These are all questions that social psychology has been asking since the beginning of this century. The self-concept is defined as the sum total of our beliefs about our skills, talents, and personal attributes.
Social psychologists feel that one s self-concept is structured around a few very important traits.
These schematic traits assist in forming your self concept and processing self-relevant information. In this concept, Cooley theorized that we form our self-concept by observing how others think of us. Both Cooley and Mead make good arguments, but there is one problem. Often, how we think a person perceives us is not consistent with how the other person actually perceives the individual. Recently, social psychologists have developed some new ideas on how we form our self-concept.