Definition
The term “the self” is broad. It can encompass: (1) knowledge that one is separate and distinct from others, (2) knowledge about the degree to which one is consistent over time, (3) knowledge about how one is a causal agent in the world, (4) information about the attributes (e.g., appearance, personality traits, habits) that one possesses, (5) information about one’s goals or motives as well as plans to execute them, (6) knowledge about one’s significant roles and relationships, (7) the result of judgments made about oneself, and (8) feelings or emotions that one experiences in response to self-thought.
Introduction
People experience “a sense of self.” This may include ideas about how they look, who they are now, how they were in the past, and what they have done in the past. They have the experience that they (not an outside agency) do things, and that they(and not an...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Charles, D. P., Gaffan, D., & Buckley, M. J. (2004). Impaired recency judgments and intact novelty judgments after fornix transection in monkeys. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 2037–2044. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3796-03.2004.
Eichenbaum, H. (2013). Memory on time. Trends in Cognitive Science, 17, 81–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.04.002.
Fingelkurts, A. A., Fingelkurts, A. A., & Kallio-Tamminen, T. (2016). Long-term meditation training induced changes in the operational synchrony of default mode network modules during a resting state. Cognitive Processing, 17, 27–37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0743-4.
Hills, T. T., & Butterfill, S. (2015). From foraging to autonoetic consciousness: The primal self as a consequence of embodied prospective foraging. Current Zoology, 61, 368–381. https://doi.org/10.1093/czoolo/61.2.368.
Hublin, J. J., Ben-Ncer, A., Bailey, S. E., Freidline, S. E., Neubauer, S., Skinner M. M., Bergmann I., Le Cabec, A., Benazzi, S., Harvati K., & Gunz P. (2017). New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature, 546, 289–292. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22336.
Humphrey, N. (1986). The inner eye. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kaneko, T., & Tomonaga, J. M. (2011). The perception of self-agency in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 278, 3694–3702. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.0611.
Klein, S. B. (2014). Autonoesis and belief in a personal past: an evolutionary theory of episodic memory indices. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 5, 427–447. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-014-0181-8.
Klein, S. B., & Lax, M. L. (2010). The unanticipated resilience of trait self-knowledge in the face of neural damage. Memory, 18, 918–948. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2010.524651.
Kober, H., Ray, A., Obhi, S., Guide, K., & Paul Keenan, J. (2005). The neural correlates of depersonalization: A disorder of self-awareness. In T. E. Feinberg & J. P. Keenan (Eds.), The lost self: Pathologies of the brain and identity (pp. 193–205). New York: Oxford University Press.
Leary M. R., Buttermore N. (2003). The evolution of the human self: tracing the natural history of self-awareness. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 33, 365–404. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1468-5914.2003.00223.x
Leary, M. R., & Tangney, J. P. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of self and identity (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.
Lind, S. E. (2010). Memory and the self in autism: A review and theoretical framework. Autism, 14, 430–456. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361309358700.
Lou, H. C., Luber, B., Crupain, M., Keenan, J. P., Nowak, M., Kjaer, T. W., … & Lisanby, S. H. (2004). Parietal cortex and representation of the mental self. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101, 6827–6832. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0400049101.
Lyons, V., & Fitzgerald, M. (2013). Atypical sense of self in autism spectrum disorders: A neuro-cognitive perspective. In M. Fitzgerald (Ed.), Recent advances in autism spectrum disorders (Vol. 1, pp. 749–770). Croatia: InTech. https://doi.org/10.5772/53680.
Maeda, K., Ishida, H., Nakajima, K., Inase, M., & Murata, A. (2015). Functional properties of parietal hand manipulation-related neurons and mirror neurons responding to vision of own hand action. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27, 560–572. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00742.
Martin-Ordas, G., Haun, D., Colmenares, F., & Call, J. (2010). Keeping track of time: evidence for episodic-like memory in great apes. Animal Cognition, 13, 331–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0282-4.
Mitchell, R. W. (2012). Self-recognition in animals. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (2nd ed., pp. 656–679). New York: Guilford Press.
Molnar-Szakacs, I., & Uddin, L. Q. (2016). The self in autism. In M. Kyrios, R. Moulding, G. Doron, S. S. Bhar, M. Nedeljkovic, & M. Mikulincer (Eds.), The self in understanding and treating psychological disorders (pp. 144–157). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Moore, J. W. (2016). What is the sense of agency and why does it matter? Frontiers in Psychology, 7, ArtID 1272. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01272.
Northoff, G. (2013). Brain and self – A neurophilosophical account. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 7, 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-2000-7-28.
Northoff, G. (2014). How is our self altered in psychiatric disorders? A neurophenomenal approach to psychopathological symptoms. Psychopathology, 47, 365–376. https://doi.org/10.1159/000363351.
Parker, S. T. (1997). A general model for the adaptive function of self-knowledge in animals and humans. Consciousness and Cognition, 6, 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1006/ccog.1996.0271.
Pinel, E. C., & Bosson, J. K. (2013). Turning our attention to stigma: An objective self-awareness self-awareness analysis of stigma and its consequences. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 35, 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2012.746593.
Prather, J. F., and Mooney, R. (2015.) Mirror neurons in the songbird brain: A neural interface for learned vocal communication. In P. F. Ferrari & G. Rizzolatti (Eds.), New frontiers in mirror neurons research. (pp. 182–197). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Prüfer, K.,F., Racimo, N., Patterson, F,. Jay, S., Sankararaman, S,. Sawyer, A., Heinze, A., et al. (2014). The complete genome sequence of a Neandertal from the Altai Mountains. Nature, 505, 43–49. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12886
Reilly, S. K., Yin, J., Ayoub, A. E., Emera, D., Leng, J., Cotney, J., … & Noonan, J. P. (2015). Evolutionary changes in promoter and enhancer activity during human corticogenesis. Science, 347, 1155–1159. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1260943.
Rochat, P. (2003). Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life. Consciousness and Cognition, 12, 717–731. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1053-8100(03)00081-3.
Saphire-Bernstein, S., Way, B. M., Kim, H. S., Sherman, D. K., & Taylor, S. E. (2011). Oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) is related to psychological resources. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 108, 15118–15122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1113137108.
Sedikides, C., & Campbell, W. K. (2017). Narcissistic force meets systemic resistance: The energy clash model. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12, 400–421. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617692105.
Sedikides, C., & Skowronski, J. A. (1997). The symbolic self in evolutionary context. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 80–102.
Sedikides, C., Skowronski, J. J., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2006). When and why did the human self evolve? In M. Schaller, J. A. Simpson, & D. T. Kenrick (Eds.), Evolution and social psychology (pp. 55–80). Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Sherwood, C. C., Subiaul, F., & Zawidzki, T. W. (2008). A natural history of the human mind: Tracing evolutionary changes in brain and cognition. Journal of Anatomy, 212, 426–454. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7580.2008.00868.x\.
Won, H., de la Torre-Ubieta, L., Stein, J. L., Parikshak, N. N., Huang, J., Opland, C. K., … & Geschwind, D. H. (2016). Chromosome conformation elucidates regulatory relationships in developing human brain. Nature, 538, 523–527. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19847.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Skowronski, J.J., Sedikides, C. (2018). Evolution of Self. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2424-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2424-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences