A Sociological Approach to Self and Identity Thoughts on Social Structure A sociological

approach to self and identity begins with the assumption that there is a reciprocal relationship
between the self and society (Stryker, 1980). The self influences society through the actions of
individuals thereby creating groups, organizations, networks, and institutions. And, reciprocally,
society influences the self through its shared language and meanings that enable a person to take
the role of the other, engage in social interaction, and reflect upon oneself as an object. The latter
process of reflexivity constitutes the core of selfhood (McCall & Simmons, 1978; Mead, 1934).
Because the self emerges in and is reflective of society, the sociological approach to understanding
the self and its parts (identities) means that we must also understand the society in which the self
is acting, and keep in mind that the self is always acting in a social context in which other selves
exist (Stryker, 1980). This chapter focuses primarily on the nature of self and identity from a
sociological perspective, thus some discussion of society is warranted. The nature of the self and
what individuals do depends to a large extent on the society within which they live.
George Herbert Mead, a sociologist from the late 1800s, is well known for his theory of
the social self, which includes the concepts of 'self,' 'me,' and 'I.' In this lesson, we will explore
Mead's theory and gain a better understanding of what is meant by the terms 'me' and 'I.' We will
also discuss the concept, derived out of Mead's work, of the looking-glass self.
Mead's work focuses on the way in which the self is developed. Mead's theory of the social self is
based on the perspective that the self emerges from social interactions, such as observing and
interacting with others, responding to others' opinions about oneself, and internalizing external
opinions and internal feelings about oneself. The social aspect of self is an important distinction
because other sociologists and psychologists of Mead's time felt that the self was based on
biological factors and inherited traits. According to Mead, the self is not there from birth, but it is
developed over time from social experiences and activities.

Development of Self
According to Mead, three activities develop the self: language, play, and games.
Language develops self by allowing individuals to respond to each other through symbols,
gestures, words, and sounds. Language conveys others' attitudes and opinions toward a subject or
the person. Emotions, such as anger, happiness, and confusion, are conveyed through language.
Play develops self by allowing individuals to take on different roles, pretend, and express
expectation of others. Play develops one's self-consciousness through role-playing. During role-
play, a person is able to internalize the perspective of others and develop an understanding of how
others feel about themselves and others in a variety of social situations.
Games develop self by allowing individuals to understand and adhere to the rules of the activity.
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.

Two Sides of Self: Me & I

According to Mead's theory, the self has two sides or phases: 'me' and 'I.'
 The 'me' is considered the socialized aspect of the individual. The 'me' represents learned
behaviors, attitudes, and expectations of others and of society. This is sometimes referred to as the
generalized other. The 'me' is considered a phase of the self that is in the past. The 'me' has been
developed by the knowledge of society and social interactions that the individual has gained.
The 'I', therefore, can be considered the present and future phase of the self. The 'I'
represents the individual's identity based on response to the 'me.' The 'I' says, 'Okay. Society says
I should behave and socially interact one way, and I think I should act the same (or perhaps
different),' and that notion becomes self.
The 'me' and the 'I' have a didactic relationship, like a system of checks and balances. The
'me' exercises societal control over one's self. The 'me' is what prevents someone from breaking
the rules or boundaries of societal expectations. The 'I' allows the individual to still express
creativity and individualism and understand when to possibly bend and stretch the rules that govern
social interactions. The 'I' and the 'me' make up the self.
Anthropology has important contributions to make in extending the study of the self. An
integrated and cumulative body of anthropological theory relevant to the self has yet to be
realized. Nevertheless, it is possible to connect several lines of theory to suggest converging
general orientations and research strategies bearing on the study of the self and related ideas. In
addition, the ever-expanding comparative ethnographic record constitutes a valuable resource
that can be exploited to examine the broader applicability or inapplicability of Western
conceptions of the self—as well as to investigate, in their own right, self concepts that have
developed independent of Western influence.

The concept of the person, like other comparative concepts such as kinship or the state,
designates a zone of enquiry within which there is enough commonality across societies to ensure
that comparison is reasonable, yet enough variation between them to make enquiry fruitful.
Enquiries in this zone concern conceptions of the human psychophysical individual. This is
territory for the psychologist and the philosopher as well, of course, but anthropologists are guided
by two special considerations. First, we expect that a society’s conceptions of people as
individuals, of how people work, can be related com-pellingly to its forms of social institution, of
how society works. Second, we have come to learn that other societies’ ways of anatomizing
individuals’ thought and form may be profoundly, and startlingly, different from those we take for
granted.
Indeed the differences between versions of the person are a matter not only of thought but
of feeling and experience as well. Consider, for example, "Godfrey Lienhardt’s (1961)
ethnographic account of the Dinka, in which he shows that Dinka regard themselves, indeed
experience themselves, very differently to the way people of the North Atlantic do. In the matter
of a bad debt, for example, North Atlantic peoples assume that the power to recollect a bad debt -
the faculty of the conscience, in other words — is wholly internal to the thinking subject, the
person. But among the Dinka such recollection is not a property of the debtor’s own mind or
conscience. Rather, the debtor who owns up to his debt does so because the spirit Mathiang Gok
has laid hold of her and forced her to recollect the debt and respond to it. Rather than an internal
conscience directing her, in other words, the debtor experiences an external power. Similarly,
members of certain clans among the Dinka have as a special divinity, the spirit which Lienhardt
translates as Flesh. The divinity Flesh appears within them as their own flesh when their muscles
begin to quiver and they become possessed during ritual sacrifices. In other words, their own body
becomes at once spiritual and subject to another power, neither of which properties are familiar in
a North Atlantic perspective. To this extent, the person is very differently conceived and
experienced in the two societies.

The binary of self and other is perhaps one of the most basic theories of human
consciousness and identity, claiming, in short, that the existence of an other, a not-self, allows the
possibility or recognition of a self. In other words: I see you. I do not control your body or hear
your thoughts. You are separate. You are not me. Therefore, I am me. The self/other binary seems
to be an accepted division of how the modern individual comprehends who s/he is, by recognizing
what s/he is not. Variations of this binary appear in the work of numerous thinkers2 , including
media theorist Niklas Luhmann and racial theorist W.E.B. Du Bois. Luhmann uses the terms self-
reference and otherreference to discuss the system of the mass media, while Du Bois uses the term
doubleconsciousness to discuss the position of black people in white-controlled America at the
turn of twentieth century. This essay seeks go beyond binary thinking to explore what
Self, Other, Other-Self The idea of double-consciousness, of the existence of both/and
within the psychology and identity of an individual, complicates the stark boundaries of the Journal
of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2011 4
self/other binary. This idea is support by psychological research in which “the self is often viewed
as fundamentally interpersonal, composed of a repertoire of relational selves” (Kenny and West
120). In the humanities and other social sciences, as Hancock indicates, the concept of both/and
sitting just below the surface of the theory of doubleconsciousness, has been picked up and used
by a variety of other thinkers, particularly feminist, black feminist, class and racial theorists.
Deborah K. King uses double and triple jeopardy in relation to black women and black working
class women (King 297). Gloria Anzaldúa develops a theory of mestiza consciousness for
Mexican, Mexican American and Chicana women (Anzaldúa). Chen Xu writes about the existence
of a third consciousness in the novelist Richard Wright’s black male characters (Xu 40). In many
ways, the use of this both/and, non-binary thinking is not unique, yet I am proposing an approach
which takes a broad enough stance to be applicable to multiple groups at once, not exclusively
those which are multiple marginalized in a traditional identity politics sense.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-7834-5_3
The 1980s have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the self. Not only have new models
proliferated, but a number of investigators have sought theoretical guidance from historical
scholars of the past. In our own work, we have drawn upon the insights of William James (1892)
and Charles Horton Cooley (1902). In this chapter we build upon the legacy of James and
Cooley, particularly with regard to an understanding of the determinants of self-regard or self-
worth. We adopt a developmental perspective in that we focus on how the child’s sense of overall
worth as a person is constructed. A major goal of our research has been to operationalize the
formulations of both James and Cooley, in order to provide a test of their appropriateness in
accounting for individual differences in self-worth. We have also sought to examine the issue of
whether self-worth is merely an epiphenomenal construct or whether it plays a role in mediating
one’s affect and one’s motivational level. Since a detailed description of this work has appeared
elsewhere (see Harter, 1986b, 1987), this chapter merely summarizes the model and supporting
evidence.
The 1980s have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the self. Not only have new models
proliferated, but a number of investigators have sought theoretical guidance from historical
scholars of the past. In our own work, we have drawn upon the insights of William James (1892)
and Charles Horton Cooley (1902). In this chapter we build upon the legacy of James and Cooley,
particularly with regard to an understanding of the determinants of self-regard or self-worth. We
adopt a developmental perspective in that we focus on how the child's sense of overall worth as a
person is constructed. A major goal of our research has been to operationalize the formulations of
both James and Cooley, in order to provide a test of their appropriateness in accounting for
individual differences in self-worth. We have also sought to examine the issue of whether self-
worth is merely an epiphenomenal construct or whether it plays a role in mediating one's affect
and one's motivational level. Since a detailed description of this work has appeared elsewhere (see
Harter, 1986b, 1987), this chapter merely summarizes the model and supporting evidence.
Following this description, we examine the extent to which children and adolescents are able to
conserve the self over time as well as across the various roles that they must adopt. We also discuss
the mechanisms through which children and adolescents attempt to protect and enhance the self.
Finally, this more Western approach to the self is contrasted to a more Eastern, Buddhist
perspective, and the implications of each are explored. I -Self Versus Me-Self The majority of
scholars who have devoted thoughtful attention to the self have come to the conclusion that two
conceptually distinct, but experientally intertwined, aspects of the self can be meaningfully
identified, the I-self and the Me-self. From a historical perspective, James (1892) was perhaps the
most articulate on this issue, although Mead (1934) also pur
The Principles of Psychology
William James (1890)

CHAPTER X.
The Consciousness of Self.
Let us begin with the Self in its widest acceptation, and follow it up to its most delicate and subtle
form, advancing from the study of the empirical, as the Germans call it, to that of the pure, Ego.
The Empirical Self or Me.
The Empirical Self of each of us is all that he is tempted to call by the name of me. But it is clear
that between what a man calls me and what he simply callsmine the line is difficult to draw. We
feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves. Our
fame, our children, the work of our hands, may be as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the
same feelings and the same acts of reprisal if attacked. And our bodies themselves, are they simply
ours, or are they us? Certainly men have been ready to disown their very bodies and to regard them
as mere vestures, or even as prisons of clay from which they should some day be glad to escape.

We see then that we are dealing with a fluctuating material. The same object being
sometimes treated as a part of me, at other times as simply mine, and then again as if I had nothing
to do with it at all. In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that
he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife
and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht
and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels
triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down, - not necessarily in the same degree
for each [p. 292] thing, but in much the same way for all. Understanding the Self in this widest
sense, we may begin by dividing the history of it into three parts, relating respectively to -

1. Its constituents;
2. The feelings and emotions they arouse, -- Self-feelings;
3. The actions to which they prompt, -- Self-seeking and Self-preservation.

1. The constituents of the Self may be divided into two classes, those which make up respectively
-

(a) The material Self;

(b) The social Self;
(c) The spiritual Self; and
(d) The pure Ego.

(a) The body is the innermost part of the material Self in each of us; and certain parts of the body
seem more intimately ours than the rest. The clothes come next. The old saying that the human
person is composed of three parts - soul, body and clothes - is more than a joke. We so appropriate
our clothes and identify ourselves with them that there are few of us who, if asked to choose
between having a beautiful body clad in raiment perpetually shabby and unclean, and having an
ugly and blemished form always spotlessly attired, would not hesitate a moment before making a
decisive reply.[1] Next, our immediate family is a part of ourselves. Our father and mother, our
wife and babes, are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. When they die, a part of our very
selves is gone. If they do anything wrong, it is our shame. If they are insulted, our anger flashes
forth as readily as if we stood in their place. Our home comes next. Its scenes are part of our life;
its aspects awaken the tenderest feelings of affection; and we do not easily forgive the stranger
who, in visiting it, finds fault with its arrangements or treats it with contempt. All these different
things are the objects of instinctive preferences coupled with the most important practical interests
of life. We all have a blind impulse to watch over our body, to deck it with clothing of [p. 293] an
ornamental sort, to cherish parents, wife and babes, and to find for ourselves a home of our own
which we may live in and 'improve.'

An equally instinctive impulse drives us to collect property; and the collections thus made
become, with different degrees of intimacy, parts of our empirical selves. The parts of our wealth
most intimately ours are those which are saturated with our labor. There are few men who would
not feel personally annihilated if a life-long construction of their hands or brains - say an
entomological collection or an extensive work in manuscript - were suddenly swept away. The
miser feels similarly towards his gold, and although it is true that a part of our depression at the
loss of possessions is due to our feeling that we must now go without certain goods that we
expected the possessions to bring in their train, yet in every case there remains, over and above
this, a sense of the shrinkage of our personality, a partial conversion of ourselves to nothingness,
which is a psychological phenomenon by itself. We are all at once assimilated to the tramps and
poor devils whom we so despise, and at the same time removed farther than ever away from the
happy sons of earth who lord it over land and sea and men in the full-blown lustihood that wealth
and power can give, and before whom, stiffen ourselves as we will by appealing to anti-snobbish
first principles, we cannot escape an emotion, open or sneaking, of respect and dread.

(b) A man's Social Self is the recognition which he gets from his mates. We are not only
gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get
ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment could be
devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and
remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no one turned round when we entered,
answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met 'cut us dead,' and
acted as if we were non-existing things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would ere long well
up in us, from which the [p. 294] cruellest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these would make
us feel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be unworthy
of attention at all.

Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize
him and carry an image of him in their mind. To wound any one of these his images is to wound
him.[2] But as the individuals who carry the images fall naturally into classes, we may practically
say that he has as many different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose
opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups.
Many a youth who is demure enough before his parents and teachers, swears and swaggers like a
pirate among his 'tough' young friends. We do not show ourselves to our children as to our club-
companions, to our customers as to the laborers we employ, to our own masters and employers as
to our intimate friends. From this there results what practically is a division of the man into several
selves; and this may be a discordant splitting, as where one is afraid to let one set of his
acquaintances know him as he is elsewhere; or it may be a perfectly harmonious division of labor,
as where one tender to his children is stern to the soldiers or prisoners under his command.

The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in
love with. The good or bad fortunes of this self cause the most intense elation and dejection -
unreasonable enough as measured by every other standard than that of the organic feeling of the
individual. To his own consciousness he is not, so long as this particular social self fails to get
recognition, and when it is recognized his contentment passes all bounds.

A man's fame, good or bad, and his honor or dishonor, are names for one of his social
selves. The particular social self of a man called his honor is usually the result of one of those
splittings of which we have spoken. It is his image in the eyes of his own 'set,' which exalts or con-
[p. 295] demns him as he conforms or not to certain requirements that may not be made of one in
another walk of life. Thus a layman may abandon a city infected with cholera; but a priest or a
doctor would think such an act incompatible with his honor. A soldier's honor requires him to fight
or to die under circumstances where another man can apologize or run away with no stain upon
his social self. A judge, a statesman, are in like manner debarred by the honor of their cloth from
entering into pecuniary relations perfectly honorable to persons in private life. Nothing is
commoner than to hear people discriminate between their different selves of this sort: "As a man
I pity you, but as an official I must show you no mercy; as a politician I regard him as an ally, but
as a moralist I loathe him;" etc., etc. What may be called 'club-opinion' is one of the very strongest
forces in life.[3] The thief must not steal from other thieves; the gambler must pay his gambling-
debts, though he pay no other debts in the world. The code of honor of fashionable society has
throughout history been full of permissions as well as of vetoes, the only reason for following
either of which is that so we best serve one of [p. 296] our social selves. You must not lie in
general, but you may lie as much as you please if asked about your relations with a lady; you must
accept a challenge from an equal, but if challenged by an inferior you may laugh him to scorn:
these are examples of what is meant.

(c) By the Spiritual Self, so far as it belongs to the Empirical Me, I mean a man's inner or
subjective being, his psychic faculties or dispositions, taken concretely; not the bare principle of
personal Unity, or 'pure' Ego, which remains still to be discussed. These psychic dispositions are
the most enduring and intimate part of the self, that which we most verily seem to be. We take a
purer self-satisfaction when we think of our ability to argue and discriminate, of our moral
sensibility and conscience, of our indomitable will, than when we survey any of our other
possessions. Only when these are altered is a man said to be alienatus a se.

Now this spiritual self may be considered in various ways. We may divide it into faculties,
as just instanced, isolating them one from another, and identifying ourselves with either in turn.
This is an abstract way of dealing with consciousness, in which, as it actually presents itself, a
plurality of such faculties are always to be simultaneously found; or we may insist on a concrete
view, and then the spiritual self in us will be either the entire stream of our personal consciousness,
or the present 'segment' or 'section' of that stream, according as we take a broader or a narrower
view - both the stream and the section being concrete existences in time, and each being a unity
after its own peculiar kind. But whether we take it abstractly or concretely, our considering the
spiritual self at all is a reflective process, is the result of our abandoning the outward-looking point
of view, and of our having become able to think of subjectivity as such, to think ourselves as
thinkers.

This attention to thought as such, and the identification of ourselves with it rather than with
any of the objects which it reveals, is a momentous and in some respects a rather mysterious
operation, of which we need here only say that as a matter of fact it exists; and that in everyone, at
an early age, the distinction between thought as such, [p. 297] and what it is 'of' or 'about,' has
become familiar to the mind. The deeper grounds for this discrimination may possibly be hard to
find; but superficial grounds are plenty and near at hand. Almost anyone will tell us that thought
is a different sort of existence from things, because many sorts of thought are of no things - e.g.,
pleasures, pains, and emotions; others are of non-existent things - errors and fictions; others again
of existent things, but in a form that is symbolic and does not resemble them - abstract ideas and
concepts; whilst in the thoughts that do resemble the things they are 'of' (percepts, sensations), we
can feel, alongside of the thing known, the thought of it going on as an altogether separate act and
operation in the mind.

Now this subjective life of ours, distinguished as such so clearly from the objects known
by its means, may, as aforesaid, be taken by us in a concrete or in an abstract way. Of the concrete
way I will say nothing just now, except that the actual 'section' of the stream will ere long, in our
discussion of the nature of the principle of unity in consciousness, play a very important part. The
abstract way claims our attention first. If the stream as a whole is identified with the Self far more
than any outward thing, a certain portion of the stream abstracted from the rest is so identified in
an altogether peculiar degree, and is felt by all men as a sort of innermost centre within the circle,
of sanctuary within the citadel, constituted by the subjective life as a whole. Compared with this
element of the stream, the other parts, even of the subjective life, seem transient external
possessions, of which each in turn can be disowned, whilst that which disowns them remains.
Now, what is this self of all the other selves?

Probably all men would describe it in much the same way up to a certain point. They would
call it the active element in all consciousness; saying that whatever qualities a man's feelings may
possess, or whatever content his thought may include, there is a spiritual something in him which
seems to go out to meet these qualities and contents, whilst they seem to come in to be received by
it. It is what welcomes or rejects. It presides over the perception of sensations, and by giving or
withholding its
[p. 298] assent it influences the movements they tend to arouse. It is the home of interest, - not the
pleasant or the painful, not even pleasure or pain, as such, but that within us to which pleasure and
pain, the pleasant and the painful, speak. It is the source of effort and attention, and the place from
which appear to emanate the fiats of the will. A physiologist who should reflect upon it in his own
person could hardly help, I should think, connecting it more or less vaguely with the process by
which ideas or incoming sensations are 'reflected' or pass over into outward acts. Not necessarily
that it should be this process or the mere feeling of this process, but that it should be in some close
way related to this process; for it plays a part analogous to it in the psychic life, being a sort of
junction at which sensory ideas terminate and from which motor ideas proceed, and forming a kind
of link between the two. Being more incessantly there than any other single element of the mental
life, the other elements end by seeming to accrete round it and to belong to it. It becomes opposed
to them as the permanent is opposed to the changing and inconstant.

The 'I' and the 'me' are terms central to the social philosophy of George Herbert Mead,
one of the key influences on the development of the branch of sociology called symbolic
interactionism. The terms refer to the psychology of the individual, where in Mead's
understanding, the "me" is the socialized aspect of the person, and the "I" is the active aspect of
the person.[1]
One might usefully 'compare Mead's "I" and "me", respectively, with Sartre's "choice" and
"the situation". But Mead himself matched up the "me" with Freud's "censor", and the "I" with his
"ego"; and this is psychologically apt'
 The "Me" is what is learned in interaction with others and (more generally) with the
environment: other people's attitudes, once internalized in the self, constitute the Me.[3] This
includes both knowledge about that environment (including society), butalso about who the person
is: their sense of self. "What the individual is for himself is not something that he invented. It is
what his significant others have come to ...treat him as being."[4] This is because people learn to
see who they are (man or woman, old or young, etc.) by observing the responses of others
themselves or their actions. If others respond to a person as (for instance) a woman, the person
develops a sense of herself indeed as a woman.
At the same time, 'the "Me" disciplines the "I" by holding it back from breaking the law of
the community'.[5] It is thus very close to the way in a man Freud's 'ego-censor, the
conscience...arose from the critical influence of his parents (conveyed to him by the medium of
the voice), to whom were added, as time went on, those who trained and taught him and the
innumerable and indefinable host of all the other people in his environment—his fellow-men—
and public opinion'.[6] It is 'the attitude of the other in one's own organism, as controlling the thing
that he is going to do'.[7]
By contrast, 'the "I" is the response of the individual to the attitude of the community'.[8] The "I"
acts creatively, though within the context of the me. Mead notes that "It is only after we have acted
that we know what we have done...what we have said."[8]People, he argues, are not automatons;
Mead states that "the "I" reacts to the self which arises though the taking of the attitude of
others."[9] They do not blindly follow rules. They construct a response on the basis of what they
have learned, the "me". Mead highlighted accordingly those values that attach particularly to the
"I" rather than to the me, "...which cannot be calculated and which involve a reconstruction of the
society, and so of the 'me' which belongs to that society."[10] Taken together, the "I" and the "me"
form the person or the self in Mead's social philosophy. According to Mead, there would be no
possibility of personality without both the "I" and the "Me".[11]

Fusion[edit]
Mead explored what he called 'the fusion of the "I" and the "me" in the attitudes of religion,
patriotism, and team work', noting what he called the "peculiar sense of exaltation" that
belongs[12] to them. He also considered that 'the idea of the fusion of the "I" and the "me" gives a
very adequate explanation of this exaltation...in the aesthetic experience'.[13]
In everyday life, however, 'a complete fusion of the "I" and the "me" may not be a good thing...it
is a dynamic sort of balance between the "I" and the "me" that is required'.[14]

Conventionality[edit]
When there is a predominance of the "me" in the personality, 'we speak of a person as a
conventional individual; his ideas are exactly the same as those of his neighbours; he is hardly
more than a "me" under the circumstances'[15]—"...the shallow, brittle, conformist kind of
personality..." that is "all persona, with its excessive concern for what people think."[16] The
alternative—and in many ways Mead's ideal—was the person who has a definite personality, who
replies to the organized attitude in a way that makes a significant difference. With such a person,
the I is the most important phase of the experience.[15]

Dissociation[edit]
Mead recognised that it is normal for an individual to have 'all sorts of selves answering to all sorts
of different social reactions', but also that it was possible for 'a tendency to break up the personality'
to appear: 'Two separate "me's" and "I's", two different selves, result...the phenomenon
of dissociation of personality'.[17]

Literary examples[edit]
Walt Whitman 'marks off the impulsive "I", the natural, existential aspect of the self, from critical
sanction. It is the cultured self, the "me", in Mead's terms, that needs re-mediation'.[18]
Psychological Differentiation
What is Psychological Differentiation?

Psychological differentiation is an important aspect of self-development. As Dr. Robert Firestone

writes in his book The Self-Under Siege: A Therapeutic Model for Differentiation, “In order for
people to live their own own lives and fulfill their destinies, they must differentiate from
destructive environmental influences.”
Dr. Firestone believes that a person’s true identity is affected throughout their lives by
interpersonal experiences that either support or damage the development of his or her personality.
In order for us to live our own lives and fulfill our own destinies, we must differentiate
ourselves from destructive family and societal influences. Differentiating from
negative influences and identities from our past allows us to become who we truly are, rather than
following a prescribed identity from either our family or our society. To the extent that we are able
to develop and sustain our own unique identities and follow our own unique desires, we will be
able to live truly fulfilling lives.
So, you should ask yourself:
Whose life am I really living?
Am I basing my life on my own personal beliefs, values and desires?
By undertaking the project of differentiation, we are able to more fully become the unique
individuals that we have the potential to be. By understanding the process of psychological
differentiation, we can begin to separate ourselves from the chains of the past and lead the most
individualistic and meaningful lives possible.
Watch this Whiteboard Video on Differentiation
The Four Steps of Differentiation

There are four key steps to psychological differentiation. The first steps involve becoming aware
of the various ways we have been influenced by destructive individuals and experiences from our
past. The next steps involve taking actions to break with these old identities in order to ultimately
become our truest selves. As Dr. Firestone points out, “Becoming a differentiated person is a
lifelong project.” So be patient and compassion toward yourself as you move through these steps.
Step 1:
The first step of psychological differentiation involves breaking with destructive thoughts and
attitudes toward ourselves that we internalized based on painful early life experiences. We can
start by identifying these negative thought processes, which Dr. Firestone calls the critical inner
voice, that are harmful or negative toward the self. Some of these thoughts may seem positive at
first (either self-soothing or self-aggrandizing), while others will seem hostile, self-hating,
paranoid, or suspicious. Once we become aware of these “voices,” we can develop insight into the
sources of these destructive thoughts. We can develop this insight by thinking about which
specific individuals or experiences may have lead us to feel these negative ways about ourselves.
Then we can try to answer back to these skewed thoughts in our own point of view. By learning
to challenge this inner critic, we separate from the “parent” we’ve internalized, a step that may
cause us anxiety but will ultimately free us to become who we strive to be.
Step 2:
The second step of differentiation involves recognizing and changing negative personality traits in
ourselves that are an incorporation of the negative traits of our parents, caregivers, or other
influential figures. Many individuals are surprised to find that, despite their best intentions, they
often act in the same negative ways a parent did — reenacting the very actions or personality
patterns that they swore they would never repeat themselves. Altering these unpleasant or toxic
personality characteristics — addictions, vanity, phoniness, self-centeredness, a victimized
orientation toward life, attitudes of superiority and contempt, among others – is a powerful way of
saying goodbye to our past. It is important to be proactive about changing these negative
personality traits without being self-hating or falling back into your critical inner voices.
Understand that you came by these faults honestly and that you have the full power to change
them.
Step 3:
The third step of differentiation involves looking into the psychological defenses we developed as
an adaptation to the pain and distress we experienced growing up. To differentiate from the more
childish aspects of our personality, we need to identify and then give up the patterns of defense we
formed to deal with pain early in our lives. We need to recognize that the defenses we formed to
protect ourselves as children often limit us in our adult lives. For example, if we were intruded on
as children, we may feel excessively guarded as adults. If we were rejected as kids, we may feel
distrusting in our relationships. People tend to cling to these defended ways of responding to others
and remain emotionally trapped in cycles from their past. As adults, it’s important to give up the
hope of ever filling the vast voids we felt as children. In order to become psychologically
differentiated, we need to, in effect, say goodbye to our “child selves” and live fully as the adults
we are now.
Step 4:
The final step of psychological differentiation involves developing our own values, ideals, and
beliefs rather than automatically accepting the beliefs that we grew up with or those of our culture.
We should strive to lead a life of integrity, according to our own ideals, in spite of social pressures
to conform to the standards of others. We should resist influences that are oppressive or restrictive
of individual human rights. It is also important to formulate transcendent goals, those that go
beyond ourselves and our immediate family, and to take steps toward fulfilling these goals that
give personal meaning to our life.
A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of the totality of their experience is
unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image.

The humanistic approach states that the self is composed of concepts unique to ourselves. The self-
concept includes three components:
Self-worth

Self-worth (or self-esteem) comprises what we think about ourselves. Rogers believed feelings of
self-worth developed in early childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with
the mother and father.
Self-image

How we see ourselves, which is important to good psychological health. Self-image includes the
influence of our body image on inner personality.

At a simple level, we might perceive ourselves as a good or bad person, beautiful or ugly. Self-
image affects how a person thinks, feels and behaves in the world.
Ideal-self

This is the person who we would like to be. It consists of our goals and ambitions in life, and is
dynamic – i.e., forever changing.

The ideal self in childhood is not the ideal self in our teens or late twenties etc.

Positive Regard and Self Worth

Carl Rogers (1951) viewed the child as having two basic needs: positive regard from other people
and self-worth.

How we think about ourselves, our feelings of self-worth are of fundamental importance both to
psychological health and to the likelihood that we can achieve goals and ambitions in life and
achieve self-actualization.
Self-worth may be seen as a continuum from very high to very low. For Carl Rogers (1959) a
person who has high self-worth, that is, has confidence and positive feelings about him or herself,
faces challenges in life, accepts failure and unhappiness at times, and is open with people.

A person with low self-worth may avoid challenges in life, not accept that life can be painful and
unhappy at times, and will be defensive and guarded with other people.

Rogers believed feelings of self-worth developed in early childhood and were formed from the
interaction of the child with the mother and father. As a child grows older, interactions with
significant others will affect feelings of self-worth.

Rogers believed that we need to be regarded positively by others; we need to feel valued, respected,
treated with affection and loved. Positive regard is to do with how other people evaluate and judge
us in social interaction. Rogers made a distinction between unconditional positive regard and
conditional positive regard.
Unconditional Positive Regard

Unconditional positive regardis where parents, significant others (and the humanist therapist)
accepts and loves the person for what he or she is. Positive regard is not withdrawn if the person
does something wrong or makes a mistake.

The consequences of unconditional positive regard are that the person feels free to try things out
and make mistakes, even though this may lead to getting it worse at times.

People who are able to self-actualize are more likely to have received unconditional positive regard
from others, especially their parents in childhood.
Conditional Positive Regard

Conditional positive regard is where positive regard, praise, and approval, depend upon the child,
for example, behaving in ways that the parents think correct.
Hence the child is not loved for the person he or she is, but on condition that he or she behaves
only in ways approved by the parent(s).

At the extreme, a person who constantly seeks approval from other people is likely only to have
experienced conditional positive regard as a child.

Congruence

A person’s ideal self may not be consistent with what actually happens in life and experiences of
the person. Hence, a difference may exist between a person’s ideal self and actual experience. This
is called incongruence.

Where a person’s ideal self and actual experience are consistent or very similar, a state of
congruence exists. Rarely, if ever, does a total state of congruence exist; all people experience a
certain amount of incongruence.
The development of congruence is dependent on unconditional positive regard. Carl Rogers
believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization they must be in a state of congruence.

According to Rogers, we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with
our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self.

The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are
and the higher our sense of self-worth. A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of
the totality of their experience is unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image.

Incongruence is "a discrepancy between the actual experience of the organism and the self-picture
of the individual insofar as it represents that experience.

As we prefer to see ourselves in ways that are consistent with our self-image, we may use defense
mechanisms like denial or repression in order to feel less threatened by some of what we consider
to be our undesirable feelings. A person whose self-concept is incongruent with her or his real
feelings and experiences will defend because the truth hurts.
our real self is the person you are in reality, at present. Your ideal self is the ought self - that which
you desire to be. It comprises your image of yourself - both in terms of your physical (body image)
as well as psychological traits. It could be that you are very short tempered (your real self) however
you desire to be someone who is in control of his/ her situational temper (ideal self). Similarly you
may be short and a bit flabby but your ideal image of yourself is being a bit taller and more lean.
The greater the discrepancy between your real and ideal self , the greater will be your frustration
and distress. Hence we should aim at reducing this discrepancy , so as to reduce the cognitive
dissonance. You can reduce the discrepancy either by directly addressing the issue if possible
(exercising) or trying to be more accepting of the issue if it cannot be solved (for example being
short in terms of height).
ames, William. 1890. "The Self And Its Selves" (161-166).

James’ piece elaborates on the constituents, or selves, that create one cohesive “self. What people
associate with the terms “I,” “me,” and “mine,” can all in some way or another be associated with
an investment of self to some degree or another. James claims that the understanding of Self can
be separated into three categories: “1. Its constituents; 2. The feelings and emotions they arouse,—
Self-feelings; 3. The actions to which they prompt,—Self-seeking and Self-preservation” (James
1890, 162). The first category, the constituents that constitute Self can then be further divided into
sub-categories of “a. The material Self; b. The social Self; c. The spiritual Self; and d. The pure
Ego” (James 1890, 162). James then further explicates each of the four aforementioned sub-
categories.

The material Self is constituted by: our bodies, clothes, immediate family, and home. It is it to
these things, according to James, that we are the most deeply affected by because of our
investments of self within these things. The more we invest of ourselves in these objects, the more
attached to them we inevitably are to them.

A man’s social Self is configured based upon our interactions with society and the reactions of
others that are analyzed in order to contribute to our idea of a social Self. Within this notion of the
social Self, there are multiple divergences; which version of Self is present is contingent upon
which of a particular social group one finds one’s self in. Seemingly, possessing multiple social
Selves and maintaining the right face depending on social situation can be chaotic or harmonious.
In attempts to maintain order between different variations of social Self, an individual’s sense of
“fame” or “honor” regulates and determines what behaviors are or not moral, reasonable or
honorable.

The next constituent is said by James to be the most intimate self, the spiritual Self. James claims
that it is the most intimate version of self because the satisfaction experienced when one thinks of
one’s “ability to argue and discriminate, of our [one’s] moral sensibility, and conscience, of our
indomitable will” (James 1890, 164) is more pure than other sentiments of satisfaction. Then,
James describes a number of bodily processes in which becoming introspective can make the acts
entirely mindful, conscious processes—furthering our understanding of an intimate, spiritual self.

Finally, James addresses the last and “most puzzling aspect of the self,” (1980, 165) the Pure ego.
While different schools of thought have all reached differing conclusions regarding the Ego, James
begins to describe it by first addressing the deciphering of a personal identity. The first part of
understanding the Ego comes with understanding that it can recognize its own thoughts; the
thoughts that belong to one’s own Ego can be recognized and possess a warmth that thoughts
possessed by a separate ego does not. This constructed consciousness then works in conjunction
with subjective synthesis, a concept that is essential to thinking and is the act of bringing thoughts
together (even if only to contrast them and realize the thoughts no longer belong together). In
understanding the entirety of the Ego’s functions, however, one must recall that personal identity
is perceived sameness and can ultimately be feeling—not fact.

True self (also known as real self, authentic self, original self and vulnerable self)
and false self (also known as fake self, idealized self, superficial self and pseudo self) are
psychological concepts often used in connection with narcissism.
They were introduced into psychoanalysis in 1960 by D. W. Winnicott.[1] Winnicott used true self
to describe a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience, and a feeling of being alive,
having a real self.[2]
The false self, by contrast, Winnicott saw as a defensive façade[1] – one which in extreme cases
could leave its holders lacking spontaneity and feeling dead and empty, behind a mere appearance
of being real.[1]
To maintain their self-esteem, and protect their vulnerable true selves, narcissists need
to control others' behavior – particularly that of their children, seen as extensions of themselves.[3]

Issues Eastern Philosophy Western Philosophy

Main Schools Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity**, Rational, Scientific,

Integral Yoga, Islam, Taoism, Zen Logical schools
Main Principles 1. Cosmological unity
2. Life is a journey towards eternal
realities that are beyond the
realities that surround us
3. Circular view of the universe,
based on the perception of
eternal recurrence
4. Inner-world dependent
5. Self-liberation from the false
"Me" and finding the true "Me".
The highest state is believed to
be a state of 'no-self', where
neither self-worth nor self-
importance have any real
meaning.
6. Behavioral ethics
The "Me" Eternal reality of the universal truth:
concept self-liberation through getting rid of
the false "Me" and discovering the
true "Me"
Relationship Integration
with Religion
Search for  Systemic approach – all events
Absolute Truth in the universe are
interconnected
 Searching inside yourself – by
becoming a part of the universe
through meditation and right
living
"Though he should live a hundred
years, not seeing the Truth Sublime;
yet better, indeed, is the single day's
1. Feeling oneself as an element
of the Divine
2. Life is a service (to the God,
money, business, etc.)
3. Linear view of the universe
and life, based on the
Christian philosophy where
everything has its beginning
and the end.
4. Outer-world dependent
5. Self-dedication to the goal
(life
vision, success, happiness,
etc.)
"Me" is here and now. The true
“Me” in every human being is a part
of the Divine that need to become
apparent. True “Me” is given
anddoesn’t have to be cognizable.
Opposition
 More focused on individual
events and the role of the
person
 Searching outside yourself -
through research and analysis
"The truth that survives is simply
the lie that is pleasantest to
believe." ~ H.L.Mencken
 life of one who sees the Truth
Sublime." ~ Buddha
Search for The truth is given is does not to have The truth needs to be proved.
Truth & be proved. The philosophic base for and culture
Fundamental The philosophic base for and culture of of fundamental research isstronger.
Research fundamental research isweaker.

Future Your future is determined by your Your future is unknown, it

deeds today. was predetermined by God and is
"Study the past if you would like to not much influenced by your deeds.
divine the future." "You can never plan the future by
~ Confucius the past." ~ Edmund Burke
Beliefs and The true key is inside. The inner world The main values
Values of a human being and his or her ability are success and achievement. These
to control and develop it is of the that can be achieved in many ways,
highest value. The way to the top is but rarely through developing inner
inside yourself, through self- strength. The majority
development. of success and achievement criteria
"The superior man understands what have an external nature (money,
is right; the inferior man understands faith, popularity, etc.). The way to
what will sell." ~ Confucius the top is through
active outside intervention.
"By chasing desires you will meet only
the outer surface." "Happiness lies in virtuous activity,
~ Lao Tzu and perfect happiness lies in the
best activity, which is
contemplative." ~ Aristotle
Justice Spiritual practice Cerebral practice
"There is a higher court than courts of "At his best, man is the noblest of all
justice and that is the court of animals; separated from law and
conscience. It supercedes all other justice he is the worst. " ~ Aristotle
courts." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Individualism / A human being is an integral part of A human being has an
Collectivism the universe and the society. People individualistic nature and is an
are fundamentally connected. Duty independent part of the universe and
towards all others is a very important the society. Individualism is
matter. stronger.
Collectivism is stronger.
Improvement / Cyclic development, Linear development, hence
Evolution hence improvement is a never ending improvement has a goal.
journey that has no limits. Development stops when the goal is
reached.
Radical The fundamentals of the status quo The fundamentals of the status quo
Innovation / should not be questioned. The culture can – and often should –
Revolution of considering and introducing radical bequestioned. The culture of
changes is weaker. considering and introducing radical
changes is stronger.

Keep Your Computer-tired Eyes Healthy

Passion & Entrepreneurial creativity and Entrepreneurial

Venturing venturing is contained by the habit to
control one's passions.
"Desires are the cause of suffering. If
desire, which lies at the route of all
human passion, can be removed, then
passion will die out and all human
suffering will be ended." ~ Buddhism
"Vain indeed is all overweening pride
in the conquest even of the entire
universe if one has not conquered
one's own passions." ~ Sri Aurobindo
Achievement & Winning is inside yourself. >>>
Winning "Though he should conquer a
thousand men in the battlefield a
thousand times, yet he, indeed, who
would conquer himself is the noblest
victor." ~ Buddha
"He who conquers others is strong; he
who conquers himself is mighty." ~
Lao Tzu
"The most excellent Jihad is that for
the conquest of self."
– Mohammad
venturing is encouraged emotionall
y.
"Nothing is ever achieved by
reasonable men." – J Fred Bucy of
Texas Instruments
"Nothing great was
ever achieved without enthusiasm..
. Always do what you are afraid to
do... Do not go where the path may
lead, go instead where there is no
path and leave a trail." ~ Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"If you want to succeed, you have
to forge new paths and avoid
borrowed ones." ~ John Rockfeller
→ Winning is outside yourself.
"You're not a star until they can
spell your name in Karachi."
~ Roger Moore
"Life affords no higher pleasure
than that of surmounting difficulties,
passing from one stop of success to
another, forming new wishes and
seeing them gratified."
~ Samuel Johnson
"It is not because things are difficult
that we do not dare; it is because we
do not dare that they are difficult."
Implementation Spiritual and missionary approach.
"To create and develop without any
feelings of ownership, to work and
guide without any expectation and
control, is the best quality" ~ Lao Tzu
To achieve self-liberation and nirvana
you need to perform your duties
without expecting any reward for it. ~
Vedanta, Hinduism
"Action can be achieved by inaction,
where the result is achieved by "Not-
Me" ~ Zen
Goals & Key to Spiritual
Success "Virtuous life and adherence to
performing your duties."
~ Confucianism
"The Three Armies can be deprived of
their commanding officer, but even a
common man cannot be deprived of his
purpose." ~ Confucius
"If you really want everything, then
give up everything."
~ Lao Tzu
"He is able who thinks he is able." ~
Buddha
Living Virtue
Principles "Be satisfied with whatever you have,
and enjoy the same. When you come to
know that you have everything, and
you are not short of anything, then the
whole world will be yours." ~ Lao Tzu
"The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed; The
deed develops into habit; And habit
hardens into character. So watch the
thought and its ways with care, And let
Pragmatic and emotional approac
h.
"The supreme accomplishment is to
blur the line between work and
play." ~ Arnold Toynbee
"Since most of us spend our lives
doing ordinary tasks, the most
important thing is to carry them out
extraordinary well." ~ Henry David
Thoreau
"Every minute you spend
in planning saves 10 minutes in
execution." ~ Brian Tracy
Materialistic
"The secret of success in life, and
subsequently of making money, is
toenjoy your work. If you do,
nothing is hard work – no matter
how many hours you put in." ~ Sir
Billy Butlin
"Success is that old ABC – ability,
breaks and courage."
~ Charles Luckman
"Flaming enthusiasm, backed by
horse sense and persistence, is the
quality that most frequently makes
for success."
~ Dale Carnegie
Ethic
"Refrain from doing ill; for one all
powerful reason, lest our children
should copy our misdeeds; we are
all to prone to imitate whatever is
base and depraved."
~ Juvenal
"There is no real excellence in all
this world which can be separated
from right living."
~ David Starr Jordan
 it spring from love born out of concern
for all beings."
~ Buddha
Establishing Through meditation Through analysis
Control Over A man can separate his/her mind from "I can control my passions and
Your Emotions his/her emotions and control them. ~ emotions if I can understand their
Taoism nature." ~ Spinosa
Leadership Spiritual; walking behind people; Hands-on; walking ahead of
silence is golden. people; speech is golden.
"In order to guide people, "Leadership is done from in front.
the leader must put himself behind Never ask others to do what you, if
them. Thus when he is ahead they feel challenged, would not be willing to
no hurt." ~ Lao Tzu do yourself."
~ Xenophon
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty developed

the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "ego cogito."
This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world
existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as aperceiving thing are intricately
intertwined and mutually "engaged." The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the
natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and
"communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as
incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through
use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration,
however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things
are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our
connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in
an ongoing "becoming."
The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at
a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there
is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such
"Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is
manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is
immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the
world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object
reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world
– being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object
coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives
that that object has upon the beings around it.
Each object is a "mirror of all others." Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not
that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception
founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the
meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual gestalt. Only after we have been integrated
within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular
objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not
operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a
particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and
indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.
Paul Churchland

Philosophical views[edit]

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Churchland's work is in the school of analytic philosophy in western philosophy, with interests
in epistemology and thephilosophy of science, and specific principal interests in the philosophy of
mind and in neurophilosophy and artificial intelligence.[citation needed] His work has been described
as being influenced by the work of W. V. O. Quine, Thomas Kuhn,Russell Hanson, Wilfred
Sellars, and Paul Feyerabend[2] as well as by Karl Popper.[citation needed]
Along with his wife, Churchland is a major proponent of eliminative materialism,[10] the belief that
everyday, common-sense, ‘folk’ psychology, which seeks to explain human behavior in terms of
the beliefs and desires of agents, is actually a deeply flawed theory that must be eliminated in favor
of a mature cognitive neuroscience.[3]
where by folk psychology is meant everyday mental concepts such as beliefs, feelings, and desires,
which are viewed as theoretical constructs without coherent definition, and thus destined to be
obviated by a scientific understanding of human nature.[according to whom?][citation needed] From the
perspective of Zawidzki, Churchland's concept of eliminativism is suggested as early as his
book Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (1979), with its most explicit formulation
appearing in a Journal of Philosophy essay, "Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional
Attitudes" (1981, see Written works section below).[3]
Churchland holds that beliefs are not ontologically real; that is, he maintains that a future, fully
matured neuroscience is likely to have no need for "beliefs" (see propositional attitudes), in the
same manner that modern science discarded such notions as legends or witchcraft.[according to
whom?][citation needed]
According to Churchland, such concepts will not merely be reduced to more
finely grained explanation and retained as useful proximate levels of description, but will be
strictly eliminated as wholly lacking in correspondence to precise objective phenomena, such as
activation patterns across neural networks.[this quote needs a citation] He points out that the history of
science has seen many posits once considered real entities, such as phlogiston, caloric,
the luminiferous ether, and vital forces, thus eliminated.[citation needed]
Moreover, in The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul Churchland hypothesizes that
consciousness might be explained in terms of a recurrent neural network with its hub in
the intralaminar nucleus of the thalamus, and feedback connections to all parts of the cortex.[full
citation needed]
He acknowledges that this proposal will likely be found in error with regard to the
neurological details, but states his belief that it is on the right track in its use of recurrent neural
networks to account for consciousness.[citation needed] This has been described, notably,[by whom?] as
a reductionist rather than eliminativist account of consciousness.[citation needed]

The way you responded to the Sharing the Rewards exercise tells you something about how you
feel regarding individual achievement and reward. Most Americans choose to divide the available
pool in a disproportionate way; they do not generally divide the money equally. This tendency to
stress either individuality or a more collective response is one of the most widely distributed traits
around the world. Not every culture is at one end or the other of the spectrum, but the majority
tend to favor one over the other in everyday life. Knowing about the basis of this Collectivism
versus Individualism construct will help you to recognize, understand, and anticipate attitudes in
different types of cultures.
 Individualist—

The individual identifies primarily with self, with the needs of the
individual being satisfied before those of the group. Looking after and
taking care of oneself, being self-sufficient, guarantees the well-being
of the group. Independence and self-reliance are greatly stressed and
valued. In general, people tend to distance themselves psychologically
and emotionally from each other. One may choose to join groups, but
group membership is not essential to one’s identity or success.
Individualist characteristics are often associated with men and people
in urban settings.

Collectivist—

One’s identity is, in large part, a

function of one’s membership and role in a group, e.g., the
family or work team. The survival and success of the group
ensures the well-being of the individual, so that by considering
the needs and feelings of others, one protects oneself. Harmony
and the interdependence of group members are stressed and
valued. Group members are relatively close psychologically and
emotionally, but distant toward nongroup members. Collectivist
characteristics are often associated with women and people in
rural settings.

Individualistic Cultures: ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease’ Individualistic cultures, such as North
American and Western European countries, are characterized by a cultural perspective that
emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual’s personal characteristics, needs, and motives as the
focal point of predicting and understanding the individual’s actions (Chiu, Kim, & Wan, 2008). In
contrast to collectivistic cultures, individualistic cultures place more emphasis on the expression
and satisfaction of the individual’s needs than on conformity to public norms (Oyserman & Lee,
2007). These cultures are sometimes described as ‘complex’ societies because people have
considerable societal flexibility to join many different groups and exercise a wide range of choices
in the expression of various social roles. For example, in American society, although parents might
have certain expectations of their children to go to college, the children are relatively free to choose
a major that reflects their personal needs and interests. Due to their emphasis on the expression of
the needs and desires of the individual, such complex, individualistic cultures illustrate the proverb
‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease’. Collectivistic Cultures: ‘the nail that stands out gets pounded
down’ In contrast to individualistic cultures, collectivistic cultures such as Japan, India, and China
tend to be characterized by a cultural perspective that places less emphasis on the uniqueness of
the individual’s personal characteristics as the focal point of predicting and understanding the
individual’s actions. Instead, such cultures place more of an emphasis on the person’s
identification with a group, such as family, country, occupation, or caste, and the expectations,
duties, and roles associated with being a member of a group as the primary source for
understanding the individual (Benet-Martínez & Oishi, 2008). These cultures appear as ‘tight’
societies because of the high expectations they place on people to conform to societal values, roles,
and norms. For example, even though she may not like studying economics, a young Japanese
college student may pursue a career as an economist to fulfill the wishes of the elder members of
her family. Due to their restrictive nature, such tight, collectivistic cultures illustrate the proverb
‘the nail that stands out gets pounded down’. These descriptions of individualistic and collectivistic
cultures represent general patterns of thinking and behavior associated with certain cultural
guidelines. As a point of clarification, within any given culture there will be personal expression
by individuals who do not conform to such cultural guidelines. More specifically, even in tight,
collectivistic cultures there will be those individuals whose actions reflect to a greater degree their
personal needs, motives, and values. For example, even in highly repressive cultures, there will be
those individuals who will pursue their academic interests (e.g., study forbidden texts), creative
passions (e.g., play music), and/or political views (e.g., anti-government protesting) that are at
odds with the cultural guidelines.

Paul Churchland Identity theory (philosophy of the mind): the thesis that mind states are
nothing but states of the brain. Types of identity theory are the weaker assumption of a type-type
identity and the stronger assumption of a token-token identity.