Michael Schwalbe. Encyclopedia of Social Theory. Editor: George Ritzer, Volume 2, Sage Reference, 2005.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Harvard psychologist William James laid down a cornerstone of modern self theory. In his 1890 Principles of Psychology, James distinguished between the self as knower (the I) and the self as object known (the Me, or self-concept). This formulation offered a language for talking about matters that had been obscured by reifications such as psyche, mind, soul, spirit, and ego. Following James, the self could be seen as both a process—acts of perception and knowing—and the outcome of that process—knowledge about the knower. James’s distinction remains basic to self theory today.
The origins of self theory lie in human prehistory. As our hominid ancestors sought to explain the world around them, they likewise struggled to explain themselves. The world of dreams, images, thoughts, and feelings was perhaps no less troubling a mystery than the outer world of animals, plants, weather, and landscape. Where did these inner forces come from, and how did they relate to the outer world? What made one person different from another? To wrestle with these questions was to begin to theorize about the self.
Reflecting on the capacities, dispositions, and inner processes that make us human may thus be as old as consciousness. By the time such reflections began to be recorded, people surely had been thinking about human nature for ages. When Socrates (470-399 BCE) urged “know thyself,” he presumed an intellectual framework within which disciplined introspection made sense. The Socratic admonition leaves open, however, the question of precisely what it is we should seek to know. And that is the question that has occupied subsequent social theorists.
To try to identify a history of thought regarding the self raises, first, the question of whether there exists a body of thought that constitutes a coherent tradition of theorizing about the self. By modern standards of scholarship, the answer is no, at least prior to the nineteenth century. Before then, one can find a great deal of philosophical and theological discourse about the inner processes—or, more often, “essences”—that constitute human nature. Absent is conceptual consensus or continuity. Psyche, soul, spirit, mind, proprium, and ego may all be answers to roughly the same question, but the answers, cast in such disparate terms, refuse to add up.
A major shift in thinking began to appear in the eighteenth century. Before this, Leibniz, Descartes, and other rationalist philosophers of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Renaissance period embraced a neoclassical view of the human being. In this view, the mind—that which made us self-aware and uniquely human—is an indisputably natural, indeed axiomatic, feature of individuals. This was expressed in Descartes’s famous dictum: I think, therefore I am. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, this dictum was supplanted by one that has remained foundational ever since: I am social, therefore I can think.
This shift had vast implications for theorizing about the self as a social phenomenon and a matter for empirical study. The eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosophers, notably David Hume and Adam Smith, drew attention to how social life engendered the moral habits and sentiments that make us human. Hume and Smith (and later Marx, Weber, and Durkheim) saw how capitalist industrialization was altering social relationships, giving rise to new categories and groups, creating new moral strains, and in these ways, generating new patterns of thought. In light of such changes, it was no longer tenable to see the human mind as insulated from social life. The inner processes that make us human were coming to be seen as inexorably linked to the organization of social life.
James’s contribution opened the way to deeper understandings of these connections between self and society. In James’s view, the self as object known—what he called the Me—becomes more complex as society becomes more complex. The more different ways it is possible to exist in a given society—materially, socially, and spiritually—the more different ways we can know ourselves. The complexity of the Me is also enhanced by the multiple relationships that can exist between individuals and groups. As James (1890) put it in a key passage,
Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind. To wound any one of these his images is to wound him. But as the individuals who carry the images fall naturally into classes, we may practically say that he has as many different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. (p. 294)
This passage foreshadows Charles Horton Cooley’s notion of the looking-glass self, which refers to self-conceptions that derive from imagining how others judge us. The emphasis on feelings attached to self-images also foreshadows Erving Goffman’s discussion of the self as a virtual reality created in interaction. Further implied is a central idea of reference group theory: Behavior is aimed at pleasing the audiences that most powerfully affect our self-conceptions.
Following in the pragmatist tradition, John Dewey and George H. Mead built on James’s ideas concerning the social nature of the self. Dewey emphasized the “I” as a conditioned subjectivity: a configuration of habits shaped by our relationships with others and by our choices in response to the moral dilemmas inherent in social life. Dewey’s contribution was thus to highlight the self as both a social product and an agent of its own making. Mead drew on James, Dewey, and Cooley, powerfully and creatively extending their ideas (see Mead [1934] Mind, Self, and Society). Mead’s profound contributions lay in theorizing about the development of the self, the role of language in this process, and the relationship between mind and self.
Although Mead adopted James’s “I” and “Me” terminology and sometimes referred to these as alternating phases of the self, Mead uniquely conceived of the self as an internalization of the social process of communication. According to Mead, this process entails the use of significant symbols, which are those that evoke, by virtue of learned convention, a similar response in the user and the perceiver. Using such symbols requires taking the perspective of the other—that is, sympathetically imagining the other’s response to the symbol (be it gestural, oral, or textual). Taking the perspective of the other implies, in turn, the ability to look back on oneself as an object. To do this—to act and then, in the next moment, perceive the meaning of that act from the standpoint of an other—is, for Mead, what it means for an individual to have a self.
In Mead’s view, the self is not inborn but emergent. This occurs as the child learns to use language (rather than impulsive cries and gestures) to evoke responses in others. To use language in this way requires perspective taking, which in turn enables perception of oneself as actor/object. As the child masters the use of language to evoke precise responses in others, the child also learns to carry on the process imaginarily. The unfolding of this internal conversation—in which one’s acts, the reactions of others, and one’s reactions to those reactions are represented in consciousness—is the process that constitutes the self. Further development occurs as the individual gains facility with language and the ability to take the perspectives of diverse others. Adult development is achieved when individuals are able to take the perspective of a community, or what Mead called the generalized other.
Mead’s view also distinguishes self from mind. Rather than use the static term mind, Mead preferred to speak of minded behavior, by which he meant behavior that was not merely impulsive but was mediated by internal representations—imagery—of external objects and completed acts. Mead argued that the highly complex human nervous system enables the internal representation and imaginary manipulation of complex external states. This use of imagery and cognitive manipulation occurs “in the field of mind,” wherein also arises the process of self as described above. A prominent feature in the field of mind is the Me—the person as a social object—which is taken into account, along with other persons and objects, in forming minded behavior, or what contemporary symbolic interactionists call a “line of action.”
James and Mead are the giants of classic social theorizing about the self. They conceived the self as distinct from and not reducible to psyche, spirit, mind, or ego. Both theorists also linked the self—as process and object—to social life. The distinction between self as knower and self as object known also has been enormously important for later work on the self. It would be fair to say that twentieth-century social-psychological study of the self is not merely indebted to James and Mead, but barely imaginable without them.
Contemporary Themes
Beginning early in the twentieth century, the self has been one of the most heavily studied topics in social psychology. Review articles began to appear in the early 1900s (e.g., Mary Calkins [1919]). Yet most of the theoretical and empirical work on the self throughout the century can be seen as moving along paths cut by classical self theorists. Four themes, or focal concerns, thus continue to dominate self theory: (1) the nature of the self as knower; (2) the content, causes, and consequences of self-conceptions; (3) the interactive construction of virtual selves through expressive and interpretive behavior; and (4) the etiology of the self.
Until the 1980s, little effort was made to further theorize the self as knower. It was as if this aspect of the self, the I of James’s formulation, simply had to be assumed rather than explained. The cognitive revolution in psychology changed this. Under the influence of ideas associated with computer science, the brain was now seen as a kind of organic computer, and mind as “software” that ran on this organic platform. Some social psychologists, mostly in psychology, took this computer metaphor seriously and used it to reconceive the self as knower.
In this view, the self as knower is theorized as a schema. A schema is not static but rather, as Greenwald and Pratkanis (1984) define it, “an active, self-monitoring knowledge structure” (p. 142). A knowledge structure that can assimilate information, manipulate that information using a stable set of algorithms, and then modify itself as a result, is, in essence, a highly sophisticated computer program. Theorists who take this approach treat the self as a program for which the original code is not directly accessible. The empirical task, then, is to observe how the program functions—that is, how the self as knower processes information—and thereby infer its hidden operating logic.
Perhaps because it seemed more empirically accessible, far more attention has been paid to the self as object known, or what is now called the self-concept. Theorists have thus sought to specify, first, the content of the self-concept—that is, the kinds of knowledge we have about ourselves. We know ourselves, for example, in terms of public and private roles, categorical and group identities, and a set of character traits. Study of the content of the self-concept has also examined the organization of this knowledge. Some theorists have suggested, for example, that the self-concept is a theory we have about ourselves—a theory consisting of axioms, first-order propositions, and a host of logical implications.
Also recognized as key parts of the self-concept are self-evaluations and self-esteem. Although the self, like any object, can be evaluated in many ways, it has been suggested that the two main dimensions of self-evaluation, in Western societies, are competence (also referred to as self-efficacy) and morality (also referred to as self-worth). Self-esteem is then often defined as the affective response to these evaluations. Theorists have also posited two kinds of self-esteem: (1) “global,” referring to chronic, generalized feelings of positive or negative self-regard, and (2) “situational,” referring to more transitory feelings about the self that are influenced by events in a particular context.
Among all the concepts associated with self theory, self-esteem has gained the greatest currency in popular culture (see Hewitt 1998). Folk psychologists and moral entrepreneurs often invoke self-esteem as the cause of all manner of behaviors, good and bad. Crime, teenage pregnancy, unemployment, and failure in school have been alleged to result from low self-esteem. The obvious solution is then held to be raising self-esteem. Research has consistently found, however, that self-esteem is of only slight predictive value, relative to situational variables, when trying to explain social behavior.
The self-concept is universally seen as social in origin. Roles and identities derive from one’s place in a social order; the meanings of identities are socially constructed and situationally variable; terms for character traits, as well as criteria for applying them, are aspects of culture; standards for self-evaluation are likewise socially learned. This view suggests that the self-concept is not only a product of social life but that its shape and content mirror the culture and social organization in which an individual develops. There is also agreement that the self-concept is formed by, and remains subject to the influence of, feedback from others (reflected appraisals); the ways we measure ourselves against others (social comparisons); and our observations of what we do and make happen (self-perceptions).
Three self-concept motives have been posited to explain how the self-concept shapes behavior. The tendency to behave in ways that affirm central identities is attributed to a self-consistency or self-verification motive. The tendency to behave in ways that generate positive reflected appraisals (from important audiences), favorable social comparisons, and perceptions of morality and competence is attributed to a self-esteem motive. And the tendency to behave in ways that produce observable and valued effects on the world is attributed to a self-efficacy motive. Theorists have thus sought to understand the self-concept not only as a social product but also as a social force.
A different approach to the self is found in theoretical work associated with the dramaturgical and semiotic perspectives. In the dramaturgical view, associated with Erving Goffman, the self is a “dramatic [or rhetorical] effect,” that is, an attribution of character that is interactively constructed through expressive and interpretive behavior. The only self that matters, in other words, is the one attributed to us based on our acts of signification, because this is the self to which others respond. Other than presuming a concern for protecting the feelings attached to cherished self-images, the dramaturgical perspective has little to say about cognition or self-conceptions. The semiotic perspective similarly focuses on expressive behavior, analyzing the signifying acts (sometimes called identity work) through which virtual selves are created in interaction.
A related approach that also treats the self as a linguistic construction points to what Kenneth Gergen calls “narratives of the self.” In this view, similar to the dramaturgical, the self is an impression, a virtual reality, created in our minds and the minds of others. This impression, however, is created not only through situated expressive behavior and reactions to that behavior but through lifelong storytelling about ourselves. Who we are is thus seen as a result of how we selectively weave the purported facts of biography into stories about ourselves. Studies of the narrative construction of the self have examined cultural templates for biographical storytelling and the interactive creation of self-narratives in therapeutic groups.
In the 1980s, there emerged a strain of self theory influenced by postmodernist social theory more generally (see Elliott 2001). The core argument was that as social life had become more fast-paced, fluid, fragmented, and soaked in media images, the self had changed correspondingly. According to postmodernist self theory, the idea of a solid, stable self as the basis of personhood is passé. “The postmodern self,” as Gecas and Burke (1995) described it in a critical review of the literature, is “decentered, relational, contingent, illusory, and lacking any core or essence” (p. 57). Some theorists went so far as to argue that the self had disappeared. Critics of the postmodernist view granted that changes in society could produce changes in self-conceptions and experiences of personhood but preferred to treat any such changes as matters for empirical study rather than accepting the self’s demise by theoretical fiat.
At the start of the new century, studies of the self and self-concept continue to move along the paths outlined above. Researchers remain concerned with how culture and social structure shape the self and with how the self in turn shapes thought and behavior. Narrative approaches to studying self and identity seem to be gaining ground relative to older approaches based on experiments and surveys. At the other end of the spectrum, an emerging neurobiological perspective aims to theorize the relationship between the organization of neural networks in the brain and the emergence of self-consciousness. Each path carries on the ageless human project of understanding the self as knower and as object never fully known.