3.1 The Self in Human Communication

     Who you are and how you see yourself influence not only the way you communicate, but also how you respond to the communications of others. First we’ll explore the self: the self-concept and how it develops; self-awareness and ways to increase it; self-esteem and ways to enhance it; and self-disclosure, or communication that reveals who you are.

3.1.1 Self-Concept

     Your self-concept is your image of who you are. It’s how you perceive yourself: your feelings and thoughts about your strengths and weaknesses, your abilities and limitations. Self-concept develops from the images that others have of you, comparisons between yourself and others, your cultural experiences, and your evaluation of your own thoughts and behaviors (Figure 3.1). Let’s explore each of these components of the self-concept.

3.1.1.1 Others’ Images of You

 If you want to see how your hair looks, you probably look in a mirror. But what would you do if you wanted to see how friendly or how assertive you are? According to the concept of the looking-glass self (Cooley, 1922), you’d look at the image of yourself that others reveal to you through the way they communicate with you. Of course, you would not look to just anyone. Rather, you would look to those who are most significant in your life—to your significant others, such as your friends, family members, and romantic partners. If these significant others think highly of you, you will see a positive self-image reflected in their behaviors; if they think little of you, you will see a more negative image.

3.1.1.2 Comparisons with Others

     Another way you develop self-concept is by comparing yourself with others, most often with your peers (Festinger, 1954). For example, after an exam, you probably want to know how you performed relative to the other students in your class. This gives you a clearer idea of how effectively you performed. If you play on a baseball team, it’s important to know your batting average in comparison with the batting average of others on the team. You gain a different perspective when you see yourself in comparison to your peers.
     For good or ill, social media have provided us with the tools (all very easy to use) to compare ourselves to others to perhaps estimate our individual worth or perhaps make us feel superior. Here are just a half-dozen ways social media enable us to find out how we stand.

• Search engine reports. Type in your name on Google, Bing, or Yahoo!, for example, and you’ll see the number of websites on which your name (and similarly named others) appears. Type in a colleague’s name, and you get his or her score, which, you’re hoping, is lower than yours.
• Network spread. Your number of friends on Facebook or your contacts on LinkedIn or Plaxo is in some ways a measure of your potential influence. Look at a friend’s profile, and you have your comparison. Not surprisingly, there are programs and apps that will surf the Web to help you contact more social network friends.
• Online influence. Network sites such as Klout and Peer Index provide you with a score (from 0–100) of your online influence. Your Klout score, for example, is a combination of your “true reach” (the number of people you influence), “amplification” (the degree to which you influence them), and “network” (the influence of your network). Postrank Analytics, on the other hand, provides you with a measure of engagement—the degree to which people interact with, pay attention to, read, or comment on what you write.
• Twitter activities. The number of times you tweet might be one point of comparison but more important is the number of times you are tweeted about or your tweets are repeated (retweets). Twitalyzer will provide you with a three-part score: an impact score, a Klout score, and a Peer Index score and will also enable you to search the “twitter elite” for the world as well as for any specific area (you can search by ZIP code). Assuming your Twitter score is what you’d like it to be, a single click will enable you to post this score on your own Twitter page.
• Blog presence. Your blog presence is readily available from your “stats” tab where you can see how many people visited your blog since inception or over the past year, month, week, or day. And you’ll also see a map of the world indicating where people who are visiting your blog come from.
• References to written works. Google Scholar, for example, will enable you to see how many other writers have cited your works (and how many cited the works of the person you’re comparing) and the works in which you were cited. And, of course, Amazon and other online book dealers provide rankings of your books along with a star system based on reviewers’ comments.

3.1.1.3 Cultural Teachings

     Your culture instills in you a variety of beliefs, values, and attitudes about such things as success (how you define it and how you should achieve it); the relevance of religion, race, or nationality; and the ethical principles you should follow in business and in your personal life. These teachings provide benchmarks against which you can measure yourself. Your ability to achieve what your culture defines as success, for example, contributes to a positive self-concept; in the same way, your failure to achieve what your culture encourages contributes to a negative self-concept.

3.1.1.4 Self-Interpretations and Self-Evaluations

Your self-interpretations (your reconstruction of the incident and your understanding of it) and self-evaluations (the value—good or bad—that you place on the behavior) also contribute to your self-concept. For example, let’s say you believe that lying is wrong. If you then lie and you view it as a lie (rather than as, say, a polite way of avoiding an issue), you will probably evaluate this behavior in terms of your internalized beliefs about lying (lying is wrong) and you’ll react negatively to your own behavior. You may, for example, experience guilt about violating your own beliefs. On the other hand, let’s say that you pull someone out of a burning building at great personal risk. You will probably evaluate this behavior positively; you’ll feel good about this behavior and, as a result, about yourself.

3.1.2 Self-Awareness

     Self-awareness—your knowledge of who you are; of your traits, your strengths and limitations, your emotions and behaviors, your individuality—is basic to all communication. You can achieve self-awareness by examining the several aspects of yourself as they might appear to others as well as to yourself. One tool that is commonly used for this examination is called the Johari window, a metaphoric division of the self into four areas (Figure 3.2).

3.1.2.1 Your Four Selves

     Divided into four areas or “panes,” the Johari window shows different aspects or versions of the self. The four aspects are the open self, blind self, hidden self, and unknown self. These areas are not separate from one another, but interdependent. As one dominates, the others recede to a greater or lesser degree; or, to stay with our metaphor, as one window pane becomes larger, one or another becomes smaller.

• Open self. This self represents all the information, behaviors, attitudes, and feelings about yourself that you know and that others also know. Such knowledge could include everything from your name, skin color, sex, and age to your religion and political beliefs. The size of the open self varies according to your personality and the people to whom you’re relating. You may be more open with some people than you are with others. So, you may have a large open self about your romantic life with your friends (you tell them everything), but a very small open self about the same issues with, say, your parents.
• Blind self. This self represents knowledge about you that others have but you don’t. Blind self might include your habit of finishing other people’s sentences or your way of rubbing your nose when you become anxious. A large blind self indicates low self-awareness and interferes with accurate communication. So, it’s important to reduce your blind self and learn what others know about you. You can do this by following the suggestions offered below, under “Growing in Self-Awareness.”
• Unknown self. The unknown self represents those parts of yourself that neither you nor others know. This is information that is buried in your subconscious. You may, for example, learn of your obsession with money, your fear of criticism, or the kind of lover you are through hypnosis, dreams, psychological tests, or psychotherapy.
• Hidden self. This self represents all the knowledge you have of yourself but keep secret from others. The hidden self window pane includes all your successfully kept secrets; for example, your fantasies, embarrassing experiences, and any attitudes or beliefs of which you may be ashamed. You probably keep secrets from some people and not from others; for example, you might not tell your parents you’re dating someone of another race or religion, but you might tell a close friend.

     Each person’s Johari window will be different, and each individual’s window will vary from one time to another and from one communication situation to another. By way of example, Figure 3.3 illustrates two possible configurations.

3.1.2.2 Growing in Self-Awareness

     Because self-awareness is so important in communication, try to increase awareness of your own needs, desires, habits, beliefs, and attitudes. You can do this in various ways.

• Listen to others. Conveniently, others are constantly giving you the very feedback you need to increase self-awareness. In every interaction people comment on you in some way—on what you do, what you say, how you look. Sometimes these comments are explicit: “Loosen up” or “Don’t take things so hard.” Often they’re “hidden” in the way others look at you—in the expressionless face that indicates disagreement or disappointment or the broad smile that says, “I think you’re wonderful.”
• Increase your open self. Revealing yourself to others will help increase your self-awareness. As you talk about yourself, you may see connections that you had previously missed. With feedback from others, you may gain still more insight. By increasing your open self, you also increase the chances that others will reveal what they know about you.
• Seek information about yourself. Encourage people to reveal what they know about you. Use situations that arise every day to gain self-information: “Do you think I came down too hard on the kids today?” “Do you think I was assertive enough when asking for the raise?” But seek this self-awareness in moderation. If you do it too often, your friends will soon look for someone else with whom to talk.
• Dialogue with yourself. No one knows you better than you know yourself. Ask yourself self-awareness questions: What motivates me to act as I do? What are my short-term and long-term goals? How do I plan to achieve them? What are my strengths and weaknesses?

3.1.3 Self-Esteem

     Self-esteem is a measure of how valuable you think you are; people with high self-esteem think very highly of themselves, whereas people with low self-esteem view themselves negatively. The basic idea behind building self-esteem is that when you feel good about yourself—about who you are and what you’re capable of doing—you will perform better. When you think like a success, you’re more likely to act like a success. Conversely, when you think you’re a failure, you’re more likely to act like a failure. When you get up to give a speech and you visualize yourself being successful and effective, you’re more likely to give a good speech. Increasing self-esteem will, therefore, help you to function more effectively in school, in interpersonal relationships, and in careers. Here are six suggestions for increasing self-esteem.

3.1.3.1 Attack Self-Destructive Beliefs

     Challenge those beliefs you have about yourself that are unproductive or that make it more difficult for you to achieve your goals (Einhorn, 2006). Here, for example, are some popular self-destructive beliefs (Butler, 1981):

• The belief that you have to be perfect; this causes you to try to perform at unrealistically high levels at work, school, and home; anything short of perfection is unacceptable.
• The belief that you have to be strong tells you that weakness and any of the more vulnerable emotions like sadness, compassion, or loneliness are wrong.
• The belief that you have to please others and that your worthiness depends on what others think of you.
• The belief that you have to hurry up; this compels you to do things quickly, to try to do more than can be reasonably expected in any given amount of time.
• The belief that you have to take on more responsibilities than any one person can be expected to handle.

     These beliefs set unrealistically high standards and therefore almost always end in failure. As a result, you may develop a negative self-image, seeing yourself as someone who constantly fails. So, replace these self-destructive beliefs with more productive ones, such as “I succeed in many things, but I don’t have to succeed in everything” and “It would be nice to be loved by everyone, but it isn’t necessary to my happiness.” See Table 3.1 for a summary and comparison of these destructive beliefs and constructive counterparts.

3.1.3.2 Beware the Impostor Phenomenon

     The impostor phenomenon refers to the tendency to disregard outward signs of success and to consider yourself an “impostor,” a fake, a fraud, one who doesn’t really deserve to be considered successful (Clance, 1985; Harvey & Katz, 1985). Even though others may believe you are a success, you “know” that they are wrong. One of the dangers of this belief is that it may prevent you from seeking advancement in your profession, believing you won’t be up to the task. Becoming aware that such beliefs are not uncommon and that they are not necessarily permanent should help relieve some of these misperceptions. Another useful aid is to develop a relationship with an honest and knowledgeable mentor who not only will teach you the ropes but will let you know that you are successful.

3.1.3.3 Seek Out Nourishing People

     Psychologist Carl Rogers (1970) drew a distinction between noxious and nourishing people. Noxious people criticize and find fault with just about everything. Nourishing people, on the other hand, are positive and optimistic. Most important, nourishing people reward us, they stroke us, they make us feel good about ourselves. To enhance your self-esteem, seek out these people—and avoid noxious people, those who make you feel negatively about yourself. At the same time, seek to become more nourishing yourself so you each build up the other’s self-esteem.
     Identification with people similar to yourself also seems to increase self-esteem. For example, in one study deaf people who identified with the larger deaf community had greater self-esteem than those who didn’t so identify (Jambor & Elliott, 2005). Similarly, identification with your cultural group also seems helpful in developing positive self-esteem (McDonald et al., 2005).

3.1.3.4 Work on Projects That Will Result in Success

     Some people want to fail (or so it seems). Often, they select projects that will result in failure simply because these projects are impossible to complete. Avoid this trap; select projects that will result in success. Each success will help build self-esteem, and each success will make the next success a little easier. If a project does fail, recognize that this does not mean that you’re a failure. Everyone fails somewhere along the line. Failure is something that happens; it’s not necessarily something you’ve created. It’s not something inside you. Further, your failing once does not mean that you will fail the next time. So, learn to put failure in perspective.

3.1.3.5 Remind Yourself of Your Successes

     Some people have a tendency to focus, sometimes too much, on their failures, their missed opportunities, their social mistakes. If your objective is to correct what you did wrong or to identify the skills that you need to correct these failures, then focusing on failures can have some positive value. But if you focus on failure without thinking about plans for correction, then you’re probably just making life more difficult for yourself and limiting your self-esteem. To counteract the tendency to recall failures, remind yourself of your successes. Recall these successes both intellectually and emotionally. Realize why they were successes, and relive the emotional experience—the feelings you had when you sank that winning basketball or aced that test or helped that friend overcome a personal problem.

3.1.3.6 Secure Affirmation

     An affirmation is simply a statement asserting that something is true. In discussions of self-concept and self-awareness, as noted in this chapter, the word affirmation is used to refer to positive statements about you, statements asserting that something good or positive is true of you. It’s frequently recommended that you remind yourself of your successes with self-affirmations—that you focus on your good deeds; on your positive qualities, strengths, and virtues; and on your productive and meaningful relationships with friends, loved ones, and relatives (Aronson, Cohen, & Nail, 1998; Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2010).
     Self-affirmations include statements such as “I’m a worthy person,” “I’m responsible and can be depended upon,” and “I’m capable of loving and being loved.” The idea behind this advice is that the way you talk to yourself will influence what you think of yourself. If you affirm yourself—if you tell yourself that you’re a success, that others like you, that you will succeed on the next test, and that you will be welcomed when asking for a date—you will soon come to feel more positive about yourself.
     Some researchers, however, argue that self-affirmations—although extremely popular in self-help books—may not be very helpful. These critics contend that if you have low self-esteem, you’re not going to believe your self-affirmations because you don’t have a high opinion of yourself to begin with (Paul, 2001). They propose that the alternative to self-affirmation is to secure affirmation from others. You’d do this by, for example, becoming more competent in communication and interacting with more positive people. In this way, you’d get more positive feedback from others—which, these researchers argue, is more helpful than self-talk in raising self-esteem.