Printed Page 40

Self-Concept

Self-concept is your overall perception of who you are ("On the whole, I'm a ____ person"). 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). As we saw in the opening story about Eric Staib, 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 mirror, or "looking glass" as it was known in his era. When you stand in front of a mirror, 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? Do you possess "desirable" eye, skin, and hair colors, according to others? 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. This includes their perceptions and evaluations of you ("People think I'm talented, and they like me") as well as 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 and highly skilled at communicating. This view leads you to predict job interview success. During the actual interview, your prophecy of success leads you to communicate in a calm, confident, and impressive fashion, which consequently creates success; the interviewers like and are impressed by you, and their reaction confirms your prophecy.

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 or clubs, his self-concept would lead him to predict interpersonal failure: "What's the point; no one will talk to me anyway." He would then spend the entire time sitting at our table, scowling and staring morosely into his drink. Needless to say, no one would approach him or try 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!"