In a very real way, the self is socially constructed. Unlike the previous perspectives of chapters 2-4, which start internally to discover the self, the social constructionist perspective begins with the social context in order to discover what the self is like. It answers the question ?how do culture, history and society shape the psychology of the individual??

Social constructionists support a view which merges ?the person? and ?their social context;? the boundaries for one cannot be easily separated from the boundaries of the other. All aspects of a person, ?consciousness, mind and the self are seen as social through and through.? Therefore, it makes no sense for one to ask the question what is determined from the ?inside? and what is determined from the ?outside.?

Our physical bodies, because they exist completely separate from each other, mislead us into thinking that our thoughts and feelings are completely shut out from the rest of the world. Rather, social constructionist argue that it would be more accurate ?to describe this internal place as a line momentarily and arbitrarily drawn around pieces of the public world.?

Vygotsky argued that ?when children internalize dialogues experienced within particular social practices, the words carry with them the social and cultural trappings of the contexts within which they have been experienced.? The cultural meanings shape the ways language contribute to cognitive processes, and how children use it as a tool to help them solve tasks on other occasions.

sts think that the best view of the self comes from leaving out the social context, social constructionists feel that the social world should be at the heart of psychological investigations. In their approach, the self is not taken as a static object, but something that is continuously changing and a ?fluid history of relationships.? The self is constantly changing and spreading across a social and relational field. Bruner states that ?the self is best understood not as a pure and enduring core but as ?the sum and swarm of participations in social life.??

Unlike what the biological perspective would say, the social constructionist says that emotions are social practices structured by our forms of understanding. Some social psychologists say that all people have the same emotional reactions, they are just displayed or repressed in different ways. Social constructionists would argue that local meanings and practices structure what is felt.

Social constructionist approaches say that people are shaped by others and by their cultural environment right from the earliest stages of life. Children?s individual characteristics are developed through their participation in social relationships and activities. The direction of development is from the social to the individual, through language. Mead and Vygotsky believed that our thought processes consist of internalized social dialo

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