Development of Self and Social Cognition

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Development of Self and Social Cognition

• Chapter 12

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Social Cognition

• Parallels Between Social and Nonsocial Cognition
  (Flavell)
• surface appearances ? underlying realities
• salient characteristics
• Differences in Social and Nonsocial Cognition
• Which is easier?
• Physical forces

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• What develops fastersocial or nonsocial
  cognition?

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Knowledge of Self

• Develops in social context
• Separate and different before understanding self
• Two aspects of self
• The knower (I)/self as subject
• Perceived self/object (Me)/categorical self
• Self-recognition
• Visual recognition task

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18 months
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Knowledge of Self

• Lewis Brooks-Gunn
• Photographs of self and other children
• Live videotape of self
• Prerecorded videotape of self
• Videotape of another child

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Knowledge of Self

• Lewis Brooks-Gunn Results
• By 9 months, contingency cues
• Later ? featural cues
• By 2 years, contingent and noncontingent
  situations

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Knowledge of Self

• Lewis Brooks-Gunn (1979) believe that it is
  the ability to recognize and respond to the
  self independent of contingency which represents
  the important developmental milestone in
  self-recognition (p. 218).

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Self-Concept

• A summary of personal characteristics (abilities,
  attitudes, attributes, values) that an individual
  believes defines who s/he is
• Preschoolers ? concrete characteristics
• Between 8-11 ? shift to psychological qualities
• Adolescence ? qualify characteristics also
  emphasize social virtues

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Self-Concept

• 9 y/o My name is Bruce. I have brown eyes. I
  have brown hair. I love sports. I have seven
  people in my family. I have great eyesight. I
  have lots of friendsI have an uncle who is
  almost 7 feet tall.

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Self-Concept

• 11 ½ y/o My name is A. Im a human beinga
  girla truthful person. Im not pretty. I do
  so-so in my studies. Im a very good cellist.
  Im a little tall for my age. I like several
  boysIm old fashioned. I am a very good
  swimmerI try to be helpfulMostly Im good, but
  I lose my temper. Im not well liked by some
  girls and boys. I dont know if boys like me

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Self-Concept

• 17 y/o I am a human beinga girlan
  individualI am a Pisces. I am a moody personan
  indecisive personan ambitious person. I am a
  big curious personI am lonely. I am an American
  (God help me). I am a Democrat. I am a liberal
  person. I am a radical. I am conservative. I
  am pseudoliberal. I am an Atheist. I am not a
  classifiable person (that is, I dont want to be).

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Self-Concept

• Montemayor Eisen ? adolescents incorporate many
  types of descriptors more complex
• Are young children unaware of their psychological
  characteristics or do they simply not have the
  appropriate vocabulary?

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Self-Concept

• If children are unaware, is it because theyre
  cognitively incapable of grasping these abstract
  qualities or is it because adults tend not to
  actively reflect back their impressions of
  children in these terms?

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Self-Concept

• Effect of number of answers requested?
• Eder (1990) used a forced-choice recognition task
• 180 children, ages 3 ½ to 7
• Presented with 50 pairs of statements
• I mostly do things that are hard. vs. I mostly
  do things that are easy. (Achievement)
• When I get angry, I feel like hitting someone.
  vs. When I get angry, I feel like being quiet.
  (Aggression)

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Self-Concept

• Eder (1990) cont
• Responses were internally consistent at every age
• Self-conceptions were moderately stable over 1
  month

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• Figure 12.2 Average number of inconsistent
  attributes reported by 13-, 15-, and 17-year-olds
  (panel A) and the percentages of 13-, 15-, and
  17-year-olds who said they were confused or
  mixed up by these inconsistencies in their
  self-portraits (panel B). ADAPTED FROM HARTER
  MONSOUR, 1992.

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• Figure 12.3 Average percentages of
  personal/individualistic and social/relational
  attributes listed as core dimensions of the
  self-concept by American and Japanese students
  who responded to a Who Am I? questionnaire.
  ADAPTED FROM COUSINS, 1989.

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Attributions and Self-Concept

• Grusec Redler
• 7-8 y/o played bowling game
• Scored points won marbles
• Marbles could be exchanged for toys
• More marbles better toys
• Could donate marble to charity

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Attributions and Self-Concept

• Conditions
• attribution I guess youre the kind of person
  who likes to help others whenever you can. Yes,
  you are a very nice and helpful person
• reinforcement It was good that you gave some
  marbles to those poor children. Yes, that was a
  nice and helpful thing to do
• control no statement

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Attributions and Self-Concept

• Results
• marble donation attribution reinforcement
  donated more than control
• pencils attribution more than others, no
  difference between reinforcement and control
• cards same as pencils
• drawings craft materials same

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Self-Esteem

• Judgments we make about our own worth as well as
  the feelings that are associated with those
  judgments
• Combination of separate self-evaluations into a
  general appraisal of ourselves
• A person with high self-esteem is fundamentally
  satisfied with the type of person he is, yet he
  may acknowledge his faults while hoping to
  overcome them (Rosenberg, 1979, p. 31).

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Self-Esteem

• Once believed that self-esteem/worth wasnt
  apparent until school-age
• Recent research suggests that preschool children
  display self-esteem/worth behaviorally
• High self-worth confidence, curiosity,
  initiative, independence, can tolerate
  change/stress
• Low self-worth low confidence, low curiosity,
  low initiative, low independence, difficulty
  reacting to change/stress

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Models of Self-Esteem

• James
• weighting of competencies
• Self-esteem competencies/pretensions
• Cooley
• Looking glass self
• Others are the social mirror into which one gazes
  for information that defines the self
• Who is correct?

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Self-Esteem

• Harter measured perceptions of competence and
  then asked children how important success in each
  domain was
• A discrepancy score (competence minus importance)
  was averaged across domains child considered
  important
• Bigger discrepancy score in negative direction ?
  lower self-esteem should be

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Self-Esteem

• High self-esteem/worth should be associated with
  scores close to zero, indicating that ones
  perceived competence is similar to importance
• Correlations between competence/importance
  discrepancy scores and self-worth ranged from
  -.72 to -.55 across children between 8-15

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Self-Esteem

• Others opinions toward self degree to which
  children felt that others acknowledged their
  worth as a person
• Items addressed extent to which children felt
  others treated them like a person who matters,
  felt they were important, listened to what they
  had to say
• Correlations between overall positive regard and
  self-worth ranged from .50 to .56

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Influences on Self-Esteem

• Culture
• Social comparison plays strong role in American
  culture
• Collectivist culture emphasizes humility and
  self-effacement derive self-worth from
  contributing to the welfare of the groups to
  which they belong

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Influences on Self-Esteem

• Child-Rearing Practices
• Warm, responsive parenting, reasonable
  expectations for behavior ? higher self-esteem
• Highly coercive parenting, communication of
  inadequacy ? lower self-esteem
• Overly tolerant, indulgent parenting ? false
  sense of high self-esteem

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Influences on Self-Esteem

• Peers
• use of social comparison as early as 4-5
• adolescence

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Components of Self-Esteem

• Before age 7, children distinguish how well
  others like them (social acceptance) from how
  good they are at doing things (competence)
• Above 7-8, self-esteems academic, physical,
  social
• Inaccurately high self-perceptions of competence
• Based on wishes/desires

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Illusion of Incompetence

• Hold low expectations for success, evidence less
  persistence, more feelings of anxiety, feel that
  important adults hold equally low perceptions of
  their abilities
• Mothers/fathers of highly competent children with
  low perceived competence have lower perceptions
  of their childrens abilities do not have
  equally low expectations for achievement

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Components of Self-Esteem

• Adolescence ? interpersonal relationships
• Relational self-worth feelings of self-esteem
  within a particular relationship context

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Changes in Self-Esteem

• Decline into middle and high school
• Multiple stressors contribute
• Overall stability lowest in childhood and early
  adolescence
• Relatively stable in late adolescence and early
  adulthood

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Gender Differences in Self-Esteem

• emerge by early adolescence
• girls ? lower self-esteem

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Identity

• firm and coherent sense of who one is, where one
  is heading, and where one fits into society

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Identity

• Marcia
• Identity diffusion
• Foreclosure
• Moratorium
• Identity achievement

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• Figure 12.8 Percentages of participants in each
  of Marcias four identity statuses as a function
  of age. Note that resolution of the identity
  crisis occurs much later than Erickson assumed
  Only 4 percent of the 15-year-olds and 20 percent
  of the 18-year-olds had achieved a stable
  identity. FROM MEILMAN, 1979.

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• Marie is a 14-year-old who, when asked what she
  wants to do when she graduates from high school,
  replies, Maybe I will get married and have some
  children, or maybe I will be a neurosurgeon, or a
  fashion designer. Im going to take anatomy and
  physiology next year to see if Id like to be a
  physician and Im taking home economics to see if
  I enjoy designing clothes and working at home.

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• Seventeen-year-old Suzanne is questioning the
  tenets of the religion in which she was brought
  up. For the first time, she is examining her
  beliefs and considering other belief systems. At
  the end of the period, she chooses to follow the
  same religion as her parents.
• Lorraine is 16 years old and, when asked what she
  wants to do when she graduates from high school,
  replies, I never really thought about it. I
  guess I will decide when the time comes.

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• After Bill graduates from high school, he plans
  to go into his fathers business. He has been
  talking this over with his parents since he was a
  young boy and is eager to fulfill his parents
  expectations.
• Michael was asked to debate issues concerning
  premarital sex in his health class. His parents
  always taught him that premarital sex was wrong
  and that they would be disappointed if they
  discovered he had participated. After thoroughly
  investigating the consequences of premarital sex,
  Michael came out against it.

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Influences on Identity Formation

• Cognitive Influences formal-operational thought
  helps imaging and contemplate future identities
• Parenting Influences
• Being neglected/rejected
• Too controlling
• Affection, mutual respect
• Scholastic Influences
• Social-Cultural Influences

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Knowledge of Other

• Children lt 8
• Procedure involves asking children to give oral
  or written responses to instructions such as I
  want you to describe what sort of person Sally
  is
• Studies using this methodology find that the use
  of dispositional attributions increases with age

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Knowledge of Other

• Heller Berndt
• Kindergarten, third, and sixth grade children,
  plus college students
• Information about an actor
• generous actor actor shared part of his/her
  lunch with other children
• selfish actor refused to share lunch
• Control given information about age/sex of
  child, but told nothing about behavior

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Knowledge of Other

• Heller Berndt (cont)
• Asked to rate actor on 10 traits share, selfish,
  help, nice, naughty, lie, tease, smart, and two
  fillers
• Childrens responses were similar to each other
  and to college students responses

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• Holly is an 8-year-old girl who likes to climb
  trees. She is the best tree climber in the
  neighborhood. One day while climbing down from a
  tall tree, she fallsbut does not hurt herself.
  Her father sees her fall. He is upset and asks
  her to promise not to climb trees any more.
  Holly promises. Later that day, Holly and her
  friends meet Shawn. Shawns kitten is caught in
  a tree and cant get down. Something has to be
  done right away or the kitten may fall. Holly is
  the only one who climbs trees well enough to
  reach the kitten and get it down but she
  remembers her promise to her father.

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Knowledge of Others

• Role-taking and thinking about relationships
• Preschool any positive interaction equals a
  friendship
• 6-8 years common activities and one-way
  friendships
• 8-10 reciprocal friendships
• Adolescence exchange of intimate thoughts or
  feelings