The Psychology of the Social Self

Tom R. Tyler,Roderick M. Kramer,Oliver P. John

• Editore: Psychology Press
• Anno: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317778271
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Psychologie
• Categoria: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

Leading theoreticians and researchers present current thinking about the role played by group memberships in people's sense of who they are and what they are worth. The chapters build on the assumption, developed out of social identity theory, that people create a social self that both defines them and shapes their attitudes and behaviors. The authors address new developments in the theoretical frameworks through which we understand the social self, recent research on the nature of the social self, and recent findings about the influence of social context upon the development and maintenance of the social self.

PART
I

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

CHAPTER
1

Social Identity, Personality, and the Self-Concept: A Self-Categorization Perspective

John C. Turner

Rina S. Onorato

Australian National University

Since the social categorization studies of Tajfel, Flament, Billig, and Bundy (1971) and the first statements of social identity theory (Tajfel, 1972; Turner, 1975), research in and research influenced by the social identity tradition have grown steadily for a quarter of a century. Initially, this tradition focused entirely on problems of intergroup relations and social conflict (Tajfel, 1978a; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). In the late 1970s, with the development of self-categorization theory (Turner, 1982, 1984, 1985; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), research broadened to encompass group processes in general, a trend that has continued with work on group cohesiveness, social influence, social cooperation, and crowd behavior. Self-categorization theory also broached issues in social cognition. Because it explains the qualitative difference between individual and group behavior in terms of the level of inclusiveness at which self and others are categorized, self-categorization theory makes use of and is interested in general analyses of categorization (e.g., Bruner, Tajfel, Rosch, Medin). This focus too has continued and has strengthened with work on stereotyping and social judgment (Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994; Oakes & Turner, 1990; Spears, Oakes, Ellemers, & Haslam, 1997).

In this chapter, we consider the implications of self-categorization theory for the problem of conceptualizing the structure and functioning of the social self. What have we learned about the nature of the self-concept from 25 years of social identity research? Social identity ideas have always implied a distinctive view of the self (Turner, 1982), and in the last decade researchers have actively worked out this view (Onorato, 1997; Turner, 1988, 1989; Turner & Oakes, 1989; Turner, Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty, 1994). Our aim here is to summarize the present picture, which, although largely drawn from self-categorization theory, is consistent with the assumptions and metatheory of social identity theory. Self-categorization theory is in a sense the theory of the self-concept that social identity theory required but did not itself provide.

We first summarize some major themes (assumptions, hypotheses) in the currently dominant view of the self in social psychology. We then seek to show how self-categorization theory qualifies, rejects, or otherwise challenges these ideas, as a way of outlining a different view or model of the self. Finally, we consider the extent to which the self-categorization analysis of the self deals with or is contradicted by the evidence that sustains the existing view.

THE SELF AS PERSONALITY

There is obviously not one dominant view of the self in social psychology, but researchers have widely shared some assumptions about the nature of the self. These assumptions, moreover, have a unifying core, which can be referred to as the personality or interpersonal perspective. This core reflects an orientation to the self in which the concept is used to make sense of and guide research on individual differences and interpersonal relationships. The dominant model emphasizes the uniqueness and relative stability and consistency of a person’s behavior even when there is situational variability (Epstein, 1973, 1980; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984;Kihlstrom et al., 1988; Markus & Cross, 1990; Markus & Wurf, 1987). It construes the self-concept in terms of stable individual differences, relatively fixed cognitive and personality structures, interpersonal orientations and styles, and enduring motives and predispositions.

Four ideas in the literature, which appear frequently and are only rarely questioned, illustrate the personality model. These ideas make up a model in the sense that they function as axioms on which research is based rather than as hypotheses to be tested competitively. Although some researchers take a different position, we think that what follows is faithful to the mainstream view.

These ideas are that the self-concept is, in content, a representation of an individual’s personal identity; each self-concept is a unique or idiosyncratic property of the perceiver, belonging to only one individual and not shared with others; the social self is a looking-glass self, a reflection and internalization of others’ reactions to the public self as presented in social interaction; and the self-concept is a relatively enduring, stable cognitive structure.

The Self-Concept as Personal Identity

The idea of personal identity refers to the self largely based on representations of the perceiver as an individual person; the self is personal in focus, describes the I and the me, and includes personality traits and individual attributes (including attitudes, values, goals, beliefs, interpersonal relationships, and styles). It refers to the notion of self as an individual’s special personal identity, based on personal differences from others. Almost any standard review or classic reference from outside the social identity tradition, whether from a psychological or sociological perspective, substantiates this point (Epstein, 1980; Gecas, 1982; Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Markus & Cross, 1990; Markus & Wurf, 1987; Stryker & Statham, 1985). Thus Triandis (1989, p. 506) stated that “the self consists of all statements made by a person, overtly or covertly, that include the words ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘mine,’ and ‘myself’ (Cooley, 1902).” Even when people refer to the “global” self-concept (Crocker & Major, 1989), the “collective” or “public” self (Triandis, 1989), the “interdependent” or “relational” self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), or just the “self,” they have nearly always meant the personal self, the self-concept as a representation or collection of representations of the perceiver as an individual person, understood as unique, special, and different from other individual persons.

The Self as a Unique Psychological Property of the Perceiver

This idea refers to the self as a personal property in a related but different way. The self-concept does not merely describe or represent the perceiver as an individual person; the self-representation belongs to only one individual perceiver as a specific psychological structure. It is an idiosyncratic psychological attribute (see Markus, 1977), which by definition others do not and cannot share. The self not only describes me and functions subjectively as I (as in the first idea); the self is also only mine. One’s own self is precisely that, one’s own, inherently differentiated and differentiating. Part of what provides individuality, a unique personality, is that the private self, the true self, belongs to no other–it is a “gem serene,” locked in private, ultimately incommunicable experience. Thus in the impression management literature (e.g., Schlenker, 1980; Schlenker, Britt, & Pennington, 1996; Turner, 1991) “social” selves and “social identities” have not been understood as selves that are in any subjective sense psychologically shared with others. They have referred to the public self, the individual self as presented to and perceived by others, whether or not it corresponds to the inner, private self. What is shared to any degree can be only the outward impression perceived by others, the symbolic social meanings of a person’s actions, communicated and projected through role relationships and social interaction, never the actual subjectivity of experience that we denote by the concept of self. The public self–what other people think of us–may be shared, but not the private, phenomenal self.

The Social Self as the Looking-Glass Self

There are two basic answers to the question of where the contents of the self-concept come from. One idea is that concepts of self derive from personal experience, from observation and interpretation of past behavior (e.g., Bem, 1972; Gecas & Schwalbe, 1983; Markus, 1977; Tice, 1994). A second idea is that they derive from social interaction and social influence in a symbolic interactionist sense (e.g., Gecas, 1982; McCall, 1987; Oyserman & Packer, 1996; Shrauger & Schoeneman, 1979; Stryker, 1987, 1997; Stryker & Statham, 1985). The former idea emphasizes the cognitive processes through which people form attitudes, concepts, schemata, beliefs, and judgments about the self on the basis of generalization and inference from past behavior. Classic research on attitude change (reinforcement, dissonance, and attribution theories) and contemporary work on self-inference processes have illustrated this answer (Olson & Zanna, 1990). Note that this position takes for granted that the individual person develops a picture of him- or herself (as an individual) on the basis of his or her personal experience of his or her own distinctive individual behavior (cf. Onorato, 1997).

The second answer provides the widely accepted explanation of why and how the self is “social” or has a social component. This idea occurs in a variety of related formulations going back to James (1890), Cooley (1902), and Mead (1934): The social self is a looking-glass self, a function of how people appear and are reacted to by “others” (individuals, groups, society, the generalized other). The looking-glass self is a metaphor for the idea that the individual sees (acquires) self in the “reflected appraisals” of others. Others in the social environment are not self–which is unique and personal–but they are a mirror for the self. They provide social reflections of the self, which, when internalized, make self-awareness reflexive (able to function as both object and subject), provide social identities and content, and enable participation in a world of shared symbolic meanings. The self is social therefore insofar as it projects public identities in social interaction, enacts social roles and norms, is presented to and perceived by others, is shaped by their expectations, and contains the internalized reactions, expectations, and judgments of others. In this view, the social self is still construed as a property of the individual person (it is a social me; see James, 1890), but it is nevertheless social insofar as the person participates in social interaction, is judged by others, and incorporates the social perspectives of those others into his or her own concepts of self. At its most profound, this perspective has provided a general account of how the mind is socialized and how the self becomes a reflexive object to itself, how it becomes self-aware, conscious (Gecas, 1982; Stryker & Statham, 1985).

The Self-Concept as a Bounded Cognitive Structure

The final idea, which has become particularly popular in the last 20 years with the growth of interest in social cognition, is that the self-concept can be conceptualized as a relatively fixed, enduring, and separate cognitive structure in the information-processing system (e.g., Greenwald, 1981; Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Higgins & Bargh, 1987; Klein & Loftus, 1993; Markus, 1977, 1980; Markus & Sentis, 1982; Rogers, 1981; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977). It is an organized system of interrelated self-concepts or mental representations of self, bounded, interconnected and elaborated, relatively stable, complex, rich, affectively charged, and central to information processing in everyday social perception.

Psychologists have widely assumed a high degree of functional and situational variability in the phenomenal self (i.e., the self immediately given in subjective experience) as a function of perceiver motives, goals, expectations, and particular social circumstances (e.g., Gergen, 1971; Markus & Wurf, 1987; Turner, 1982); in this sense, self-conception is malleable and fluid (Markus & Kunda, 1986). Yet behind the “dynamic,” “working,” “on-line,” “current,” or “accessible” self-concept–as Markus and Wurf (1987) refer to the currently active self-concept (cf. the idea of the situationally “salient” personal and social identities in self-categorization theory; Turner, 1982, 1985)–there is still the hypothesis of an underlying cognitive structure. Thus the symbolic interactionist idea that the self arises in social interaction through “reflected appraisals” and “taking the role of the other” and therefore varies with the social situation (e.g., Oyserman & Packer, 1996) is not necessarily incompatible with a cognitive-structural psychological account of an enduring self-concept (Markus & Wurf, 1987; Stryker, 1987).

The influential model of the dynamic self-concept provided by Markus and Wurf (1987) illustrates two important senses in which an underlying self-structure is assumed to exist behind the phenomenal and situational variability of self-perception. First, Markus and Wurf propose that the phenomenal self varies as a function of the specific subset of stored self-concepts activated in a given situation. That is, underlying self-concepts exist before being activated; they are not brought into being by specific circumstances but are brought into sight and are stored beforehand. Because there is constant variation in the specific subsets of self-concepts activated, self-perception is malleable, but these subsets are previously existing self-concepts that are stored as part of an underlying, organized self-structure. They are relatively enduring, interconnected, and stored separately from nonself-structures (cf. Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991; see Abrams, 1996).

Second, Markus and Wurf describe some self-concepts as “core,” whereas others are “peripheral”; some are psychologically central and important, whereas others are less central and less important. For example, “self-schemata” (Markus, 1977: “cognitive generalizations about the self, derived from past experience, that organize and guide the processing of self-related information contained in the individual’s social experiences,” p. 64), are core self-concepts, likely to be chronically accessible and salient across situations and thus able to exert a pervasive influence (Markus & Kunda, 1986). They function precisely to constrain variation in self-experience and individual behavior by producing stability, continuity, and behavioral consistency across situations. They act to interpret and reinterpret experience selectively, to filter out and attenuate the impact of discrepant information, particularly in relevant areas of self-conception. Self-schemata are in effect personality structures, which function to provide a stable personal core behind phenomenal variation in self-perception and behavior (Markus & Kunda, 1986). This view springs from an implicit and powerful assumption that the more a self-concept is central rather than peripheral, the more it tends to be chronically salient and to constrain variation in phenomenal experience. If there are specific self-concepts that are fully constructed on the spot, they are by definition likely to be relatively peripheral: “The working self-concept consists, then, of one’s core self-conceptions [defined in the same paragraph as ‘self-schemas’] embedded in a context of more tentative self-conceptions that are tied to the immediate social circumstances” (p. 859).

Summary

These four ideas indicate a strong affinity between traditional views of self and personality. In a sense the self-concept is a person’s implicit theory of his or her own personality (Epstein, 1973; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984). It is “an intimate counterpart of personality, constituting its subjective representation as it were” (Kruglanski, Miller, & Geen, 1996, p. 1061). Likewise it functions as a scientific theory of personality for social psychologists and provides an explanation of individuality, stability across time, and consistency across situations. This core psychological structure embodies personal history, relates the individual to the social situation, shapes cognition, and functions as the anchor for a range of individual motives, goals, and needs. The “personality model” of the self, therefore, is the idea that the self-concept is a person’s idiosyncratic and relatively stable knowledge structure about personal identity and reflects personal experience and the internalized appraisals of others. The self-concept functions as the cognitive-structural aspect of personality; it determines and explains individuality, stability, and consistency. The personality model is the view of self which equates it with a ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Frontmatter Page
• Introduction What Does Studying the Psychology of the Social Self Have to Offer to Psychologists?
• Part I Theoretical Perspectives
• Part II The Nature of the Social Self
• Part III Social Context and the Social Self
• Author Index
• Subject Index