Chapter 2 Perceiving the Self and Others 47Self-Concept: Who You Think You Are
Six-year old Coy Mathis has long hair, loves to wear pink dresses, and tears up when
anyone refers to her as a boy. She was born biologically male but identifies as female.
Her parents and doctors agree that her gender identity is simply part of who Coy
is as a human being (Frosch, 2013). So, who are you? You may describe yourself to
others as a male, a female, a college student, a Latino, a Buddhist, a heterosexual, a
biology major, an uncle, a mother, or a friend. But who you are involves much more.
As we discussed in Chapter 1, your awareness and understanding of who you
are—as interpreted and influenced by your thoughts, actions, abilities, values,
goals, and ideals—is your self-concept. You develop a self-concept by thinking
about your strengths and weaknesses, observing your behavior in a wide variety
of situations, witnessing your own reactions to situations, and watching others’
reactions to you (Snyder, 1979). You form beliefs about yourself as active and
scattered, as conservative and funny, as plain and popular—and so on. You even
form beliefs about how you tend to behave and how you expect to be treated
in a variety of social situations. These are your cognitions. Remember from the
model in Chapter 1 that both cognition and behavior make a communicator.
Your self-concept powerfully shapes your communication with others. It
can affect what you think of other people, because your perception of others is
related to how you think of yourself (Edwards, 1990). If attributes like honesty
and wit are important to you, you will consider them important traits in other
people. If you think that swearing makes you appear vulgar, you will likely think
the same of others when they use foul language. When you interact with others,
your self-concept comes into play as well. As we shall see when we discuss self-
esteem and self-efficacy, it can affect how apprehensive you get in cer-
tain communication situations (McCroskey, 1997), whether you’re even
willing to interact with others (Cegala, 1981), and how you approach
someone with a request (timidly or with confidence).
So while your self-concept strongly influences how and when you
communicate with others, the reverse is also true: when you interact
with other people, you get impressions from them that reveal what they
think about you as a person and as a communicator. This information
gets reincorporated into your self-concept. Direct evidence comes in the
form of compliments, insults, support, or negative remarks. Indirect
evidence that influences your self-concept might be revealed through
innuendo, gossip, subtle nonverbal cues, or a lack of communication.
For instance, if you ask a friend to evaluate your promise as a contestant
on America’s Got Talent and he changes the subject, you might get the
impression that you’re not such a great singer after all.
Our interactions with others, and their responses to us, often cause
us to compare ourselves to others as we develop our ideas about ourselves.
Social comparison theory (Bishop, 2000; Festinger, 1954) explains that
we are driven to gain an accurate sense of self by examining our qualities
and abilities in comparison to others. For example, if you are the least
financially well-off among your friends, you may consider yourself as
poor; given the same income and resources but a circle of less fortunate
friends, you might think of yourself as well-off. Images in the media can
have a similar effect. For example, if you compare your body shape with
models in fashion magazines, you might come to believe that you have
ISIS KING, former
America’s Next Top Model
contestant, was the first
transgender woman to
compete on the show and
became a public advocate
for transgender youth. Anthony
Behar/Sipa USA/Newscom