Social Psychology. The Study Of `the Self` Or `identity`.

Should social Psychology continue to study 'the self' or is it more productive to talk about 'identity' in the 21st century?

Over the years social psychology has tried to understand the notion of the 'self' and someone's 'identity' through creating models and tests to try and measure certain aspects. Figures such as William James, Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman have presented theories to try and understand how our 'self' or 'identity' is constructed and why. They are very early understandings of this topic and their validity is being questioned because of the nature of a modern society. William James in particular has set building blocks on which today's understanding of 'self' and 'identity' are construed. His theories are lacking the understanding of a fluid and ever changing society that we are living in today. He touches briefly on a notion which he called 'the social me' where recognition and respect from others is crucial in the process of how we see ourselves but uses out dated platforms on which we do this. Mead and Goffman begin to theorise more thoroughly on how social constructs and pressures make us actively change who we are. These theories attribute to what we understand today as 'social identity theory'. The society in which we live in today has changed exponentially and therefore the pressures that can shape how we see ourselves or in turn create our 'identities' are of course very different and need to be taken into account. Society massively shapes how we construct our selves, even more so now in a capitalist, consumer orientated world. Although looking at it from this perspective we begin to ignore the fact that we are human beings with individual beliefs, values and reactions to certain situations. By overshadowing this perspective, the question of whether individuality is in decline becomes precedent. If we embark on constant behavioural change for recognition by our peers then who are we? Do our own values and ideas become useless, and instead we are trapped in a 'dramaturgical' model, which Goffman suggests. Everything we do is an act that is modified to give off a certain effect from ourselves to others. Mead suggests there are two parts of our internal 'self', the 'I' which is our individuality and unique human thought and the 'me' which is the ability to observe our behaviour and act upon it accordingly. Taking this into account, where does our individuality go? "The 'I' disappears at the very moment when it performs it's function; once it presents itself as a past actor, it ceases to be an 'I' and becomes a 'me'." .

"Social identity is therefore something that links us to the social world. It provides the pivot between the individual and society." Understanding how much the social world affects our individuality is a problem for modern social psychology. If our 'dentity' is a construct of our take on society and our individuality of 'self', realising how much 'self' is used in making an identity is problematic. 'Social identity theory' is a direct challenge to previous theories of the fact that people's behaviour is mainly internal and their sense of self is affected very little by external, social factors. The "Three Aspects of Self" is an example of this, it takes into account external factors but claims that they are always modified by our individual morality. The 'personal self' is the fact that we are aware of being ourselves and also the awareness that who we are has been shaped by social, historical and political factors we still hold individuality through our own personal beliefs, values and attitudes. The 'social self' is how we hold ourselves in certain social situations and the 'relational self', which defines us by how we interact with others within our family, group of peers and community. It's the self that interacts within certain constraints of duty and responsibility. In a modern society the fact that we have inexorably changed our economic agendas from production to consumption has affected the importance and the type of social factors that define us. Previous to this shift, identity markers such as our profession, religion and community were what we used to define ourselves and allow us to have a sense of being, but now these things have lost a lot of value. When living in a westernised, capitalist environment we value membership of peers that are deemed to be aspirational or desirable at a much higher importance. On the note of aspiration and desirability, people use consumerism to define themselves. Which brand of clothing they buy, where they buy their food or which car they drive are now used as identity markers. These products all have connotations that can tell us a lot about a person who owns them, or how someone wants us to perceive them. Clever advertising gives a company's commodity aspirational connotations which appeals to the way in which we define ourselves in a modern world. For example Marks and Spencer's market their food as upper class, in turn leading their consumers to define themselves as upper class and enjoyers of 'proper food'. "Consumption for them is a vehicle of liberation and self expression." With the nature of a capitalist society products come and go and therefore so must identity markers. A psychologist, Zigmunt Bauman, refers to this as the 'liquid life', old identity markers are overlooked and people use commodities to feel like they are 'in the loop'. Being 'in the loop' is incredibly important in modern society, aspirational products and peers are markers on which we define ourselves and in turn modify our behaviour. These new markers have very little to do with individual morality and values, they are simply being forced upon us by the nature of modern consumerism. "Time was when poor people could retain respectability, dignity and pride by observing the rituals of traditional working class communities, with their prescribed routines for washing clothes, cleaning the house and tending to the garden." With our overwhelming need to define ourselves with modern commodities, the earlier referred to 'personal self' clearly plays a very little part in understanding the individual as we readily discard morality and our own beliefs to blindly use modern consumer trends to define our selves and create a sense of 'identity'. Also the 'relational self' has also been phased out of the process of self-identification, the previous quote from Bauman suggests that everyday duties and obligations are no longer used to define us. Our duty to our community is an extremely minor factor in our process of understating ourselves; the new markers of consumerism have overshadowed these. With this in mind it would be a safe assumption to say that using the theory of 'the self' to understand the individual in modern society would be fairly useless. 'Identity' has taken precedence in modern culture.

In contrast to the perspective that people mindlessly follow the rules of consumerism to define themselves, there is the fact that people have free will, values and attitudes that have stuck with them from childhood and helped defined who they are today. This refers to the 'personal self' similar to James' 'Three Aspects of Me' where these values are somewhat affected by social environments but still remain individual and help retain the ability for the individual to think for themselves. In reference to this theory we can see evidence for the fact that using the notion of 'the self' is still a valid tool in understanding the individual. The 'social self' is a collection of selves that are different in particular social situations. They are, to a degree, defined by the social nature of the situation but the way in which we interact is individual to everyone, no two people act exactly the same in any given situation. This refers to the 'I' and 'Me' of Mead's theory; the 'I' is the spontaneous interaction with other human beings using our innate ideals and belief systems, which are unique to us as individuals. A sense of 'self' encapsulates the idea that we can think for ourselves and modify our own behaviour accordingly. This can be seen with the example that people are very focussed on how they are seen by others and constantly repair their behaviour in what Goffman coined as the 'Dramaturgy' of society. "The sense of self is at the centre of everybody's world. In an individualistic culture people tend to see themselves at centre stage overestimating the extent to which they are noticed by others." The three aspects of self all coexist and modify each other to certain extents but everything owes itself to free will and the modification of behaviour in regards to values and beliefs that the individual holds. To an extent we do use society's environment to define ourselves but each individual uses the markers in different ways according to their beliefs and values.

In conclusion using one or the other theories to study the individual's construction of how they see themselves is not enough. There are many levels of 'identity' or 'self' and endless environments and social situations that can modify our behaviour and in turn modify who we are. "It is necessary or useful to distinguish between 'social identity' (what they call 'group membership') and 'group identity' which, in their model seems to be almost a sociological construct, unrelated to the psychological construct." Using social identity theory and the controlling nature of a capitalist society in regards to identity is not enough to fully understand how an individual comes to the conclusions of who they are. You cannot discard the fact that the individual is a human and has complex cognitive processes, values, beliefs and unique reactions to certain situations. How people modify their behaviour to fit into social groups can affect how they interact with members of that group, social identity theory assumes that an individual fits into a category, adopting a stereotypical behavioural pattern common to the particular group ,in order to fit in. "Social identities can differ and that not all induce ingroup favouring behaviours." Social identity theory is intrinsic for understanding how society and relationships with others affect who we are but the study of the 'self' is crucial to understanding why we interact with society in the way that we do.

Bibliography

Alan Aldridge (2003). Consumption. Cambridge: Polity Press

da Silva F C. (2007). G.H. Mead: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press. 51.

Dora Capozza and Rupert Brown Social Identity Process. London: Sage Publications.

Wendy Stainton Rogers (2011). Social Psychology. Maidenhead: Open University Press

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