Who You Are is Who We Tell You You Are

Here is a discussion board prompt from my General Psychology:

Social Psych is by far my favorite chapter. One realizes how our sense of ourselves (our identity) is tied to other people.

This thought experiment will be easiser if you have seen the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, because viewing that movie, one really gets the sense of what is means to be stranded and completely alone - something almost completely foreign to us humans beings.

But imagine you could have been born, like Tom Hanks in the movie, on a deserted island, and had enough food and nutrition to survive from baby to toddler, adolescent, adult BUT without the company of others.

This is hard to even imagine as we are born of others and usually surrounded and immersed in others.

But on this island, you have survived, without others to adulthood.

Now, the thought experiement is this: on this island, what adjectives could you assign to yourself? Are you funny? Are you smart? Are you pretty? Are you mean?

What are you?

This is fascinating because it shows you, if you earnestly engage the experiment, that your sense of self is almost completely bound to others.

Couldn't one argue that you are how other people see you? You see yourself as funny, or smart, or pretty, or mean only because other people have reflected this back to you. This is the Looking Glass Self concept. If you are on a deserted island, you have no adjectives because there are no comparatives and no other people to assign adjectives to you.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.  

Now check out this great response from a student:

In the thought experiment of being stranded on a deserted island from birth, devoid of any social interaction, the concept of self takes on a strikingly different dimension. Without the presence of others to provide feedback or validation, the development of one's self-concept becomes severely limited. In the absence of social comparison and interaction, the individual lacks the external perspectives necessary to form adjectives or descriptors about themselves.

This scenario underscores the profound influence of social interactions on the construction of our self-identity. As social beings, we often define ourselves in relation to others and through the feedback we receive from them. This concept aligns with the Looking Glass Self theory in social psychology, which posits that our self-concept is shaped by how we believe others perceive us. Without the presence of others to act as mirrors reflecting back our qualities or characteristics, it becomes challenging, if not impossible, to develop a nuanced understanding of ourselves.

In essence, the thought experiment highlights the interconnectedness between our sense of self and the social environment in which we exist. It emphasizes that our identity is not merely an internal construction but is intricately linked to the perceptions and interactions of those around us. Therefore, if stranded on a deserted island without the presence of others, the individual's self-concept would likely be devoid of the adjectives or descriptors typically used to define oneself in a social context. 

What say you?