MODULE 1:

Understanding the Self

Introduction to Self-Understanding
Understanding oneself is essential to understand behaviors and beliefs that affects
ourselves and others specifically in becoming effective and successful person in life, work, and
relationship. Moreover, self-understanding (1) provides a sense of purpose; (2) leads to
healthier relationships; (3) helps harness your natural strength; and (4) promotes confidence.
This module will introduce you to the basic concepts of self and personality, and
how they are related with each other. Self and personality characterized the way we define
our existence, also these refers on how we organized our experiences that are reflected to our
behavior. On the other hand, people have different ideas about themselves. These ideas
represent the self of the person. Moreover, we behave in different ways in a given situation,
but people also behave fairly stable in different circumstances. The relatively permanent
pattern of behavior represents personality of the person. In details,

Identity VS. Self

Self and identity are topics that remain popular not only among psychologist (even authors
of psychology articles) but also among other social scientists like sociologist, cultural
anthropologist, and economist. Noticeably, the term “self” and “identity” have been loosely
interchanged in various literature. Many people believe that there is very thin conceptual and
functional distinctions between the concept and does perceive them as a synonymous.

Based on the lexical definition, the two concepts are distinct and can be delineated. Consider,
for example, the definitions provided in Merriam Webster Dictionary for the term identity
(noun) “the qualities beliefs etc. that make a particular person or group different from the
others” or “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual”. On the other hand
the term “self” (noun) refers to “the person the someone normally or truly is” or “the entire
person as an individual.” The definition provided suggest that demarcation that separates
the two falls on the social representation of the term (i.e., known to others or known to
oneself). Identity distinguishes or compares one from another, while self refers to the total
characteristic or qualities of a person both known and unknown to others (but known to
oneself).

A comprehensive definition that underscores the distinction and overlap between self and
identity was given by Oyserman, Elmore, and Smith (2012), stating that:
Identities are the traits and characteristics, social relations, roles, and
social group membership that define who one is. Identities can be focused
on the past - what you use to be true of one, the present - what is true of
one now, or the future - the person one expects or wishes to become, the
person one feels obligated to try to become, or the person one fears one
may become; together, identities make up one’s self-concept variously
described as what comes to mind when one thinks about oneself.

Personality
• The etymological derivative of personality comes from the word “persona”, the theatrical
masks worn by Romans in Greek and Latin drama. Personality also comes from the two
Latin words “per” and “sonare”, which literally means “to sound through”.
• Personality have no single definition since different personality theories have different
views on how to define it. However, the commonly accepted definition of personality is
 that it is a relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency
and individuality to a person’s behavior (Roberts & Mroczek, 2008).
• Personality plays a key role in affecting how people shape their lives. It involves the
complex relationship of people with their environment, how they cope and adjust through
life, and how they respond to demands of physical and social challenges.
• Personality is the overall pattern or integration of a person’s structure, modes of behavior,
attitudes, aptitudes, interests, intellectual abilities, and many other distinguishable
personality traits. Personality is the conglomeration of the following components:
physical self, intelligence, character traits, attitudes, habits, interest, personal discipline,
moral values, principles and philosophies of life.

Determinants of Personality
Personality refers to the total person in his/her overt and covert behavior. The
determinants of factors of personality are as follows.
• Environmental Factors of Personality. The surroundings of an individual compose
the environmental factors of personality. This includes the neighborhood a person lives
in, his school, college, university and workplace. Moreover, it also counts the social circle
the individual has. Friends, parents, colleagues, co-workers and bosses, everybody plays a
role as the determinants of personality.
• Biological Factors of Personality. This further includes:
1) hereditary factors or genetic make-up of the person that inherited from their
parents. This describes the tendency of the person to appear and behave the way their
parents are;
2) physical features include the overall physical structure of a person: height, weight,
color, sex, beauty and body language, etc. Most of the physical structures change from
time to time, and so does the personality. With exercises, cosmetics and surgeries,
many physical features are changed, and therefore, the personality of the individual
also evolves; and
3) brain. The preliminary results from the electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB)
research gives indication that better understanding of human personality and
behavior might come from the study of the brain.
• Situational Factors of Personality. Although these factors do not literally create and
shape up an individual’s personality, situational factors do alter a person’s behavior and
response from time to time. The situational factors can be commonly observed when a
person behaves contrastingly and exhibits different traits and characteristics.
• Cultural Factors. Culture is traditionally considered as the major determinants of an
individual’s personality. The culture largely determinants what a person is and what a
person will learn. The culture within a person is brought up, is very important determinant
of behavior of a person. Culture is complex of these belief, values, and techniques for
dealing with the environment which are shared among contemporaries and transmitted
by one generation to the next.

Personality Traits
Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors. Personality traits imply consistency and stability—someone who scores high on a
specific trait like Extraversion is expected to be sociable in different situations and over time.
Thus, trait psychology rests on the idea that people differ from one another in terms of where
they stand on a set of basic trait dimensions that persist over time and across situations.

The most widely used system of traits is called the Five-Factor Model. This system
includes five broad traits that can be remembered with the acronym OCEAN: Openness,
Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Each of the major traits
from the Big Five can be divided into facets to give a more fine-grained analysis of someone's
personality. In addition, some trait theorists argue that there are other traits that cannot be
completely captured by the Five-Factor Model. Critics of the trait concept argue that people
do not act consistently from one situation to the next and that people are very influenced by
situational forces. Thus, one major debate in the field concerns the relative power of people’s
traits versus the situations in which they find themselves as predictors of their behavior.

The Five-Factor Model of Personality

Research that used the lexical approach showed that many of the personality
descriptors found in the dictionary do indeed overlap. In other words, many of the words that
we use to describe people are synonyms. Thus, if we want to know what a person is like, we
do not necessarily need to ask how sociable they are, how friendly they are, and how
gregarious they are. Instead, because sociable people tend to be friendly and gregarious, we
can summarize this personality dimension with a single term. Someone who is sociable,
friendly, and gregarious would typically be described as an “Extravert.” Once we know she is
an extravert, we can assume that she is sociable, friendly, and gregarious.

The most widely accepted system to emerge from this approach was “The Big Five” or
“Five- Factor Model” (Goldberg, 1990; McCrae & John, 1992; McCrae & Costa, 1987). The Big
Five comprises five major traits shown in the Figure 2 below. A way to remember these five is
with the acronym OCEAN (O is for Openness; C is for Conscientiousness; E is for
Extraversion; A is for Agreeableness; N is for Neuroticism). The table below provides
descriptions of people who would score high and low on each of these traits.

Table 1. Descriptions of Personality Traits

Big 5 Trait Definition
Openness The tendency to appreciate new art, ideas, values, feelings, and
behaviors.
Conscientiousness The tendency to be careful, on-time for appointments, to follow
rules, and to be hard working.
Extraversion The tendency to be talkative, sociable, and to enjoy others; the
tendency to have a dominant style.
Agreeableness The tendency to agree and go along with others rather than to
assert one owns opinions and choices.
Neurotism The tendency to be frequently experience negative emotions such as
anger, worry, and sadness, as well as being interpersonally
sensitive.

Table 2. Example behaviors for those scoring low and high for the big 5 traits
Example Behavior for Example Behavior for HIGH
Big 5 Trait
LOW Scorers Scorers
Openness Prefers not to be exposed to Enjoys seeing people with new
alternative moral systems; types of haircuts and body
narrow interest; inartistic; not piercing; curious; imaginative;
analytical; down-to-earth untraditional
Conscientiousness Prefers spur-of-the-moment Never late for a date; organized;
action to planning; unreliable; hardworking; neat, persevering;
hedonistic; careless; lax punctual; self-disciplined
Extraversion Preferring a quiet evening Being the life of the party’
reading to a loud party; sober; active; optimistic; fun-loving;
aloof; unenthusiastic affectionate
Agreeableness Quickly and confidently asserts Agrees with other about political
own rights; irritable; opinions; good-natured;
manipulative; uncooperative; forgiving; gullible; helpful;
rude forgiving
Neurotism Not getting irritated by small Constantly worrying about little
annoyances; calm, things; insecure;
unemotional; hardy; secure; hypochondriacal; feeling
self-satisfied inadequate

Scores on the Big Five traits are mostly independent. That means that a person’s
standing on one trait tells very little about their standing on the other traits of the Big Five.
For example, a person can be extremely high in Extraversion and be either high or low on
Neuroticism. Similarly, a person can be low in Agreeableness and be either high or low in
Conscientiousness. Thus, in the Five-Factor Model, you need five scores to describe most of
an individual’s personality. In the exercises part of this module there is a short scale to assess
the Five-Factor Model of personality (Donnellan, Oswald, Baird, & Lucas, 2006). You can take
this test to see where you stand in terms of your Big Five scores.

Traits are important and interesting because they describe stable patterns of behavior
that persist for long periods of time (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005). Importantly, these stable
patterns can have broad- ranging consequences for many areas of our life (Roberts, Kuncel,
Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007). For instance, think about the factors that determine success
in college. If you were asked to guess what factors predict good grades in college, you might
guess something like intelligence. This guess would be correct, but we know much more about
who is likely to do well. Specifically, personality researchers have also found the personality
traits like Conscientiousness play an important role in college and beyond, probably because
highly conscientious individuals study hard, get their work done on time, and are less
distracted by nonessential activities that take time away from school work. In addition, highly
conscientious people are often healthier than people low in conscientiousness because they
are more likely to maintain healthy diets, to exercise, and to follow basic safety procedures
like wearing seat belts or bicycle helmets. Over the long term, this consistent pattern of
behaviors can add up to meaningful differences in health and longevity. Thus, personality
traits are not just a useful way to describe people you know; they actually help psychologists
predict how good a worker someone will be, how long he or she will live, and the types of jobs
and activities the person will enjoy.

Who Am I?
Have you ever ask yourself the question, “Who am I?”? Answering the question 'Who
am I?' can lead to a solid self-concept and self-understanding. For many people, answering
this question isn't very easy. For others, a solid understanding of who they are is a big part of
their lives. Understanding of who you are as a person is called self-concept and
understanding what your motives are when you act is called self-understanding.
In definition, self-concept is generally thought of as our individual perceptions of our
behavior, abilities, and unique characteristics—a mental picture of who you are as a person.
For example, beliefs such as "I am a good friend" or "I am a kind person" are part of an overall
self-concept
Self-concept tends to be more malleable when people are younger and still going
through the process of self-discovery and identity formation. As people age, self-perceptions
become much more detailed and organized as people form a better idea of who they are and
what is important to them.
According to the book Essential Social Psychology by Richard Crisp and Rhiannon Turner:
• The individual self consists of attributes and personality traits that differentiate us
from other individuals. Examples include introversion or extroversion.
• The relational self is defined by our relationships with significant others. Examples
include siblings, friends, and spouses.
• The collective self reflects our membership in social groups. Examples include British,
Republican, African-American, or gay.

At its most basic, self-concept is a collection of beliefs one holds about oneself and the
responses of others. It embodies the answer to the question "Who am I?". The lesson to follow
will facilitate learning about the self, and self-concept.

NATURE VS NURTURE
Some insist that the self is a product of natural processes to which people are inherently
predisposed. The natural basis of self is anchored on biology and explains that human traits
are passed from one generation to another. These transmitted traits serve as a blueprint of
the self and predispose to the certain self-expressions (e.g., attitudes, behaviors, tendencies
etc.) In this stance, the self is studied structurally and functionally from the molecular level
to the entirety of human physiological systems. Genetics, for examples, contributes so much
information about the description of the self. This branch of biology is primarily concerned
with the process of heredity (the transmissions of traits and characteristic from one
generation to the next) as well as the characterizations (similarities and differences) of
organisms.

The other side, meanwhile, argues that the self should be principally viewed as an outcome
of various nurturing factors in the context of one's life. The social sciences have provided a
number of insights and explanations about the self both on the micro and macro levels.
Different social sciences stress how group life (formal and informal) affects an individual's
behavior and attitude and emphasize the impact of various social institutions on a person’s
self-construal.

While the issue of the predominance of either nature or nurture is still unresolved one can
safely assume that the self is a product of both nature and nurture.
ACTIVITY#1: The Mini-IPIP (International Personality Item Pool
Representation of the NEO PI- R) Scale (20 points)
Instructions: Below are phrases describing people’s behaviors. Please use the rating scale
below to describe how accurately each statement describes you. Describe yourself as you
generally are now, not as you wish to be in the future. Describe yourself as you honestly
see yourself, in relation to other people you know of the same sex as you are, and
roughly your same age.
Please read each statement carefully and put a number from 1 to 5 next to it to describe
how accurately the statement describes you. Answer the guide questions at the end
of the activity.
1 = Very inaccurate
2 = Moderately inaccurate
3 = Neither inaccurate nor accurate
4 = Moderately accurate
5 = Very accurate

_______ 1. Am the life of the party (E)

_______ 2. Sympathize with others’ feelings (A)
_______ 3. Get chores done right away (C)
_______ 4. Have frequent mood swings (N)
_______ 5. Have a vivid imagination (O)
_______ 6. Don’t talk a lot (E)
_______ 7. Am not interested in other people’s problems (A)
_______ 8. Often forget to put things back in their proper place (C)
_______ 9. Am relaxed most of the time (N)
_______ 10. Am not interested in abstract ideas (O)
_______ 11. Talk to a lot of different people at parties (E)
_______ 12. Feel others’ emotions (A)
_______ 13. Like order (C)
_______ 14. Get upset easily (N)
_______ 15. Have difficulty understanding abstract ideas (O)
_______ 16. Keep in the background (E)
_______ 17. Am not really interested in others (A)
_______ 18. Make a mess of things (C)
_______ 19. Seldom feel blue (N)
_______ 20. Do not have a good imagination (O)

Scoring: The first thing you must do is to reverse the items that are worded in the opposite
direction. In order to do this, subtract the number you put for that item from 6. So if you
put a 4, for instance, it will become a 2. Cross out the score you put when you took the scale,
and put the new number in representing your score subtracted from the number 6.

Items to be reversed in this way: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
Next, you need to add up the scores for each of the five OCEAN scales (including the
reversed numbers where relevant). Each OCEAN score will be the sum of four items. Place
the sum next to each scale below.
Openness: Add items 5, 10, 15, 20
Conscientiousness: Add items 3, 8, 13, 18
Extraversion: Add items 1, 6, 11, 16
Agreeableness: Add items 2, 7, 12, 17
Neuroticism: Add items 4, 9,14, 19
 Compare your scores to the norms below to see where you stand on each scale. If you are
low on a trait, it means you are the opposite of the trait label. For example, low on
Extraversion is Introversion, low on Openness is Conventional, and low on Agreeableness
is Assertive.

19–20 Extremely High,

17–18 Very High,
14–16 High,
11–13 Neither high nor low; in the middle,
8–10 Low,
6–7 Very low,
4–5 Extremely low

Guide Questions: Answer the following questions in an essay form with a maximum of
300 words.
Do it on MS Word or Google Docs. And send it on your Google Classroom. (10 points each).

1. How do you describe your scores on Mini IPIP Scale? Do you think the results are
accurate? Why?
2. Do you think personality changes through time? How?
3. Discuss how we develop our personality.
4. Differentiate personality from self.
5. How will you answer the question, “Who am I?”?

References/Sources:
Personality Traits. Edward Diener and Richard E. Lucas. Accessed July 25, 2020.
[Link]
Self-Understanding & Self-Concept: How We Perceive Ourselves. Natalie Boyd. Accessed July
25, 2020. [Link]
Personality. Accessed July 25, 2020.
[Link]
4 Reasons Why Self-understanding is Essential. Kee’s Blog. Accessed July 25, 2020.
[Link]
Self and Personality. National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
Accessed July 25, 2020. [Link]
What Is Self-Concept? The Psychological Exploration of "Who Am I?". Kendra Cherry.
Accessed July 25, 2020. [Link]
Macayan, J.V., Junghan-Pinugu, J.N, & Castillo, J.C (2022). Understanding the Self. 2nd
Edition. C&E Publishing Inc.