indentity and the self

-the ideal self-self image-self esteem

The Ideal Self

The ‘ideal self’ is easier in theory than in practice as looking into our ideal self often results in ‘gate keeping’’, where we filter out any information that may cause negative perceptions. In expressing our ideals we will often refer to others: Role Models.

The idea of the Ideal Self then becomes further complicated because, according to Rogers (1961) we have a number of levels of ‘self’:

o public

o private

o core

ROGERS suggests that the gap between self image and ideal self is likely to be a measure of ones self worth or ‘self esteem’.

Self living prophecy à living up to the labels other people give us.

conducted the 'who am i?' questionaire on a group of 7 year olds and a group of university students. Thier response fell into two catagories..

1) social roles --> the roles we play either ascribed (son, daughter etc) or achieved (student, worker etc)

2)personality traits-->statements about what we like

The students were more concerned with social roles, suggesting that as we get older we describe ourselves in terms of the jobs that we do or the status that we have.

‘LOOking Glass Theory’

COOLEY (1992) suggests that we look to others to validate our behavior and confirm for us (hopefully) that we are projecting the image that we want. Cooley’s theory then is really about the version of us we find reflected in others

We usually have three images of ourselves in our heads at any one time: a realistic view of our self, an ideal version which we try to live up to, and a looking glass self (Cooley) – this is the version of ourselves that we have reflected back at us by other people, in the way that they react to us.