Self-concept
The organized set of beliefs a person holds about who they are.
What it means
The self-concept is the totality of a person's beliefs about themselves — their traits, roles, values, abilities, and group memberships — organized into a structured, multifaceted knowledge system rather than a single global image. It is theorized to comprise many domain-specific self-views and 'self-schemas,' chronic cognitive generalizations about the self that guide how self-relevant information is attended to, encoded, and recalled. The self-concept differs from self-esteem, which is the evaluative, affective appraisal of self-worth, and it includes representations of the present self as well as past and future possible selves. Its nuance is that the self-concept is both stable, providing continuity, and context-sensitive, as different facets become active in different situations (the 'working self-concept'). It matters as the cognitive foundation on which motivation, self-regulation, identity, and social behavior are built.
Examples
Someone whose self-concept centers on being 'an athlete' notices, remembers, and acts on fitness-related information far more than someone for whom that identity is peripheral.
A teacher who defines herself as 'someone good with people' remembers every warm exchange from parents' evening and barely registers the spreadsheet she also finished.
The same man is the careful eldest son at his mother's table and the joker among old schoolfriends — different facets of one self-concept switch on in each room.
First described in Roots in William James (1890); schema model by Hazel Markus (1977).