Chapter 4 Notes | Self and Self-Esteem

• Theories that guide research in the developmental course of the self:

  • Mead's theory of symbolic interactionism
  • Piaget's theory of cognitive development
  • Erikson's eight-stage theory of psychosocial development
• Self-awareness:

  • Self-awareness is not uniquely human
  • Self-awareness in humans emerges during the first year of life
  • Newborns may possess a rudimentary self-schema
• Changes in people's thoughts about themselves as they age:

  • Young children describe themselves in concrete terms
  • Middle childhood: self-descriptions become more socially oriented
  • Adolescents focus more on their inner (psychological) qualities
• Self-development across the lifespan:

  • People tend to evaluate themselves positively, with a decline in early adolescence and a rebound in early adulthood
  • Adolescence is a time of great change in the self, but most individuals maintain a strong sense of identity
  • Aging process: most individuals retain a positive self-view
• Mead's theory of the self development tied to social interaction:

  • Individuals adopt the standards and norms of the culture they are born into
  • Development of self through acquiring the capacity to look back on themselves through the eyes of others
  • Perspective-taking facilitated by the need to communicate with symbols and play
• Piaget's model of development:

  • Progress through cognitive stages with increasing sophistication in abstract reasoning, perspective-taking, and problem-solving
  • Stages affect self-understanding as ideas about themselves grow more complex with age
• Erikson's eight-stage model of psychological development:

  • Each stage characterized by a psychological need or conflict related to self
  • Failure to resolve conflicts leads to later psychological difficulties
• Mirror-recognition task research:

  • Chimpanzees and orangutans besides humans capable of recognizing themselves in a mirror
  • Chimpanzees raised in social isolation fail to show mirror recognition, supporting Mead's claim on self-development requiring social interaction
• Self-recognition in infants:

  • Begins with recognizing oneself through contingent movement around nine months
  • By 15 months, infants recognize themselves with noncontingent stimuli and pass the facial mark test
  • By 21 months, most infants can identify themselves using personal pronouns
• Self-awareness in humans:

  • May be present at birth with an innate capacity to distinguish self from "not self"
  • Newborns possess a rudimentary sense of self that sets the stage for later development
• Developmental sequence of self-thoughts:

  • Young children focus on specific concrete aspects of themselves
  • As children age, self-descriptions become more general and abstract, defining themselves in social terms
  • Adolescents emphasize hidden, psychological characteristics over observable, physical ones
• Self-evaluations:

  • Young children evaluate themselves very positively
  • Positivity declines in early adolescence and returns in early adulthood
  • Self-evaluations generally remain positive throughout adulthood
• Adolescence in self-development:

  • Critical time with the term "identity crisis" coined by Erikson
  • Most adolescents weather the storms of adolescence unscathed
• People's ideas about themselves in adulthood:

  • Remain rather stable with new identities added as lives change
  • People interpret experiences to maintain a sense of continuity