User:Matthew M/Week 3 - Social Self

Week 3 - 05/07/08 – Social Self
A common question when asked to me which leaves me stunned and speechless at times would be ‘who are you really’? How do we as people define who we are, what makes us what we are? This generally confuses me and I utter words which describe what I like, what I do, how I am, what my personality is like, but I was never sure as to whether this actually answered the question at all. However, this weeks topic of the Social Self interested me greatly and helped me understand a little bit more. The question of ‘What is self?’ according to the textbook states that ‘self’ is generally combined of three separate parts. These three parts are; 1) Self-Knowledge or self-concept – this is the beliefs that people hold about themselves, 2) The interpersonal self of public self – this second part of self is related to people being social animals. This part helps people connect socially to other people and is the image of the person which is viewed by others, & 3) The agent or executive function – the last part of self is directed towards the actions which people take to do things. This part of the self helps a person to make choices in their life as well as hold control, not only over themselves, but others as well. After that the question then became, ‘what is the social self?”. According to the lecture notes the social self can be defined as the interpersonal or social self that engages face-to-face in social relations to other people. It appears that us as humans are all social animals and are group-based creatures. At times it even seems that the aim of our self is merely to become socially accepted and act ourselves out in social roles. We seem to do this in everyday life when changing who we are to become more accepted in a group or when we do things merely to please other people. It seems that throughout our everyday lives people underestimate how much our own behaviour will affect others and also how much we are affected by other peoples behaviour whether we like to believe it or not!!!