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Self-Awareness

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences
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Synonyms

Objective self-awareness; Self-consciousness; Self-focused attention; Self-reflection

Definition

For children, self-awareness begins as a rudimentary understanding that one is separate from the environment. In older children and adults, self-awareness is a psychological state where attention is focused inwardly, toward one’s self-concept. Self-awareness has many consequences for thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

Introduction

Self-awareness is notoriously difficult to define, as are many elusive self-related terms. “Self-awareness” often reflects several types or levels of self-awareness that include: a basic sense that one is separate from the outside world, a sense of bodily self-awareness where people (and some animals) can recognize themselves in mirrors, and a more advanced form of self-awareness, where someone can turn attention inwards toward an elaborate self-concept.

While self-awareness means many things to many researchers and theorists, most agree that it develops...

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Correspondence to Ann G. Phillips .

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Phillips, A.G. (2020). Self-Awareness. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1158

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