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Chapter 2: Communication and Personal Identity
Key Concepts
anxious/ambivalent attachment style
attachment styles
cyberbullying
direct definition
dismissive attachment style
face
fearful attachment style
generalized other
identity scripts
impression management
Johari Window
particular others
reflected appraisal
secure attachment style
self
self-disclosure
self-fulfilling prophecies
self-sabotage
social comparison
Chapter Outline
I.
What is the self?
A.
The self arises in communication with others.
1.
We develop notions of who we are and are not in our interactions with
others from the time we are born until the time we die.
2.
We internalize two kinds of perspectives that are communicated by
particular others and generalized others.
B.
Particular others—people who are significant to us.
1. Family members are generally the first influence on the
development of the self.
2. Later, peers, teachers, friends, coaches, romantic partners,
coworkers, and others also influence how we see
ourselves.
a.
Particular others provide direct definitions by labeling us
and our behaviors.
b.
Reflected appraisal is our perception of others’ views about
us. How we think others appraise us affects how we
see ourselves.
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c.
Direct definitions and reflected appraisals affect our self-
concept through self-fulfilling prophecies, which
occur when we internalize other’s expectations or
judgments about us and then behave in ways that
are consistent with those expectations and
judgments.
d.
Social comparison is the process of assessing ourselves in
relation to others. We form judgments about our
own talents, abilities, qualities, and so on by
deciding if we are like others and by measuring our
abilities compared to others.
e.
Particular others also provide identity scripts that define our
roles, how we fulfill them, and the general
progression of our lives.
f.
Parents or primary caregivers communicate who we are by
how they interact with us or their attachment styles.
• Secure attachment style is the most positive. This style
develops when the caregiver responds in a consistently
attentive and loving way to the child.
• Fearful attachment style is cultivated when the
caregiver in the first bond communicates in negative,
rejecting, or even abusive ways to the child. People
with this style are apprehensive about relationships.
• Dismissive attachment style is also promoted by
caregivers who are disinterested, rejecting, or
abusive toward children. People with this style
dismiss others as unworthy.
• Anxious/Ambivalent attachment style is the most
complex and is fostered by inconsistent treatment from
the caregiver.
C.
The generalized other reflects the views that others in a society generally hold.
1.
Perspectives of the generalized other are communicated through
media, institutions, and individuals who have internalized or reflect
cultural values.
2.
Race, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class are prevalent
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identifiers in Western culture.
3.
The generalized other unequally values different races, genders,
socioeconomic classes, and sexual orientations.
4.
Social views are not fixed once and for all. They are constructed in
particular cultures at specific times.
5.
Social views are also quite arbitrary, which can be seen when we consider
how widely values differ from culture to culture and how social meanings
vary across time within single cultures.
II.
Presenting and negotiating identity
A.
Erving Goffman (1959, 1967) argues that we present, or “perform,” ourselves
as if on a stage.
B.
We do this by presenting a face, which is the impression of self that we want
others to accept.
C.
We use impression management to persuade others to believe in the face we
present.
III.
Social media and personal identity
A.
Social media are implicated in identity development and maintenance.
B.
Direct definitions and reflected appraisals are often delivered through social media.
C.
Social networks may also be used for cyberbullying—messages and images that are meant to
hurt another person.
D.
Social media are also key sources for social comparison.
IV.
Guidelines for enriching the self.
A.
We must make a firm commitment to personal growth.
B.
We must gain and use knowledge to support personal growth.
a.
The Johari Window helps us identify the different sorts of knowledge that
affect self-development.
1.
Open—information known both to us and to others
2.
Blind—information known to others but not to us
3.
Hidden—information that is known to us but not revealed to others
4.
Unknown—information about ourselves that neither we nor others know
C.
We should self-disclose when appropriate to get information about how others do
and might see us.
1. Self-disclosure is intentionally revealing information about ourselves to
another person whom he or she is unlikely to discover in other ways.
D.
Rather than setting ourselves up for failure by attempting to make radical
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changes, we need to set realistic goals with realistic standards.
E.
We should seek contexts that support personal change.
F.
Self-sabotage is a crippling kind of self-talk that involves telling ourselves we are no good,
we cannot change, and so on.
G.
True friends offer constructive criticism to encourage us to reach for better versions of
ourselves.
Discussion Ideas
• Johari Window: Recognizing the different window panes of the Johari Window—Have
students create their own personal Johari Window and give an example of a statement that
fits each pane. Generally, it will be difficult to state what is hidden and unknown for
students. Have students think of examples that will fit this area based on things they have
learned about themselves from others. This works well as a lead-in to perception where you
can again point out the perceptual errors we make.
• Social Comparisons: Recognizing social comparisons—On the day you are going to
discuss this topic, you will need some current newspapers, magazines, or television show
clips (you can collect them or ask students to each bring in one). Divide students into groups
or as a class ask them to make a list of social comparisons from the magazine, television, and
newspaper examples. Why is it that we generally choose to compare ourselves to people we
consider “better” at something than we are? You may also want to entertain a discussion on
how media create unrealistic social comparisons for many people (e.g., thin for women,
muscular for men, without any blemishes) and relationships (e.g., all family problems on
situation comedies are resolved within 20 minutes).
• Social Perspectives: Tracing changes in social perspectives—Collect a set of magazines or
books from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Ask students to generate a list of
how our views have changed. You may choose to focus on sex, class, race, sexual
orientation, or any other social perspective for which there is little or much change. If you do
a social perspective for which there has been little change, ask why that is the case.
• Identity Scripts: Identifying identity scripts—Have students complete each of the following
statements as a springboard for discussing how our identity scripts are created and why some
types of scripts are similar while others are different. Another variation is to ask students first
to write out what they learned as a child and then go through them again writing out what
they have learned since high school. How and why do our identity scripts change over time?
o Money is
o Nobody in our family has ever
o You can/cannot trust others to
o The most important goal in life is
o Good people
o You can’t trust people who
o Families should
o If you want to respect others, you should
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• Self-fulfilling Prophecy: Self-fulfilling prophecy is an important concept. Discuss
an example that you have encountered a self-fulfilling prophecy. Discuss how this
was facilitative or debilitative toward your goal. Do you think self-fulfilling prophecies can
be more beneficial than destructive or vice versa? Explain your answers.
• New Identities: Exploring new identities online—Through the use of chat rooms, bulletin
boards, and MUDs (computer programs where users can log on and explore with a virtual
persona) over the Internet, people can creatively explore new identities. For example, people
can switch genders, races, physical abilities, physical appearance, and so on, since the visual
and auditory cues we use to identify people with in face-to-face interaction are not present.
Do you see this ability to explore new identities as helpful or harmful (or both) to people’s
self-concepts? Is it ethical to present oneself as a different type of identity while online?
Some advantages include being able to explore new aspects of one’s self that might not
otherwise be available and to be liberated from our embodied constraints. Disadvantages
include issues of equity and that not everyone has equal access to participate online, virtual
stalking, and harassment.
Activities
Title
Individual
Partner/
Ethno
Group
Demonstration/
Whole Class
Internet
1. Others in me
X
2. Johari Window
X
3. Representing me
X–P
4. My many selves
X–P
X
5. So, are you keeping your name?
X–P
X–P
X = Marks type of activity H = Handout P = Preparation required for students/teacher
Others in Me
This activity enhances students’ awareness of the ways that communication with others has
shaped their self-concepts.
Ask students to list five important positive qualities about themselves. Provide examples such as
ambitious, loyal, helpful to others, smart, honest, or generous. When students have done this,
create small groups of five or six members. Instruct groups to explore how the qualities each
member listed reflect interactions with particular others in their lives.
A variation on this activity is to invert it. Thus, students would initially list three individuals who
were and/or are extremely important to them. Then, in group discussion, they would explore the
ways in which each person they listed has shaped who he or she is today.
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Johari Window
This is a role-play activity designed to increase students’ understanding of how others’
communication affects self-concept and self-esteem.
Select four students for the demonstration. Either before class or by stepping outside of the room
during class, talk privately with the students about the role-play. Assign each student one role of
either open, hidden, blind, or unknown. It may be an actual or a fictional account. After
discussing the exercise with the role players, allow them time to develop a 5- to 10-minute
improvisational performance in which self discusses an issue and the others respond to self in
their respective roles. Have the students present their demonstration to the class. Afterward,
discuss each of the window panes in our lives so that students understand each style of
communicating and how it affects self-concept and/or communication.
Representing Me
This activity will help students understand themselves. This activity allows students to share
more information about themselves and learn about others in class.
A week before class, ask students to find pictures of celebrities who they: (1) truly admire, (2)
want to be like, (3) strongly dislike; and (4) feel like they are similar to.
Ask them to bring the pictures to class and explain why they picked each person for each
category. Some students may feel that the person they admire, want to be like, and are similar to
are the same person.
Ask students to discuss the reasons why they liked certain characteristics in some celebrities and
some reasons why they disliked others. Ask students to vote whether each person is similar to the
person they think is similar to them.
Discuss how the ways that we think we are presenting ourselves to others are completely
different from how others perceive us. Help students understand their differences for disliking
the celebrity they picked. Are there ways to deal with someone who has the disliked
characteristics?
This exercise is a personal growth exercise, because it helps students understand more about
themselves. Some psychologists have argued that people feel a strong dislike for others based
on things they deny in themselves and admire others based on things they long for in
themselves. Ask your students if they agree or disagree with this statement.
My Many Selves
In this activity, students examine their multiple selves and explore how they present those
different selves in different contexts and relationships. This activity also allows students to share
information about themselves with the class and to learn more about their classmates.
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One week before processing this activity in class, ask students to construct a collage divided into
four sections: physical self, emotional self, social self, and moral self. On the day students bring
their collages into class, have them discuss in small groups what each quadrant of their collages
represents and what they learned about the self in constructing the collages. Then in a large class
discussion, discuss the ways in which we construct the self with others, focusing on the
presentation of different aspects of the self in different contexts and relationships.
So, Are You Keeping Your Name?
The purpose of this activity is to explore decisions people made about their names when getting
married and their reasons for that decision. The names we are called affect how we see ourselves
and others. When two people marry, they are faced with a decision about whether or not to keep
or change their name.
In the class before this activity, have students read a firsthand account by people who
consciously decided not to change their names. (This can be found by using any search engine,
but one effective account in the Huffington Post is the following:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/reflective-bride/why-im-not-changing-my-la_b_5172581.html)
Next, have students ask their friends and family members what they plan to do (if they intend to
get married), what decision they made (if they are already married), or what decisions people
they know have made.
On the day of the activity, have students report their results from their informal polls of friends
and family. Then, lead a discussion about the implications of keeping one’s name, changing one’s
name, hyphenating, combining two names, and so on to their own sense of self, their sense of
relationships, to their family traditions, career issues, and larger cultural issues. You also can
have each person discuss what decision they have made, or will make, if they plan to get married.
Journal Items
• Read through a commercial magazine and identify examples of the generalized other’s
perspective. Focus on how media define desirable women and men. Analyze these
messages and discuss how you respond to them.
Responses will vary, especially depending on the magazine. For example, in fitness
magazines, being well-toned might be emphasized more for women, while being more
muscular and buff might be more emphasized for men. In business magazines for women,
desirable characteristics of women might be the women engaging in active, business
pursuits, while women may be less represented in business magazines that are not explicitly
targeted for one gender or another.
• Describe different individuals in your life (including yourself) who you think are
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examples of each of the attachment styles. Analyze why you think that each person
fits that attachment style. Offer specific examples that indicate how their attachment
style affects their communication behavior.
Responses will vary, but students should be able to identify the differences among secure,
fearful, anxious/ambivalent, and dismissive attachment styles. In addition, they should be
able to distinguish how communication may differ among the attachment styles.
• Describe an instance in which you were each of the panes of the Johari Window.
Analyze why you communicated differently in the different situations. What was it
about the overall communication systems that affected what you said, and how did your
communication, in turn, affect the relational systems within which it occurred?
Responses will vary, but students could attribute their different communication behavior to
the contingencies of the situation, to factors of like/dislike for the other person, and so on.
Panel Idea
Invite individuals, students or not, from four different cultures to discuss how individuals are
viewed in their cultures. In advance, ask students to prepare questions for the panelists based on
Chapter 2 in the textbook. After panelists have been introduced and had the opportunity to make
opening statements, direct the discussion by asking questions such as these: Are individualism
and personal independence esteemed in your culture? How important is family to individual
identity in your culture? Are women and men regarded as equally individual by your culture (are
women the property of families or husbands)?
Media Resources
Websites
Name: Joining the Size Acceptance Revolution
Developer: National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance
Brief Description: This web-based brochure talks about U.S. culture’s idealization of slenderness
and how this affects the self-concepts of those who are larger than average.
URL: http://world.std.com/~naafa/documents/brochures/revolution.html
Name: Self
Developer: Living Life Fully
Brief Description: This page lists quotations about the self from a variety of sources.
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URL: http://www.livinglifefully.com/self.html
Name: Why I’m Not Changing My Last Name After Marriage
Developer: Huffington Post
Brief Description: Offers one woman’s reflection regarding why she didn’t change her name.
URL: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/reflective-bride/why-im-not-changing-my-la_b_5172581.html
Name: Personal Identity
Developer: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Brief Description: Surveys the main questions that go under the heading of personal identity.
URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
Name: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Developer: Carsten Korfmacher; Linacre College, Oxford University
Brief Description: The aim of this article is to (1) understand the problem of personal identity, (2)
state a number of theories of personal identity and give arguments for and against them, (3)
formulate “the paradox of identity,” which proposes to show that posing the persistence question,
in conjunction with a number of plausible assumptions, leads to a contradiction, (4) explain how
Derek Parfit’s theory of persons attempts to answer this paradox, and (5) share resources.
URL: http://www.iep.utm.edu/person-i/
Name: Personal Identity
Developer: Metaphysics By Default
Brief Description: Describes the three criteria for personal identity.
URL: http://mbdefault.org/8_identity/default.asp
Film Ideas
Bicentennial Man. This film relates one android’s quest to develop a self and relationships, and
to become fully human. What does it take to make someone fully human? Compare androids
such as the one portrayed in this movie (and/or “Data” from Star Trek: The Next Generation)
with Ramu, the wolf boy. Discuss: Is one more or less human than the other?
Blast from the Past. This film illustrates how one young man deals with society after he was
locked away in a bomb shelter for a long period of time. Throughout the movie, he learns about
society and himself. Based on how he learns his information, you might discuss the different
ways he deals with social comparison and self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Print Resources
The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life by Kenneth J. Gergen. In
this book, Gergen argues that continual exposure to a range of media “saturate” ourselves and
has profound implications to our identities. How does Gergen’s thesis relate to Isabelle de
Courtivron’s observation that many of today’s college and university students are “citizens of a
time rather than a place”?
Honoring the Self: Self-Esteem and Personal Transformation by Nathaniel Branden.
In this book, students can compare and contrast what they learned from this book with what they
learned from the textbook.
