Chapter Introduction

CHAPTER 5

5 The Nature, Origins, and Functions of the Self

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TOPIC OVERVIEW

  • External Influences on the Self-concept

    The Influence of Culture on the Self-concept

    The Influence of Gender on the Self-concept

    Stable and Malleable Aspects of the Self-concept

  • How Do We Come to Know the Self?

    Reflected Appraisals: Seeing Ourselves Through the Eyes of Others

    Social Comparison: Knowing the Self Through Comparison with Others

    Self-perception Theory: Knowing the Self by Observing One’s Own Behavior

  • SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AT THE MOVIES
    The Self Lost or Found in Black Swan

  • Self-regulation: Here’s What the “I” Can Do for You

    The Role of Self-awareness in Self-regulation

    Staying on Target: How Goals Motivate and Guide Action

    The Benefits of Time Travel: The Role of Imagining the Future in Self-regulation

  • Self-regulatory Challenges

    Willpower: Running Hot and Cool

  • SOCIAL PSYCH OUT IN THE WORLD
    Neurological Underpinnings of Self-regulation

    Trying Too Hard: Ironic Process Theory

    Insufficient Energy, or Ego Depletion

    Getting Our Emotions Under Control

    Application: What Happened to Those

    New Year’s Resolutions? Implementing Your Good Intentions

    Identifying Goals at the Wrong Level of Abstraction

    When We Can’t Let Go: Self-regulatory Perseveration and Depression

In the last two chapters, we explored how people understand others and events in the world around them. Our understanding of the external world has a considerable effect on our behavior, but so too does the world inside our minds. Humans have the unique ability to focus attention on their own thoughts, feelings, and desires—in short, we have a sense of self. In some ways, the self is private. Only you know what it’s like from your point of view. Yet the self is also a thoroughly social thing. People’s cultural and social environments profoundly influence how they understand and experience the self, and the self significantly influences how they think, feel, and act in the social world.

A useful starting point for understanding the self is a distinction proposed by William James in his groundbreaking Principles of Psychology (1890). James noted that, in one sense, the self is all the knowledge you have about your life and experiences. James labeled this the Me, but today we call it the self-concept. In another sense, the self is the controlling voice in your head that contemplates, makes decisions, and chooses what courses of action to take—what James and Freud labeled the I. Freud originally wrote in German, and his early English translators used the Latin word for “I,” ego, and that has become the most common term for the aspect of self that directs one’s actions. James noted that these two aspects of the self make it a unique topic to study: It is simultaneously doing the thinking, and it is what is being thought about. It’s like using your eyes to look at your eyes!

Self-concept

A person’s knowledge about him- or herself, including one’s own traits, social identities, and experiences.

Ego

The aspect of self that directs one’s thoughts and actions.

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This chapter builds on James’s distinction to examine how the self and the social world relate to each other. We first explore how people’s cultural and social environments shape the self-concept by determining what they know about themselves and how they come to acquire that knowledge. We then examine how the ego regulates a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Finally, we’ll look at people’s everyday efforts to regulate their actions and thoughts, and we’ll consider why they sometimes succeed and other times fall short.