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].
Poor self image may be the result of accumulated 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 negative judgments from authority figures because they have yet to develop competency in evaluating such reports.
It should be noted that some information about an individual is not directly available to others, and that information may be very pertinent to the formation of an accurate and well functioning self image. For instance, only the individual may know whether certain of his or her acts were malicious or benevolent in intent. Only individuals know whether in their internal experience they are masculine or feminine, good or bad and so on.
