L14: Self Concept and Identity

Self-concept

This refers to your perception of yourself and how you define and understand yourself as a multidimensional (physical, spiritual, emotional, social, and moral) human being.

Physical characteristics

describe how you appear, including features such as height, build, hair color, eye color, and skin tone. These traits can be used to highlight your uniqueness or convey positive qualities.

Personality traits

are stable characteristics that shape your behavior, thoughts, and emotions. These traits influence how you interact with others and respond to different situations, and they are typically consistent over time.

Social traits

refers to the social groups you identify with, such as family, culture, or profession, which shape your self -concept and interactions with others.

Self-complexity

This refers to the varying ways in which you can think about yourself, which can be high or low according to researchers.

Self-esteem

This refers to a positive or negative self evaluation of the self concept.

Self worth

This refers to how much you VALUE yourself.

Self-efficacy

This refers to your belief and confidence that you can accomplish tasks and control your environment.

Self-awareness

It is the ability to know yourself extensively not only regarding your traits and characteristics but also knowing your inner state and how you think.

Self-awareness Theory

states that when you focus on yourself, you tend to compare your current behavior and thoughts to the internal standards you set for yourself, which can lead to feelings of alignment or discomfort.

Self-discrepancy theory

refers to the gap between different aspects of your self-concept, these gaps can lead to emotional discomfort.

Actual self, ideal self, ought self

Who you are in reality.
Who you want to be, reflecting your desires and aspirations.

Who you think you should be, based on social expectations or obligations.
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Self-concept clarity

This helps you and your desire to become self-aware by providing a more stable view of your positive traits. This creates higher self-esteem and less vulnerability to the stress caused by inconsistencies between the actual self and the ideal self.

Internal self-awareness

refers to clearly seeing your inner self: your personality, values, desires, reactions, and impact on other people

External self awareness

involves understanding how others see you

Charles Horton Cooley

popularized the concept of the looking glass self

Looking glass self

people around you serve as mirrors that reflect how you see yourself. You merely reinforce others’ impressions and build this idea of yourself based on these interactions