SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. PART 4. SELF-PERCEPTION

How often do you look at yourself in the mirror?

This Module of the Course on Social Psychology is devoted to SELF-PERCEPTION.

It focuses mainly on the Self-concept, which can basically be treated as  collection of thoughts or beliefs about oneself. Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to "WHO AM I?"

According to Olga Gulevich, Self-concept is the image that we have of ourselves. The professor speaks about how this self-image forms and changes over time, being influenced by several factors.

The Module reveals the mechanism of our personal evaluation: the traits of character (kindness, honesty), our attitude towards people and also the way we act in different situations (perseverance, independence). The Social Psychology suggests that we pay much more attention to our action-related features, rather than personal ones.

The concept of Self-esteem was highlighted in one of the lectures. No one would doubt that self-esteem is beneficial, that people with low self-esteem suffer from psychological difficulties and tend to struggle through life, and that higher self-esteem generally equates with greater psychological health.

The best thing I liked about the Module is discovering the concept of self-sufficiency, which is the quality of feeling secure and content with oneself, a deep-rooted sense of inner completeness and stability. This issue is similar to the effect of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (one of my previous posts was devoted to that term), when our expectations and predictions influence our behaviour.  As we go deeper into revealing the concept, we come across weak and strong for self-sufficiency. People with strong self-sufficiency aren’t too concerned with other people’s opinions of them.  They have a deep-rooted sense of their own worth. Self-sufficient people have a strong internal locus of control, they trust in their own instincts, and are prepared to sail through the difficulties they can face on their way to success.  Thus, the level of Self-sufficiency determines our expectations about the step we are going to take, the efforts we make, which leads to achieving higher or lower results of our work.

As I studied the lectures thoroughly, I got the highest result:

I believe that the succeeding lectures will keep me involved and inspired 

for my further self-development.