A person's
self image is the
mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to objective investigation by others (
height,
weight,
hair color,
sex,
I.Q. score, etc.), but also items that have been learned by that person about himself or herself, either from personal experiences or by
internalizing the judgments of others. A simple definition of a person's self image is their answer to this question - "What do you believe people think about you?" A more technical term for self image that is commonly used by social and cognitive psychologists is
self-schema. Like any
schema, self-schemas store information and influence the way we think and remember. For example, research indicates that information which refers to the self is preferentially encoded and recalled in memory tests, a phenomenon known as "
Self-Referential Encoding" (Rogers et al. 1977).
As it is a relative objective measure, it is generally measured against crowd leaders, such as celebrities[1].
The formation of a healthy self image can be challenging for an individual, especially when family, peers, community, or the general society issues very negative evaluations of a person that happen to be inaccurate. The consequences can be severe for the individual, who may learn self-hatred. They can also be severe for the society.
Poor self image may be the result of accumulated invalid criticisms that the person collected as a child which have led to damaging his own view of himself. Children in particular are vulnerable to accepting false negative judgments from authority figures because they have yet to develop competency in evaluating such reports.
