Self concept is how we view ourselves in the sense of; our looks/style, our personal relationships, our intellect and our overall way life/life style. Through out our life’s our self concept can change and it develops from childhood, this is through our relationships, our family life and our social life; for example if someone was to tell you, you were beautiful everyday your self concept would change and you would think of your self in a positive way and this would go visa-versa. Your self concept is how you think of your self; your thoughts on you, your life, your image etc.
self concept id influenced by how we see ourselves and what we see in mirror. A Theory on Self-Concept: The self- concept is how we think about and evaluate ourselves. To be aware of oneself is to have a concept of oneself. The term self-concept is a general term used to refer to how someone thinks about or perceives themselves. It is an important term for both Social Psychology and Humanism. The most basic part of the self-scheme or self-concept is the sense of being separate and distinct from others and the awareness of the constancy of the self”
Self-image is what we see when we look in the mirror; Height, Weight, Looks, style etc; this is your body image. Self image is developed at a very early age; this changes through out life as we get older, we hit puberty and our body changes so self image can go up and down the same as our emotions. Our self image is how we see our selves among others these include: our traits (this is looks/habits/personality we inherit from our parents), our looks and our personality. Our self image is also how other people see us/ what we think people see in us/ how they us.
All aspects of our personality and looks influence our self image this literally means that we evaluate our image, class, looks, style and popularity all the time and in very situation; if we think we are popular and that other people agree then our self image is better than if we were to receive ‘put downs’ or bad comments toward ourselves. For most people our self image is not our ideal self, in fact almost everyone has something they would like to change about themselves.
Our esteem is affected by our self image; if we see our self image, and we don’t like it, our esteem is going to be low. Our esteem is our opinion of ourselves on how we look, our personality and how others speak or see of us etc. our esteem can grow and deteriorate through life, a lot of people wear fashionable clothes and cosmetics to help with their esteem; because if we think we look better with make up, we will wear to make our esteem higher.
Not many people have high self esteem, the few that may have are likely to be happy with the way they look; this does not mean they were born the way they look; some people have surgery/wear make etc to higher this but once they are happy with a look they feel confident in, their esteem is at a high. When esteem kicks in as a young child, this is when you start to question yourself and the way you look, sound, speak etc. sometimes you evaluate your self for the things that are wrong and fail to notice their own unique traits.
Your ideal self is who you aspire to be/ want to be or who you would like to be for example you might seek to be like a celebrity some people may start to dress like this celebrity etc. your ideal self and real self are two completely different things; unless you are one the few lucky people who completely like your self; this is very rare. Some people who seek to be their ideal self seek it through wearing make up, having surgery, dressing how they would like and some people who desperately don’t like the way they look can have what is called body dimorphic disorder.
Ideal self is not just how we want to look it is also how we would like our personality to be, or our voice, also our lifestyle, our career etc and also ideally how we want others to think of us. For example when your little you might say ‘’I want to be a princess in a castle, with a handsome rich husband, have lots of children and work as a ballerina’’ although this is not very real, at that stage in life that would be your ideal self.