The self in society: effects of social contexts on the sense of self.

Abstract

It is assumed here that even as intimate and individualistic an experience as one's sense of self is affected by the social context in which the self-thoughts arise. As regards two major social worlds of childhood, family and school, it is postulated that the family's nurturent atmosphere fosters a more passive self-concept in contrast to a more dynamic sense of self promoted by the school's press toward achievement. Six predictions were derived that self-thoughts in the two contexts will differ in basic psycholinguistic characteristics, the types of verbs used to describe the self. To test these predictions children's three-minute descriptions of their family and of their school were content analysed into successive subject/verb/complement thought segments, from among which we selected out self-thoughts (segments with self as subject). An analysis of the types of verbs used in self-thoughts evoked by family versus school probes supported the six predicted differences in verb types derived from our postulate of a more passive self-concept in the family context. Specifically, in family more than in school contexts the self is perceived passively in terms of state rather than action verbs (of what one is rather than what one does); in terms of static states of being rather than dynamic states of becoming; in terms of overt actions rather than covert reactions; in terms of physical actions rather than social interactions; in terms of cold cognitions rather than hot affects; and in terms of simple affirmations rather than reflexive negations. These six manifestations of a more passive self in family than school social contexts are robust across age, gender and response modality.