Individual Differences
The Self
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Unit Two: The Self
Key concepts
Candidates should be able to:
• understand the idea that individuals are unique;
• explain the concept of free will.
Core theory: Humanistic Theory
Candidates should be able to:
• distinguish between self concept and ideal self in relation to self esteem;
• explain the idea of unconditional positive regard;
• explain the idea of self actualisation;
• explain the criticisms of humanism as an explanation of the self;
• consider trait theory as an alternative theory, with specific reference to extraversion and
neuroticism.
Core study: Van Houtte and Jarvis (1995)
Candidates should be able to:
• describe Van Houtte and Jarvis’ interviews about pet ownership amongst adolescents;
• outline limitations of Van Houtte and Jarvis’ study.
Application of research into the self: Counselling
Candidates should be able to:
• explain how psychological research relates to counselling, e.g. raising self esteem in depressed
people, individual choice in careers counselling, humanistic principles of relationship counselling.
Key terms
The self
Our inner being, who we believe we are.
Free will
We have a choice, we are not completely governed by external factors.
Self-concept
Your mental image of yourself.
Ideal self
Your mental image of who you would ideally like to be.
Self esteem
How you feel about your current self.
Core theory: Humanistic theory of self
Humanist psychologists emphasise the importance of treating people as individuals, they see us as
being unique and having free will. They believe in the idea of us having an unconscious, that we have
the power to decide on our actions, that we should focus on the present and not the past and that we
are motivated to become the best we can be and fulfil our potential.
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Carl Rogers believed that our self-concept develops in early childhood and that this is dependent on
how others treat and reflect back to us. If as a child you are told that you are a ‘good girl’ and that
your are ‘so funny’ then you will develop a self concept of being fun and good. If you are always told
that you are ‘ugly’ and ‘stupid’ then this will lead to a more negative self concept. Rogers found that
young children focus on physical aspects when describing themselves, older children focus on social
roles (such as being a brother or a member or a karate group) and adults focus on traits and their
psychological selves.
Rogers also researched the concept of an ideal self, this is what we would like ourselves to be like e.g.
I would like to be more organised. Someone’s self-esteem is calculated by observing the difference
between the self-concept and ideal self. If these are incongruent (there is a big difference with the
self-concept being much lower than the ideal self), then the person will have a low self-esteem and
not value themselves. If these two things are very close, then the person will value themselves as
they will be happy that their self-concept is very close to how they ideally want to be.
Rogers suggested that if a person had a low self-esteem, there was something that could help them
to raise this. If other show unconditional positive regard (showing love without expecting anything
in return or certain conditions to be met) then the individual will begin to think more highly of
themselves. Receiving this kind of regard makes us feel happy about ourselves, e.g. loving your
brother even though he has been arrested for theft. Conditional positive regard is when you offer
love and support but only so long as you gain something back in return, e.g. being best friends with
someone so long as they let you borrow their play station, this can be damaging to the individual
receiving it.
Self-actualisation is a term that was developed by Maslow, this refers to the desire to achieve your
full potential (your ideal self). If others make us feel good about our actual self, this gets us closer
to our ideal self. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs stipulates that in order to achieve self-actualisation
we have to firstly have met our other needs, these are basic physical needs, safely needs, love and
belonging needs, esteem and then self-actualisation.
There are a number of limitations of this theory, however, the humanist theory of the self is still
quite popular in psychology as it believes that everyone has the potential to be good and achieve.
Critics argue that some of the ideas within this theory are vague and difficult to measure. It is very
subjective (meaning that it is open to individual interpretation) and it can be very difficult to study
yourself and define what your ideal self is. Another limitation is that it is not very scientific.
Psychologists like to be able to measure and define things and as the point above states, this is not
possible for many aspects of this theory. Rogers did much of his own research and drew his
conclusions from his findings, this was not very representative of the whole population. A third
limitation is that there is too much focus on the individual, if we go with this idea then we would not
be able to predict any human behaviour, this is not the case. The point of psychology as a science is
that we can study human behaviour in order to identify why we do things and predict future
behaviour, this theory does not sit well with this which raises the question, what is the point of
studying psychology? Finally, this theory does not take into account that there may be biological and
genetic influences on the development of our ‘self’. Some psychologists suggest that between 20 to
60 per cent of our emotional social and intellectual development comes from genetic factors. Think
about some of the evidence from the criminal topic.
Alternative theory: Trait theory
Eysenck’s trait theory is much more scientific than the humanist theory. He thought that our
personality had a genetic basis (we are born being a certain way) and that biology also had an impact
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(activity in the reticular activating system in the mid brain can shape our personality). This suggests
that we cannot help having the personality we have, it is down to our biological make up.
Eysenck believed that there were two main scales which made up a person’s personality,
introvert/extrovert and stable/neurotic. He came to this conclusion after studying the personalities
of 700 soldiers from the Second World War. Introversion refers to being quiet and reserved,
Extroversion refers to being outgoing, lively and sociable, Neuroticism refers to being anxious a
worrier and moody and Stability refers to being emotionally stable. Eysenck used these scales to
define a person’s personality type, this then gave a list of traits that he thought that person would
show. A trait is a stable and long lasting tendency to act in a certain way e.g to be helpful. Eysenck
believed that these traits were a much better indicator of our personality and our self than our self
concept and self esteem.
Core study: Van Houtte and Jarvis (1995)
Aim
Are pets good for people? Do adolescents who own pets show higher self-esteem that those who
don’t?
Procedure
130 pupils aged between 8 and 13 years from Illinois USA (71 boys and 59 girls).
Participants were told about the experiment and the school gave permission for them to take part,
pupils could withdraw if they wanted to.
Pupils were split into pet owners and non-pet owners. They were then matched on 3 different
aspects, marital status of their parents, socio-economic status of their parents, and the number of
brothers and sisters they had. Matching participants means that if there was a child in the pet
owners group whose parents were divorced, had a low income and had 4 siblings, then the researchers
would make sure there was a child in the non-pet owners group who also had parents who were
divorced, with a low income and 4 siblings. This was to try and eliminate these confounding variables
from the results. Participants were also asked questions about what pet they had, how long they had
had the pet for and if they took a role in looking after the pet (these questions were for the
researchers so they could take them into account when looking at the individual results).
All participants were then given a questionnaire which consisted of marking their answers on a scale.
Autonomy (independence) was measured by asking questions such as ‘My parents and I agree on
everything’. Self-concept measured by questions such as ‘I am happy’, self-esteem was measured by
questions such as ‘on the whole I am satisfied with my life’ and attachment to animals was measured
by questions such as ‘I consider my pet to be a friend’. All of the scales ranged from strongly
disagree to strongly agree.
Students were debriefed and thanked for taking part, parents were informed by letters being sent
home, these were also used to confirm children had been honest about their pet ownership.
Results
In general Van Houtte and Jarvis found that those who owned pets reported higher self-esteem than
those who did not own pets. Across all age groups, higher autonomy was reported in those who owned
pets.
Conclusion
They concluded that just before children move into adolescence, pets can have a great impact on a
child’s life. They also suggested that pets can raise a person’s self-esteem, be a supportive influence
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and increase the sense of responsibility. This suggests that pets offer unconditional positive regard
towards their owners.
Limitations
Generally this research was conducted very well and was well thought out, however there are still a
number of limitations. Firstly, as self report techniques were used (questionnaires) participants may
not have been entirely honest in their answers. This does not necessarily mean that they outright
lied (although this is a possibility), but that children may have found it difficult to have the
necessary insight to answer some of the questions (it can be hard to answer questions about your self
esteem and self concept if you have not though about these things before). Secondly, the
experiment used scales to quantify their data (putting a number on a scale so you don’t have people
giving answers in long sentences). This could mean that the depth and detail of answers was lost, e.g.
a child may have wanted to answer the question ‘My parents and I agree on everything’ with an
explanation about how they agree on most things but not when it comes to the child’s taste in music
or choice of friends, however the scale did not allow this level of detail. The final limitation of this
study was that the sample was not very representative. Only school children were used, meaning that
the results cannot be generalised to other age groups. The children were all from Illinois USA
meaning that the results cannot be generalised to other areas in the USA let alone other countries
and the sample only included a very small number of ethnic minority pupils, most were white American
(culturally bias).
Applications of research: Counselling
An application of this research is to help individuals understand more about themselves and what
they want. Rogers developed a client centred therapy which works on the basis that the client knows
themselves and has the capacity to change. There are 4 main elements to Rogarian counselling: 1. The
counsellor does not give instructions, they just show they understand what the client is saying and
offer unconditional positive regard, 2. The counsellor has to believe that the client has the potential
to change and achieve self-actualisation, 3. The counsellor shows empathy to the client and shows
them they are understanding how the client feels, 4. The counsellor allows the client to express
themselves as they really are. This client centred approach allows the client to recognise the
situation and the feelings they are going through, by recognising these things it is though that they
will then be able to think of a way of dealing with the situation.
Another application is relationship counselling, the Rogarian technique had been used successfully by
the organisation Relate. Relate offer relationship counselling and is the UKs largest provider of this.
Finally, counselling has also been used successfully in careers guidance programmes. Careers advisors
often use the Rogarian technique to allow the individual to clarify in their own mind what their next
step should be.
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