W1.1
ARTICLE BY MCADAMS (2013) – THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SELF AS ACTOR,
AGENT, AND AUTHOR
Three different kinds of psychological material or content → Each of the three corresponds to
three developmental layers of psychological selfhood:
1. The self as a social actor
- Encompasses semantic representations of traits, social roles and other features
of self that result in and rise from performances on the social stage of life
- Persona: Mask – Meaning in the perspective of others
- The I defines the actor Me the way a radical behaviourist or demographer
might describe social action; in terms of observable performance and concrete
situational cues (E.g.: ‘I am a fast runner’ or ‘I have green eyes’)
- Self-perception theory: Actors repeatedly observe their own particular
performances and the performances of other actors, and they eventually come
to define themselves in terms of these observations (Bem)
- With greater insight, the I sees how it consistently performs in one manner in
certain situations and in a very different manner in certain other situations,
reflecting an understanding of contingency and context in social behaviour
2. The self as a motivated agent
- Characterised by intention, volition, goal-directedness and self-determination
- The I becomes more like a trait psychologist (E.g.: ‘I am outgoing’)
- Theory of mind: An implicit theory about how minds operate and why people
do what they do – Develops around age 4 – Allows children to understand
others and themselves as motivated agents
- 5-to 7-year shift: Shift between age 5 and 7 in which children become
markedly more rational, planful and goal-oriented
- Erikson: Socialising forces like schools and religious institutions teach
children how to use material and cultural tools and adopt social roles in order
to meet their personal goals (= industry versus inferiority)
- Piaget: Around age 7 or 8, children are able to understand the perspectives of
other motivated agents and to compare themselves and their goals
systematically with others (= concrete operational thought)
- Episodic future thought: Imagining and simulating specific personal outcomes
and episodes that may potentially occur in the future (Szpunar) – Close
relation with the ability to remember specific personal episodes from the past
3. The self as an autobiographical author → The self as storyteller who ultimately aims
to burnish and synthesise episodic information about the self into a coherent and
integrative life story – Integration of the past, present and imagined future
- Narrative identity: The internalised and evolving blend of self stories –
Integrates the reconstructed past, experienced present and imagined future
- Autobiographical reasoning: A wide set of interpretive operations through
which people draw on autobiographical memories to make inferences about
who they are and what their lives mean (E.g.: identifying a ‘turning point’) –
Also encompasses ways in which authors string together multiple events into
causal sequences – Begins to emerge in late childhood and adolescent years
,Not reified, autonomous, distinct roles → A psychologically fully formed adult exists at any
given time and place as an actor, an agent, and an author
Actor Agent Author
The self’s contents Social roles, skills, Personal goals, plans, Life narrative
traits; social reputation values, hopes and fears
Mechanisms Self-attribution and Exploration of and Autobiographical
categorisation built on commitment to life reasoning;
observation of social projects; planning; construction of an
performances prioritising integrative life story
investments for future
Temporal emphasis Present Present and future Past, present and
future
Psychosocial problem Self-regulation Self-esteem Self-continuity
Developmental Early childhood (age Middle or late Adolescence and early
emergence 2-3) childhood (age 7-8) adulthood (age 15-25)
Culture provides… Performance norms, Scripts for goal A menu of images,
display rules; content, timing and metaphors, and stories
behavioural constraints goal pursuit; goal for life; narrative
disengagement; constraints
motivational
constraints
Psychological self: Construed as a reflexive arrangement of the subjective I and the
constructed Me, evolving and expanding over the
human life course
The I reflexively construes the Me as both
a) A collection of abstract traits
b) A collection of personal episodes or stories
about one’s life
Three problems for the self:
1. Self-regulation: The ability of a person to
control or monitor their feelings, thoughts, impulses and behaviours in certain settings
→ Emerges as a problem for the self as a social actor by calibrating how one
expresses themselves on life’s social stages
- The great leap forward in self-regulation is the developmental emergence of
self-awareness
- Effortful control: An active and voluntary capacity to withhold a dominant
response in order to enact a subordinate response given situational demands
2. Self-esteem: Evaluative attributions that the I makes regarding the Me’s worth →
Emerges as a problem for the self as a motivated agent
- Contingencies of self-worth: The domains in which success or failure leads to
increases or decreases in self-esteem, respectively (Crocker)
- James: Defined self-esteem as ‘success’ divided by ‘pretensions’ (= goals,
values and expectations that we seek to achieve)
, - Sense of mastery: The extent to which individuals perceive having control over
their lives – Prime underlying variable accounting for increases in self-esteem
3. Self-continuity: The extent to which the I apprehends the Me to be continuous in space
and time → Emerges as a problem for the self as an autobiographical author
- Identity: The confidence that the inner sameness and continuity prepared in the
past are matched by the sameness and continuity of one’s meaning for others
- Autobiographical memory:
1. Personal episodic memory/autonoetic consciousness: Memory for
specific events → Provides the cognitive basis for the simulation of
future events
2. Personal semantic memory: Memory for general facts and semantic
attributions about the self
- Addis & Tippett:
1. Phenomenological continuity: A basic, moment-by-moment feeling that
I continues to exist as the same locus of feeling, thought and
consciousness (E.g.: when one goes to bed at night fully expecting that
one will still be the same in the morning)
2. Narrative continuity: A constructed sense of the self as a character in
the many different scenes that comprise a story, extending back to the
past and forward to the future (E.g.: ‘identity crisis’)
Culture and the self:
a) Culture sets norms and constraints for the behavioural expression of the actor’s traits
and roles
b) Culture provides timetables, scripts and strong priorities for the agent’s articulation of
goals and values
- Avoidance–prevention goals: Suggest social vigilance and caution – Aimed at
achieving security and social harmony – More common in collectivist societies
- Approach–promotion goals: Suggest personal entrepreneurship and the
uninhibited pursuit of self-fulfilment – More common in individualist societies
c) Culture provides the psycho-literary menu of which the author chooses the very
images, metaphors and narratives that can be used to make narrative identity
- Master narrative: A narrative provided by culture that captures the fundamental
journeys and conflicts that its people have traditionally faced
LECTURE W.1.1
Personality always happens in a context!
Origins of personalities:
- Natural origins → Universal human nature
- Cultural origins → Particular human cultures
- Individual origins → A singular human life
Common confusions and mistakes:
- Naturalising cultural categories
- Reducing every aspect to cultural narratives
, - Forgetting about the cultural and subjective position from where the author speaks
- Treating all accounts as equally subjective opinions
Two steps in the evolution of human cooperation:
1. Obligate collaborative foraging
- Humans have a strong skill for collaboration
- Joint intentionality: The shared focus and mutual understanding between
individuals engaging in a cooperative activity
- Shared meaning and shared stories can come into existence within the context
of collaboration
- Adaptive collaboration: Involves individuals working together flexibly and
efficiently, adapting their behaviours and strategies to meet the needs of the
group and the changing environment
- Altruism: The selfless concern for the well-being of others
- Intersubjectivity: The shared understanding and mutual knowledge among
individuals
2. Group-mindedness
- Convention: The established norms and practices that are commonly accepted
and followed within a society – Provide a framework for predictable and
orderly behaviour, facilitating social interactions and cooperation
- Children are born in a world full of pre-existing conventional structures that
they grow into and only later partially become aware of → Symbolic order:
The universe of signs and meanings typical for human societies
Schemata: Memory-structure developed in the repeated interactions with others that contains
crucial preconceptions about self, others and the world
ARTICLE BY MCADAMS (2013) – THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SELF AS ACTOR,
AGENT, AND AUTHOR
Three different kinds of psychological material or content → Each of the three corresponds to
three developmental layers of psychological selfhood:
1. The self as a social actor
- Encompasses semantic representations of traits, social roles and other features
of self that result in and rise from performances on the social stage of life
- Persona: Mask – Meaning in the perspective of others
- The I defines the actor Me the way a radical behaviourist or demographer
might describe social action; in terms of observable performance and concrete
situational cues (E.g.: ‘I am a fast runner’ or ‘I have green eyes’)
- Self-perception theory: Actors repeatedly observe their own particular
performances and the performances of other actors, and they eventually come
to define themselves in terms of these observations (Bem)
- With greater insight, the I sees how it consistently performs in one manner in
certain situations and in a very different manner in certain other situations,
reflecting an understanding of contingency and context in social behaviour
2. The self as a motivated agent
- Characterised by intention, volition, goal-directedness and self-determination
- The I becomes more like a trait psychologist (E.g.: ‘I am outgoing’)
- Theory of mind: An implicit theory about how minds operate and why people
do what they do – Develops around age 4 – Allows children to understand
others and themselves as motivated agents
- 5-to 7-year shift: Shift between age 5 and 7 in which children become
markedly more rational, planful and goal-oriented
- Erikson: Socialising forces like schools and religious institutions teach
children how to use material and cultural tools and adopt social roles in order
to meet their personal goals (= industry versus inferiority)
- Piaget: Around age 7 or 8, children are able to understand the perspectives of
other motivated agents and to compare themselves and their goals
systematically with others (= concrete operational thought)
- Episodic future thought: Imagining and simulating specific personal outcomes
and episodes that may potentially occur in the future (Szpunar) – Close
relation with the ability to remember specific personal episodes from the past
3. The self as an autobiographical author → The self as storyteller who ultimately aims
to burnish and synthesise episodic information about the self into a coherent and
integrative life story – Integration of the past, present and imagined future
- Narrative identity: The internalised and evolving blend of self stories –
Integrates the reconstructed past, experienced present and imagined future
- Autobiographical reasoning: A wide set of interpretive operations through
which people draw on autobiographical memories to make inferences about
who they are and what their lives mean (E.g.: identifying a ‘turning point’) –
Also encompasses ways in which authors string together multiple events into
causal sequences – Begins to emerge in late childhood and adolescent years
,Not reified, autonomous, distinct roles → A psychologically fully formed adult exists at any
given time and place as an actor, an agent, and an author
Actor Agent Author
The self’s contents Social roles, skills, Personal goals, plans, Life narrative
traits; social reputation values, hopes and fears
Mechanisms Self-attribution and Exploration of and Autobiographical
categorisation built on commitment to life reasoning;
observation of social projects; planning; construction of an
performances prioritising integrative life story
investments for future
Temporal emphasis Present Present and future Past, present and
future
Psychosocial problem Self-regulation Self-esteem Self-continuity
Developmental Early childhood (age Middle or late Adolescence and early
emergence 2-3) childhood (age 7-8) adulthood (age 15-25)
Culture provides… Performance norms, Scripts for goal A menu of images,
display rules; content, timing and metaphors, and stories
behavioural constraints goal pursuit; goal for life; narrative
disengagement; constraints
motivational
constraints
Psychological self: Construed as a reflexive arrangement of the subjective I and the
constructed Me, evolving and expanding over the
human life course
The I reflexively construes the Me as both
a) A collection of abstract traits
b) A collection of personal episodes or stories
about one’s life
Three problems for the self:
1. Self-regulation: The ability of a person to
control or monitor their feelings, thoughts, impulses and behaviours in certain settings
→ Emerges as a problem for the self as a social actor by calibrating how one
expresses themselves on life’s social stages
- The great leap forward in self-regulation is the developmental emergence of
self-awareness
- Effortful control: An active and voluntary capacity to withhold a dominant
response in order to enact a subordinate response given situational demands
2. Self-esteem: Evaluative attributions that the I makes regarding the Me’s worth →
Emerges as a problem for the self as a motivated agent
- Contingencies of self-worth: The domains in which success or failure leads to
increases or decreases in self-esteem, respectively (Crocker)
- James: Defined self-esteem as ‘success’ divided by ‘pretensions’ (= goals,
values and expectations that we seek to achieve)
, - Sense of mastery: The extent to which individuals perceive having control over
their lives – Prime underlying variable accounting for increases in self-esteem
3. Self-continuity: The extent to which the I apprehends the Me to be continuous in space
and time → Emerges as a problem for the self as an autobiographical author
- Identity: The confidence that the inner sameness and continuity prepared in the
past are matched by the sameness and continuity of one’s meaning for others
- Autobiographical memory:
1. Personal episodic memory/autonoetic consciousness: Memory for
specific events → Provides the cognitive basis for the simulation of
future events
2. Personal semantic memory: Memory for general facts and semantic
attributions about the self
- Addis & Tippett:
1. Phenomenological continuity: A basic, moment-by-moment feeling that
I continues to exist as the same locus of feeling, thought and
consciousness (E.g.: when one goes to bed at night fully expecting that
one will still be the same in the morning)
2. Narrative continuity: A constructed sense of the self as a character in
the many different scenes that comprise a story, extending back to the
past and forward to the future (E.g.: ‘identity crisis’)
Culture and the self:
a) Culture sets norms and constraints for the behavioural expression of the actor’s traits
and roles
b) Culture provides timetables, scripts and strong priorities for the agent’s articulation of
goals and values
- Avoidance–prevention goals: Suggest social vigilance and caution – Aimed at
achieving security and social harmony – More common in collectivist societies
- Approach–promotion goals: Suggest personal entrepreneurship and the
uninhibited pursuit of self-fulfilment – More common in individualist societies
c) Culture provides the psycho-literary menu of which the author chooses the very
images, metaphors and narratives that can be used to make narrative identity
- Master narrative: A narrative provided by culture that captures the fundamental
journeys and conflicts that its people have traditionally faced
LECTURE W.1.1
Personality always happens in a context!
Origins of personalities:
- Natural origins → Universal human nature
- Cultural origins → Particular human cultures
- Individual origins → A singular human life
Common confusions and mistakes:
- Naturalising cultural categories
- Reducing every aspect to cultural narratives
, - Forgetting about the cultural and subjective position from where the author speaks
- Treating all accounts as equally subjective opinions
Two steps in the evolution of human cooperation:
1. Obligate collaborative foraging
- Humans have a strong skill for collaboration
- Joint intentionality: The shared focus and mutual understanding between
individuals engaging in a cooperative activity
- Shared meaning and shared stories can come into existence within the context
of collaboration
- Adaptive collaboration: Involves individuals working together flexibly and
efficiently, adapting their behaviours and strategies to meet the needs of the
group and the changing environment
- Altruism: The selfless concern for the well-being of others
- Intersubjectivity: The shared understanding and mutual knowledge among
individuals
2. Group-mindedness
- Convention: The established norms and practices that are commonly accepted
and followed within a society – Provide a framework for predictable and
orderly behaviour, facilitating social interactions and cooperation
- Children are born in a world full of pre-existing conventional structures that
they grow into and only later partially become aware of → Symbolic order:
The universe of signs and meanings typical for human societies
Schemata: Memory-structure developed in the repeated interactions with others that contains
crucial preconceptions about self, others and the world
