Essay 1 (aka Wall of Text!)

Social Identity and the Social Self

 

Is it possible to truly know one’s self?

No.

Self perception is like walking down a hallway of broken and tarnished mirrors, each wall reflecting the other infinitely. It is ever changing, convoluted and fractured, so that the true self is indistinguishable from the objects and people that surround us. Allow me to explain…

As Nietzsche understood it; “Truths are illusions about which we have forgotten that this is what they are” (Paul de Man, 1979 as cited in Anderson, 2005). By this he meant that the interests weighing upon our minds inevitably bias our perception, and the culture and society in which we exist will change the way we perceive and express ourselves. Complete objectivity is a fantasy, impossible, as even the very thoughts in our head are shaped by the language we use, and the values we aspire to.

This is not to say that the pursuit of intimate knowledge of one’s own self is an unworthy one.

Indeed this is at the heart of Social Psychology, and over the years many theories and experiments have been proposed that seek understanding of who we really are, and how we function in relation to each other. In this essay I will be exploring these theories using my own perceived social identity (regardless of flaw and bias) to exemplify them.

To begin, it should be noted that I do not have one single social identity. As many social psychologists in the past have pointed out; the social identity is fluid, depending on the roles that an individual fulfils and the context in which these roles are performed (Tajfel, 1982; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell 1987, as cited in Reicher, Hopkins & Harrison 2006). For instance, at home I am a son and a brother, while at university I am a student, a friend or a classmate. In addition to this, how I choose to perform these roles adds to the variability of my social identities.

The factors that give meaning to these seemingly abstract labels are far more complicated, very much determined by the culture and society you belong to, the class you inherit and various physiological characteristics. Howarth (2002), for example, points out the importance of race in self conceptualisation within the UK town of Brixton. She emphasises the multiculturalism of the region, as well as its perceived economic disadvantage, linking these contexts to the formation of social identity in the youths she studied. She found that while many of the inhabitants of Brixton identified themselves in a positive light, as members of a vibrant multicultural community, this conflicted with an outside interpretation of the region as poor, riddled with crime and dangerous. This conflict often lowered self esteem and created a self concept that was tainted with the malignant perceptions of others (Howarth, 2002).

This suggests two simple things; what you interpret a social identity to mean is closely tied to the group you identify with, but it can also be greatly affected by how another group perceives your group, especially when the out groups perception is in conflict with the in groups. For instance, I identify myself as a University of Canberra student, I work with other students often, and I have friends that are students here. I consider it to be a good university that contains a diverse mix of students and staff catering to a wide range of learning styles. However I also know of students from other universities that insinuate that the bulk of UC’s students are lazy or incompetent, only studying at UC because they were incapable of getting in to a better university. This conflict filters into my social identity as a University of Canberra student, if only a little, and effects the way I fulfil that role wether I like it or not.

However, social identity is sometimes not just about who you identify with, but who you don’t identify with as well. Vignoles, Chryssochoou, and Breakwell (2000) suggest that all humans desire a level of distinctiveness from the people around them, something that separates them from the groups they belong to as a whole. They also point out that this desire for distinctiveness is “portrayed as a core value of Western cultures” (Vignoles, Chryssochoou, & Breakwell 2000, 203 as cited in Vignoles, Chryssochoou, & Breakwell 2003). I agree with them, in that I would find it very discomforting if all I had to identify with were categories describing group affiliations. In fact, in the vast majority of cases I identify myself in relation to those things that I am not. I am not an American, I am not a woman, I am not poor or Catholic or a Liberal voter etc.

Another factor that contributes to a person’s social identity is their self-consciousness, though it has more impact upon every day social interactions than longer term identity conceptualisation. Fenigstein, Scheier and Buss (1975) believed that self-consciousness consisted of two major components: the private self-consciousness which analysed internal thoughts and feelings, and the public self-consciousness which constituted an individual’s awareness of themselves and the effect they had on other people in a social context. My private self-consciousness tells me that I think of myself as shy and reserved. However, my public self-consciousness is not as perceptive as my private self-consciousness, so I might be completely deluding myself.

Social identity plays a big part in how we interact with other people, how we see ourselves and how we articulate ourselves to others. We don’t simply have one single social identity, but many that shift and change with every social situation imaginable or unimaginable. Many factors influence how these identities are created, such as race, socialisation, inter-group interaction and so forth. Our social identities are also affected by how we see ourselves when we are separate from the groups we belong to, how we distinguish ourselves and even our personal thoughts and feelings. Unsurprising as human beings are such socially motivated animals.

However, we often get mixed up in our social worlds to the point that we lose sight of the bigger picture. We shouldn’t forget that while attempting to better understand who we are and where we fit in to society, it’s also important to look at where we fit in to the universe as well.

 

References

 

Anderson, R. (2005). Nietzsche on truth, illusion, and redemption. European Journal of Philosophy, 13, 185-225.

Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M.F., & Buss, A.H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522-527.

Howarth, C. (2002). Identity in whose eyes? The role of representation in identity construction. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 32, 145-162.

Reicher, S., Hopkins, N., & Harrison, H. (2006). Social identity and spatial behaviour: The relationship between national category salience, the sense of home, and labour mobility across national boundaries. Political Psychology, 27, 247-263.

Vignoles, V.L., Chryssochoou, X., & Breakwell, G.M. (2002). Evaluating models of identity motivation: Self-esteem is not the whole story. Self and Identity, 1, 201-218.