Download Chapter 12 Development of the Self and Social Cognition

Chapter 12
Development of the Self and
Social Cognition
Dr. Martha Pelaez
Development Of The Self-Concept
• Most developmentalists believe that
infants are born without a self-concept and
gradually come to distinguish themselves
form the external environment over the
first 2 to 6 months, as they gain a sense of
personal agency and learn to discriminate
their faces from those of other people
Development Of The SelfConcept Cont…
• Who are you really? Are you the person
that you are because of your unique
personality, physical and mental abilities
etc. Or do you get information about who
you are from outside influences?
• The concept of self implies that people are
a combination of physical and
psychological attributes that are unique to
that individual.
Development Of The Self-Concept
Cont…
• The looking-glass self is the idea that a
child’s self concept is largely determined
by the ways other people respond to him
or her.
• Social cognition - thinking people display
about the thoughts, feelings, motives and
behaviors of themselves and other people.
• Self concept - one’s perceptions of one’s
unique attributes or traits.
The Emerging Self: Differentiation and
Self Recognition
Spatial awareness is something that can be noted
at very early stages in human development. It is
suggested that this ability to sense one’s
location is a result of:
Proprioceptive feedback - sensory information
from the muscles, tendons, and joints that help
one to locate the position of one’s body (or body
parts) in space.
*Infants rely very heavily on this feedback.
The Emerging Self: Differentiation
and Self Recognition cont…
• As infants interact and gain more
experience in their environments they
begin to become aware of:
• Personal agency - recognition that one
can be the cause of an effect.
• Infants as young as 2 months newborns
have this recognition.
Self Recognition
• Self recognition - the ability to recognize oneself
in a mirror or photograph.
• Present self - early self-representation where 2
and 3-year-olds recognize current
representations of self but are unaware that the
past self - representations or self-relevant events
have implications for the present.
• Extended self - more mature self-representation,
emerging between ages 3 1/2 and 5 years, in
which children are able to integrate past, current
and unknown future self.
Self Recognition cont…
*One social and emotional consequence of
self recognition is:
• The categorical self - a person’s
classification of the self along socially
significant dimensions such as age and
sex.
– This usually occurs once toddlers display selfrecognition
Who am I?
• Who am I? Responses of Preschool
Children- Until recently, developmentalists
believed that the self-concepts of
preschool children were concrete,
physicalistic, and nearly devoid of any
psychological self awareness.
Children’s Theory of Mind and
Emergence of the Private Self
• When adults think about the self, they know that
it consists of a public self (or me) that others can
see an a private self (or I) that has an inner
reflective (thinking) character not available to
others.
• Theory of mind - an understanding that people
are cognitive beings with the mental states
(beliefs, motives, feelings, and intentions) that
are not always accessible to others and that
often guide their behavior.
Early Understanding of Mental
States:
• Desire Theory: an early theory of the mind
where a person’s actions are thought to be a
reflection of her desires rather than other mental
states such as beliefs.
• Belief-desire theory of the mind: develops
between age 3 and 4; child now realizes that
both beliefs and desires may determine behavior
and that people will act on their beliefs even if
they are inaccurate.
• False Belief problem: method of assessing one’s
understanding that people can hold inaccurate
beliefs that can influence their conduct even if
the beliefs are wrong.
Conceptions of Self in Middle
Childhood and Adolescence
• Once children develop a theory of mind and
clearly differentiate their public and private
selves, their self-descriptions gradually evolve.
• As children grow and acquire all of the
components of self awareness they begin to
make decisions as to whether or not they accept
their true selves. Often times when if an
adolescent/teen is not self confident they will
engage in:
– False self-behavior- acting in ways that do not reflect
one’s true self.
Self-Esteem: The Evaluative
Component Of Self
• As children develop, they not only
understand more and more about
themselves and construct more intricate
self-portraits, but they also begin to
evaluate the qualities that they perceive
themselves as having. This evaluative
aspect of self is called self-esteem.
Self Esteem cont...
– Origins and Development of Self-EsteemChildren's evaluation of themselves and their
competencies is a most important aspect of
self that can influence all aspects of their
conduct and their psychological well-being.
The theory predicts that securely attached
children, who presumably construct a positive
working model of self and others, should soon
begin to evaluate themselves more favorably
than insecurely attached children, whose
working models are not so positive.
Self-Esteem cont...
• Components of Self-Esteem- By early adolescence
one's perceptions of self-worth become
increasingly centered on interpersonal
relationships. Susan Harter and her associates
coined the term relational self-worth to describe
their finding that adolescents often begin to
perceive their self-worth somewhat differently in
different relational contexts.
• Changes in Self-Esteem- Young adolescents who
experience the many physical, cognitive, and
social changes associated with puberty often
become confused and show at least some decline
in self-esteem as they leave childhood behind and
begin to search for a stable adult identity.
Self-Esteem cont...
– Social Contributors to Self-Esteem
• Parenting Styles- Parents can play a crucial role in
shaping a child's self-esteem. The sensitivity of
parenting early in childhood clearly influences
whether infants and toddlers construct positive or
negative working models of self
• Peer Influences- As early as age 4 or 5 children
are beginning to recognize differences among
themselves and their classmates as they use
social comparison information to tell them whether
they perform better or worse in various domains
than their peers.
Development of Achievement
Motivation and Academic SelfConcepts
• Achievement motivation - a willingness to
strive to succeed at challenging tasks and
to meet high standards of
accomplishment.
– Phase 1: Joy of Mastery
– Phase 2: Approval Seeking
– Phase 3: Use of Standards
Achievement Motivation during
Middle Childhood and Adolescence
– Home Influences on Mastery Motivation and
Achievement- Researchers have identified
three especially potent home influences on
children's mastery and achievement
motivation and actual achievement behavior,
they are:
• Quality of Attachment
• The Home Environment
• Child Rearing and Achievement
Achievement Motivation cont...
• Peer Group Influences- Peers are also an
important source of influence on gradeschool children and adolescents who may
sometimes support and at other times
undermine parents' efforts to encourage
academic achievement.
Beyond Achievement of Motivation
• Development of Achievement Attributions
– Types of Achievement Attributions
•
•
•
•
Ability
Effort
Task Difficulty
Luck
Beyond Achievement cont...
– Age differences in achievement-related
attributions- Young children do seem to have
an incremental view of ability: They believe
that ability is changeable, not stable, and that
they can get smarter or become more capable
through increased effort and lots of practice.
– Dweck's Learned-Helplessness Theory
• How does learned helplessness develop?
• On helping the helpless to achieve.
Methods used to Help the Helpless to
Achieve
•
•
•
•
•
Attribution retraining
Person praise
Performance goal
Process-oriented praise
Learning goals
Who Am I To Be? Forging An
Identity
• Identity - a mature self-definition; a sense of who
one is, where one is going in life and how one
fits into society.
• Identity crisis - Erickson’s term for the
uncertainty and discomfort that adolescents
experience when they become confused about
their present and future roles in life.
Who Am I To Be? cont…
• James Marcia has developed a structured
interview that allow researchers to classify
adolescents into one of four identity
statuses
– 1. Identity diffusion
– 2. Foreclosure
– 3. Moratorium
– 4. Identity achievement
Age Trends In Person Perception
• Behavioral comparisons phase - the tendency to
form impressions of others by comparing and
contrasting their overt behaviors.
*Increases between ages 6 and 8 and declines
rapidly after age 9.
• Psychological constructs phase - tendency to
base one’s impressions of others on the stable
traits these individuals are presumed to have.
• Psychological comparisons phase - tendency to
form impressions of others by comparing and
contrasting these individuals on abstract
psychological dimension
Theories of Social-Cognitive
Development
• Cognitive-Developmental Theory
• Selman’s Role-Taking Theory
• Role Taking and Thinking about
Relationships
Social Influences on SocialCognitive Development
– Social Experience as a Contributor to RoleTaking- It seems that equal-status contacts
among friends may be especially important for
the growth of role-taking skills and
interpersonal understanding.
– Social Experience as a Direct Contributor to
Person Perception- It seems that both social
experience and cognitive competence
contribute in their own ways to the
development of children’s understanding of
other people.