Self- Concept

Self-concept is a term that is used to define the feeling, thoughts and opinion of a person about himself. I general, it means how we evaluate ourselves or we can say that what aware of oneself is the concept of oneself. It is mainly related to cognitive aspect of a person’s thinking. It helps in understanding the person bout himself. It depends on various factors through which a person or a child makes his own opinion like personality traits, how we look, what are our moral values and goals in life, how we play a role in our life etc. All these factors help a person in analysis his situation and role and make the opinion about him. It is like a self-image what a person imagine or feel about him. It is continuous changing concept because it changes as our feelings and attitude change with time. As according to Baumeister (1999) Self – concept is “the individual’s belief about himself or herself, including the person’s attributes and who and what the self is”. In psychology, ‘self’ word defines the meaning of a person’s existence. It means how a person sees himself in terms of his self- image, feeling and thoughts about his weakness and strengths and perception about emotions, values and talents etc. The analysis of self gives the answers of two questions – who am I? And why I am here? In this regard, self – concept is a term that answers the question “Who are you”. This is related to the image what a person has views about himself. How he perceives himself personally in terms of how others perceive him, his own interpretations and evaluations and cultural teaching. Carl Rogers (1959) defines the three different component of self-concept –

Self- image – It shows a person’s knowledge about himself and others. It shows how a person knows or does not know about him and others. It can be increased by knowing more about oneself, listening by others etc.

Self – Esteem – It is related to the values. How a person place himself or his perceived self – worth about himself. It can be increased by seeking affirmation.

Ideal Self – It means how we want to be look like or represent ourselves in front of others.

In social word, the concept of self helps a person in analysing his worth and role in relations to others. He tries to impact his image in positive way on others. This is the reason that self-concept is related to explaining and prediction about one’s behaviour and feeling.

In our life, all these three terms – self-concept, self-esteem and self-efficacy are interrelated and not only important but necessary also to study and apply it into life. Self – concept helps in analysing ourselves while self-esteem is also very important part because a person should be aware about how he relates to himself his values. How a person place himself or his perceived self – worth about himself. It can be increased by seeking affirmation. For Example – if we are going to apply for a job, after attending the interview, what we expect acceptance or rejection about our self. it shows how we place our self. It shows our perceived self-worth after the interview. Thus from this example, it is clear that self-esteem helps a person in comparing himself with others that helps in improving their communication with others. Every person is different in itself. This is the reason that we find different level of self-esteem in others. Some people have very high level of self-esteem while others are found low in self-esteem. High Self-esteem people are those who have high self-respect and confidence and always want to earn the feeling of being unique and recognition. While the people who are low in their self-esteem found very boring and frustrating and show a negative attitude towards life. They have low confidence in themselves and have fear about taking initiative in new work. There are four important factors that influence the self-esteem of a person. These are reaction of others, comparison with others, social roles and identification. All these factors help a person in measuring his own self-esteem. Self-efficacy is also a very important part of self-judgement of a person. It means a person’s judgement about his own ability for performing a particular task. We can observe it whenever we found somebody to say either with confidence or lack of confidence like I can do it or I can’t do it because of lack of experience or any other reason. It shows the confidence of a person for a particular job and encourage him whether to pick or not to do a task.

I remembered one social experience when I was going to meet some old people who live in a house. I was associated with them before my marriage. But after my marriage, I started to stay in in a foreign location and this is the reason that it was not possible to meet them frequently. So after going there, I realised that everyone was very happy and eager to see me. This experience realised me my worth in eye of others and feel me important for them. It increases my confidence and a feeling of doing some work for them. It shows me how important I am for them and I can do lots of things for their betterment. This experience gives me a goal in my life for them.

Another experience was related to one social gathering where I met with my lots of sisters, brothers and cousins. We met each other and I found that all are doing very well in their life. In fact, I found them that they are very successful in their life because they are holding good positions in the renowned company. This experience forced me to think and evaluate about myself and I found that I do not exist anywhere. So it encourages me to do something good like them. This experience works me like an inspiration that encourages me to do hard work in my life to become like them.

There is no doubt that sometimes we learn something good and positive from others and some other times, we discourage and feel negative about oneself and feel scared for taking any new initiative in life. So it depends on our self-concept, self-esteem and self-efficacy. It helps us in understanding our behaviour, feeling, abilities and worth in social environment.

References

Saul McLeod (2008). Self-Concept. Retrieved on May 5 2013, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/self-concept.htmlSaul McLeod (2007). Carl Rogers. Retrieved from on May 5 2013, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-rogers.htmlBaumeister (1999). The Self in Social Psychology. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press (Taylor & Francis).