Unit 12: Development of the Self Concept

• Early Self Concept: Proprioceptive feedback: knowing where you are in space, how you are moving, and how you are being touched.
• Early Self Concept: Self Recognition: present self (as they are in this moment) and extended self (as they were or to be), at about 18 months
• Early Self Concept: Personal Agency: who they are and how they are different from others.
• Securely attached children, have a better self-concept than children with anxious attached children
• Categorical Self: how you classify yourself in a social dimension

  Preschoolers' - Concrete and observable

  Middle-schoolers' - more inner qualities
• Individualistic societies: value competition and individual initiative
• Collective societies: value cooperation, social harmony and interdependence
• Self Esteem: evaluation of ones worth as a person, securely attached children have higher self-esteem
• Hierarchical model of Childhood self-esteem:

  • Scholastic comp.
  • Social Accept.
  • Physical app.
  • Athletic Comp.
  • Behavioural Conduct
• in 4-7 kiddos, they rate themselves highly in everything, where by age 8, they rate themselves closer to how others rate them
• Correlates of self-worth/self-esteem:

  • body image
  • bullying
  • Social Emotional learning
  • Parenting style
  • social comparison
• Achievement motivations: willing to strive to succeed
• Humans are innately motivated to master their environment aka Mastery Motive
• Development of achievement motivation:

  1. Joy of mastery
  2. approval seeking
  3. use of standards
• Stimulation in the home environment and authoratative parenting style is important for development
• Attachement styles will dictate a child's development. A securely attached child will adventure and try new things
• Expectancy value theory: Expectancies of success and value of the task are the two factors that influence performance presistance and choice
• How do children view their ability?

  • Growth mindset (practice makes perfect) incremental view
  • Fixer mindset (you are what you are) entity view
• Mastery orientation: to presist at hard events
• Learned-helplessness orientation: tendance to give up because of failure
• Attribution retraining: intervention that shows children that it is not a lack of ability for failure, but a lack of effort
• Person praise: leads to performance goals
• Process-oriented praise leads to learning goals
• Person perception: ability to attribute characteristics to another person
• After 7-8 years, children can begin to attribute psychological discriptors, and socially disirable traits
• Social cognition

  • Behavior comparison
  • Psychological constructs
  • Psychological comparison
• Cognitive Development Theories: parallels to Piaget stages Concrete operational phase (step away from egocentrical view of themselves)
• Selman's role-taking theory: people are able to take a third person prespective. Ablility to reflect on thier own Behaviour
• Role taking: being able to understand another persons prespective and act accordingly
• Selman's Stages:

  • Egocentric
  • Social-information role taking
  • Self-reflective role taking
  • Mutual role taking
  • Societal role taking
• Social Cognition: Role taking improves as the SC goes developes. Role taking is skills are related to IQ and Social experiences