NOTES 3

Unit 4: SELF AS COGNITIVE CONSTRUCT

-Self as cognitive construct In confidence or in an attempt to avoid further analytical discussions,

a lot of people say, "I am who I am" yet, this statement still begs the question, "if you are who you
are, then who are you that makes you who you are?"

-As mentioned earlier, there are various definitions of the "self" and other similar or
interchangeable concepts in psychology simply put, "self" is "the sense of personal identity and
of who we are as individuals (Jhangiani and Tarry 2014)."

-William James (1890) was one of the earliest psychologists to study the self and conceptualized
the self as having two aspects the "I" and the "me".

-The "I" is the thinking, acting, and feeling self (Gleitman, Gross, and Reisburg 2011; Hogg, and
Vaughan 2010). The "me" on the other hand, is the physical characteristics as well as psychological
capabilities that makes who you are (Gleitman, Gross, and Reisburg 2011; Hogg and Vaughan
2010). Carl Rogers's (1959) theory of personality also used the same terms, the "I" as the one who
acts and decides while tha "me" is what you think or feel about yourself as an object
(Gleitman,Gross and Reisburg 2011

-The most influential of them is SIGMUND FREUD. Basically, Freud saw the self its mental processes
and ones behavior as the result of the interaction between the I.D, EGO and the SUPEREGO.

Three reasons why self and identity are social products:

1. We do not create ourselves out of nothing.
2. Whether you like to admit it or not, we actually needs others to affirm and reinforce
who we think we are, we also need them as reference points about our identity.