Self and Identity

*warning: long Psychological post. This is the stuff I think about at least 13 out of the 17 hours I'm awake on a given day*

I've been thinking a lot about identity and the self these days, partly because that's one of the main lines of research I'm interested in, and partly because lately I've been reading a lot of journal articles and conversing with a lot of researchers about the self.

It is widely accepted in Psychology research that we, as humans, construe our identity from our social relationships and interactions. This mechanism comes in handy as experiences and research reveal that often our self-evaluations can be grossly inaccurate depending on different factors. So instead we turn to "objective" things to confirm our own evaluations such as success in performance or others' evaluations. We then adjust our self-evaluation accordingly to the feedback we receive. This mechanism, albeit helpful at times, can go awry.

As I was working on my research relating basing self-esteem on romantic relationships to body shame, I came across an interesting tidbit: men and women often overestimate how much the opposite sex is looking for thinner women or more muscular men (Lamb et al., 1993; Rozin & Fallon, 1988; Pope et al, 2000). Part of the reason body shame and symptoms of disordered eating may be so prevalent for women who urgently desire romantic relationships is that women try to conform their body to attract men based on assumptions about men's standards rather than actual feedback they get from men.

This got me thinking: how often we do or say things to please others based on assumptions about their reactions rather than their actual reactions? And do we let our assumptions lead us to distrust reactions that are contrary to what we expect? And how often do we change our own evaluations to conform to what we assume others are thinking or feeling rather than what they actually express to us? Basically, do we construe our identity based on false assumptions??

To illustrate this, I will share with you a story from my life. I have a hard time inviting long-distance friends to my church. Not the church I've been going to in particular, but any church that I've attended in the past. But let's take my church now as an example. I love, love, love the teaching at my church, and I love that my pastor is a vivid storyteller. I also love the order of worship at my church and all its components including the liturgy. But when I invite a friend to my church, I'm suddenly edgy and critical of everything. Is the musical that good? (darn, I feel this week the music is a little off) Is the preaching organized? (maybe the talk is less organized and theologically based this week) Is the service too long and serious? (why, oh, why is the liturgical portion so dry this week) Is my pastor too comical when he preaches? In short, all the things I love become the things I hate just because I fear my friend won't like it. And even if they say they enjoyed the service, I'm doubtful, because I was not able to enjoy the service myself. In fact, I start questioning whether I can pick a good church or not. In retrospect I wish I had enough confidence to trust that others will see what I see.

Can we get to the point of having enough confidence in ourselves to trust others will see what we see? Or are we going to keep reacting to our assumptions of what people think? As for a long answer, or an answer that can be published in a Psych journal, I have none at this time. Short answer, though, is if we base our identity in Christ alone, if we seek perfecting ourselves while accepting His grace, if we trust the feedback we're given and accept our shortcomings as human, we can get to that point. Okay, I admit this is a cop-out ending to a long post. More to come on this topic, I promise.