UNIT 3 - Material Self and Digital Self

• William James - the Harvard psychologist and giant of the American intellectual scene in the late nineteenth century. A “man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his”, he wrote in 1890.
• Material self - consists of things that belong to a person or entities that a person belongs to.
• Material self

  • Body
  • Clothes
  • Family
  • Home
  • Money
• For James, the core of the material self was the body.
• Body - We are attached to this commodity that we cannot live without.
• Clothes - for identity.
• Family - is the extension of our self.
• Home - is where our self is mostly shaped; is where our heart is.
• Positive Psychology - shows that we are not statistically happier than previous generations.
• Utility - This is concerned with how things work and serve a practical purpose. This is also concerned with efficiency derived from technological and material factors.
• Significance - This is concerned with how forms assume meaning in the ways they are used, or the roles and meaning assigned to them. It is also concerned with how objects become powerful symbols or icons of habit and ritual.
• During the 1950, Barthes popularized the field of semiology or the study of objects as sign.
• Signifier - its physical form - a diamond ring
• Signified - the mental concept it refers to - engaged to be married
• DIGITAL IDENTITY - On social networks one might choose to appear as living a grandiose life again regardless of the truth in one’s real life.
• self-presentation - through the ways they choose to represent themselves online by posting picture and sharing aspects of their lives.
• impression management - by attempting to use these media to control other people’s perceptions of who they are and how they act.
• Online disinhibition - when people behave differently online than they would in real life. It is the lack of restraint one feels when communicating online in comparison to communicating in-person.
• Benign disinhibition - behavior in which people tend to self-disclose more on the internet than they would in real life. Also, they tend to go out of their way to help someone or show kindness.
• Toxic disinhibition - Behavior that in which people tend to use rude language, threats, and visiting places of pornography, crime, and violence on the internet. They may also go to places they might not have been to in real life.