Self-concept is your overall perception of who you are. Your self-concept is based on the beliefs, attitudes, and values you have about yourself. Beliefs are convictions that certain things are true—for example, “I’m an excellent student.” Attitudes are evaluative appraisals, such as “I’m happy with my appearance.” Values represent enduring principles that guide your interpersonal actions—for example, “I think it’s wrong to . . . .”

Your self-concept is shaped by a host of factors, including your gender, family, friends, and culture (Vallacher, Nowak, Froehlich, & Rockloff, 2002). One of the biggest influences on your self-concept is the labels others put on you. How do others’ impressions of you shape your self-concept? Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley (1902) argued that it’s like looking at yourself in the “looking glass” (or mirror). When you stand in front of it, you consider your physical appearance through the eyes of others, including lovers, friends, family, and even the media. Do others see you as attractive? Overweight? Too tall or too short? Seeing yourself in this fashion—and thinking about how others must see you—has a powerful effect on how you think about your physical self. Cooley noted that the same process shapes our broader self-concept: it is based in part on your beliefs about how others see you, including their perceptions and evaluations of you (“People think I’m talented, and they like me”) and your emotional response to those beliefs (“I feel good/bad about how others see me”). Cooley called the idea of defining our self-concepts through thinking about how others see us the looking-glass self.

In considering your self-concept and its impact on your interpersonal communication, keep two implications in mind. First, because your self-concept consists of deeply held beliefs, attitudes, and values, changing it is difficult. Once you’ve decided you’re a compassionate person, for example, you’ll likely perceive yourself that way for a long time (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).

Second, our self-concepts often lead us to make self-fulfilling prophecies , predictions about future interactions that lead us to behave in ways that ensure the interaction unfolds as we predicted. Some self-fulfilling prophecies set positive events in motion. For instance, you may see yourself as professionally capable, which leads you to predict job interview success. During an interview, your prophecy of success leads you to communicate in a confident fashion, which impresses the interviewers. Other self-fulfilling prophecies set negative events in motion. I once had a friend who believed he was unattractive and undesirable. Whenever we went out to parties, his self-concept would lead him to predict interpersonal failure. He would then spend the entire time in a corner, staring morosely into his drink. Needless to say, no one tried to talk to him. At the end of the evening he’d say, “See, I told you no one would want to talk to me!”