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Learner’s Guide
Module 1: Understanding the Self and Others
Jeffrey R. Ballaret, PhD

Overview

Understanding the Self and Others is the key to building healthy and successful
relationship socially, economically, culturally and politically. It has important aspects of
understanding your self-concept, self-esteem, and ideal self and become a fully
functional individual having a clear understanding of what is happening and how you can
contribute. This unit will help you explore how you see yourself through the lenses of
personal identity, your skills and talents, roles, values, personal core, and how you
meet your psychological needs as it transcends to help you understand others.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, the students must have:

1. Discussed various perspectives and conceptualization of the self and others.
2. Assessed self from recognizing personal experiences to better understand their
personality, self and identity from the instrumental influence of culture,
technology, family and relationships.
3. Demonstrated effective strategies to promote cohesive social wellbeing and
resilience

Part 1: Understanding the Self

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Self-Assessment

Words That Describe Me

Circle the words that best describe you. Add additional words if needed.

Adaptive Dependable Compassionate

Respectful Energetic Creative
Complex Balanced Quiet
Self-Aware Intelligent Hard Worker
Calm Eccentric Confidant
Realistic Cooperative Attentive
Tolerant Fearless Humble
Clever Thoughtful Cautious
Shy Picky Competitive
Select your top three words that best describes you and provide a brief explanation:

1.1. Introduction

The self is not something that one finds; it is something that one creates. One
should understand himself/herself truly for realistic, satisfactory and truly optimistic life.
Our self should be developed in a right direction from early years of age so as to
develop our personality as it encompasses our life’s need. In this respect understanding
self is crucial in education.

1.2. Self-Awareness (Self-Understanding)

a. Self-awareness was first defined by Duval and Wicklund (1972) as is the ability
to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t
align with your internal standards. If you’re highly self-aware, you can objectively
evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behavior with your values,
and understand correctly how others perceive you.
b. Sutton (2016) broadly defines self-awareness as ‘the extent to which people are
consciously aware of their internal states and their interactions or relationships
with others’.
c. Self-awareness allows us to see things from the perspective of others,
practice self-control, work creatively and productively, and experience pride in
ourselves and our work as well as general self-esteem (Silvia & O’Brien, 2004).

In a nutshell, the definition of self awareness is having a clear perception of your

personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and
emotions. It encompasses not only understanding our self but allows you to understand
other people, how they perceive you, your attitude and your responses to them in the
moment.

Tasha Eurich (2018), a researcher and organizational psychologist, and her team of
researchers came up with two categories of self-awareness, which are important to
note in this lesson: internal self-awareness, and external self-awareness.

a. Internal self-awareness is about how clearly you see your values, passions, and
aspirations, and how well those standards fit with your environment and your
reactions (which include thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strengths, and
weaknesses).
 b. External self-awareness, on the other hand, is the ability to clearly see how other
people view you. People who know how others see them are typically more
empathetic. Leaders who can see how their employees view them are usually
more effective, and have stronger relationships with their employees.

1.3. Why Self-Understanding

1.3.1. Benefits of self-understanding:

• Knowing exactly what is bothering you instead of feeling bad without
knowing why. This in turn will allow you to take the first step towards
happiness.
• Not feeling lost because you will know exactly where you fit in life. Whether
it’s a career or a relationship.
• A solid understanding of others, the more you understand yourself the more
will you understand others.

1.3.2. Understanding self can be focused mainly as;

a. The physical self

Who you are physically is important to many people, and being
physically fit and strong is a big part of how they define
themselves.
b. The social self
“A‟ doesn’t have a lot of friends, but those she does have are
very close to her. She likes to spend time with her friends and get
to know them deeply. This is part of her social self; that is, how a
person relates to others.

“B‟ is different from A here, too. She has lots and lots of friends
and is always surrounded by a bunch of people. She likes to spend
time in the midst of a party crowd. Her social self is still part of her
self-concept, but it is different from ‘A’ ‘s.

c. The competent self

Competence is the ability of a person to provide for their basic
needs.
d. The inner self
Also sometimes called the psychological self, is made up of the
feelings and thoughts that a person has deep inside them.(Simply
Psychology)
1.4. Self-Concept, Self-Esteem, Ideal-Self

While understanding about self one can get three important aspects of self, they
are;

• Self-concept- picture or concept of ourselves

• Self esteem- feeling we have about ourselves
• Self ideal- the way we would like to be

1.4.1. Self-Concept
• Baumeister (1999) defines Self-Concept as;
“Self Concept is individual’s belief about himself or herself, including
the person’s attributes and who and what the self is”.
Self Concept is an important term for both social psychology and
humanism.
• Lewis (1990) suggests that development of a concept of self has two
aspects:

a. The Existential Self

This is ‘the most basic part of the self-scheme or self-
concept; the sense of being separate and distinct from
others and the awareness of the constancy of the self’ (Bee,
1992). The child realizes that they exist as a separate entity
from others and that they continue to exist over time and
space.

b. The Categorical Self

Having realized that he or she exists as a separate
experiencing being, the child next becomes aware that he or
she is also an object in the world.

• Purkey suggests that self concept is

a. Learned
b. Organized
c. Dynamic
 • Carl Rogers (1959) believes that the self concept has three different
components:
a. The view you have of yourself (self image)
b. How much value you place on yourself (self esteem or self-
worth)
c. What you wish you were really like (ideal-self)

1.4.2. Self-Esteem

Self-esteem refers to the extent to which we like accept or approve of

ourselves or how much we value ourselves. Self-esteem always involves
a degree of evaluation and we may have either a positive or a negative
view of ourselves.

• High Self Esteem i.e. we have a positive view of ourselves. This

tends to lead to:
a. Confidence in our own abilities
b. Self acceptance
c. Not worrying about what others think
d. Optimism

• Low Self Esteem i.e. we have a negative view of ourselves. This

tends to lead to
a. Lack of confidence
b. Want to be/look like someone else
c. Always worrying what others might think
d. Pessimism

There are several ways of measuring self-esteem.

• Even though self-esteem might fluctuate, there are times when
we continue to believe good things about ourselves even when
evidence to the contrary exists. This is known as the perseverance
effect.

• Miller and Ross (1975) showed that people who believed they had
 socially desirable characteristics continued in this belief even when
the experimenters tried to get them to believe the opposite. Does
the same thing happen with bad things if we have low self-
esteem? Maybe not, perhaps with very low self-esteem all we
believe about ourselves might be bad.

• Argyle (2008) believes there are 4 major factors that influence

self-esteem: 1) The Reaction of Others. 2) Comparison with
Others. 3) Social Roles. 4) Identification.

1.4.3. Ideal-Self (What you’d like to be)

If there is a mismatch between how you see yourself (e.g. your self
image) and what you’d like to be (e.g. your ideal self ) then this is likely
to affect how much you value yourself. Therefore, there is an intimate
relationship between self-image, ego-ideal and self-esteem. 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. Michael Argyle (2008) says there are four major factors which
influence its development:

• The ways in which others (particularly significant others) react to

us.
• How we think we compare to others 

• Our social roles
• The extent to which we identify with other people
Part 2: Understanding Others
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Self-Assessment

Karen’s Story

Karen is a working student in a fast food chain. She has an enthusiastic smile and an
outgoing positive presence. She greets every customer as they come through the door
with a welcoming “Hello, how are you today?” She is calm and respectful with each
customer. She listens carefully to every customer’s orders. She seems to be able to
connect with a wide range of people and somehow creates a cheerful atmosphere
among customers in the place. Her friendly demeanor and kindness brings a joy to
people despite of her being tired in the whole day work.

Guide Question:

Identify someone you know in your personal or professional life who has the same kind
of qualities as Karen.

1. How do you feel being around them?

2. How do other people see them?
3. What is it that these people do to attract and connect with people?

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2.1. Introduction

Developing a better understanding of yourself may also improve your capacity to better
understand the thoughts and feelings of other people. Thus, learning how to better put
yourself in other people's shoes is a useful social skill in everyday life that could also be
important in promoting more cross-cultural understanding in our society.

2.2. The Three Keys to Emotional Intelligence (EI)

“Emotionally intelligent people know how to be smart in their interactions with

people. They adapt their words and actions to the needs of particular people in
changing situations.” Daniel Goleman, Harvard University

The three keys to being EI smart are:

1. Using social skills to communicate effectively with others.

2. Controlling one’s emotions to deal with anger and cope with stress.
 3. Being flexible to adapt when change happens.

2.2.1 Emotional Intelligence is ...

• Being intelligent about emotions.

• The capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others.
• It fuels our motivation.
• The ability to successfully manage emotions in ourselves and others.
• An emotional competence is a learned ability that contributes to
satisfaction in all aspects of life.
• It is a different way of being smart. It is connected to IQ and technical
expertise, but EI is more important to success in work and life.
• EI is based on studies of thousands of people and it reflects the
character traits or personal qualities of an individual.

2.2.2. Emotional Intelligence is Not ...

• merely being nice

• only developed in early childhood
• women vs. men
• the same as IQ – cognitive intelligence
• genetically fixed

2.3. Cognitive Intelligence vs Emotional Intelligence

Cognitive Intelligence is the ability to: Emotional Intelligence is the ability to:
• concentrate and plan • understand oneself and others
• use words effectively • get along in the world
• analyze • deal with life’s demands
• interpret facts • develop positive relationships
• understand and assimilate • adapt to change in our environment
information
2.3.1. In Perspective Kindness vs Empathy

2.3.2. Social Awareness

The ability to:

• understand other people

• accurately pick up emotional cues
• sense others’ needs and concerns
• understand what people are saying and why
• connect with different kinds of people
• understand power relationships in the workplace
• know who can influence and who are the real decision makers
• accurately read workplace expectations
• be motivated and proactive to help or serve others

2.3.3. Social Skills

The ability to:

• understand other people

• accurately pick up emotional cues
• sense others’ needs and concerns
• understand what people are saying and why
• connect with different kinds of people
• understand power relationships in the workplace
• know who can influence and who are the real decision makers
 • accurately read workplace expectations
• be motivated and proactive to help or serve others

2.3.4. Competencies within Emotional Intelligence

Social-
Self-Awareness Self-Management Social Skills
Awareness
Developing Others
Leadership
Self-Control
Influence
Trustworthiness
Communication
Emotional Self- Conscientiousness Empathy
Change Catalyst
Awareness Accurate Adaptability Organizational
Conflict
Self-Assessment Optimism Awareness Service
Management
Self-Confidence Achievement Orientation
Building
Orientation
Relationships
Initiative
Teamwork and
Collaboration

Reference:

Argyle, M. (2008). Social encounters: Contributions to social interaction. Aldine

Transaction.

Baumeister, R. F. (1999). Self-concept, self-esteem, and identity. In V. J. Derlega, B. A.

Winstead, & W. H. Jones (Eds.), Nelson-Hall series in psychology. Personality:
Contemporary theory and research (p. 339–375). Nelson-Hall Publishers.

Bee, H. L. (1992). The developing child. London: HarperCollins.

Coopersmith, S. (1967). The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: Freeman.

Duval, S., & Wicklund, R. A. (1972). A theory of objective self awareness. Academic
Press.

Eurich, T. (2018). What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It). Retrieve
from https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-
cultivate-it

Kuhn, M. H. (1960). Self-attitudes by age, sex and professional training. Sociological

Quarterly, 1, 39-56.
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(Ed.), Handbook of personality (pp. 277-300). New York: Guilford.

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(Ed.), Handbook of personality (pp. 277-300). New York: Guilford.

Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact
or fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82(2), 213–
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Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact
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Morse, S. J. & Gergen, K. J. (1970). Social comparison, self-consistency and the concept
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https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=T-14efLNqagC

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McGraw Hill.

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