After reading this chapter you should understand:

• The nature of self-awareness, how it develops and how it differs between situations and people
• How we organise our self-knowledge in self-schemas
• How we maintain our concepts of our selves, through processes such as comparison with others
• Factors influencing our self-esteem and the consequences of high and low self-esteem
• Self-enhancement and how we deal with threats to our self-esteem
• How the concept of the self varies between cultures