Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Developments in self-concept theory and research: affect, context, and variability
- Commentary: the self-concept is dead, long live … which construct or process? Differentiation and organization of self-related theories
- 3 The self and emotions
- Commentary: the self and emotions
- 4 Fish, foxes, and talking in the classroom: introducing dynamic systems concepts and approaches
- Commentary: fish, foxes, identity, and emotion
- 5 A relational perspective on the development of self and emotion
- Commentary: the personal experience of coherence
- 6 Affective processes in a multivoiced self
- Commentary: affective processes in a multivoiced self in action
- 7 Old–new answers and new-old questions for personality and emotion: a matter of complexity
- Commentary: emotions as sources of information about the self
- 8 Cognitive–emotional self-organization in personality development and personal identity
- Commentary: two faces of identity
- 9 A self-organizational approach to identity and emotions: an overview and implications
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
- Titles in the series
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Developments in self-concept theory and research: affect, context, and variability
- Commentary: the self-concept is dead, long live … which construct or process? Differentiation and organization of self-related theories
- 3 The self and emotions
- Commentary: the self and emotions
- 4 Fish, foxes, and talking in the classroom: introducing dynamic systems concepts and approaches
- Commentary: fish, foxes, identity, and emotion
- 5 A relational perspective on the development of self and emotion
- Commentary: the personal experience of coherence
- 6 Affective processes in a multivoiced self
- Commentary: affective processes in a multivoiced self in action
- 7 Old–new answers and new-old questions for personality and emotion: a matter of complexity
- Commentary: emotions as sources of information about the self
- 8 Cognitive–emotional self-organization in personality development and personal identity
- Commentary: two faces of identity
- 9 A self-organizational approach to identity and emotions: an overview and implications
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
- Titles in the series
Summary
Over the years, the topics of self and identity have received a great deal of attention in the field of psychology. The literature is replete with investigations into self-concept, people's perceptions, ideas, and feelings about themselves, and into identity, people's perceptions of their own sameness and continuity (Oosterwegel and Wicklund, 1995). Although researchers in the field choose to focus on different facets of self and identity, broad theoretical trends can be identified.
Traditionally, theorists have conceptualized self and identity as cognitive structures (Hattie, 1992; Marcia, Waterman, Matteson, Archer, and Orlofsky, 1993). These structures have mostly been regarded as stable mental representations that – once they have become crystallized through the repeated processing of personal information – control our further behavior (e.g. Markus and Wurf, 1987). As a result, the phenomena that are seen as indicative of self and identity are implicitly reduced to a self-concept: a set of beliefs about oneself. This set of beliefs, moreover, is considered to have dynamic implications for the regulation of our actions. The self-concept is thought to serve as an interpretative framework that integrates our personal experiences and as a regulative basis to guide further behavior. However, since the mental representations that constitute the self-concept are seen as stable carriers of personal information, deeply engraved in our memory, the traditional approaches are more suitable for accounting for aspects like stability and continuity than for the dynamics that emerge in self and identity.
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- Identity and EmotionDevelopment through Self-Organization, pp. 1 - 9Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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