566 vI. SELF‑ AND S OCIAL P ROCESSES
How Many Selves Do We Have?
Some theorists question the assumption that 
each person has a unique stable self that rep -
resents his or her distinctive personal experi -
ences and traits (Brewer & Chen, 2007; Mc -
Connell, 2011; Turner & Onorato, 1999). 
Instead, these theorists argue that society 
enmeshes the individual in multiple specific 
social contexts, each imposing a role that 
confers a distinctive sense of self. Conse -
quently, people have multiple selves reflect -
ing their various group memberships and 
associated role identities.3
Within psychology, the idea that the “Me” 
encompasses multiple selves dates back to 
James’s The Principles of Psychology (1890), 
which included a summary table classifying 
the levels and structures of the self (p. 329). 
Table 26.1  shows a revised and expanded 
version of this table. The first row shows the 
personal  or individual self, which reflects 
people’s beliefs about their private self, in -
cluding their traits, values, and abilities. 
The second row shows the relational  self, 
which reflects how people see themselves in 
intimate relationships. The third row shows 
the social self, which reflects how people see 
themselves in more general interpersonal 
contexts, including their social roles and 
reputation. The fourth row shows the col -
lective  self, which reflects people’s identities 
concerning their various reference groups, 
such as their religion, ethnicity, and nation -
ality. Some aspects of identity, such as gen -
der, permeate all levels of the self from the 
personal (e.g., self-  perceptions of feminine 
characteristics) to the collective (e.g., one’s 
identity as a “feminist”). Cultures vary in 
the degree of emphasis on these different lev -
els, with individuals from Western cultures 
(e.g., United States) focusing on the personal 
(“independent”) self, and individuals from 
Eastern cultures (e.g., China, Japan) focus -
ing on the collective (“interdependent”) self 
(e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 
1997; but see Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmel -
meier, 2002; Vignoles et al., 2016).
Clearly, the structure of self-representa -
tions does not parallel the structure of per -
sonality, as embodied in models such as the 
five- factor model (FFM; John, Chapter 2, 
this volume). Our self-  representations in -
clude far more than just perceptions of per -sonality traits. The FFM was not intended as 
a complete model of personality, but rather 
as a model of individual personality traits. 
Thus, relational, social, and collective as -
pects of the self were not included in the re -
search that led to the discovery of the FFM, 
and most lexical studies of personality struc -
ture have explicitly excluded social roles and 
relationships. Moreover, many aspects of 
the self do not reflect content domains such 
as the Big Five, but rather how the content 
of the self is organized, including the degree 
of differentiation, complexity, and com -
partmentalization (Bleidorn & Ködding, 
2013; Donahue et al., 1993; McConnell, 
Strain, Brown, & Rydell, 2009; Pilarska & 
Suchańska, 2014; Showers & Kling, 1996). 
Consequently, although the FFM effective -
ly captures the trait-  relevant aspects of the 
personal self, it fails to capture many other 
important aspects of the self, including its 
organizational structure and features of the 
relational, social, and collective self.
When Does the Self Emerge and How Does It 
Change across  the Lifespan?
By adulthood, our beliefs about ourselves 
seem to be relatively enduring. When we 
wake up in the morning, we have the sense 
that we are the same person we were the pre -
vious day. Even when we experience changes 
in our identity, such as starting a new job 
or having a baby, we still know that these 
changes apply to our  self. Where does this 
enduring sense of self come from? At what 
age does it develop?
Emergence of  Self‑Awareness
Infants, and virtually all animals, have at 
least one basic aspect of self-  awareness: They 
can distinguish self from non-self and con -
sequently do not eat themselves when they 
are hungry. Beyond this rudimentary sense 
of self, Rochat (2018) argued that “infants 
possess an implicit sense of their embodied 
self as a differentiated (distinct), substantial 
(occupying space), agentive (causing effects 
in the world), and situated (relatively lo -
cated) entity among other distinct entities in 
the world” (p. 2). It is difficult to determine 
when children develop even more complex 
forms of self-  awareness, because they cannot 