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Psych Class Is Frustrating :dough:

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Today in my personality psychology class we were talking about the goals people set for themselves, and my teacher explained that people basically had three images of themself: the "actual" self (how they think they really are), the "ideal" self (how they would like to be) and the "ought" self (this was a little unclear, but I think it referred to how people felt that they had a moral obligation to be). Someone then asked if anyone's "ought" self matched their "actual" self. Everyone in the class agreed that this was impossable- I wanted to scream at them "of course it's possible- it's only impossible if you've accepted an impossible standard of morality!"

Then, to make matters worse, our teacher explained that "basically the only people whose "ought" selves match their "actual" selves are serial killers, but these people have extremely low levels of anxiety." I was about to say that my "ought" pretty much matched my "actual," but I didn't want them to think that I was a serial killer. I'm sure they think I'm strange enough for trying to explain why it was obvious that people have free will :) .

Does anyone else have these kinds of experiences in their psychology classes?

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Does anyone have these kinds of experiences?

No. I haven't taken personality yet... Isn't there a disctinction between 'actual' and percieved. Like how you see yourself compared to how people see you. I would think 'ought' self would closely match one's percieved self, but not their actual self. I would think that one would follow their OWN moral judgement... However, that of others or that of the collective society would rarely be matched. Whether or not the outside world sees your actions the way you have justified them is another story. I would think one's ought self would match their percieved self as long as they weren't severely mentally disabled. The actions you percieve as moral are generally those that you bring to fruition. Only people constantly making mistakes would have a percieved self that was far from their ought self.

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"Actual" doesn't mean how you actually are, it just means how you perceive yourself. And yeah, one would think the "ought" self would match up, but, for anyone with the standard Judeo-Christian sense of morals, it doesn't, and can't.

Edited by pi-r8
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