The self-concept is theorized to play an important role in many psychological processes. Numerous theories rest on assumptions concerning the differential accessibility of pieces of self-knowledge, but relatively little attention during the past decade has centered on examining the underlying structure of the self-concept that mediates such differences. In the present article, we suggest a new model of the self-concept that incorporates recent advances in knowledge regarding conceptual structure. We envision the self as a representation in working memory with inherently flexible content and organization. Initial empirical evidence supporting this view is reviewed and followed by a discussion of the implications of this model for many phenomena involving the self-concept.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
ArabieP., CarrollJ. D., & DeSarboW. S. (1987). Three-way scaling and clustering. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
2.
AndersenS. M., ReznikI., & ChenS. (1997). The self in relation to others: Cognitive and motivational underpinnings. In SnodgrassJ. G. & ThompsonR. L., The self across psychology: Self-recognition, self-awareness, and theself-concept (pp. 235–275). New York: New York Academy of Science.
3.
AschS. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258–290.
4.
BanajiM. R., & PrenticeD. A. (1994). The self in social contexts. Annual Review of Psychology, 45, 297–332.
5.
BarclayJ. R., BransfordJ. D., FranksJ. J., McCarrellN. S., & NitschK. (1974). Comprehension and semantic flexibility. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, 471–481.
6.
BarghJ. A., BondR. N., LombardiW. J., & TotaM. E. (1986). The additive nature of chronic and temporary sources of construct accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 869–879.
7.
BarghJ. A., LombardiW. J., & HigginsE. T. (1988). Automaticity of chronically accessible constructs in person X situation effects on person perception: It's just a matter of time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 599–605.
8.
BarsalouL. W. (1982). Context-independent and context-dependent information in concepts. Memory and Cognition, 10, 82–93.
9.
BarsalouL. W. (1987). The instability of graded structure in concepts. In NeisserU., Concepts and conceptual development: Ecological and intellectual factors in categorization (pp. 101–140). New York: Cambridge University Press.
10.
BarsalouL. W. (1993). Flexibility, structure, and linguistic vagary in concepts: Manifestations of a compositional system of perceptual symbols. In CollinsA. F., GathercoleS. E., ConwayM. A., & MorrisP. E., Theories of memory (pp. 29–101). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
11.
BellezzaF. S. (1984). The self as a mnemonic device: The role of internal cues. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 506–516.
12.
BlattS. J., & BlassR. B. (1992). Relatedness and self-definition: Two primary dimensions in personality development, psychopathology, and psychotherapy. In BarronJ., EagleM., & WolitskyD., Interface of psychoanalysis and psychology (pp. 399–428). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
13.
BowerG. H., & GilliganS. G. (1979). Remembering information related to one's self. Journal of Re- search in Personality, 13, 420–432.
14.
BrewerM. B. (1991). The social self: On being the same and different at the same time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 475–482.
15.
BrunerJ. S., & TagiuriR. (1954). Person perception. In LindzeyG., Handbook of socialpsychology (Vol. 2, pp. 634–654). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
16.
CantorN. (1994). Life task problem solving: Situational affordances and personal needs. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 235–243.
17.
CantorN., & KihlstromJ. F. (1987). Personality and social intelligence. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
18.
CarlstonD. E., & SkowronskiJ. J. (1986). Trait memory and behavior memory: The effects of alternative pathways on impression judgment response time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 5–13.
19.
ChaseW. G., & SimonH. A. (1973). The mind's eye in chess. In ChaseW. G., Visual information processingNew York, NY: Academic Press.
20.
ClarkA. (1993). Associative engines: Connectionism, concepts, and representational change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
21.
CloreG. L., SchwarzN., & ConwayM. (1994). Cognitive causes and consequences of emotions. In WyerR. S. & SrullT. K., Handbook of social cognition (2nd ed., (pp. 323–417). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
22.
CousinsS. D. (1989). Culture and self-perception in Japan and the United States. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 124–131.
23.
DeStenoD. A. (1996). Dispositional and situational differences in the structure of the self-concept. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University.
24.
DeStenoD. A., & SaloveyP. (1996). Jealousy and the characteristics of one's rival: A self-evaluation maintenance perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 920–932.
25.
DeStenoD. A., & SaloveyP. (1997). The effects of mood on the structure of the self-concept. Cognition and Emotion, 11, 351–372.
26.
DunningD., & HayesA. F. (1996). Evidence for egocentric comparison in social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 213–229.
27.
EpsteinS. (1973). The self-concept revisited: Or a theory of a theory. American Psychologist, 28, 404–416.
28.
GatiI., & TverskyA. (1984). Weighting common and distinctive features in perceptual and conceptual judgments. Cognitive Psychology, 16, 341–370.
29.
GeertzC. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.
30.
GreenwaldA. G., & BanajiM. R. (1989). The self as a memory system: Powerful, but ordinary. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 41–54.
31.
GreenwaldA. G., & BanajiM. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102, 4–27.
32.
HalberstadtJ. B., & NiedenthalP. M. (1997). Emotional state and the use of stimulus dimensions in judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1017–1033.
33.
HastieR. (1988). A computer simulation model of person memory. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 423–447.
34.
HigginsE. T. (1987). Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect. Psychological Review, 94, 319–340.
35.
HigginsE. T. (1990). Personality, social psychology, and person-situation relations: Standards and knowledge activation as a common language. In PervinL. A., Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 301–338). New York: Guilford Press.
36.
HigginsE. T. (1996). Knowledge activation: Accessibility, applicability, and salience. In HigginsE. T. & KruglanskiA. W., Socialpsychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 133–168). New York: Guilford.
37.
HigginsE. T., & BarghJ. A. (1987). Social cognition and social perception. Annual Review of Psychology, 38, 369–425.
38.
HigginsE. T., KingG. A., & MavinG. H. (1982). Individual construct accessibility and subjective impressions and recall. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 35–47.
39.
HigginsE. T., RholesW. S., & JonesC. R. (1977). Category accessibility and impression formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 141–154.
40.
HigginsE. T., Van HookE., & DorfmanD. (1988). Do self-attributes form a cognitive structure?Social Cognition, 6, 177–206.
41.
HinkleyK., & AndersenS. M. (1996). The working self-concept in transference: Significant-other activation and self-change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1279–1295.
42.
JacksonD. N. (1984). Personality research form manual. Port Huron, MI: Sigma Assessment Systems.
43.
JamesW. (1890/1981). The principles of psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
44.
KeilF. C. (1987). Conceptual development and category structure. In NeisserU., Concepts and conceptual development: Ecological and intellectual factors in categorization (pp. 175–200). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
45.
KellyG. A. (1955). Personal construct theory. New York: Norton.
46.
KihlstromJ. F. (1993). What does the self look like?. In SrullT. K. & WyerR. S., The mental representation of trait andautobiographical knowledge about the self: Vol. 5. Advances insocial cognition (pp. 79–90). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
47.
KihlstromJ. F., & CantorN. (1984). Mental representations of the self. In BerkowitzL., Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 17, pp. 1–47). New York: Academic Press.
48.
KihlstromJ. F., CantorN., AlbrightJ. S., ChewB. R., KleinS. B., & NiedenthalP. M. (1988). Information processing and the study of the self. In BerkowitzL., Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 145–178). New York: Academic Press.
49.
KihlstromJ. F., & KleinS. B. (1994). The self as a knowledge structure. In WyerR. S.Jr., & SrullT. K., Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 1, pp. 153–208). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
50.
KleinS. B., & KihlstromJ. F. (1986). Elaboration, organization, and the self-reference effect in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 115, 26–38.
51.
KleinS. B., & LoftusJ. (1990). Rethinking the role of organization in person memory: An independent trace storage model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 400–410.
52.
KleinS. B., & LoftusJ. (1993). The mental representation of trait and autobiographical knowledge about the self. In T. K. Srull & R. S. Wyer, Jr., Advances insocial cognition (Vol. 5, pp. 1–49). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
53.
KleinS. B., LoftusJ., & ShermanJ. W. (1993). The role of summary and specific behavioral memories in trait judgments about the self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 305–311.
LinvilleP. W. (1985). Self-complexity and affective extremity: Don't put all of your eggs in one cognitive basket. Social Cognition, 3, 94–120.
56.
MarkusH. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 63–78.
57.
MarkusH., CraneM., BernsteinS., & SiladiM. (1982). Self-schemas and gender. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 38–50.
58.
MarkusH., & CrossS. (1990). The interpersonal self. In PervinL. A., Handbook ofpersonalityNew York: Guilford.
59.
MarkusH. R., & KitayamaS. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.
60.
MarkusH., & KundaZ. (1986). Stability and malleability of the self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 858–866.
61.
MarkusH., & SmithJ. (1981). The influence of self-schemata on the perception of others. In CantorN. & KihlstromJ. F., Personality, cognition, and social interaction (pp. 233–262). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
62.
MarkusH., & WurfE. (1987). The dynamic self-concept: A social psychological perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 38, 299–337.
63.
MarkusH., & ZajoncR. B. (1985). The cognitive perspective in social psychology. In LindzeyG. & AronsonE., Handbook of social psychology (3rd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 137–230). New York: Random House.
64.
McAdamsD. P. (1985). Power, intimacy, and the life story: Personological inquiries into identity. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.
65.
McClellandD. C. (1984). Motives, personality, and society. New York: Praeger.
66.
McClellandJ. L., RumelhartD. E., & The PDP Research Group. (1986). Parallel distributed processing (Vol. 2). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
67.
McGuireW. J., & McGuireC. V. (1988). Content and process in the experience of self. In BerkowitzL., Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 97–144). New York: Academic Press.
68.
McGuireW. J., McGuireC. V., & CheeverJ. (1986). The self in society: Effects of social contexts on the sense of self. British Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 259–270.
69.
MedinD. L. (1989). Concepts and conceptual structure. American Psychologist, 44, 1469–1481.
70.
MedinD. L., AltomM. W., & MurphyT. D. (1984). Given versus induced category representations: Use of prototype and exemplar information in classification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 333–352.
71.
MedinD. L., & SchafferM. M. (1978). A context theory of classification learning. Psychological Review, 85, 207–238.
72.
MedinD. L., & ShobenE. J. (1988). Context and structure in conceptual combination. Cognitive Psychology, 20, 158–190.
73.
MedinD. L., & WattenmakerW. D. (1987). Category cohesiveness, theories, and cognitive archaeology. In NeisserU., Concepts and conceptual development: Ecological and intellectual factors in categorization (pp. 25–62). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
74.
MurphyG. L., & MedinD. L. (1985). The role of theories in conceptual coherence. Psychological Review, 92, 289–316.
75.
MurphyM. D., & PuffC. R. (1982). Free recall: Basic methodology and analyses. In PuffC. R., Handbook of research methods inhuman memory and cognitionNew York: Academic Press.
76.
NeisserU. (1992). The development of consciousness and the acquisition of self. In KesselF. S., ColeP. M., & JohnsonD. L., Self and consciousness: Multiple perspectives (pp. 1–18). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
77.
NosofskyR. M. (1987). Attention and learning processes in the identification and categorization of integral stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13, 87–108.
78.
RoenkerD. L., ThompsonC. P., & BrownS. C. (1971). Comparison of measures for the estimation of clustering in free recall. Psychological Bulletin, 76, 45–48.
79.
RogersT. B. (1981). A model of the self as an aspect of the human information processing system. In CantorN. & KihlstromJ. F., Personality, cognition, and social interaction (pp. 193–214). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
80.
RoschE. (1975). Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 192–233.
81.
RoschE., & MervisC. B. (1975). Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 573–605.
82.
RosenbergS., NelsonC., & VivekananthanP. S. (1968). A multidimensional approach to the structure of personality impressions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 283–294.
83.
RumelhartD. E., McClellandJ. L., & The PDP Research Group (1986). Parallel distributed processing (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
84.
RyleG. (1971). The thinking of thoughts: What is le Penseur doing? Collected papers (Vol. 2, pp. 480–496). New York: Barnes & Noble.
85.
SegalZ. V. (1988). Appraisal of the self-schema construct in cognitive models of depression. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 147–162.
86.
ShermanJ. W. (1996). Development and mental representation of stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1126–1141.
87.
ShowersC. (1992). Compartmentalization of positive and negative self-knowledge: Keeping bad apples out of the bunch. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 1036–1049.
88.
ShowersC. J., & KlingK. C. (1996). Organization of self-knowledge: Implications for recovery from sad mood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 578–590.
89.
SmithE. E., & MedinD. L. (1981). Categories and concepts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
90.
SmithE. R. (1990). Content and specificity in the effects of prior experiences. In T. K. Srull & R. S. Wyer, Jr., Advances insocial cognition (Vol. 3, pp. 1–59). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
91.
SmithE. R. (1996). What do connectionism and social psychology offer each other?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 893–912.
92.
SmithE. R., & ZárateM. A. (1992). Exemplar-based model of social judgment. Psychological Review, 99, 3–21.
93.
SwannW. B. (1990). To be adored or to be known: The interplay of self-enhancement and self-verification. In HigginsE. T. & SorrentinoR. M., Handbookof motivation and cognition (Vol. 2, pp. 408–450). New York: Guilford.
94.
TesserA. (1988). Toward a self-evaluation maintenance model of social behavior. In BerkowitzL., Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 181–227). New York: Academic Press.
95.
TulvingE., & PearlstoneZ. (1966). Availability versus accessibility of information in memory for words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 5, 381–391.
96.
TulvingE., & ThomsonD. M. (1973). Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review, 80, 359–380.
97.
TurnerJ. C. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. New York: Basil Blackwell.
98.
TverskyA. (1977). Features of similarity. Psychological Review, 84, 327–352.
99.
WishnerJ. (1960). Reanalysis of “Impressions of personality.”Psychological Review, 67, 96–112.
