Community Effects on Self-Identity with Self-Perception

Kassia Zegzdryn

Psychologist Daryl Bem proposed the self-perception theory, which suggests that when one's internal self-cues are weak, one will observe their behaviors and attitudes with the perspective of an outsider (Bem, 1967). I claim that when an individual's internal self-cues are weak, one will create a self-identity that is influenced by various social cues and attitudes implemented by one's culture, using Bem's self-perception analysis. In my research I have discovered that many people's behaviors and attitudes are often crafted from what one's community desires them to be through various verbal self-descriptors (Bem, 1970). Bem proposes the idea that a community controls much of what a person considers aspects of him or herself. Because a person is influenced by their community's expectancies of behavior, much of what one observes through the self-perception analysis is not based on internal self cues but interpersonal social cues given by a community's environment.