Self-concept refers to people's characteristic ideas about who they are and what they are like. Although psychologists often talk about the self-concept, a person's self-concept typically consists of a loose collection of ideas rather than a single unified conception of the self. The self-concept is grounded in subjective experience. This means that a person's self-concept may be different from what he or she is actually like.

One of the first psychologists who wrote about the self-concept was William James, a psychologist in the late 19th century. James distinguished between the I and the ME. The I is the part of the self that is actively perceiving and thinking. The ME is the part of the self that becomes an object of the person's thoughts and perceptions. ...