Self and Identity

Personal, Social, and Symbolic

Yoshihisa Kashima, Margaret Foddy, Michael Platow, Yoshihisa Kashima, Margaret Foddy, Michael Platow

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780805836844
• eBook ISBN: 9781135654931
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

This edited volume outlines the latest meta-theoretical and theoretical contexts of self-research. Self and Identity examines theoretical accounts of human experience within the contemporary socio-cultural milieu and attempts to answer the question of what it means to be human. It provides a clear structure within which to conceptualize contemporary empirical research on self and identity in terms of personal, social, and symbolic aspects. In so doing, it identifies the symbolic aspect as an emerging area of contemporary significance.

Featuring contributions from a distinguished group of scholars and therapists, the book is organized into four parts. The editors provide section introductions to demonstrate how each chapter relates to the book's overall theme, as well as how the chapter authors responded to the editors' charge to go beyond the social cognitive theory of the self. Part I describes the current meta-theoretical context of self-research, the editors' interpretation of the social cognitive approach to the self, and an emerging alternative theory, the Connectionist Approach. Part II highlights personal perspectives on selfhood, Part III focuses on social perspectives, and Part IV reviews symbolic processes. The concluding chapter reviews the book's major themes with overlapping themes and intellectual disputes.

The book is intended for graduate students and researchers in social and personality psychology interested in self and identity and self-research. It may also be used as a supplemental text in advanced-level courses on self and identity.

Part I

THEORIES OF THE MIND

Part I addresses two metatheoretical perspectives on the self. One takes the metatheory of serial information processing driven by the central processing Unit (CPU) as a theory of the mind. By contrast, the other is the parallel distributed processing (PDP) metatheory, which regards psychological processes as emerging from interaction among a large number of simple processing units. On the one hand, theories of the mind provide different conceptions of the person, that is, what people and their minds are like. These conceptions of the person can enter into everyday discourse about the self, shaping people’s self-conceptions. This is the sense in which social psychology provides self-conceptions. On the other hand, theories of the mind provide theoretical frameworks in which to investigate self-related phenomena. They both enable and constrain the kind of conceptions of the self that could be developed.

Then, what implications would the CPU and PDP metaphors of the mind have for self-conceptions? Chapter 1 (Foddy and Kashima) provides a background for the book by delineating the core assumptions embedded in what we have called the social cognitive theory of the self, which primarily takes the CPU metaphor of the mind. In this view, the mind that is in control provides a unitary conception of the person. Although this model provides many advantages, it has its own limitations, as discussed in the chapter. In contrast, chapter 2 (Humphreys and Kashima) describes an emerging alternative theory of the mind in the form of connectionism and parallel distributed processing, and discusses its implications for conceptions of the self. The image of the mind presented here is one in which no single entity is in charge, but in which multiple processes continue in parallel. It has strong conceptual affinities with some of the perspectives on the self that are presented in subsequent sections. Although this model may provide some solutions to the puzzles of the unitary self (as discussed in the chapter), it does not deal in a satisfactory way as yet with the issue of control and agency. Its implications for social psychology of self and identity are only beginning to be explored.

Chapter 1

Self and Identity: What Is the Conception of the Person Assumed in the Current Literature?

Margaret Foddy

La Trobe University

Yoshihisa Kashima

University of Melbourne

The topic of self and identity has had its vicissitudes. In the mid-20th century, social psychological research on this topic was almost nonexistent. In fact, in the 1960s, it was declared that the self “looked as dead as a dodo bird” (Pepitone, 1968, p. 347). Nonetheless, in the 1970s, a number of concepts and topics appeared that bore the prefix of “self” in social psychology: self-efficacy, self-monitoring, self-schema, self-consciousness, self-theory, and so on (see Kashima & Yamaguchi, 1999). The 1980s and 1990s saw an explosion of research on self and identity (for recent reviews, see Baumeister, 1998; Tyler, Kramer, & John, 1999). Despite its diversity, the current social psychological research on self and identity has a more or less coherent set of theoretical and methodological assumptions. Rather than reviewing the extensive literature, we present in this chapter what we take to be a set of core assumptions of a research program or research tradition (i.e., Berger & Zelditch, 1993; Lakatos, 1970; Laudan, 1977). Our claim is that this research tradition rests on a set of substantive, if implicit, propositions about what it means to be human, which amount to a particular conception of the person.

This conception of the person is one of an abstract individual, as defined by Lukes (1973, p. 73) as follows:

Individuals are pictured abstractly as given, with given interests, wants, purposes, needs, etc.; while society and the state are pictured as sets of actual or possible social arrangements which respond more or less adequately to those individuals’ requirements. Social and political rules and institutions are, on this view, regarded collectively as an artifice, a modifiable instrument, a means of fulfilling independently given individual objectives; the means and the ends are distinct. The crucial point about this conception is that the relevant features of individuals determining the ends which social arrangements are held (actually or ideally) to fulfill, whether these features are called instruments, faculties, needs, desires, rights, etc., are assumed as given, independently of a social context. This givenness of fixed and invariant human psychological features leads to an abstract [emphasis in the original] conception of the individual.

More than two decades ago, Smith (1978/1991) foresaw that there are three perspectives from which the experience of self and identity may be approached: evolutionary, cultural-historical, and developmental. Indeed, the subsequent literature on self and identity generally followed them. Adding two more to these three, we identify five significant areas for scientific inquiry into self and identity: metatheory of the mind, ontogenesis of the self, self in sociocultural context, self and evolution, and epistemological and methodological issues. We examine core assumptions that characterize the conception of the person underlying the current inquiry into self and identity in each area.

To give a brief outline, first, a human is assumed to be equipped with a mind that is a limited-capacity, universal mechanism of symbol processing and cybernetic control, with the capacity for feeling and desire. Second, from a life-span perspective, self-conceptions are seen to develop through stages not unlike that of general cognitive development, displaying an increase in level of complexity and abstraction, which allow the eventual emergence of an autonomous, self-regulating agent. Third, the resultant self-regulating agent does not operate in a vacuum, but rather is suspended in a web of interpersonal, intergroup, collective and institutional relationships. Fourth, the current social cognitive conception of the person assumes that Darwinian evolutionary processes have affected Homo sapiens, a species born with the potential to develop a self-reflective mind. Finally, we turn to a set of methodological assumptions that underlie the theories and findings discussed in the four areas of research on self and identity.

In the end, our claim is this: Despite the current literature’s recognition of the social embedding of self and identity, the abstract and independent individual is still a dominant image of the person in much of the social psychological literature of self and identity. Let us see how this is the case.

CORE ASSUMPTION 1: SELF IN THE MIND

There is a model of the mind taken for granted in the current literature on self and identity. It is a mixture of an information processing model based on the serial computer metaphor, and a cybernetic theory of self-regulation. Nevertheless, the model has gone beyond the typical information processing theory in two significant ways. One is its clear recognition of the human capacity for self-awareness, and the other is the inclusion of affect and motivation as integral to human mental processes. Let us explicate these points.

Architecture of the Mind. The architectural core of the mind is assumed to be a symbol processor, which creates, manipulates, stores, and retrieves various symbols, very much in line with Newell’s physical symbol hypothesis (Newell & Simon, 1990, 1995; see Kihlstrom & Klein, 1994). In the serial computer metaphor, the symbol processor is often called the central processing unit (CPU). A personal computer typically has one CPU, which creates and manipulates symbol tokens; the creation and transformation of symbol tokens can be conceptualized as a kind of formal computation based on clearly defined rules (e.g., computer languages). Without the CPU, no computation occurs. The serial computer metaphor of the mind regards the creation and transformation of symbols by the CPU as thought processes.

In addition, the mind is assumed to have a capacity for cybernetic control; that is, it is equipped with a mechanism for self-regulation. This mechanism is usually assumed to involve the processes of setting an evaluation criterion, observing the current state relative to the criterion, and computing the discrepancy between the criterion and the current state. Once a discrepancy is detected between the criterion and the current state, procedures are executed to decrease the discrepancy (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1981; Higgins, 1987). The choice of language to represent the underlying architecture (processor, procedures, regulation, etc.) reveals much about the nature of the organism assumed.

Despite the diversity in theorizing, the mind is generally assumed to have several common features. First, its symbol processor is a limited-capacity processor: Both attention and memory are understood to be relatively limited resources. Second, symbol tokens need to be both available and accessed to be involved in any psychological activities, although people may or may not be aware of that which is accessed. General cognitive principles govern availability, and thus accessibility, of symbols. Third, accessed symbol tokens must be in some way relevant to the task at hand in order for them to have any effects on psychological activities.

This mind acquires symbols or contents from its natural, social and cultural environment, and then executes a set of universal procedures or processes on those acquired contents. The content-process distinction roughly corresponds to the distinction between Ryle’s (1963) “knowing that” and “knowing how,” or declarative and procedural knowledge, in the serial computer metaphor of the mind. However, the demarcation line between process and content is rather unclear and in fact fairly labile. One gains the impression that social cognitive theorists assume the universality of processes, while acknowledging cross-cultural variability of contents, suggesting that content is a fairly arbitrary detail that does not substantially influence process.

Self-Awareness. Nevertheless, one aspect of this mind goes beyond the standard information-processing theory in its clear recognition of the human capacity for self-awareness. Note that the distinction between the self-as-subject and the self-as-object of awareness, the duality of the self that James and Mead identified as the/and the Me (James, 1950/1950; Mead, 1934), presupposes the capacity that/is capable of observing Me, a clear recognition of self-awareness. Although the mechanisms enabling humans to achieve this feat are still not well understood, social psychological research is assumed to be able to proceed without waiting for an answer to this question.

The social psychological literature on self and identity began as an inquiry into the Me, the self-as-object, and the mental representation of the self as a network of semantic memory (e.g., Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984), a prototype (e.g., Kuiper, 1981), or a schema (e.g., Markus, 1977). Nonetheless, as Hermans (1996) noted, the self-as-object in the current social cognitive literature is not a unitary entity, but multifaceted. At the very least, it may consist of multiple attributes, and at most it could be a story (Gergen & Gergen, 1988; Sarbin, 1990) or even a theory (Epstein, 1973). The self-as-object could be visually represented or measured (e.g., Dol-linger’s autophotographic method: Clancy & Dollinger, 1993; Dollinger, Preston, O’Brien, & DiLalla, 1996; Aron and Aron’s circles: Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992). Whatever form they may take (semantic memory, prototype, or schema), they are nonetheless all symbols in that they represent (or stand for) the self. Symbolic representations of the self are assumed to be significant contents of the mind.

Affect and Motivation. The mind assumed in social psychological research of self and identity departs from the standard information processing model in its inclusion of affect and motivation. That is, not only does the social cognitive mind process symbols, but it is also capable of having feelings and desires. The underlying model here is a tripartite model of the mind, which has ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I: Theories of the Mind
• Part II: Personal Processes
• Part III: Social Processes
• Part IV: Symbolic Processes
• Part V: Conclusion
• Author Index
• Subject Index