3.1: The Self

Who Are You? – Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney)

Know Yourself – Socrates

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man—Shakespeare

Shakespeare tells us that if we are true to ourself, we cannot then be false to anyone. But how do we answer the question “who are you” if we do not know who are are?

Who we are embraces two ideas – self-concept, which is the relatively stable set of ideas you have about yourself, and self-esteem, which is how you view your self-worth.

How about you? What is your self-concept? Are you a good student? A good athlete? If, like many of my students, you’re a working single mother, do you think you’re a good mother?

• Reflect: Take five minutes, think about yourself, and write a short essay describing your self-concept.

Self-esteem is different from your self-concept. Self-esteem is your overall opinion of yourself, how you feel about your abilities and your limitations. When you have healthy self-esteem, you feel good about yourself and see yourself as deserving the respect of others.

Self-esteem begins in early childhood. What you think about yourself today likely reflects what those close to you – your parents, siblings, peers, teachers and others – have said about you. If you’ve gotten good feedback from them, you likely see yourself as worthwhile and have healthy self-esteem. But, if all you’ve heard is how you fail to measure up, if you’ve often been criticized, teased, and devalued by those whose opinion matters to you, you’re more likely to struggle with self-esteem.

If you have low self-esteem, you put little value on your ideas or opinions. On the other hand, if you have healthy self-esteem, you have a balanced view of your abilities but recognize your flaws. (Mayo Clinic, 2022)

• Reflect: How would you characterize your self-esteem?

What Shapes Our Self Image

There are several factors that affect how we view ourselves. The first is biology. It turns out that some of the factors we use to evaluate ourselves have developed through evolution. Wade (2017) explains:

Women’s self-esteem is based more on their physical attractiveness, while men’s self-esteem is based more on their relative status and flow of resources. Humans evaluate potential mates based on a number of factors, all of them shaped by evolution to assist us in selecting the most viable mate. Women evaluate men based on their dominance, status, masculinity and good health. Because women are looking for a mate who can protect and provide for potential offspring, the physical traits generally found to be sexually attractive in men are those classic high-testosterone indicators of broad chests and shoulders, strong chins and muscular upper bodies.

Men, for their part, are looking for a fertile, healthy woman who would make a capable mother. Waist-to-hip ratio happens to be one of the strongest indicators of fertility and health in women. Now, because men are mainly seeking a fertile, healthy woman and because these are attributes men can assess through a woman’s appearance (mainly her waist-to-hip ratio), men’s evaluations of women as potential mates focus more heavily on a woman’s appearance. A woman’s evaluation of a man as a potential mate, on the other hand, does take appearance into account but also includes his status in society, his dominance over other men and his access to resources.

So, a man whose appearance is that of a “weakling” – i.e., lacking broad chests and shoulders, strong chins, muscular upper bodies – is likely to have a poor self-image. Likewise, women who do not feel themselves to be physically attractive are more likely to have poor self-images than those who do.

But it’s not just the biological factor of attractiveness that affects how we view ourself. Socialization plays a huge role. Our views of ourselves are influenced by how others perceive us. This is known as “reflected appraisal.” The basic concept is simple: We are what others tell us we are. Children whose parents are consistently positive and offer supportive appraisals are more likely to experience a strong sense of self and better self-esteem growing up. (Gunerson, et al, 2013).

It won’t surprise you to learn that people we value more have a greater impact on our self-worth than do people we don’t value as much. These people are significant others and include parents, bosses, teachers and partners. In a marriage, the partner with higher status in terms of education, occupation and income is more like to influence both their partner’s self-views, but also how their partner views them.

The messages we receive about ourselves can become self-fulfilling prophecies, events or actions that occur because we (and other people) expected them. A number of years ago, a study (which I don’t believe would be permitted now) divided a third-grade classroom in half. Everyone took an IQ test. The test was not scored, but parents, teachers are students were given “results.” One-half the class was told it was brilliant: by the end of the year, the third graders would be reading at the high school level and doing math several years above the third-grade level. The other half was told, sorry, but you’ll be lucky to simply meet third-grade standards. At the end of the year, the pupils were tested again, except this time it was scored. The half that had been told it was “brilliant” in fact performed exceptionally well. The other half, which had been told it was barely adequate did not show any significant progress.

This is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it tells us something very important as friends, lovers, parents and employers: Generally, people will live up (or down) to what you expect of them. So tell others you expect great things from them. It also tells us something important about our self-talk. We should avoid negative thoughts as much as possible.

A Key to Success

Watch Prof. Angela Duckworth explain why effort matters more than talent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaeFnxSfSC4&t=49s

• Test your understanding:  Answer these questions:

· What is the “10-year rule”

· What does Duckworth say is the key to a person becoming a world-class talent?

· What are the two common traits of 300 geniuses who made a mark on the world?

· What did she find to be the key to winning the National Spelling Bee?

Read this article about America’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison.

• ⇒ Answer these questions (you’ll have to find the answers elsewhere):

· Edison developed devices in many fields. Name four fields.

· How many patents did Thomas Edison hold at his death?

· Why was he fired from his job with the Associated Press?

· For what was his first patent?

· What was his first big financial success?

· What invention led Edison to be known as “The Wizard of Menlo Park?”

· Edison played a major role in developing the motion picture industry. How many films did his studio produce?

Carol Dweck of Stanford University has done a lot of research in this area, too. She says mindset is the key to success. Her book Mindset is worth reading, but you can get a summary in this video:

 

• ⇒ Dweck compares a “fixed mindset” to a “growth mindset.” How can we grow a growth mindset in our children? List the factors she mentions.

Learning a growth mindset transforms the meaning of difficulty and effort. Difficulty just means “not yet.”

Characteristics of the Self-Concept

Now, we have to understand that our self-concept is subjective. Sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. This may be because of obsolete information, distorted feedback, perfectionism, social expectations. As we noted in Chapter 2, social media can magnify these distortions.

The self-concept will resist change. This is called cognitive conservatism, which is the tendency to hold firmly onto one’s beliefs, be they intellectual, religious, or political, even in the face of compellingly disconfirming evidence. We tend to hold onto ideas and opinions that match our current idea of who we are. This explains why, even after extensive investigations and more than 60 court hearings weighing tons of evidence, supporters of Donald Trump continued to believe his assertions that the 2020 election was stolen by massive fraud.

It also explains why someone may hold to beliefs that hold them back, such as the belief that because they were born in poverty they can never rise to a top position in society. How can we build a better self-image? A psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic offers six tips, here:

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/ways-to-build-a-healthy-self-image/

Now, watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3QhS4WDqcA

Factors that Influence Our View of Ourself

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that culture and gender influence how we view ourselves. In the U.S., we live in an individualistic culture. We tend to think that everything revolves around ourselves. We fight for our rights, even if they might harm others. Take the debate over gun violence. Some people feel they cannot depend upon the police to protect them. A recent column in The Wall Street Journal noted that with violence rising in many cities, often a result of prosecutors or police pulling back in the wake of a few police shootings of Black men, Black Americans have dramatically increased their purchase of guns (Riley, 2022). In the wake of the abject failure of Uvalde, Tex., police to stop a school shooter, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment limited restrictions on the right of individual Americans to carry weapons.

That’s markedly different from a collectivistic culture. A collectivistic culture is one in which the emphasis is on the group, not the individual. In New Zealand, for instance, after one mass shooting the government ordered private citizens to surrender their weapons, and they did. With almost no complaint.

Gender also makes a difference. Different messages are often aimed at males and females. Self-esteemed also is often influenced by gender. Women are noted for feeling less powerful.

Next: How to make a good impression. How to manage “your brand.”

References

Gunderson EA, Gripshover SJ, Romero C, Dweck CS, Goldin-Meadow S, Levine SC. Parent praise to 1‐ to 3‐year‐olds predicts children's motivational frameworks 5 Years Later. Child Dev. 2013;84(5):1526-1541. doi:10.1111/cdev.12064

Mayo Clinic (2022, July 31). Self-esteem check: Too low or just right? MayoClinic.org. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-l...m/art-20047976

Riley, J. (2022, June 7). Why Black Americans are buying more guns. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-bla...on-11654635686

Wade, T.J. (2017, November 2). How biology affects self-perception. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...elf-perception