead to emotional and social challenges.
The self-concept is a general term for how someone thinks about, evaluates, or perceives themselves. To be aware of oneself is to have a concept of oneself.
It’s formed through experiences, interactions, and reflections, and plays a pivotal role in influencing behavior, emotions, and interpersonal relationships. A healthy self-concept promotes well-being, while a negative one can lead to emotional and social challenges.
Baumeister (1999) provides the following self-concept definition: “The individual’s belief about himself or herself, including the person’s attributes and who and what the self is.”
Aspects
The self-concept is an important term for bothsocialandhumanistic psychology. Lewis (1990) suggests that the development of a concept of self has two aspects:
(1) The Existential Self
This is “the most basic part of the self-scheme or self-concept; the sense of being separate and distinct from others and the awareness of the constancy of the self” (Bee, 1992).
The existential self is a concept within developmental psychology, particularly in the study of infant development. It refers to the basic and most fundamental understanding that an individual exists as a separate and distinct entity from others.
The child realizes that they exist as a separate entity from others and continue to exist over time and space.
The existential self is the foundation upon which more complex aspects of self-concept, like the categorical self (understanding oneself in terms of categorical memberships like gender, skills, and age), are built.
According to Lewis (1990), awareness of the existential self begins as young as two to three months old and arises in part due to the child’s relationship with the world. For example, the child smiles, and someone smiles back, or the child touches a mobile and sees it move.
(2) The Categorical Self
Having realized that he or she exists as a separate experiencing being, the child becomes aware that he or she is also an object in the world.
The categorical self involves the understanding that one can be categorized into various groups based on traits, roles, and attributes.
Just as other objects, including people, have properties that can be experienced (big, small, red, smooth, and so on), so the child is becoming aware of himself or herself as an object which can be experienced and which has properties.
The self, too, can be put into categories such as age, gender, size, or skill. Two of the first categories to be applied are age (“I am 3”) and gender (“I am a girl”).
In early childhood, the categories children apply to themselves are very concrete (e.g., hair color, height, and favorite things). Later, self-description also begins to include reference to internal psychological traits, comparative evaluations, and how others see them.
Self-Image
Self-imagerefers to the mental representation or picture that individuals have of themselves, encompassing both physical appearance and personal traits.
It’s how people perceive themselves and believe others perceive them. Personal experiences, interactions with others, societal standards, and media influences, can shape this perception.
This does not necessarily have to reflect reality. Indeed, a person with anorexia who is thin may have a self-image in which the person believes they are fat.
Self-image is a significant component of one’s overall self-concept and is crucial to self-esteem and confidence. It can influence behavior, choices, relationships, and overall mental well-being. Over time, a person’s self-image can change based on experiences, feedback, achievements, and personal reflections.
The Twenty Statements Test
He asked people to answer “Who am I?” in 20 different ways.
He found that the responses could be divided into two major groups. These weresocial roles(external or objective aspects of oneself such as son, teacher, friend) andpersonality traits(internal or affective aspects of oneself such as gregarious, impatient, humorous).
The list of answers to the question “Who Am I?” probably includes examples of each of the following four types of responses:
Actual Self
The actual self is how individuals currently see themselves based on their self-awareness and introspection. It represents the attributes, roles, competencies, and characteristics that a person believes they genuinely possess at the present moment.
While “actual self” and “self-image” are closely related and often used interchangeably in casual discussions, they are distinct concepts within the realm of psychology. Here’s a breakdown of the differences:
In essence, the “actual self” is a broader construct that might include one’s self-image as a component.
The actual self covers the entirety of an individual’s current self-perception, while the self-image focuses more on the visual or representational aspect and perceived traits.
Both, however, are integral parts of an individual’s overall self-concept.
Self-Esteem
Self-esteem (also known as self-worth) refers to the extent to which we like, accept, or approve of ourselves or how much we value ourselves.
Self-esteem always involves a degree of evaluation, and we may have either a positive or a negative view of ourselves.
Factors influencing self-esteem include:
High Self-Esteem: Individuals with high self-esteem generally believe that they have good qualities and value themselves positively. They often handle life challenges better, are more resilient, and have a positive outlook on life.
Low Self-Esteem:Those with low self-esteem tend to view themselves negatively, doubt their abilities, and are more critical of themselves. They are more susceptible to experiencing feelings of worthlessness, depression, and anxiety.
Having a balanced self-esteem is crucial for mental well-being. While high self-esteem is generally beneficial, overly inflated self-esteem can lead tonarcissism. On the other hand, chronically low self-esteem can contribute to a host of psychological issues, including depression and anxiety.
Measurement
There are several ways of measuring self-esteem. For example,Harrill Self-Esteem Inventoryis a questionnaire comprising 15 statements about a range of interests.
Another example is theThematic Apperception Test(TAT), which is a neutral cartoon given to the participant, who then has to devise a story about what’s going on.
Causes
Argyle (2008) believes 4 major factors influence self-esteem.
- The Reaction of OthersIf people admire us, flatter us, seek out our company, listen attentively and agree with us, we tend to develop a positive self-image.If they avoid, neglect, and tell us things about ourselves that we don’t want to hear, we develop a negative self-image.
If people admire us, flatter us, seek out our company, listen attentively and agree with us, we tend to develop a positive self-image.If they avoid, neglect, and tell us things about ourselves that we don’t want to hear, we develop a negative self-image.
If people admire us, flatter us, seek out our company, listen attentively and agree with us, we tend to develop a positive self-image.
If they avoid, neglect, and tell us things about ourselves that we don’t want to hear, we develop a negative self-image.
- Comparison with OthersIf the people we compare ourselves with (our reference group) appear to be more successful, happier, richer, and better looking than ourselves, we tend to develop a negative self-image, BUT if they are less successful than us, our image will be positive.
If the people we compare ourselves with (our reference group) appear to be more successful, happier, richer, and better looking than ourselves, we tend to develop a negative self-image, BUT if they are less successful than us, our image will be positive.
Other roles carry a stigma. E.g., a prisoner, mental hospital patient, refuse collector, or unemployed person.
- IdentificationRoles aren’t just “out there.” They also become part of our personality, i.e., we identify with the positions we occupy, the roles we play, and the groups we belong to.
Roles aren’t just “out there.” They also become part of our personality, i.e., we identify with the positions we occupy, the roles we play, and the groups we belong to.
But just as important as all these factors are the influence of our parents! (See Coopersmith’s research.)
Experiments
Morse and Gergen (1970) showed that our self-esteem might change rapidly in uncertain or anxiety-arousing situations.
Participants were waiting for a job interview in a waiting room. They sat with another candidate (a confederate of the experimenter) in one of two conditions:
A) Mr. Clean – dressed in a smart suit, carrying a briefcase opened to reveal a slide rule and books.
B) Mr. Dirty – dressed in an old T-shirt and jeans, slouched over a cheap sex novel.
The self-esteem of participants with Mr. Dirty increased whilst those with Mr. Clean decreased! No mention was made of how this affected the subjects’ performance in the interview.
Self-esteem affects performance at numerous tasks, though (Coopersmith, 1967), so one could expect Mr. Dirty’s subjects to perform better than Mr. Clean.
Even though self-esteem might fluctuate, there are times when we continue to believe good things about ourselves, even when evidence to the contrary exists. This is known as the perseverance effect.
Miller and Ross (1975) showed that people who believed they had socially desirable characteristics continued in this belief even when the experimenters tried to get them to believe the opposite.
Does the same thing happen with bad things if we have low self-esteem? Maybe not. Perhaps with very low self-esteem, all we believe about ourselves might be bad.
Ideal Self
The ideal self refers to the person an individual aspires to become. It embodies one’s goals, ambitions, and dreams, encompassing attributes, behaviors, and traits a person values and wishes to possess. This concept is pivotal in understanding personal development and self-concept.
Key points about the ideal self:
Carl Rogers, a humanistic psychologist, emphasized the importance of achieving congruence between the real self and the ideal self for overall psychological well-being.
If there is a mismatch between how you see yourself (e.g., your self-image) and what you’d like to be (e.g., your ideal self), this will likely affect how much you value yourself.
Therefore, there is an intimate relationship between self-image, ego-ideal, and self-esteem. Humanistic psychologists study this using theQ-Sort Method.
A person’s ideal self may not be consistent with what actually happens in the life and experiences of the person. Hence, a difference may exist between a person’s ideal self and actual experience. This is called incongruence.
Where a person’s ideal self and actual experience are consistent or very similar, a state of congruence exists. Rarely, if ever, does a total state of congruence exist; all people experience a certain amount of incongruence.
The development of congruence is dependent onunconditional positive regard. Rogers believed that for a person to achieveself-actualization, they must be in a state of congruence.
Michael Argyle (2008) says there are four major factors that influence its development:
References
Argyle, M. (2008). Social encounters:Contributions to social interaction. Aldine Transaction
Baumeister, R. F. (Ed.) (1999).The self in social psychology. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press (Taylor & Francis).
Bee, H. L. (1992).The developing child. London: HarperCollins.
Coopersmith, S. (1967).The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: Freeman.
Lewis, M. (1990). Self-knowledge and social development in early life. In L. A. Pervin (Ed.),Handbook of personality(pp. 277-300). New York: Guilford.
Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction?Psychological Bulletin,82, 213–225
Morse, S. J. & Gergen, K. J. (1970). Social comparison, self-consistency and the concept of self.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 148-156.
Rogers, C. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality and interpersonal relationships as developed in the client-centered framework. In (ed.) S. Koch,Psychology: A study of a science. Vol. 3: Formulations of the person and the social context. New York: McGraw Hill.
Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
