We all are human beings, and as such we share some necessary characteristics which make us different from other living species. But each of us is also unique and different from other people. What makes us different and unique is both external and internal to the individual. To define ourselves we use different identities. Identities are parts into which the self is organized, and each of them is tied to different aspects of the social life, positions and role relationships a person holds in the society (Stryker, 1980; Stets and Burke, 2003). Identity can be defined as
a set of meanings attached to the self in a social role, this set of meanings serves as a standard or reference for a person. When an identity is activated in a situation, a feedback loop is established (Stets and Burke, 2003: 137).
Discussing the concept of identity, Anna Lubecka describes it as
the self-consciousness in all aspects of being and action, i.e. the knowledge of one’s corporeality, spirituality and emotionality [...] (Lubecka, 2005: 30).
It involves both features which are shared by all members of one group, community or culture and features distinguishing them from others (Lubecka, 2005: 30). Identity incorporates the individual and the social.
From the very beginning of the study of the self, scholars have discussed the multiplicity of the human self and provided various descriptions of its components. James (1890: 294) maintained that a person “has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognise him” (see also Mead, 1934; Harter, 1997). These selves are organized into a complete unitary self whose components correspond to different aspects of the social process the individual is involved in (Mead, 1934). A person’s self-concept is typically represented as a set of self-aspects (multiple selves) (Showers and Zeigler-Hill, 2003; Fitzgerald, 1993). Thus, in the unity of the self there is multiplicity of identities. The basis for the multiple self-concept varies from individual to individual; it usually includes distinct roles, contexts, relationships, activities, traits, and states (Showers and Zeigler-Hill, 2003).
Various scholars have divided the self into different component elements. According to James (1890), the self (he calls it empirical self ) consists of three parts: the material self, spiritual self and social self. The material self refers to tangible objects, people, and places, talking about which one can use one of the possessive pronouns, my or mine. It includes the bodily self (e.g., my head, my
hand) and the extracorporeal self (e.g., my computer, my son, my book). The
spiritual self “refers to our perceived inner psychological qualities” (Brown,
1998: 25; cf. Denzin’s phenomenological self). It includes everything we refer to as my or mine, but which is not a tangible object, a person, or a place. These are our emotions, interests, abilities, motives and desires. The third self-component is the social self, the creation of which involves the participation of other people. Baldwin (1897), whose interests focused mainly on social aspects of the self, claims that the social self consists of ego and alter. Ego refers to your own view of yourself, while alter to your thoughts about other people. Ego elements include an individual’s social roles, interests, affiliations, and interpersonal relations. Alter elements include all the persons an individual has some thoughts of, e.g., intimates, friends, acquaintances, and public figures.
Denzin (1992), who also analyses the concept of self from the symbolic interactionist standpoint, adds to James’ three self components a couple of others. The linguistic self refers to the person filling in the empty personal pronoun (I, me) with personal, biographical, and emotional meanings. The
ideological self involves the broader cultural and historical meanings surrounding
the definition of the individual in a particular group or social situation (e.g., tourist, husband). The self as desire refers to “that mode of self experience which desires its own fulfilment through the flesh, sexuality, and the bodily presence of the other” (Denzin, 1992: 26).
Although the human self is a complex of natural, species-given structures and processes, it is also a cultural construct. The natural (“true,” “real,” or “private”) self exists beneath a sometimes dazzling, but always thin, cultural overlay (Holland, 1997: 162; Ashmore and Jussim, 1997; Barker, 2005). We are similar by nature, but we differ a lot in the ways we behave. This way of thinking is shared by many theorists of self. For Turner et al. (1987), everyone uses three basic self-categorizations to define themselves: human identity, social identity and personal identity. Human identity is that part of an individual’s self-concept which involves the features shared by all human beings. Social
identity “refers to how we are regarded and recognized by others” (Brown,
1998: 24; cf. Denzin’s (1992) interactional self presented and displayed to another in a sequence of action). It is a socially constructed and socially meaningful category which is accepted by an individual as descriptive of himself. It provides answers to the question “Who am I?” (Thoits and Virshup, 1997). It is this part of an “individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel, 1981: 255; 1978; 1972). Our social identities may be based on our membership in various categories (e.g., nationality, ethnicity, gender, age, social class), the roles we play (e.g., mother, husband, teacher), our membership in different organizations (e.g., political parties, professional societies), our vocations (e.g., scholar, tailor, artist), or our membership in “stigmatized groups”
(e.g., the homeless, people with AIDS) (Gudykunst, 2004: 77). We can simultaneously be members of many groups or communities, and as such have many different identities which form the self.
Personal identity is the part of the self-concept that defines the individual as
unique. Goffman (1986: 57) describes personal identity as
the positive marks or identity pegs, and the unique combination of life history items that comes to be attached to the individual with the help of these pegs for his identity. Personal identity, then, has to do with the assumption that the individual can be differentiated from all others and that around this means of differentiation a single continuous record of social facts can be attached, entangled, like candy floss, becoming then the sticky substance to which still other biographical facts can be attached.
So what distinguishes an individual from others can be (Goffman, 1986: 56; Harter, 1997):
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a “positive mark” or “identity peg,” e.g., “the photographic image of the individual in others’ minds, or the knowledge of his special place in a particular kinship network,”•
“name-bound” — information about his life history (Giddens, 1991),•
“body-bound,” or more specifically face-bound — information concerning his pattern of behaviour.The personal identity is a self-description referring to unique details of biography and idiosyncratic experiences. It is a construct deeply embedded in interpersonal relationships in which the impact of significant others is of crucial importance (Harter, 1997). Thus, both the individual and the social have a strong impact on its creation.
Brewer and Gardner (1996) see an individual not only as a participant in social interaction in which he comes into contact with other people, but also as a member of various collectivities which can influence him as a person. That is why they distinguish between three aspects of the self: the individual self (cf. personal identity as described above), which can be defined by personal traits that differentiate a self from others, the relational self (cf. social self/identity and interactional self as described above), defined by dyadic relationships assimilating the self to significant others, and the collective self (cf. social self/identity as described above), defined by group membership that differentiates “us” from “them” (Hogg, 2003; see also Tajfel and Turner, 1979). All these forms of self-conceptualization are socially constructed and grounded and are culturally variable (Harter, 1997; Hogg, 2003; Barker, 2005). They depend on cultural and social circumstances (see Section 4.3.3.). All self components are “enacted” during social interaction and become part of a person’s biography.
The self-concept may also be described in terms of the truth-falsity of its components. Among the multiplicity of selves an individual may have true and false ones. The true self is what constitutes “the real me.” True self-behaviour consists in “saying what you really think,” “expressing your own opinion.” This is not always what individuals would like to show to others. The false self, on the other hand, is created when an individual tries to live up to the standards and expectations of significant others. False self-behaviour, then, includes “not stating your true opinion” and “saying what you think others want to hear” (Harter, 1997: 85). The main reasons for not expressing one’s true self are:
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the belief that it will not be accepted by significant others,•
an attempt to be approved of,•
an attempt to avoid rejection,•
an attempt to maintain a good social relationship with others.So hiding the true self and creating a false one is usually done for pragmatic reasons. Certainly, acting differently in different contexts does not have to constitute false self-behaviour (Harter, 1997). We behave in different ways in different situations in which we “put on” different social identities. This multiplicity in unity is a characteristic feature of every individual self-concept.