Social consciousness
Social consciousness refers to an individual's awareness of their connection to a group and the broader society. It is closely linked to self-awareness, with both internal and external aspects influencing how individuals perceive themselves and their relationships with others. Research in this area draws from psychology and anthropology, demonstrating that social consciousness can greatly impact personal development and collective action. For instance, a strong sense of belonging can inspire positive social initiatives, such as activism for social justice, but it can also lead to negative behaviors, like participation in riots.
The development of social consciousness often begins in childhood through family interactions and evolves through experiences with peers, education, and community involvement. Individuals may navigate multiple group memberships and experience shifting connections over time. This awareness affects daily decisions, especially when competing interests arise, such as balancing social commitments with personal aspirations. Understanding social consciousness is increasingly important in various fields, including law enforcement, health care, and education, as it highlights the need to recognize and address biases in decision-making processes.
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Subject Terms
Social consciousness
Social consciousness is an awareness that links individuals to a group. It is strongly related to self-awareness and self-consciousness because the way one views and feels about oneself determines an individual’s connection to others. Research in this field developed out of various human studies, notably psychology and anthropology. Social consciousness has widespread implications for individuals and society. It can strongly influence individuals and groups. For example, a shared sense of belonging can lead to positive developments such as inspiration and action on social justice issues; it can also result in negative developments such as participation in riots or engaging in fraudulent activities because of the belief that such actions are acceptable in one’s social group.
Background
Self-awareness involves both internal and external self-awareness. Internal self-awareness is the degree to which individuals accurately understand their goals, interests, and values; see the degree to which they fit in their environment and society; understand how and why they respond to others and events in terms of actions, feelings, and strengths/weaknesses; and recognize the effect they have on others. Individuals with greater internal self-awareness tend to be happier and more satisfied with life; less internal self-awareness is associated with more anxiety and depression. External self-awareness refers to how well one understands how others view them in the same areas. Individuals with greater external self-awareness are more likely to be empathetic and understanding of others’ points of view.
Self-concept is closely related to self-awareness. It refers to one’s self-judgments and how one feels about them. These judgments involve many elements, including emotions, physical self, religion, spirituality, and social actions. While self-concept can change throughout life, it primarily becomes established through childhood and early adulthood. Self-concept is congruent when it is in line with reality and incongruent when it is not.
Many scholars and researchers have explored social consciousness and related topics such as child development. Overall, they have concluded that awareness of one’s self develops in concert with social interaction.
In the early twentieth century, American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley developed theories about self-awareness and involvement with others. He recognized that individuals understood their identity in part by their understanding of how others see them, a concept that he called the looking-glass self. A person understands the looking-glass self gradually. This involves imagining how other people see and judge the individual, developing an emotional reaction to these judgments, and acting on these feelings. Assessment of how others see and judge one involves many clues including body language and other feedback during social interactions. However, some feedback is more valuable because individuals usually place greater importance on the reactions of certain people, such as an employer or friend, than on subordinates or strangers.
Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s theory of social development holds that social interaction is crucial to learning. For example, children can do some things for themselves, but learn they can do other things with help. This requires children to develop socially by interacting with adults and peers. Consciousness also develops through socialization; for example, once an individual learns language, the person can use an internal monologue to formulate ideas and identify feelings and beliefs. Further development of these skills allows for greater insight and thought.
Overview
The degree to which individuals feel a connection to others and society overall has a profound influence on actions and personal development. It can have an impact on personal development in that individuals who feel a connection to others are more likely to work with people, which in turn inspires others to wish to cooperate with them. Individuals may feel affinities and membership in multiple groups simultaneously and move into and away from such connections over time.
Social consciousness changes with individuals’ experiences. For most, it originates with family interactions in childhood and expands with exposure to peers in school, the community, and the workplace, among others. One’s worldview expands greatly with experience. It is shaped by these connections and shapes one’s social consciousness.
An individual’s social consciousness affects aspects of everyday life. The degree to which one feels connected to various groups can influence decision making. Individuals may have many competing interests to weigh, such as how actions might affect a group’s ability to achieve a goal, the financial impact of various choices, and the maintenance and value of relationships that might be tested by a decision. For example, an individual may have made a commitment to friends to participate in a competitive event, but also experience pressure to attend a family gathering. The competition may be fun or important to the person. It may represent a way to boost social status or offer potential financial gain. The individual may be influenced by the degree to which the peer group values family commitments. The family gathering may be of a type the person does not enjoy or involve people the individual does not know well or care for. It likewise may offer some tangible benefit, such as the possibility of receiving gifts. The individual will place varying degrees of importance on the many pros and cons of making this decision. These values are likely to be quite fluid if circumstances change.
An understanding of social consciousness is important in many fields such as the judicial system, law enforcement, health care, and engineering because one may be unaware of ways systems and situations may involve bias. Individuals, organizations, and educators can work to help develop social consciousness to reduce biases that individuals may not be aware they have. For example, educators at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Massachusetts developed exercises to help engineering design students understand the implications of decisions they make. This involved helping students think about who their designs benefit as well as who their work does not help. In legal fields, individuals may encounter issues such as racial profiling, workplace discrimination, and hate crimes and speech. Such experiences may influence policy decisions, jury selection, mediation, and decisions to litigate, among many other areas.
Bibliography
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