There are many psychology experts who affirm that human beings must first love themselves in order to adequately love others. However, taking care of oneself is often confused with a selfish idea, with a negative connotation, and this is not always the case, since there are different ways of understanding and living selfishness.
Keep reading this Psychology-Online article and you will know what is selfishness in psychologyits definition, types and some phrases from different authors that will help you understand it better.
The concept comes from ego, through which a person becomes aware of his or her own identity and recognizes himself as an “I.” The dictionary defines the word selfishness as: “excessive appreciation that a person has for himself and that makes him pay excessive attention to his own interest, without worrying about that of others” (Royal Spanish Academy).
Psychological egoism talks about self-interested human behavior and not really altruistic.
Why do we look for a partner? Why do we want to be parents? Why do we want to have friends? Why do we help the people around us? If you analyze it, behind your great motivations we find your own benefit, no matter how small.
Let’s look at the different types of selfishness in psychology:
1. Egocentric selfishness
It is the selfishness that the dictionary defines, an attitude that distances you from others, makes you lose your social value and ends up emotionally isolating you from everyone. Person just look for yourself using others based on their interest and benefit without taking into account how their actions may impact others. The ego is so big that the person is the one it interacts with. Those who are selfish “egocentric” build a victim-like personality and tend to complain and blame others when something does not go as expected. He accuses you of being selfish when you look out for your own interests because what he wants is for you to look out for his own.
2. Conscious or neutral selfishness
It is important to dedicate some time each day to give ourselves what we need and thus maintain emotional balance. We need to think about ourselves to survive physically and emotionally. I affirm, again, that the human being must love yourself first to be able to adequately love others. Through this conscious selfishness, strengthening self-confidence. Neutral selfishness benefits oneself and does not harm others, although it also tends to benefit those one loves indirectly.
3. Altruistic selfishness
This selfishness consists of doing something that we like to do and that also brings profits to other people. We are altruistic because doing good things makes us feel good. It is typical of a empathetic person, who without ceasing to seek their well-being, ensures that when they achieve it, it does not affect others in a negative way. She is able to let others receive a benefit first when she feels they need it more than she does.
In conclusion, we can understand that depending on how we look at selfishness, we can understand it as a more or less negative attitude, with different degrees of concern for our own and others’ well-being.
In the following article, we show good .
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.