 In the immortal words of the who who are you? Or maybe a better way to phrase it would be who am I? We spent a lot of time developing our own image of who we are and presenting that to the world and So having an understanding of our own self-concept is really important as a communicator in the way that we Deliver and send our messages and in the way that we interpret messages from others and understanding The role of self-concept in that is really important That's what we're going to focus on in this short video is Understanding the self-concept really just focusing in on what is the self-concept? I wonder some of the different attributes of that so first of all what is the self-concept? That's that's the question so I want you to do me a favor if you have a piece of scrap paper Or even just in your own head for a second here. I want you to think about Five things that are true about you Five things that you would say objectively are true about you You know it could be could be anything it could be your talk could be your brother You could be your a mom it could be you like volleyball it could be you're a good singer anything at all Whatever it is just write down or think about Five things that are true about me that I would say are objectively true about me So the reason we're doing this is because That's the start of and a part of really what we would call your self-concept The self-concept is just this relatively stable set of ideas that you hold to be true about yourself So it's relatively stable to it's it's takes a form and usually holds that for quite a while and doesn't change easily It can be changed, but it's stubborn it wants to say the same And there are things that you hold to be true about yourself now That doesn't mean that they actually are true, but in your mind they are as we'll talk about the self-concept It's not always accurate. It's not always objective But it's it's the stable set of things that you hold to be true about yourself So those things that you wrote down That's your self-concept or at least a part of it those things you say these this is who I am This is true about me. That's a part of your self-concept If we wanted to then go a little further and differentiate between the self-concept and the self-esteem We could then take that list of things that you said are true about yourself So bring that up in your mind again Bring up that list and look at it or have pull it up in your mind again What are the five things that you wrote down and then ask yourself about each of those things? How do I feel about that? How do I feel about that? Does that make me a better person? Do I think that's a good trait or something positive about myself? Or is it something that I'm that I try and hide that I don't feel as good about myself because of that thing? When we start to think about how we feel about each of those things that are part of our self-concept That's our self-esteem Our self-esteem tells us this is a good thing or this is a bad thing And this is something we should let out and let the world know where this is something We need to kind of you know tamp down and hide a little bit about ourselves That's the difference between the self-concept and the self-esteem again The self-concept is the relatively stable set of ideas that you hold to be true about yourself and your self-esteem is How do you feel about each of those things? So now that we have an understanding of what the self-concept is specifically and what self-esteem is But let's talk a little bit about what? What happens to develop the self-concept how that self-concept develops? Well, there are a variety of factors in the development of the self-concept of one of which is the personality and biology of the person So, you know, there are certain things that we're just born with right now It comes through DNA comes through comes to the genes through our genetics through our parents and And some of that is just biology and so we see ourselves I mean if you're super tall or you're super a good singer or whatever that may be something that you inherited from your parents But it could just be to your personality traits people tend to behave like their parents genetics are very very strong things so Our personality and our biology that will have a massive influence on our on our self-concept Also the reflected appraisal which basically means how do other people see you or and what impression do they give you about you know If they're judging you for example, if they're holding up scorecards, what do people say about you? And just in general, are you a good person? Are you you know somebody that people like to be around or they somebody that they avoid being around? And then more specifically you can get into different traits to how do people feel about your singing? How do people feel about your golfing? How do people feel about your parenting or whatever it is? That's that's reflected appraisal the input and feedback we get from others around us. Is that reflected appraisal? This is really especially powerful for where groups and individuals that we call our significant others Now it doesn't have to be somebody we're romantically involved with Significant others anybody whose opinion we especially value could be our parents could be our siblings could be our best friends Could be you know those people in particular when they say something it really hits home and really Has an impact on our self-concept positively or negatively So that's reflected appraisal though the input that we get and feedback we get from from those around us That helps shape our self-concept as well We also tend to engage in social comparison at times So we gauge ourselves against society in different ways and things we see around us. So For me It would it would be a better comparison for me socially to to go down to the wine compare myself as a basketball player to other You know middle-aged white guys down at the Y who are in my same You know kind of shape, which is not very good. My shape is round, right? So I'd be a much better off in terms of my self-concept and that'd be much more realistic For me to do that and have an idea of where I'm at as a basketball player than to compare myself with somebody like LeBron James Right or any professional basketball player or anybody within you basketball skill at all doing that's gonna You know really damage my self-concept if we have inappropriate social comparison groups but that doesn't mean we shouldn't shouldn't stretch ourselves and push ourselves toward goals, but At this point I'm not going to be LeBron James, right? So I need to find a reasonable social comparison group for my skills as a basketball player And we need to do that for the health of our self-concept as well be aware of our social comparison groups Then there are also culture and gender roles culture and gender And culture in particular influences everything about our life and everything about our communication So we look around at our culture for to see What's appropriate? What's good quote-unquote good, right? But we do need to be careful because this is contrary to what you see in the media We are not all supposed to look the same So we have this issue of you know, I'm looking around at my culture I'm seeing that I'm out of the norm right if this is the office of rules and norms I'm outside of the norm and that makes me feel bad about myself But the truth is in some ways, we're not all supposed to be the same So we need to be cautious with that as well But our culture will give us kind of those gut and those guardrails about this is who we are as a culture And as a people and try and stay within those things and then you have some people who intentionally work outside of that And that's part of there. That's part of their self-concept is to do that But but how we fit into that culture those culture and gender roles will have an impact on our self-concept as well So some different characteristics of the self-concept some different things we need to keep in mind and understand About the self-concept first of all self-concepts are multifaceted. We have more than one self I mean we have more than one self so to speak in different situations We will let these different selves out and and and show different sides of our personality probably and and so But we have the self concept is multifaceted. We don't just have one self concept or one self We have multiple cells and it's not a psychological break or anything like that. It's just how the human Personality is made up So concepts are also partially subjective. We mentioned I mentioned this when we talked about the definition There there these things there it's there's these things that you hold to be true about yourself That doesn't mean they actually are right. We need a differentiate between objective and subjective Objective says these are oranges. That's objective whether you like oranges or not. Those are oranges subjective says I love oranges I do not love oranges. So my subjective view of this of this Of this pile of oranges will be different than the person on the right. They love oranges I don't but even so objectively we can agree that they are oranges So we need to consider things Remember that the self concept is subjective, right? It's possible for us to look at it and and see something different than somebody else Somebody else may tell us we're really good at something and in our mind we have a fix that we're not So we need to be aware of that and where that the self con our own self concept can be off at times It can be incorrect at most at times I Mention this before too are enduring, but they're changeable. They're relatively stable set of concepts, but they can be changed They they they're their their notion is to say the same, but they can be changed for sure This is a reference if you're familiar with the movie the princess brides. Hello. My name is in ego Montoya It's a reference to the movie the princess bride and there's a character in her name in ego Montoya And he spends his entire life and this is an ego. He's on the left in ego Montoya is on the left And he spends his entire life Going after this one goal of killing the six-fingered man then spoiler alert he does in the movie He gets to he gets to the six-fingered man And he does kill him and he avenges his father's death and afterwards he's talking to his friend Wesley at the window here and he's saying You know, I've spent my entire life chasing this one thing now I don't know who I am without that who am I his self concept is enduring his self concept was I am the greatest swordsman in the World I'm in ego Montoya. I'm here to kill the six-fingered man, and that's it Right and once that was done his self concept was having trouble moving on and shifting We've got to be able to have that flexibility and and you know work on that flexibility. It takes time We can do that though So this is just to give you an overview of the self concept and what it is now that we have an understanding Of what the self concept is we can get to some different aspects of how the self Impacts communication and what role it plays in communication If you have questions about the self self concept anything related to to communication at all, please feel free to email me I'd love to hear from you in the meantime I hope that you've done some evaluating your self concept and self-esteem and have a better understanding of what it is so that we move forward as And increasing our communication competence we can understand the role that self concept would play in that