Different Types of Identities – Self-Concept, Self-Identity and Social Identity (PSY)

00:00 Now, let’s take a look at identity and look at how some of the interactions you have will shape that identity.

00:08 Previous information that is consistent with one’s self-concept is easy to remember.

00:13 If you say, “I’m funny and I’m intelligent.” Then you’re going to remember situations and experiences that aligned with that model of yourself.

00:28 You are going to remember all the funny things that have happened to you overtime.

00:31 You are going to remember how you’ve accomplish certain things that make you and help shape you to be intelligent.

00:36 So these things will be in a forefront but you might forget the time that you didn’t do so well because it does not align with your self-concept.

00:45 So if you think you’re really funny and intelligent, you’re going to kind of disregard some of the experiences where maybe your jokes bummed or you fail the test. And people make fun of you.

00:57 Those kind of get push to side and you remember the things that aligned very nicely with your self-concept.

01:01 The new information that is consistent with your self-concept and self-schemata are also easier to incorporate.

01:08 So if new things are coming in, I did really well at this, and that’s going to align nicely with the fact that “Oh I am quite smart. And I did really well on this task.” that you’re going to remember that’s going to be easy to integrate into your self-schemata or self-concept of yourself because you’ve said, that your smarter, you believe that your smart.

01:24 Now, the opposite holds true is if other things happen where they don’t align with yourself, you tend to modulate that.

01:34 So there's this phenomenon called the Self-reference effect.

01:37 And that’s the tendency to better remember information relevant to ourselves.

01:40 And if something doesn’t aligned with yourself, the self-reference effect would say that, that’s something your kind of push to side.

01:47 So say for example, you are preparing for this MCAT, you write the MCAT, and you bummed.

01:53 Now, it’s not going to happen to you. But in case it will happen to somebody you know they might say, “Well, their self-schemata… Their sorry, their self-concept of themselves is that they are very bright.

02:04 And that they are going to do well 'cause they’re intelligent.

02:07 But then when they wrote the exam, they did not do well.

02:10 So how do they justify that? How do they explain that? 'cause that does not align very nicely with their self-concept of themselves.

02:16 So they say, “Why I fail the MCAT? Because I was tired or the exam was really unfair.

02:21 it was biased towards people like myself. And that’s why I failed.” So what they’re doing there is what has happened does not aligned with themselves.

02:29 And so based on the self-reference effect, it does not align then move it aside.

02:33 As opposed to, if they did amazing on the test, they are going to remember it and they going to say, “Oh I did amazing because I’m really, really smart.” It aligns quite nicely.

02:43 Let’s get a little bit more into the self-concepts.

02:47 They can have the direct impact on how an individual actually interacts with their environment and their surroundings.

02:52 So if you believe that you are bright and smart and you have a more optimistic view of yourself.

02:59 So we say you have a positive self-concept.

03:01 I’m brighter, I’m smart, I’m funny all of these positive attributes you have an overall more positive view of yourself that’s a good thing and that’s going to lead to better outcomes.

03:12 As opposed to, if you have a negative self-concept of yourself and you saying, “I’m really not that smart. And I’m not that athletic.” And you end being sort of unhappy with yourself.

03:24 If you were to say, “Do you feel you have a positive self-concept or negative self-concept?” If you follow the negative side, they feel that like they are failures.

03:33 And they end up generally speaking being quite, unhappy, or dissatisfied with themselves.

03:37 Therefore, their outlook on life, and their outlook on the things are going to happen experiences that are coming will be essentially fairly negative, okay.

03:46 So let’s take a look how it impacts your identity.

03:52 Carl Rogers who was the founder of Humanistic Approach to Psychology felt a personality is composed of two different types of self.

04:01 And we used that term before of different schemata which represent as self.

04:05 And the schemata is just a composite of what you feel, you look like in that scenario.

04:11 There is two types here: There is ideal self and real self.

04:15 or ideal self is who I ought to be.

04:18 So it’s composed of different life experiences.

04:20 What the society expects from you? Who your role models? These is your ideal self.

04:26 So if you could draw on a piece of paper or mapped out, “I really want to be the best guy possible. I want to be super smart. I want to be athletic.” And based on my role models, I look up to I don’t know Michael Jordan.

04:40 I look up to all these different scholars.

04:43 And so based on all the different attributes to those people that I like that our role model to me, I ought to be THAT.

04:50 That is the best Terry that I can be.

04:52 And then there's the sad reality of this is who I actually am.

04:56 We call it the real self.

04:58 So you put those two together and you actually going to have some overlaps.

05:03 In reality, it’s fairly rare that your ideal self-aligns perfectly with your real self.

05:10 You know once you achieved that, you have achieved the magical dream of being perfect, which I’m sure most of us know we’re not.

05:19 So the difference of overlap or the ideal self is not lining up with the real self would be the incongruity.

05:26 So the differences between this two are known as incongruity.

05:29 And collectively speaking this is what help shape our personality.