The self

Self-knowledge requires ongoing self-awareness and self-consciousness. Young infants and chimpanzees display some traits of self-awareness and agency/contingency, yet they aren't considered as also having self-consciousness. At some greater level of cognition, a self-conscious component emerges in addition to an increased self-awareness component, and then it becomes possible to ask "what am I like?" and to answer with self-knowledge.

• George Herbert Mead (1934): Infant sees itself through important figures (mother). At 4-9 months babies understand that they can influence events and people. Sense of self as an agent develops, alongside frustration at limitation
• Robert N Emde (1934): Affective self - focus on connectedness. Self-with-other - "we-self": reflects relationships, in which the other e.g caregiver, is an essential part of the infant's self-regulation. Social me-self: emerges from the eventual teasing apart of the other e.g daddy, and the self.
• The mirror test can be used to test whether an entity can recognise itself. Adult great apes, 18+ month old humans, dolphins, elephants, and European magpies can pass the test.

Knowledge of the self is acquired in ways very similar to knowledge of others. We observe our own behaviours and the reactions of others, and try to make sense of them. Children tend to describe themselves in concrete terms e.g boy/girl, tall/short etc. Adults tend to describe themselves in terms of psychological states e.g outgoing, ambitious etc.

Possible selves are ideas of specific versions of ourselves that we may or may not become. They can be positive or negative. Possible selves help us organise the ways we interpret the world and its interactions with us. Self-knowledge is helpful because it lets us know what we can and can't do

Self-esteem reflects a person's overall subjective and emotional evaluation of their own worth. It's a judgement of oneself as well as an attitude toward the self, thus it is subject to distortions. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself, for example "I am competent", "I am worthy", as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame.

Smith & Mackie (2007) defined it by saying "The self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem is the positive or negative evaluations of the self, as in how we feel about it".

The success of close others feels like a negative comparison. A response to this can be that we distance ourselves from successful people. We spontaneously compare ourselves to others who are worse off. These distortions can guide us toward self-improvement.

Maslow included self-esteem in his famous hierarchy of human needs. He described 2 different forms of "esteem": the need for respect from others in the form of recognition, success, and admiration, and the need for self-respect in the form of self-love, self-confidence, skill, or aptitude.