Human Communication: Week 4 - 23th Sept 2014 (Tue)

Due to some misunderstanding of my lecturer's speech, i owe him 2 blog posts, which are chapter2 and chapter3. I will try to update them as soon as possible.. so busy recently..

Okay, what he taught yesterday was about "SELF". Perhaps, some of you will ask: is SELF related to Human Communication? Aren't communication always involves individuals?
Unfortunately, the answer is YES, so we have to study one more chapter for our exam. it is because the SELF can be also deemed as the way in which communication and interpretation of messages take place within the individual. That's why we have intrapersonal communication (which is part of the content of Chapter1)

SELF can be widen into 4 areas:

1. Self-concept
2. Self-awareness
3. Self-esteem
4. Self-disclosure

Self-Concept

Self-concept is about how you define yourself.

 Self-concept could be affect by 4 aspects. The brief explanations are given below.

•   Social comparison: Humans always compared themselves with others in the society.
•   Others’ image of you: Humans always care about their image and people’s comments.
•   Self-interpretation and evaluation: It is about how you think and evaluate about yourself
•   Cultural teaching: Different cultures may have different beliefs and values which result in different thinking.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is an ability to consciously discover your actions, personality, character etc. It’s often related to the Johari Window.

Ø  Open self (also known as open arena) is the SELF known by yourself and others
·         For example: You like to joke with your friends, so both you and your friends will notice about your humour

Ø  Blind self (also known as blind spot) is the SELF known by others but unknown by yourself
·         For example: You like to help the others without thinking much, so everyone will notice about your helpfulness but you yourself don’t notice about that

Ø  Hidden self (also known as façade) is the SELF known by yourself but unknown by others
·         For example: You are homosexual and you keep your sexuality as a secret.

Ø  Unknown self is the SELF unknown by yourself and others
·         For example: You are talented in music, but you didn’t get chance to learn any musical instrument, even you yourself didn’t noticed that you have such potential, of course others won’t know about your potential.

      There are several ways to develop high level of self-awareness, such as listening to others’ comments, introspecting to yourself, having monologue to yourself etc.

Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is how much do you trust on yourself. It has similar meaning with self-confidence.

To be a higher self-esteem person, we should be friend with nice and nourishing person take actions only when you are confident enough and avoid negative thinking and self-destructive thoughts.

Self-Disclosure

Self-disclosure is an act that reveals your hidden self. It could be understood as telling your secret to the others.

Your character, personality, religion, culture, gender, the topic you are going to reveal, the person that your secret to be revealed are the factors that having influence for disclosing yourself.

There are 2 effect after disclosing yourself:

1.       Positive effect (Advantages/Benefits)

a.       Gain more confidence

b.      Be more truthful to yourself

c.       Gain happiness

d.      Strengthen friendships/relationship among each other

2.       Negative effect(Disadvantages)

a.       Gain additional burden, pressure

b.      Life becomes stressful

c.       Life is filled with unhappiness

d.      Living with regret

And before the end of the lecture, we had a small class activity. It's about how do you define your friend. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to  be called on stage, if not it would be fun because i want to tease my friend haha...