Personal Reflection on the Self Paper 1

Personal Reflection on the Self Paper
By Joe Everett
April 21, 2014
University of Phoenix

Personal Reflection on the Self Paper 2 The study of one’s self is a part of social psychology. A person to person in social psychology is not the same as self, now if you asked someone to identify what is self their response will be different all the time because every person will tell you a different response. However, even with all the different responses it does not make any of the answer wrong, it has to do with the person’s perspective that determines what they feel is self, it is because of this we have to wonder how many self’s are we dealing with. If we asked a person that question, they might answer that more than one exists. With this kind of response it is correct because we have to see the inner self, interpersonal self, body self, and the social self. What is considered us or yourself is self-recognized and self identifies; however, what all of this means is that other peoples are not going to see you the same way. There are a couple different theories that deals with such effect and the illusion of transparency. There is what is called a spotlight effect, and this is when a person believes that everyone is looking at them, they think that everyone’s focusing all their attention on how one’s they look or even behavior like, but in reality not one is really paying attention (Myers, 2010). The illusion of transparency theory deals with emotions it has to do with person that is aware of their own emotions and they believed that when others see them they are able to read their emotions (Myers, 2010). These two theories make use of the social world to influence a person’s notion of self, and even their thoughts. What is self, well it has many parts such as self-esteem, social-self, self-concept, and self-knowledge. Self-concept is the answer to the question, “who am I?” (Myers, 2010). This question has plagued social psychologist and also makes them look for the self-concept and that is one’s self. The self-concept deals with certain parts of the body and their feeling. This then
Personal Reflection on the Self Paper 3 pin point self-schemas. Now Self-schemas is the processing of organizing the self that seems to be relevant information (Myers, 2010). These schemas gives a person the ability to take in the surrounding information and then to stores it in their memory. By doing this they can categorize, recognize, and recall this new information that they gained in relation to social stimuli. When dealing with a person’s memory it can be influenced by self-reference. With self-referenced which gives a person the ability to recall information that is important to one’s self. There is another concept is the possible self. This concept deals with the desires or images of what a person wants to become or not become in the future (Myers, 2010). When we deal with self-esteem we are dealing with our self-worth (Myers, 2010). Many people desire a high self-esteem, but there is a downside to a high self-esteem and that is it can backfire if they start to have an amplified self-esteem which can be created (Myers, 2010). Self-esteem can give us inspiration and drive in a person to go for what they want. High self-esteem can be desirable in which a person thinks highly of themselves and not like those with low self-esteem which can give off negative thoughts about themselves (McLeod, 2008). If one does have a too high of self-esteem might start to believe that they are superiority to other people which can create complications in society, this is better known as inflated ego. An example, would be a person is born into money and is handed everything they wanted growing up can feel superior to others that where not handed everything. This can cause problems with others like demanding things from them, it makes them reject this person because of how they acts. Self-knowledge is knowing one’s self and how to function in society. Social-self is part of social identity, influence of others, achievements, and the culture around us. These are all done by life experiences. Life experience happens by going through each stage of life in order to get to the
Personal Reflection on the Self Paper 4 next stage. When I was in high school there was a lot of drug use in school. When my mother found out what was going on in school and saw what kind if influence the social scene had on a child social scene she choose to move up to a school with a better reputation. Because of this move was my first social experience that had an influenced my growth that gave me the strength to become the man I am today. Now coming from one school that had drugs that other where trying to pressure you into taking and can say that I was sheltered by my mother up until then which affected me in from having a social life and this lead to my self-esteem being affected. Now by putting me in a new school I was able to go out and find who I wanted to be. By letting be find who I want to be I started to develop socially. This even helped my self-esteem that led to my confidence being raised. By gaining my confidence I join sports in school. By having all of these experiences gave me the ability to achieve all I wanted. If my mother didn’t have me switch school I do not know what chooses I would have made given all the pressure of drugs. I do feel that this attribute to my success and I would not be married with a child on the way, a good paying job, and going for a bachelor degree in psychology. The second social experience that had an influence me was getting married. When I asked my wife to marry me I started to get overwhelmed with all the things that needed to be done, I had no clue how to get everything done. It was very overwhelming to me when I found out about the cake, flowers, setting chart, band or DJ, and other things as well. I felt that the whole experience is live-and-learn, lots of looking at flower, and trying cakes and I feel that experience is needed. After a little time I was able to find my grove, I can say now that I know more about cakes, colors, and flowers and if I had to help someone I could. With each time I
Personal Reflection on the Self Paper 5 looked at flowers and cakes, and colors my confidence grew and I became better at picking things out. By the time we had to make the final decision on flowers and cakes I had some experience and self-confidence in which I could now claim my self-efficiency as a person. To understand one’s self you have to know the three key aspects. The first is efficacy, the second is concept and the third is esteem. Looking back self-efficacy would be the most important because it gives you the belief in self to do things. Self-esteem gives you the confidence in one’s beliefs, and self-concept is the evaluation that you give yourself. A person is always looking to improve oneself this is done by go into situations that are not comfortable, but they help you out the most.

Personal Reflection on the Self Paper 6 Reference
McLeod, Saul. (2008). Self-Concept. Retrieved from: http://www.simplypsychology.org/self- concept.html
Myers, D. (2010). Social Psychology. (7th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill