In this part of the lecture we looked at the concept of the self. That is… how does one deinfe/create their sense of self, how does one relate this sense of self to society at large, how does one actually discover and develop their personal potential and finally, how does one manage/regulate this sense of self?
Who am I? In our quest to define the self we wonder who we are and how others see us and we reflect on how we are different from others (Self-esteem). We also contemplate on what social position we would like to hold (lead or be lead?) and what roles we could play in society (Self-efficacy). We investigate what interests us and what doesn’t, what we like and what we don’t, while also seeking to develop our skills and talents (Self-confidence) (Reeve, 2009, pp. 265-266). Altogether, this should collectively lead to developing ones sense of Self-concept.
Essentially a self-concept is a set of beliefs that one uses in order conceptualise themselves. For example, during the tutorials I felt it hard to speak up as I felt uncomfortable and quite self-conscious. More broadly a self-concept is essentially a cluster of specific self-schemas. Self-schemas are domain specific cognitive generalisation about the self and are learnt from past experience. For example, being self-conscious does not represent the self-concept as a whole, but it represents an element of one’s self, social relationships with other (Reeve, 2009, p. 268).
A clear sense of self, which in turn I believe would suggest a well-developed series of self-schema is very beneficial for the one to have. Why is this? From our lecture (Neill, 2010), is allows one to:
· Process information about the self with ease, I am good at long distance running, but not at short sprints.
· Quickly retrieve self-related behavioural information from a specific domain. I am good with computers (technical ability) but not so good at talking to people (social ability).
· Confidently predict ones future behaviour in a specific domain (I know I can fix this problem with my PC, but I still lack social skills); and
· Resist contrary information about themselves (Hey! You don’t know how to use a computer, untrue).
Importantly, a benefits of self-schemas is their motivational properties. They allow for:
· Consistent self, self-directed behaviour to confirm ones sense of self and prevent events that give feedback which may contest that self-view.
· Motivating the possible self, self-schemas help to generate motivation to improve oneself and move from your present self toward achieving your desired self.
Despite this I find myself asking… can someone hold beliefs about the self that are inconsistent/contradictory to each other… and if so… what is the outcome? Of cause this question was answered very well in both our lecture and in the textbook. The occurrence of contradicting beliefs in the individual is knows as cognitive dissonance.
Most people who like to believe that they are competent, moral and good people, who have a rational outlook on life. However, this is surprisingly contradicted in how people behave! Think for a minute of someone who believes that they are a healthy individual… they exercise and they eat healthy! So in this instance it fits their concept of what a healthy person is…. Yet.. despite all this, during the day they routinely have cigarette breaks. Which strikes one as hypocritical and contradictory. So what happens now? The scenario which I have detailed above is thought of as a dissonance-arousing situational event. In this instance the choice is made to smoke, compared to other factors of their healthy life style there is insufficient justification for this behaviour. This then leads to inconsistency between cognitions and this motivates a sense of dissonance. In turn a dissonance reduction strategy is implemented.
This reduction strategy aims to remove the dissonant belief by:
· Removing the belief, smoking is not that bad…
· Decreasing the importance of the belief, it doesn’t matter if I smoke, so long as I exercise MORE!
· Increase the importance of the constant belief, smoking is my release from stress, therefore it is ok… right?
After looking at cognitive dissonance, we then turned our attention to affect control theory, or what was referred to in our readings as Identity-confirming behaviours. Essentially, people with nice or powerful identities engage in nice (powerful) behaviour, and passive people to behave in … well… passive behaviours (Reeve, 2009, p. 280-1). As we have seen in the above, in the reduction of dissonant beliefs, affective deflections energise behaviour. That is, when people behave in ways which conflict with their identity, affective deflection occurs to motivate identity restoring action (Neill, 2010).
Additionally, from this point on it is quite important to consider a concept called Agency. We learnt that the self is made up of cognitive and social elements. Although the self is considerable more than cognitions and relationships with our environment! Reeve (2009, p. 281) defines agency as “an action and development from within, as innate processes and motivations.” That is, we posses a core self that is energised and innately motivated and directed by inherent developmental processes of differentiation & integration. Being aware that… not all self-structures represent the self… be aware that other reflect and reproduce the expectations of society around us. So essentially these are inborn developmental needs, preferences and motivations, which energise out social, emotional and also our physical development. Two important elements of this core self are differentiation and integration. So….
· Differentiation, occurs as the individual exercises existing interests, preferences and capacities in order for the self to become specialised in certain domains. For example, you learn that not all sports are alike, that they differ and you develop a preference for which one your prefer.
· Integration, is then the organisation of the emerging complexity (of differentiations) into a coherent whole and a satisfactory self-concept.
To conclude for this reflection, I have learnt that Self-concordance is the pursuit of life goals that eminate out of the integrated, or what we now know as the ‘core self.’ Self-congruence between ones-self and ones-goals generates effort that usually leads to mastery and satisfying experiences, which promote happiness (psychological well-being) and greater gains in self-confidence.
Personal strivings represent the goals that one is trying to accomplish and they are directed by self-concordance. Self-regulation involves the process of one’s own ability to monitor how their actual goal achieving is going in relation to their goal setting.
References
Neill, J. (2010). [Personal Control Beliefs & The Self & Its Strivings Lecture]. Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/
Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. USA: Wiley.
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