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Egocentrism
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Egocentrism is the inability to differentiate between self and other. More
specifically, it is the inability to untangle subjective schemas from objective
reality; an inability to understand or assume any perspective other than their
own.
Although egocentrism and narcissism appear similar, they are not the same. A
person who is egocentric believes they are the center of attention, like a
narcissist, but does not receive gratification by one's own admiration. An egotist
is a person whose ego is greatly influenced by the approval of others while a
narcissist is not.
Although egocentric behaviors are less prominent in adulthood, the existence of
some forms of egocentrism in adulthood indicates that overcoming egocentrism
may be a lifelong development that never achieves completion. Adults appear to
be less egocentric than children because they are faster to correct from an
initially egocentric perspective than children, not because they are less likely to
initially adopt an egocentric perspective.
During infancy
The main concept infants and young children learn by beginning to show
egocentrism is the fact that their thoughts, values, and behaviors are different
from those of others, also known as the theory of mind. Initially when children
begin to have social interactions with others, mainly the caregivers, they
misinterpret that they are one entity, because they are together for a long
duration of time and the caregivers often provide for the children's needs. For
example, a child may misattribute the act of his/her mother reaching to retrieve
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an object that he/she points to as a sign that they are the same entity, when in
fact they are actually separate individuals. As early as 15-months old, children
show a mix of egocentrism and theory of mind when an agent acts
inconsistently with how the children expect him to behave. In this study the
children observed the experimenter place a toy inside one of two boxes, but did
not see when the experimenter removed the toy from the original box and
placed it in the other box, due to obstruction by a screen. When the screen was
removed the children watched the experimenter reach to take the toy out of one
of the boxes, yet because the children did not see the switching part, they looked
at the experimenter’s action much longer when she reached for the box opposite
to the one she originally put the toy in. Not only does this show the existence of
infants’ memory capacity, but it also demonstrates how they have expectations
based on their knowledge, as they are surprised when those expectations are not
met.
During childhood
According to George Butterworth and Margaret Harris, during childhood, one is
usually unable to distinguish between what is subjective and objective.
According to Piaget, "an egocentric child assumes that other people see, hear,
and feel exactly the same as the child does."
Jean Piaget (1896–1980) developed a theory about the development of human
intelligence, describing the stages of cognitive development. He claimed that
early childhood is the time of pre-operational thought, characterized by
children's inability to process logical thought. According to Piaget, one of the
main obstacles to logic that children possess includes centration, "the tendency
to focus on one aspect of a situation to the exclusion of others." A particular
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type of centration is egocentrism - literally, "self-centeredness." Piaget claimed
that young children are egocentric, capable of contemplating the world only
from their personal perspective. For example, a three-year-old presented his
mother a model truck as her birthday present; "he had carefully wrapped the
present and gave it to his mother with an expression that clearly showed he
expected her to love it." The three-year-old boy had not chosen the present out
of selfishness or greediness, but he simply failed to realize that, from his
mother's perspective, she might not enjoy the model car as much as he would.
Piaget was concerned with two aspects of egocentricity in children: language
and morality. He believed that egocentric children use language primarily for
communication with oneself. Piaget observed that children would talk to
themselves during play, and this egocentric speech was merely the child’s
thoughts. He believed that this speech had no special function; it was used as a
way of accompanying and reinforcing the child’s current activity. He theorized
that as the child matures cognitively and socially the amount of egocentric
speech used would be reduced. However, Vygotsky felt that egocentric speech
has more meaning, as it allows the child’s growth in social speech and high
mental development. In addition to Piaget’s theory, he believed that when
communicating with others, the child believes that others know everything
about the topic of discussion and become frustrated when asked to give further
detail.
Piaget also believed that egocentrism affects the child’s sense of morality. Due
to egocentrism, the child is only concerned with the final outcome of an event
rather than another’s intentions. For example, if someone breaks the child’s toy,
the child would not forgive the other and the child wouldn't be able to
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understand that the person who broke the toy did not intend to break it. This
phenomenon can also be backed by the evidence from the findings of the case
study by Nelson, who studied the use of motives and outcomes by young
children as aiding to form their moral judgements.
Piaget did a test to investigate egocentrism called the mountains study. He put
children in front of a simple plaster mountain range and then asked them to pick
from four pictures the view that he, Piaget, would see. The younger children
before age seven picked the picture of the view they themselves saw and were
therefore found to lack the ability to appreciate a viewpoint different from their
own. In other words, their way of reasoning was egocentric. Only when entering
the concrete-operational stage of development at age seven to twelve, children
became less egocentric and could appreciate viewpoints other than their own. In
other words, they were capable of cognitive perspective-taking. However, the
mountains test has been criticized for judging only the child's visuo-spatial
awareness, rather than egocentrism. A follow up study involving police dolls
showed that even young children were able to correctly say what the interviewer
would see. It is thought that Piaget overestimated the extent of egocentrism in
children. Egocentrism is thus the child's inability to see other people's
viewpoints, not to be confused with selfishness. The child at this stage of
cognitive development assumes that their view of the world is the same as other
peoples.
In addition, a more well-known experiment by Wimmer and Perner (1983)
called the false-belief task demonstrates how children show their acquisition of
theory of mind (ToM) as early as 4 years old. In this task, children see a
scenario where one character hides a marble in a basket, walks out of the scene,
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and another character that is present takes out the marble and put it in a box.
Knowing that the first character did not see the switching task, children were
asked to predict where the first character would look to find the marble. The
results show that children younger than 4 answer that the character would look
inside the box, because they have the superior knowledge of where the marble
actually is. It shows egocentric thinking in early childhood because they thought
that even if the character itself did not see the entire scenario, it has the same
amount of knowledge as oneself and therefore should look inside the box to find
the marble. As children start to acquire ToM, their ability to recognize and
process others’ beliefs and values overrides the natural tendency to be
egocentric.
During adolescence
Although most of the research completed on the study of egocentrism is
primarily focused on early childhood development, it has been found to also
occur during adolescence. David Elkind was one of the first to discover the
presence of egocentrism in adolescence and late adolescence. He argues, "the
young adolescent, because of the physiological metamorphosis he is
undergoing, is primarily concerned with himself. Accordingly, since he fails to
differentiate between what others are thinking about and his own mental
preoccupations, he assumes that other people are obsessed with his behavior and
appearance as he is himself." This shows that the adolescent is exhibiting
egocentrism, by struggling to distinguish whether or not, in actuality, if others
are fond of them as they might think because their own thoughts are so
prevalent. Adolescents consider themselves as "unique, special, and much more
socially significant than they actually are."
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Elkind also created terms to help describe the egocentric behaviors exhibited by
the adolescent population such as what he calls an imaginary audience, the
personal fable, and the invincibility fable. Usually when an egocentric
adolescent is experiencing an imaginary audience, it entails the belief that there
is an audience captivated and constantly present to an extent of being overly
interested about the egocentric individual. Personal fable refers to the idea that
many teenagers believe their thoughts, feelings, and experiences are unique and
more extreme than anyone else's. In the invincibility fable, the adolescent
believes in the idea that he or she is immune to misfortune and cannot be
harmed that might defeat a normal person. Egocentrism in adolescence is often
viewed as a negative aspect of their thinking ability because adolescents become
consumed with themselves and are unable to effectively function in society due
to their skewed version of reality and cynicism.
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