GED101 - Understanding the Self

Before reading the article, I used to think that self-concept and identity are the same. I used to
interchange the two believing that my self-concepts are directly my “identities”. After reading the article,
I now think that self-concept and identity are different. Self-concept is a cognitively structured belief and
that identity is a way of making a clearer self-concept. I also learned that self and identity are social
products where according to Oyserman (2007,2009), some people would change how they act because
they want others to view them just as how they view themselves. The third thing I learned from the article
is that a few aspects of our self and identity can be determined by what is relevant at the moment.
While the article gave clear and concise information about the self, some were a little unclear to
me. For example, self, self-concept, and identity are mental constructs. Second, the relevance of the
inclusion-exclusion model to our self and identity, and lastly, the concept of dynamic construction is still
unclear to me.
And so, I would like to end this with three questions I would like to ask from the reading:
1. How and when do we determine that our self-concept is our identity?
2. If the self, self-concept, and our identity are mere beliefs constructed by our minds, does that
mean our true self does not exist?
3. Is it possible that self-concepts can be wrong?