Bracken (1992) suggested that there are six
specific domains related to self-concept.
Social: The Ability to Interact with Others
Competence: The Ability to Meet Basic Needs
Affect: The Awareness of Emotional States
Physical: The Feelings About Looks, Health,
Physical Condition, and Overall Appearance
Academic: The Success of Failure and Overall
Appearance
Family: How Well One Functions Within the
Family Unit
What is Self
Concept?
Baumeister (1999) provides the following
self concept definition: "the individual's
belief about himself or herself, including the
person's attributes and who and what the
self is".
1. Self Image: How you see yourself. It is
important to realize that self-image does not
necessarily coincide with reality. People
might have an inflated self-image and
believe they are better at things than they
really are. Conversely, people are also prone
to having negative self-images and perceive
flaws or weaknesess.
Each individual’s self-image is a mix of
aspects including physical
characteristics, personalities, and social
roles.
Carl Rogers – 3
Carl Rogers believed Self Concept is broken
into three sections.
3. Ideal Self – How you wish you could be. In
many cases, the way we see ourselves and
how we would like to see ourselves do not
match up.
2. Self Esteem
This is how much you value yourself. A number
of factors can impact self-esteem, including
how we compare ourselves to others and how
others respond to us. When people respond
positively to our behavior, we are more likely to
develop positive self-esteem. When we
compare ourselves to others and find
ourselves lacking it can have a negative
impact on our self esteem.
Rogers believed that incongruence has its earliest roots
in childhood. When parents place conditions on their
affection for their children (only expressing love if
children "earn it" through certain behaviors and living
up to the parents' expectations), children begin to
distort the memories of experiences that leave them
feeling unworthy of their parents' love.
Unconditional love, on the other hand, helps to foster
congruence. Children who experience such love feel no
need to continually distort their memories in order to
believe that other people will love and accept them as
they are.
Congruence vs.
Incongruence
According to Carl Rogers, the degree to which a
person's self-concept matches up to reality is known as
congruence and incongruence. While we all tend to
distort reality to a certain degree, congruence occurs
when self-concept is fairly well aligned to reality.
Incongruence happens when reality does not match up
to our self-concept.
1) THE REACTION OF OTHERS. If people admire us, flatter us,
seek out our company, listen attentively and agree with us we
tend to develop a positive self-image. If they avoid us, neglect
us, tell us things about ourselves that we don’t want to hear we
develop a negative self-image.
2) COMPARISON WITH OTHERS. If the people we compare
ourselves with (our reference group) appear to be more
successful, happier, richer, better looking than ourselves we
tend to develop a negative self image BUT if they are less
successful than us our image will be positive.
3) SOCIAL ROLES. Some social roles carry prestige e.g. doctor,
airline pilot, TV. presenter, premiership footballer and this
promotes self-esteem. Other roles carry stigma. E.g. prisoner,
mental hospital patient, refuse collector or unemployed person.
4) IDENTIFICATION. Roles aren’t just “out there.” They also
become part of our personality i.e. we identity with the positions
we occupy, the roles we play and the groups we belong to.
Arygle (2008)
4 major factors that influence self esteem.
Telling children they are good at something when
they are in fact not good at it gives them a false sense
of security. Once they realize that they are actually
not good at the activity, they will lose confidence in
other areas as well.
Praise – Things
that Backfire
Inflated praise was defined in this research as an
adverb, such as “incredibly”, or an adjective, such as
“perfect”, attached to an already positive statement,
resulting in an inflated evaluation of a child’s
performance. For example, “You’re good at this” is
not inflated, whereas “You’re incredibly good at this”
is inflated. Lead author of the study, Eddie
Brummelman, also discovered that adults gave twice
as much inflated praise to children with low selfesteem than to children with high self-esteem.