As usual for a psychology class, after
learning a new concept, I go out into the world and look for examples
of the concept and its application. So the other night I decided to
give my younger brother a call and inquire about his own self-concept
with very little information (don't worry he gave informed consent
and was debriefed after I asked all my questions). As explained by
Hazel Markus (1977), the self-concept is made up of self-schemas
which are beliefs about the self which are instrumental in an
individual making sense of why they act and think in a certain way.
I'm
not able to discuss our entire conversation, but here are a few
relevant things that came out of it.
So my
younger brother was unexpectedly subject (“Do you have time for a
short survey?” “I'm watching Hercules right now but sure...”)
to the same question we were asked in class; I asked, “What are
five traits or adjectives that you think describe yourself well? Or,
if you had to pick five words to describe yourself what would they
be?” His five words were stubborn, optimistic, friendly,
trustworthy, and intelligent. These five words are most likely
characteristics of himself that he very strongly identifies with
(based on him picking them from the question asked). In other words
he is schematic for
these characteristics (Markus et al., 1987). Because he is schematic
for these traits he would likely be very defensive about any
challenge to having these characteristics (which is extra hilarious
because of his picking of stubborn) due to his strong identification
with them. Importantly, he may not be actually be any of these things
but they are characteristics that he feels that he possess which
means they are relevant as he will likely pay attention to them in
others and with himself due to their being highly relevant to his
self-concept. Additionally, he most likely acts in everyday life in
ways that are fairly consistent with these attributes.
I
pressed him further after he gave me his five attributes as to why he
thought that these five words were good personal descriptors.
Interestingly he didn't focus on his thoughts very often but drew
upon examples from his day where he mentioned his behavior as an
example of how these words were accurate descriptors (Describing
trustworthy, “Today I told my boss that I would stay late to help
finish a delivery and even though the delivery came at the end of my
shift and I was tired I stuck around to help because I said I would
earlier.”). His method of describing the applicability of these
words was in line with Bem's (1972) self-perception theory
in which Bem posits that individuals look to examples of their own
behavior and the situational context for understanding aspects of and
making inferences about themselves and their behavior. Although an
individual could select examples of behavior that conform to their
schematic traits, the fact that individuals use the behavior (as
opposed to other means of understanding the self) as a way of
describing the self and building their self-concept is important.
Therefore, his reflections involving his behavior as prime examples
for how he picked important attributes makes sense with regard to
Bem's self-perception theory.
I
encourage everyone to ask your roommate or a sibling or significant
other what five attributes they would pick because it's pretty
interesting to hear what they say! I personally would have expected a
few different ones from my brother.
Bem,
D. J. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances
in experimental social psychology
(Vol. 6, pp. 1-62). New York : Academic Press.
Markus,
H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self.
Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 35,
63-78.
Markus,
H., Hamill, R., & Sentis, K. P. (1987). Thinking fat:
Self-schemas for body weight and the processing of weight relevant
information. Journal
Of Applied Social Psychology,
17(1),
50-71.
Word count: 487
