the tendency to be responsible, take initiative, and provide sound guidance—will mirror my “father” traits. Yet there are other traits that would be manifest in one self but not another. For instance, I can get pretty silly when goofing off with my daughter, and although I try to inject humor into the classroom (albeit, with mixed success), it is not generally of the silly variety. Because we hold many self-schemas, it makes sense for us to think about the self not as a single unit but rather as multiple distinct yet overlapping elements (Swann & Bosson, 2010).
Another crucial feature of the self is its cultural embeddedness (Lee, Leung, & Kim, 2014). In Chapter 1 we discussed the individualism-collectivism (IC) dimension that, in a nutshell, reflects the extent to which individuals and cultures view the self as separate from others or closely tied to them. In relatively individualistic cultures, the self is seen as independent: as defined by its inner attributes, traits, and characteristics, and as stable over time and place (H. R. Markus & Kitayama, 1991). In contrast, people in collectivistic cultures understand the self as interdependent: It is largely derived from its connections to others and the groups to which it belongs. The independent self is considered to be unique, and in fact individualists seek to affirm its separate identity. The interdependent self overlaps with the selves of others and prefers to blend in rather than stand out. Although psychologists commonly refer to these two types of self-construal as distinct, in reality people are more flexible and fall somewhere in between. Moreover, situations may prime one or the other self-construal and hence lead people to think more about their own needs and goals or those of others, and this in turn can affect social behavior (Trafimow & Clayton, 2006). We will return to this fundamental dimension at various places in this text.
Self-Concept: Set of beliefs a person has about the characteristics she or he possesses
Schemas: Cognitive structures that organize knowledge about particular objects of thought, such as concepts, experiences, or roles
Self-Schema: Schema that organizes information about oneself with respect to specific domains of one’s life
Self-Discrepancy Theory: Idea that each person has an actual, ideal, and ought self
Actual Self: Who one is
Ideal Self: Image of a hypothetical self that possesses the qualities and features that a person’s wishes he had
Ought Self: Image of a hypothetical self who a person believes important others think he or she should be
Self-Discrepancy Theory and Possible Selves
When you reflect on who you are, do you ever think about your possible selves, such as who you would like to be or what kind of a person you ought to be? Self-discrepancy theory postulates that each of us has an actual self, an ideal self, and an ought self (Hardin & Larsen, 2014; Higgins, 1989b, 1997; Stanley & Burrow, 2015). Our understanding of who we are is called our actual self and is closely tied to our self-concept. In addition, we can imagine the person we would like to be—called the ideal self—that consists of the qualities and features that we wish we had (Hardin & Larsen, 2014). Perhaps you work at Starbucks but would rather be interning at a local mental health center. When we feel a discrepancy such as this between our actual and ideal selves, we tend to feel frustrated, dissatisfied, or disappointed (Higgins, 1989).
People also have thoughts about who they think others think they should be—what is called the ought self. Your ought self comes into play, say, if your parents own the local hardware store and have been pressuring you to work there and eventually be the owner. You think that you ought to be following the career that your parents prefer, but you have elected to choose your own career path (see photos). Here you would experience an actual-ought discrepancy and may feel guilty, ashamed, or anxious (Higgins, 1989b). As you can see, discrepancies between the actual, ideal, and ought selves have important implications for how we evaluate or feel about ourselves, a theme we will return to later in this chapter in the context of self-esteem.
©iStockphoto.com/sturti.
Is, Ought, and Ideal Selves
Are you who your parents want you to be? Who you want to be? Perhaps you work in package delivery (is self), yet you want to be a basketball player (ideal self), and your parents want you to be a doctor (ought self).
©iStockphoto.com/annebaek.
©iStockphoto.com/Aksonov.
Think Again!
1 What is your self-concept? A schema?
2 What are your actual, ideal, and ought selves?
Knowing Who We Are: Introspection And Self-Perception
How do you know who you are? Sounds like an odd question, right? You are probably thinking something like “I know who I am because I can look inside and see myself.” Unfortunately, looking internally at the self to examine who we are, how we feel, and so forth—a process we call introspection—may not be as straightforward as it seems (Corallo, Sackur, Dehaene, & Sigman, 2008). As we’ll discuss in a moment, there is no guarantee that mere reflection will uncover important aspects of the self. When introspection falls short, we can engage in a second process called self-perception, during which we essentially examine ourselves from the outside, similarly to what others may do. A third method for learning about the self involves focusing on the responses that other people have to us. In these different ways, others can serve as mirrors that help us better understand who we are.
Cooley (1902) called this aspect of the self the looking-glass self, because we see ourselves partially through the eyes of others or, rather, how we think they perceive us (see Chapter 3). Not only can we gain self-knowledge by taking the perspectives of others, but we may also derive an element of our self-esteem from how we believe they appraise us, what are called reflected self-appraisals (Asencio, 2013; Carlson, Vazire, & Furr, 2011). The interdependence between our self-understanding and our relationships with others further demonstrates once again the close connection between two of our fundamental questions: the nature of the self and of our sociality.
Introspection
Who was your third-grade teacher? It probably took you a moment, but eventually the name popped into your mind. How did you produce this answer? Easily, you respond—I just thought about it! Or maybe—I just knew it! But if I were to press you further and ask you to explain how you retrieved this from your memory, you’d likely hesitate before offering an answer. This is because you typically do not have access to the “how” you generated your response but only the response itself. Let’s look at another scenario. Suppose I were to place four blue sweaters side-by-side on a shelf. I inform you that the sweaters are of differing quality and ask you and nineteen others to individually select your preferred sweater. Unbeknownst to all of you, the sweaters are identical. Judging by the results
