What is self? How does the Indian notion of self differ from the Western notion?

What is self ?

What is Self ?

From your childhood days, you may have spent considerable time thinking about who you are, and how you are different from others. By now, you already may have developed some ideas about yourself, although you may not be aware of it. Let us try to have some preliminary notion of our self (i.e. who are we?) by completing some Activity.

Understanding the Self Please complete the following sentences starting with “I am”.

Time Now.............

I am........................................................

I am.....................................................

Time when you finished.....................

How easy was it for you to complete these sentences? How much time did you take? Perhaps it was not as easy as you may have thought at first. While working on it, you were describing your ‘self’. You are aware of your ‘self’ in the same way as you are aware of various objects in your surrounding environment, such as a chair or a table in your room. A newly born child has no idea of its self. As a child grows older, the idea of self emerges and its formation begins. Parents, friends, teachers and other significant persons play a vital role in shaping a child’s ideas about self. Our interaction with other people, our experiences, and the meaning we give to them, serve as the basis of our self. The structure of self is modifiable in the light of our own experiences and the experiences we have of other people. This you will notice if you exchange the list you completed under Activity with your other friends.

Notice what they have done. You will find that they have produced a fairly long list of attributes about how they identify themselves. The attributes they have used for identification tell us about their personal as well as social or cultural identities.

What is Personal identity ?

Personal identity refers to those attributes of a person that make her/him different from others. When a person describes herself/himself by telling her/his name (e.g., I am Sanjana or Karim), or her/ his qualities or characteristics (e.g., I am honest or hardworking person), or her/his potentialities or capabilities (e.g., I am a singer or dancer), or her/his beliefs (e.g., I am a believer in God or destiny), s/he isdisclosing her/his personal identity.

What is Social identify ?

Social identity refers to those aspects of a person that link her/him to a social or cultural group or are derived from it. When someone says that s/he is a Hindu or a Muslim, a Brahmin or an adivasi or a North Indian or a South Indian, or something like these, s/he is trying to indicate her/his social identity. These descriptions characterise the way people mentally represent themselves as a person.

Thus, self refers to the totality of an individual’s conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts and feelings with regard to herself or himself. These experiences and ideas define the existence of an individual both at the personal and at social levels.

Self as Subject and Self as Object

If you return to your friends’ descriptions in Activity, you will find that they have described themselves either as an entity that does something (e.g., I am a dancer) or as an entity on which something is done (e.g., I am one who easily gets hurt). In the former case, the self is described as a ‘subject’ (who does something); in the latter case, the self is described as an ‘object’ (which gets affected).

This means that self can be understood as a subject as well as an object. When you say, “I know who I am”, the self is being described as a ‘knower’ as well as something that can be ‘known’. As a subject (actor) the self actively engages in the process of knowing itself. As an object (consequence) the self gets observed and comes to be known. This dual status of self should always be kept in mind.

How many kinds of self are there?

There are several kinds of self. They get formed as a result of our interactions with our physical and socio-cultural environments. The first elements of self may be noticed when a newborn child cries for milk when it is hungry. Although, this cry is based on reflex, this later on leads to development of awareness that ‘I am hungry’. This biological self in the context of socio-cultural environment modifies itself. While you may feel hungry for a chocolate, an Eskimo may not.

Distinction between personal self and social self ?

A distinction is made between ‘personal’ and ‘social’ self. The personal self leads to an orientation in which one feels primarily concerned with oneself. We have talked above how our biological needs lead to the development of a ‘biological self’. But, soon a child’s psychological and social needs in the context of her/his environment lead other components of personal self to emerge. Emphasis comes to be laid on those aspects of life that relate only to the concerned person, such as personal freedom, personal responsibility, personal achievement, or personal comforts. The social self emerges in relation with others and emphasises such aspects of life as cooperation, unity, affiliation, sacrifice, support or sharing. This self values family and social relationships. Hence, it is also referred to as familial or relational self.

COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIOURAL ASPECTS OF SELF

Psychologists from all parts of the world have shown interest in the study of self.

These studies have brought out many aspects of our behaviour related to self. As indicated earlier, all of us carry within us a sense of who we are and what makes us different from everyone else. We cling to our personal and social identities and feel safe in the knowledge that it remains stable in our lifetime.

The way we perceive ourselves and the ideas we hold about our competencies and attributes is also called self-concept. At a very general level, this view of oneself is, overall, either positive or negative. At a more specific level, a person may have a very positive view of her/his athletic bravery, but a negative view of her/his academic talents. At an even more specific level, one may have a positive self-concept about one’s reading ability but a negative one about one’s mathematical skills.

Finding out an individual’s self-concept is not easy. The most frequently used method involves asking the person about herself/ himself.

Self-esteem

Self-esteem is an important aspect of our self. As persons we always make some judgment about our own value or worth.

This value judgment of a person about herself/himself is called self-esteem. Some people have high self-esteem, whereas others may have low self-esteem. In order to assess self-esteem we present a variety of statements to a person, and ask her/ him to indicate the extent to which those statements are true for her or him. For example, we may ask a child to indicate the extent to which statements such as “I am good at homework”, or “I am the one usually chosen for the games”, or “I am highly liked by my peers”, are true of her/ him. If a child reports these statements to be true for her/him, her/his self-esteem will be high in comparison to someone who says “no”.

Studies indicate that by the age of 6 to 7 years, children seem to have formed self-esteem at least in four areas: academic competence, social competence, physical/ athletic competence, and physical appearance, which become more refined with age. Our capacity to view ourselves in terms of stable dispositions permits us to combine separate self-evaluations into a general psychological image of ourselves.

This is known as an overall sense of self-esteem.

Self-esteem shows a strong relationship with our everyday behaviour. For example, children with high academic self-esteem perform better in schools than those with low academic self-esteem, and children with high social self-esteem are more liked by their peers than those with low social self-esteem. On the other hand, children with low self-esteem in all areas are often found to display anxiety, depression, and increasing antisocial behaviour. Studies have shown that warm and positive parenting helps in the development of high self-esteem among children as it allows them to know that they are accepted as competent and worthwhile. Children, whose parents help or make decisions for them even when they do not need assistance, often suffer from low self-esteem.

Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is another important aspect of our self. People differ in the extent to which they believe they themselves control their life outcomes or the outcomes are controlled by luck or fate or other situational factors, e.g. passing an examination. A person who believes that s/he has the ability or behaviours required by a particular situation demonstrates high self-efficacy.

The notion of self-efficacy is based on Bandura’s social learning theory.

Bandura’s initial studies showed that children and adults learned behaviour by observing and imitating others. People’s expectations of mastery or achievement and their convictions about their own effectiveness also determine the types of behaviour in which they would engage, as also the amount of risk they would undertake. A strong sense of self-efficacy allows people to select, influence, and even construct the circumstances of their own life. People with a strong sense of self-efficacy also feel less fearful.

Self-efficacy can be developed. People with high self-efficacy have been found to stop smoking the moment they decide to do so. Our society, our parents and our own positive experiences can help in the development of a strong sense of self-efficacy by presenting positive models during the formative years of children.

Self-regulation

Self-regulation refers to our ability to organise and monitor our own behaviour.

People, who are able to change their behaviour according to the demands of the external environment, are high on self-monitoring.

Many situations of life require resistance to situational pressures and control over ourselves. This becomes possible through what is commonly known as ‘will power’. As human beings we can control our behaviour the way we want. We often decide to delay or defer the satisfaction of certain needs. Learning to delay or defer the gratification of needs is called self-control. Self-control plays a key role in the fulfilment of long-term goals. Indian cultural tradition provides us with certain effective mechanisms (e.g., fasting in vrata or roza and non-attachment with worldly things) for developing self-control.

A number of psychological techniques of self-control have also been suggested.

Observation of own behaviour is one of them. This provides us with necessary information that may be used to change, modify, or strengthen certain aspects of self. Self-instruction is another important technique. We often instruct ourselves to do something and behave the way we want to. Such instructions are quite effective in self-regulation. Self-reinforcement is the third technique. This involves rewarding behaviours that have pleasant outcomes.

For example, you may go to see a movie with friends, if you have done well in an examination. These techniques have been tried out and found quite effective with respect to self-regulation and self-control.

CULTURE AND SELF

Several aspects of self seem to be linked to the characteristic features of the culture in which an individual lives. Analysis of self carried out in the Indian cultural context reveals a number of important features that are distinct from those found in the Western cultural context.

Distinction between Indian Views of self and Western Views of Self ?

The most important distinction between the Indian and the Western views is the way the boundary is drawn between the self and the other. In the Western view, this boundary appears to be relatively fixed.

Self and Group Boundaries in Western and Indian Cultural Perspectives

The Indian view of self, on the other hand, is characterised by the shifting nature of this boundary. Thus, our self at one moment of time expands to fuse with the cosmos or include the others. But at the next moment, it seems to be completely withdrawn from it and focused fully on individual self (e.g., our personal needs or goals). The Western view seems to hold clear dichotomies between self and other, man and nature, subjective and objective.

The Indian view does not make such clear dichotomies. illustrates this relationship.

In the Western culture, the self and the group exist as two different entities with clearly defined boundaries. Individual members of the group maintain their individuality. In the Indian culture, the self is generally not separated from one’s own group; rather both remain in a state of harmonious co-existence. In the Western culture, on the other hand, they often remain at a distance. That is why many Western cultures are characterised as individualistic, whereas many Asian cultures are characterised as collectivistic.