Читать книгу Social Psychology - Daniel W. Barrett - Страница 184

As you can see from reading this chapter, the seemingly simple question, “what is the self?” is actually quite complex. The self is not one “thing.” Instead it is a nexus of motives, cognitions, and other features that intersect, overlap, and interact in complicated and fascinating ways. We learn about our selves in several ways, including introspection and by the self-perception process of observing how we behave. The self presents a bit of a paradox: It is defined as the experience of the self, suggesting that it is independent, stable, and coherent. However, research shows that it is also dependent on and tied closely to other people— at least how we perceive our relationships with others and how we think they view us—and other people play a particularly large role in self-evaluation. Moreover, our many selves differ from each other and may vary across situations as we engage in self-monitoring and impression management. The self is the product of all of these activities and is continually evolving even as we try to hold it steady. Finally, the self lies at the core of several of the fundamental issues of social psychology, including the extent to which we have free will and the rationality of our thought processes.