ABSTRACT
The self has been a burgeoning research topic over the last decade in both personality and social psychology. This chapter considers those aspects of self research that bear upon the construction of personality. It looks at the origins of self-knowledge: what it means to know ourselves, what self-knowledge consists of, and how it is obtained. The chapter discusses the consequences of self-knowledge. It examines the sources and consequences of the human capacity for self-awareness and self-knowledge. Symbolic interactionism proposes that other people are a major source of information about the self, and this proposition is open to empirical investigation. Markus tested the hypothesis that self-schemata have consequences for the processing of self-relevant information by comparing female students with and without self-schemata with respect to dependence-independence. Models of the self-concept developed in social cognition borrow heavily from cognitive psychology and computer metaphors of the mind.
