The Social Self in the Swimming World

After English class last Wednesday, I could not stop thinking about the plethora of ways to analyze the social self. Each different psychologists approach that we examined seemed somewhat unique and seemed to require further exploration. The more I thought about them I feel I can almost draw a causation from how one perceives their "social self," to one's behavior. Throughout high school I swam for a USA swim team. My experiences with these different interpretations of the social self seem to offer an explanation of some of the team members behaviors which previously seemed hard to figure out.

First off, I used to find myself wondering as to why and how "clicks" were formed on the swim team. We were all swimmers and shared this common identity, why didn't we all hang out together? Well it seems, according to William James' empirical self, people may characterize themselves in many ways and may even change how they view themselves depending upon the people they are interacting with. In this case they may have as many descriptions as "self," as people have of them. This makes my original question more clear, for now it may seem that the really fast swimmers stuck close together, because each perceived the other as one who excels in the art of swimming and has speed. In our simple worlds in high school, where swimming seemed the most important aspect in life, it would make sense that they were friends. They liked the social self that each of them had for each other, it made them feel good, and this confidence that they shared with each other made them even faster.

My social self as a beginner may be better described by Cooley's interpretation of the social self. Everything about the self has to be felt first and then thought. For instance, I started the team at the age of 13, which is considered very late in swimmer world. I seemed to have immediately perceived the others swimmers interactions with me to be one of condescension. I started to feel that I was not as fast and would never be as fast as the other girls. This is how I felt, and no matter what anyone could say to discount this, my self reflection would not change and thus my social self was set.

Later in my swimming career I realized I might act in a particular way to a specific person so that they would see me how I wanted them to see me, thus either constantly changing my social self or just creating many. According to Mead, the social self is entirely based on interaction. The catch to this approach is that the person doing the action is making an assumption about how the other person wants them to act and how they are perceiving them to act. When I was with my friends in the locker room we all complained about how hard practices were and all of these excuses we would come up with to give the coach in order to find reasons to leave practice early. We each acted this way because we thought that is what the other person wanted us to say, when in actuality if you watched us in the water, no one complained and no one left early. When I was around my coach I would talk to him about my artwork and classes in school. This was because I wanted him to perceive me as a well rounded student and not just a swimmer, since I was one of the worst on the team, well at least perceived myself to be. I assumed by telling him about the galleries he could see my work in he would then see me how I wanted my "self" to be defined.

By applying these "social self," theories to situations in which behavior does not seem justifiable allows them to be seen more clearly. Can they help you define why someone acts the way they do?