Identity

Fixed: perment without my control ie hair colour, parents, eye colour etc
Fluid: shift and change ie hair dye, clothes, hair cut etc

Self Concept:
1. Self Image
2. Ideal Self
3. Self Esteem

Role Models

Kuhan and Mcpartland

Who am I?
-experiment 

Younger children: Personailty Trairs eg grumpy, cheeky, happy etc

Elder people: Social responsiblilty (more experienced) eg roles: mother, sister, friend etc

'Layers of self-consciousness'

Respect of others boosts our self esteem:

1. Reactions to others
2. Comparisons to others
3. Identification with others

For example:
I wear a lot of make up because my self esteem is low, however when I get told I look nice it boosts my self esteem to carry on wearing make up.

Pygrnalion Effect:

How the expectations of one person can have an impact on another.

For example:
Telling someone they will succeed drives them to be more successful
For example:
Telling only brown eyed students that they will pass their exams will then create other students to belief they will not pass.Therefore these students will live up to a negative self fullfilling prophecy, by not bothering to revise for their exams and as a result fail.

Looking Glass Theory:
The version of ourselves we see through others responses.

1. We modify our behaviours accordingly.
2. How we believe how others pecieve us shapes and forms our self concept/identity.

For example:
My friends said I smelt nice the other day created me to modify my choices to carry on wearing that same perfume.  

Cooley:
The greater our engagment with a person, the more significant the mirror effect is.

When we are criticised, the self is faced with opposing sets of data:
1. Negative data: from the world experience
2. Positive data: from the self concept

Dissonance Theory:
We attempt to weaken one side of the argument in order to preserve ourselves.

For example:
I am a smoker and therefore I understand the issues with smoking however I employ dissonance strategies to protect myself:
- belittle the evidence
- associate with other smokers
- Convince smoking relieves my stress

Gergen and Gergen: Self maintance strategies:
1. Self maintance stragies protect us from negative feedback.
 -These are dissonant responses for keeping the self intact.

Self maintance strategies:
-mixing with like minded people
-Dis believing what others say
-Self hanicapping: too scared of failure so you stop revising and trying