Psychology Essays (UOP)

Psy/400 Personal Reflection on The Self Paper

Personal Reflection on The Self Paper

Samantha Craig

Psy/400

Sherri Sedler

9/14/2015

Introduction

As we look at people as single interties, they then become an individual. The concept of self is how each of these individuals perceive their surroundings from the concept of both nature and nurture. The social world is made up on the person's attitude of the world itself. This can be understanding how each person will interact with their environment along with the influences that may guide his or her behaviors. In each individual there are three different concepts of what is call the self. These concepts are known as self-concept, self-efficiency, and self-esteem.

Concept of the self within the social world

There are many different elements that make up the self these are self -schema, possible selves, self-esteem, and self-efficiency. Self-Schema is "Beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information"(Myers, 2010) This basically means how each person may perceive themselves such as musical, athletic, brainy, or any other type of influential aspect that helps an individual remember, perceive and evaluate others and themselves. If a person's self-schema is centralized around music than that trait allows them to finds those traits whether it be harmonizing or instrumental in others as well and find common ground. "Prospective job seekers are attracted to organizations with personalities they perceive as similar to their own actual and ideal self-concepts."(Nolan & Harold, 2010)

While each individual grows they will start to recall experiences that are related to their own individual self-schema. According to (Myers, 2010) sense self-schema makes up part of an individual's self-concept, it also helps that person with organizing of experiences along with the retrieval of them. The next concept is known as possible selves which is "Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future."(Myers, 2010) This means that once a person gets ahold of their self-schema and gain knowledge of how they perceive themselves they then learn about dreams and what they want to accomplish such as love and careers. It also goes along with their fears of what they might become later on in life such as unemployed with no family. This then drives them to make changes needed within the individual's life to improve themselves.

Self-Concept

When it comes to self-concept in individuals it comes down to the main question of "who is he or she?" Self-concept is made up of self-schema which is how the individual views themselves, such as being smart, a parent, and musical. While also adding possible selves into the mix which is how that person views their future might consists of like becoming a parent, therapist along with their fears which might include being jobless with no family at all.

Self-esteem

This particular part of the self is about how "A person's overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth."(Myers, 210) In other terms it is a way a person views themselves whether it be positive or negative. Each individual may look at themselves in different ways. A person who has a high self-esteem could be seen as a narcissist because they view that they are better than everyone else and that they are always right. There can also be those who may have a low self-esteem which can cause disorders such as depression, eating problems or may even lead to substance abuse. There could also be various degrees of both high and low depending on the traits at hand. As a human being people have a tendency to compare one-self to another individual whether it be money, looks, clothing and then come to the conclusion of how they might feel about themselves.

Self-efficiency

"How competent we feel on a task." (Myers, 2010) When it comes to how individuals proceed on tasks whether they be housework, chores, education, and occupational, results in their rating of their self-efficiency. Many people can feel great about their accomplishments within this part of the self, while having a low- self-esteem. Those who do have a higher level of self-efficiency have shown that they live more successful lives than those who don't due to the lack of anxiety, and being more headstrong about the tasks at hand.

Social Experience that affected the author's personal development

Social experience grows as the individual does. The author has many social experiences that has affected her personal development. The biggest one was becoming a mother. When she was eight years old and teachers would ask what she want to be when she grew up, her response was always to be a mom. She wanted to be able to give a child everything that she never got to have including a mother. Her son changed her life by giving her someone who she can give unconditional love and vice versa. The author was slowly losing her way and when she got to hold that little boy after 17 hours of labor and almost dying she realized that no one in the world would ever have a hold on her heart like he did. She became compassionate, loved, adored and also learned to empathize and sympathize with other mothers because of that bond.

The second experience that provided an affect to personal development was the ability to proceed with a higher education. The author grew up loving books and learning new things. However, her family was not supportive of higher education and assumed she would make nothing of herself. As she got older more people doubted her and put her self-esteem lower and lower about being able to get a degree specifically after she had her son. The author had to wait nearly four and a half years after high school before she started schooling because one person believed in her. She wanted to provide for her son a bright future and show that no matter how late in life there are second chances. Thanks in large part to her self-efficiency in stubbornness to achieve a degree she is one year away from gaining a bachelor's degree and will be the first in her family to have one.

Conclusion

In conclusion, for any individual to completely comprehend the self, that person must understand the concepts of self, self-esteem, and self-efficiency. Each part of the self provides a basis for them understand what the self is. Along with knowing what these three concepts are it is important to have knowledge that self-schema and possible selves help the individual grow with understanding their strength that drives them and pushes them towards what they want to be when they grow, but also what they fear of becoming.

References

Nolan, K. P., & Harold, C. M. (2010, September). The influence of multiple self-concept images on organizational attraction.. Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 83(3).

Myers, D. (2010).Social Psychology. 10th edition McGraw