LESSON 3

THE SELF AS COGNITIVE

CONSTRUCT
In confidence or in an attempt to avoid
further analytical discussion, a lot of
people say “I am who I am”.

Yet this statement still begs the

question, “ If you are who your are,
then who are you that makes you who
you are?”
There are various definition 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”.

William James (1890)

• earliest psychologists to study the self
• Conceptualized the self as having two aspects – the “I”
and the “me”.
• “I” is thinking, acting and feeling self
• The “me” on the other hand, is physical characteristics as
well psychological capabilities that makes who you are.
Carl Rogers Carl Roger’s theory of personality also
used the same terms
• “I” as the one who acts and decides
• “me” is what you think or feel about
yourself as an object.
Other concept similar to SELF are identity
and self concept.

Identity
- is composed of personal characteristics,
social roles and responsibilities, as well as
affiliation that define who one is.

Self-concept
- Is what basically comes to your mind
when you are asked about who you are.
Self, identity
and self Example:
I was the class valedictorian (past)
concept are I am now the SSG President in HCDC
not fixed in (present)
one frame. I will be a chef soon. (future)

****They are not fixed for life nor are ever

changing at every moment.
• Rogers captured this idea in his concept of self-schema or our organized system or
collection of knowledge about who we are.
• Imagine an organized list or a diagram similar to the one below.
The schema is not limited with the given examples in the diagram. It
may also include you interest, work, course, age, name and physical
characteristics, among others.

As you grow and adapt changes around you, they also change.

They actively shape and affect how you see, think and feel about
things.
For example, when someone states your first name
even if they are not talking about you, your attention is
drawn to them. If you have a provincial language and
you hear someone using it, it catches your attention. If
you consider yourself a book-lover, a bookstore may
always entice you out of all the other stores in a mall.
Theories generally see the self and
identity as mental construct, created and
recreated in memory.

Current researches point to the

FRONTAL LOBE OF THE BRAIN as the
specific area of the brain associated with
the process concerning of self.
 Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud saw the self, its mental processes, and one’s behavior as the result of
the interaction between the ID, the EGO and the Superego.

ID – primitive of the three forces.

According to Freud, part of the
personality of instinctual drives that
serves as the basic motivation for our
behavior.

EGO –the part of personality that is

oriented toward acting responsibly
and realistically

SUPEREGO –the part of the

personality which contains one’s
ego-ideals and conscience.
 Theory of G.H Mead argued that the self is created and developed
through human interaction. Basically, there are 3 reasons
symbolic why self and identity are social products:

interactionism
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 sti;; operate in our
social and historical context in one way or the other. You
may, of course, transfer from one culture to another, but
parts of you were will still affect you and you will also have
to adapt to the new social context. Try looking at your
definition of who you are and see where society had
affected you.
 2. Whether we like to admit it or not, we actually need
Theory of others to affirm and reinforce who we think we are. We also

symbolic need them as reference points about our identity. One

interesting example is the social media interactions we have.
interactionism In the case of Facebook, there are those who will consciously
or unconsciously try to garner more “like” and/or positive
(cont..) “reactions” and that can and will reinforce their self-concept.
It is almost lie a battle between who got more friends, more
views, and trending topics/ if one says he is a good singer but
his performance and the evaluation of the audience
otherwise, that will have an effect on that person’s idea of
himself, one way or another
 3. What we think is important to us may also have
Theory of influenced by what is important in our social or historical

symbolic context. Education might be an important thing to your

self-concept because you grew up in a family that valued
interactionism education. Money might be important to some because
they may have grown I a low-income family and realized
(cont..) how important money is in addressing certain needs like
medical emergencies. Being a nurse or a lawyer be
priority in your self-schema because it is the in-demand
course during your time.
Social interaction and group affiliation, therefore, are virtual
factors in creating our self-concept especially in the aspect of
providing us with our social identity or our perception of who we
ae 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. For example, you are a student who is also part of
certain group of friends. You study because it is your role as a
student but you prefer to study with your friends and your study
pattern changes when you are with your friends than when you do
it alone.
There are times, however, when we are aware of our self-
concepts, this is also 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 feeling

2 – the public self or your public image commonly geared

toward having a good presentation of yourself to others.
Self Awareness also presents us w/ at least 3
other self-schema:

Actual – is who you are at the moment

Ideal – is who you like to be
Ought – is who you think you should be
Example: A student interest in basketball but is also
academically challenged in most of your subject. The
ideal self might be to practice more and play with the
varsity team but ought to pass your subjects as a
responsible students.
Self Awareness may be positive or negative
depending on the circumstances and our next course
of action.

It can keep you from doing something dangerous, it

can help you that there is an exam tomorrow in one
of your subjects when you are about to spend time
playing computer games w/ your subjects when you
are about to spend time playing computer games
with your cousins, among others.

In other instance, self awareness can be too much

that we are concerned about being observed and
criticized by others, also known as SELF-
CONSCIOUSNESS.
Our group activity and self-awareness
also has a great impact on our self-
esteem, one of the common concepts
associated with the “self”. It is defines as
our own positive or negative perception
or evaluation of ourselves.

One of the way in which our social

relationship affects our self-esteem is
through social comparison. According to
the social comparison theory, we
learn by comparing aspects of ourselves
w/ other people.
The downward social comparison is the more
common type of comparing ourselves w/
others. As the name implies, we create a
positive self-concept by comparing ourselves
w/ those who are worse off than us. by having
advantage , we can raise our self-esteem.

Another comparison is the upward social

comparison w/c comparing ourselves w/ those
who are better off that us. while it can be a
form of motivation for some, a lot of those
who this actually felt lower self-esteem as
they highlight more of their weakness or Take note that this occurs not only between
individuals but also among groups. Thus, if a
inequities. person’s group performing better and is
acknowledged more than the other group,
then his self-esteem may also be heightened.

Social comparison also
entails what is called self-
evaluation maintenance
theory, which states that we
can feel threatened when
someone out-performs us,
especially when that person
is close to us. (.i.e a friend or
family). In this case, we
usually react in three ways.
• First, we distance ourselves from that person or redefine
our relationship with them. Some will resort to the silent
treatment, change of friends, while some may also redefine
by being closer to that person, hoping that some
association ,may give him a certain kind of
acknowledgement also.
• Second, we may also reconsider the importance of the
aspect or skill in which you were out it, outperformed. If you
got beaten in a drawing competition, you might think that
drawing is not really for you and you will find a hobby where
you could excel, thus preserving your self-esteem.
• Lastly, we may also strengthen our resolve to improve that
certain aspect of ourselves. Instead of quitting drawing, you
might join seminars, practice more often, read books about
it, and add some elements in your drawing that makes it
unique, among others. Achieving your goal through hard
work may increase your self-esteem, too.
Narcissism 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 and self-centeredness.
They are often charismatic because of how they take care
of their image. Taking care of that image includes their
interpersonal relationships thus they will try to look for
better partners, better acquaintances, as well as people
who will appreciate the a lot. This makes them bad
romantic partner of friend since they engage in
relationship only to see themselves.
Sometimes, there is a thin line between high self-esteem and
narcissism and there are a lot of tests and measurements for
self-esteem like the Rosenberg scale but the issue is that the
result can be affected by the desire of the person to portray
herself in a positive or advantageous ways. In case you wan to
take a test and find a numerical value or level of your self-
esteem, try to be honest and objective about what you feel and
see about yourself.
Though self-esteem is a very important concept related
to the self. studies have shown that it only has a
correlation, not causality, to positive outputs and outlook.
It can be argued that high or healthy self-esteem may
result to an overall good personality but it is not, and
should not be, the only source of a person’s healthy
perspective of herself.
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
of boost their self-esteem. They may also be bullies and
experiment on abusive behaviors with drugs, alcohol and
sex.
This duality in the behavior and attitudes only proves the
above-mentioned correlation. Baumeister, Smart and
Boden in their research concluded that programs,
activities and parenting styles to boost self-esteem
should only be rewarding good behavior and other
achievements and not for the purpose of merely trying to
make children feel better about themselves or to appease
them when they get angry or sad.