At the core of our behaviour is our sense of self — who we are as individuals.
The concept of self includes our beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as human beings.
Self-awareness refers to the extent to which we are paying attention to our own self-concept.
One of the reasons why developing self-awareness is paramount is due to our inconsistencies in attitude and behaviour on a day-to-day basis, between what we THINK inside our heads and what we ACTUALLY do out there in the world.
Research shows that when a person goes through a successful experience in life (i.e. becoming a well-known figure in society), they seek the state of self-awareness. This can be demonstrated by the increased use of first-person singular pronouns such as “I”, “me” and “mine” in their speech and writings.
In one study, researchers analysed the writings and personal letters of Nobel prize winner Ernest Hemingway. The results showed that there was a significant increase in self-awareness following his fame in 1929 when A Farewell to Arms was published.
Conversely, followed a self-related inconsistency (i.e. a disapproving and shameful behaviour such as stealing or violence) people tend to avoid self-awareness.
In another (field) experiment conducted on Halloween to see if self-awareness would influence children’s honesty, researchers expected that they would avoid stealing when they were more self-aware. When trick-or-treating, children were greeted by one of the experimenters, shown a large bowl of candy, and were told to take only one piece each. In some of the houses there was a large mirror (thought to increase awareness of self) behind the candy bowl; in other houses, no mirror at all. Out of the 363 children observed, nearly 20% disobeyed the instructions taking more than one piece of candy. However, the children who were in front of a mirror were significantly less likely to steal (~ 15%) than were those who did not see a mirror (~ 30%). This suggests that the mirror indeed made the children more self-aware, bringing their belief about the importance of being honest closer to their attention.
When people are in large crowds, they may experience what psychologists call “deindividuation” — the loss of individual self- awareness and accountability. They become more likely to act violently, with no concern to mainstream social norms since they can hide themselves, whether behind a Halloween mask, a computer screen or as members of a group.
A sad historical example is the Ku Klux Klan, whose members wore white robes and hats when they met and engaged in their aggressive racist behaviour.
When people become more attuned to themselves as group members and to the specific social norms of the particular situation than to the ethics of right and wrong, they end up losing sight of their own attitudes and behaviours.
More than being self-absorbed within our personal identities, self-awareness brings clarity to our existence, it brings further understanding on the inevitable interconnectedness among us as a global tribe.
When we are aware of our idiosyncrasies as human beings, we heighten our perception of those around us, and with a little humility, at the end of the day we are able to understand we are only cells within a large organism. Destroy one cell, and you’re destroying the organism itself. When we stop to pay attention to one another, we favour the whole.
As Carl Sagan wisely said:
"Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organised what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together… If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice… is clearly the universe or nothing.”
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Your privacy is important to us. It is sou's policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect from you across our website, sou search, and other sites we own and operate.
We only ask for personal information when we truly need it to provide a service to you. We collect it by fair and lawful means, with your knowledge and consent. We also let you know why we’re collecting it and how it will be used.
We only retain collected information for as long as necessary to provide you with your requested service. What data we store, we’ll protect within commercially acceptable means to prevent loss and theft, as well as unauthorised access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.
We don’t share any personally identifying information publicly or with third-parties, except when required to by law.
Our website may link to external sites that are not operated by us. Please be aware that we have no control over the content and practices of these sites, and cannot accept responsibility or liability for their respective privacy policies.
You are free to refuse our request for your personal information, with the understanding that we may be unable to provide you with some of your desired services.
Your continued use of our website will be regarded as acceptance of our practices around privacy and personal information. If you have any questions about how we handle user data and personal information, feel free to contact us.
This is the Cookie Policy for sou.
As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the sites functionality.
We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.
You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.
In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.
Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren't sure whether you need or not it's usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site.
This policy is effective as of August 2020.
