Sociological

Perspectives
of the Self
The Five Monkeys Experiment
"Who were the people
that influenced you
and your development
as a person?"
 What is SOCIOLOGY?
• From the Latin word Socius
(companion, group, and
associate) and Greek word Logos
(study and science).

• The study of society, patterns of

social relationships, social
interaction, and culture of
everyday life.
• Man is a social being, who is born into
existence in a community before he is able to
know himself. Early in life, as children, you
become aware of your social nature. And it
is through socialization that begins in the
family that you are exposed to behavior,
social rules, and attitudes that lead to social
development. And it is through social
institutions – family, school, church, and the
community you interact with every day, that
will lead you to your deeper understanding
of your social identity – that of
understanding your social self.
 Personality Development
PERSONALITY - the basic organization
of individuals that determines the
uniqueness of their behavior.

The basic organization refers to the structure of the personality –

how it is put together, and the relationships among the various parts.
It consists of the total physical, intellectual, and emotional structure
of the individual.
 Personality Development

Our total personality structure will determine our way of

behaving. Each one of us has our own way of interacting
with others and with our social environment .
 Aspects of Personality
PHYSICAL Physical appearance is the most obvious part of an
CHARACTERISTICS individual’s personality. These characteristics are inherited
but can be altered by your culture.
ABILITIES Skills that are developed within the culture.
APTITUDE The capacity to learn skills, or to acquire a particular body
of knowledge. Aptitude is more related to heredity, as
abilities are always related to culture.
 Aspects of Personality
BELIEFS A feeling of certainty that something exists, is true, or is good. It also
includes attitudes, values, preferences, superstitions, prejudices, and
knowledge. Some are based on fact, others are not. But all beliefs are
related to the culture and learned from others in the society.
HABITS Regular, routine ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving. These are learned
from others and help you distinguish one person’s behavior from others.
INTERESTS State of wanting to know or learn about something or someone. The things
that you become interested in depends on the cultural alternatives that are
available – and an awareness of your existence.
The Influence of Heredity and
Environment

NATURE vs. NURTURE

 The Influence of Heredity and Environment
HEREDITY Characteristics that are innate, present at birth. It is the transmitting of genetic characteristics
from your parents to you. We inherit basic needs and capacities. Heredity gives us biological
needs while our culture determines how we meet these needs.
BIRTH ORDER Our personality is also influenced by whether we have brothers, sisters, both, or neither.
PARENTS Parents age, amount of education, religious beliefs, ethnic backgrounds, economic/social status,
occupations, and communities in which they live, all contribute to the personality development
of an individual.
SUBCULTURE that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of
its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural,
political, and sexual matters.
 The Social Self
The process of
cultural molding,
how individuals
SOCIALIZATION learn the basic skills,
values, beliefs, and
behavior patterns of
the society.
 Socialization Theories
• John Locke was an English philosopher who argued
that all knowledge comes exclusively through
experience. He insisted that at birth the mind is a tabula
rasa, or blank slate, that humans fill with ideas as they
experience the world through the five senses.

• The social self is the way that you see yourself as a

result of interacting with others. You begin to have a
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704) sense of your own self from your daily interactions with
other people.
 Socialization Theories
• Charles Horton Cooley was an American sociologist
who developed The Looking- Glass Self Theory.

• The looking-glass self describes the process

wherein individuals base their sense of self on how
they believe others view them. Using social
interaction as a type of “mirror,” people use the
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
judgments they receive from others to measure
(1864-1929)
their own worth, values, and behavior.
The process of discovering the looking-glass self occurs
in three steps:

1.

2.

3.
The process of the looking-glass self is further complicated by the
context of each interaction and the nature of the people involved.
Not all feedback carries the same weight, for instance. People may
take the responses from those whom they trust more seriously than
those of strangers. Signals may be misinterpreted. People also
usually take their own value systems into consideration when
thinking through any changes to their behavior or views of self.
 Socialization Theories
• George Herbert Mead was an American philosopher,
sociologist, and psychologist. He is one of the founders of
social psychology and the American sociological tradition in
general.

• Mead's theory of the social self is based on the perspective

that the self emerges from social interactions, such as:
a. Observing and interacting with others
b. Responding to others' opinions about oneself
GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
c. Internalizing external opinions and internal feelings
(1863-1931)
about oneself.
 Components of the Self According to Mead
"I" SELF "ME" SELF
The result of your subjective, private self Comes from your objective, social self
(personal)
Self as subject Self as object
Significant Others Generalized Others
Subjective behavior, quite constant Objective behavior that is quite predictable
Your unique personal qualities, your How you act according to the rules and
individual impulses. expectations of a specific role in a given
situation.
According to Mead, the self develops through three stages:
PREPARATORY Children mimic and imitate others. It develops the self when we allow children to
(Birth-2 yrs.
old) respond through symbols, gestures, words, and sounds.

PLAY take the roles of significant others into pretend play. It develops the self when we
(2-6 yrs. old)
allow children to take on different roles, pretend, and express expectations of
others.

GAME Children begin to take an active role by taking into consideration the society and
(6-9 yrs. old)
their expectations of them. Self is developed by understanding that there are rules in
which one must abide by in order to win the game or be successful at an activity.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES
OF THE
SELF
• Anthropology explores the role of
selfhood in defining human
society, and each human
individual in that society. It
considers the genetic and cultural
origins of self, the role that
self plays in socialization and
language, and the types of
self we generate in our individual
journeys to and through
adulthood.
 ANTHROPOLOGY
•From the Greek words Anthropos (human)
and Logos (study and science).

• The study of human societies and cultures and their development.

• It is concerned with how cultural and biological processes
interact to shape human experience.
 THE SELF AND THE PERSON IN
CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY
• In their book, Personality in Nature, Society and Culture, psychologist
Henry Murray and anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn (1953) claimed
that:
“Every man is in certain respects like
all other men, like some other men, and
like no other man.”
 THE SELF AND THE PERSON IN
CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY
• The pre-contemporary view of human nature demonstrated sameness,
invariability, and universality where man was regarded as identical, constant,
and general.

• Contemporary anthropologists subscribe to a

more holistic approach in studying the self by
looking unto human variety brought about by
variations across cultures and variations over
time.
THE SELF EMBEDDED IN CULTURE
CULTURE
• The set of patterns of human activity within a
society or social group.
• How we act, think, and behave based on the
shared values of our society. It is how we
understand symbols, from language to hand
gestures.
• It is everywhere, and we continually develop and
define our culture on a daily basis.
 THE SELF EMBEDDED IN CULTURE
BASIC TYPES OF CULTURE
• Material culture - refers to the physical objects, resources,
and spaces that people use. These include homes, schools,
churches, temples, offices, factories and buildings, tools,
means of production, goods and products, stores, and so
forth.
• Non‐material culture - refers to the nonphysical ideas that
people have about their culture, including beliefs, values,
rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and
institutions.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES OF THE SELF
According to French sociologist and anthropologist
Marcel Mauss (1950), the person was considered
primarily a cultural conception, or a ‘category’ of
a particular community and is composed of two
faces:

Moi
• a person’s sense of who he is.
• refers to the concept of the self.
Personne
• composed of the social concepts of what it
MARCEL MAUSS means to be who he is.
• refers to the concept of person.
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES OF THE SELF
Harry Triandis (2019), a psychology professor at the
University of Illinois, furthered the discourse about the
self being culturally shaped. He introduced and
distinguished three aspects of the self:
Private Self
• cognitions that involve traits, states, or behaviors of
the person; it is an assessment of the self by the self.
Public Self
• cognitions concerning the generalized other’s view of HARRY TRIANDIS
the self.
Collective Self
• cognitions concerning a view of the self that is found
in some collective (e.g., family, co-workers, tribe,
scientific society).