I'm exploring the statement that our self concept relies heavily on the feedback we receive from others. self-concept is a combination of the way we feel about and see ourselves, and a big part of boosting our self-concept is getting compliments from others. For example, if somebody changed their hairstyle and it received compliments from friends they would feel confident about themselves, whereas if it got negative feedback the person would most likely regret the decision depending on how high their self concept already is. if we receive negative feedback for showing our core self, the gap between our core and public self will increase and there is more chance we will adapt our public self to make us more appealing to others.
Dimbleby and Burton have a theory that we rely on the actions of, compare ourselves to, and identify with others. This ties in with the statement as we value other people highly and the reactions we receive from others can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when we are told something so much that we start to believe it and act it out. When this happens it means other people have influenced the way we act and this shows that we rely heavily on other people's opinions. As well as this, Cooley's Looking Glass Theory (1992) states that other people validate our behaviour and how we feel about ourselves depends entirely on the reactions of others. This is a similar theory to Dimbleby and Burton as both of theories support the idea that the opinions of others are important to us. A good example of this is that teenagers generally tend to dress similarly to the way their friends dress or copy popular styles and this suggests that they are doing this to fit in and be liked, rather than because they just like the style.
The Johari window is a model of identity, and shows the different versions of ourself and who sees them. There are 4 sections: open, blind, hidden and unknown, and these are all either known or unknown by us and others. Our open self is seen by everybody and our hidden self is aspects of our personality that we hide from others. This means we change the way we are depending on who we're with as we all have things that we want to keep private and we want to show ourselves in a good light when with others so we only reveal certain parts of our personality. For example, I change the way I act with different people as I want people to like me and accept me into their groups. This theory is good evidence that we rely on others opinions as we make changes to our identity to gain acceptance.
Another theory which supports this idea is the dissonance theory. It states that we have to try and protect ourselves from the opinions of others so we don't damage our self-concept. This is direct evidence that people affect what we think about ourselves. We disclose different amounts of information to different people and adapt the things we say in order to get approval from them. When I talk to people who are interested in pop music I would discuss the pop music I liked as I know it will get good feedback, whereas if I was talking to someone who liked rock music I would disclose different information and only discuss the rock music I liked.
When we receive negative feedback it affects our self-concept so we adopt different methods to prevent this. These are called "self-maintenance strategies" and these were discovered by Gergen and Gergen. We use methods such as commenting on our appearance in order to provoke a positive response and changing our behaviour to conform to the norms of society. This shows that we highly value what others think of us and will do certain actions to fit in with groups and be valued.
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