Chapter 7Understanding Self and Others

Making deals is something human do all the time

Specific Cognitive Abilitiesneeded to make deals & to avoid being cheatedLida Cosmides & John Tobby (1992) Recognize many different people Remember one’s past interaction with

people Communicate one’s belief and desires to

others Understand the beliefs and desires to others Represent the cost and benefit of items

service that being exchanged

Social Cognition Thinking about one’s own thoughts,

feelings, motives, and behaviors, and those of other people

Thinking about the self, other people, and social relationships

I. The Development of Self

A. The Development of a Concept of Self

Some core concepts in the study of selfSelf – Concept

• A person’s awareness (& potentially definition) of one’s self, including physical and psychological characteristics and skills.

• Involves knowledge of the self, as reflected in toddlers, by visual-recognition.

Self – Esteem

• The evaluative component of the self. • The judgements people make of their

general worth as a person and the feelings associated with their judgement.

5 Area of Self-Esteem Scholastic competence Social competence Behavioral conduct Athletic competence Physical appearance

Self – Efficacy

• The extent to which a person views him or herself as an effective individual

• The confidence one has in being able to control events in one’s surrounding

• Develops with experienceIdentity Formation

• A self-portrait of the different pieces of the self integrated in a coherent way, including:• Physical aspects• Sexual aspects• Ideological aspects• Intellectual aspects• Relational aspects• Vocational aspects• Cultural/ethnic aspects

• Who am I? What do I want to be?

Early signs of self-Awareness

Types of Early Self-Concept(Case & Lewis, 1991) Implicit Self

sometimes referred to as the “I”-self The character of infants from birth about 15 to 18 months

old. Michael Lewis termed it as “the machinery of the self.” At this age, the infants has no self-awareness and are only able to distinct between themselves and others and the realization that “I can cause anything.”

Explicit Self sometimes referred to as the “me”-self It involves a conscious awareness of the self or the “Idea

of me.”

Self-Concept1. By 18 months old

Most children recognizes themselves in a mirror

2. Pre-School Age Children typically describes

themselves in terms of their physical feature, things they do, where they live or who is in their family

3. Childhood to Adolescent Children’s self-description

in psychological terms increase and differentiate

4. Early & Middle Adolescent Adolescents develop different

selves that vary with social context.

They often feel confused about these opposing selves.

They feel extremely concerned about what others think about them.

5. Late Adolescent & Early Adulthood

Preoccupation with what others think decreases and the different attributes of the self in different context are not seen as opposing

B. The Development of Self-Esteemthe judgement people make of their general self-worth and the feelings associated with those judgements

Self-esteem can be viewed as a product of 2 internal assessments: The discrepancy between the perceived

self and the ideal self Support from social others

Self-Esteem & Self-Worth Pre-School Children

Children distinguish two categories of self-esteem:

Their physical & cognitive competence and their general competence

By the 3rd/4th GradeChildren differentiate among five categories of self-worth/ self-esteemThey become more realistic with their own competence

Adolescence At the beginning of

adolescence, children’s self-esteem typically declines some often associated with the transition to high-school. Self-esteem then increased again in most adolescents. Many adolescences, experience temporary period, of discomfort that are soon overcome.

C. The Development of Self-Efficacy

People’s belief about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives.” (Bandura, 1994, p.71)

It is the confidence one has in being able to control events in one’s surroundings.

It is a person’s perception of his or her ability to reach a specific goal.

Begins early, infants learn that they can exert some control over their environment

3-4 months learns that their actions has consequences

The Optimistic Child Positive sense of self efficacy is facilitated by a generally

optimistic (and often unrealistic) opinion of their own abilities.

Believes that they know more than they actually do and can do more than they actually can provides them with positive perceptions of their own skills.

Can make relatively accurate predictions of how other children are likely to perform but gets overly optimistic in predicting their own future which is due to wishful thinking (concept originally introduced by Piaget)

Overestimates their abilities which enhances their self-efficacy and gives them confidence to attempt new things

Produces more positive outcomes than realistic children

The Possible Pitfalls of Overestimating One’s Abilities Embarrassment that comes from

publicly displaying the skills that you do not have

Can cause injury especially boys who overestimates their physical abilities.

Childhood by its very nature involves reaching beyond one’s current abilities.

D. Building an Identity

Self – complicated concept with many different components that develops more in infancy and childhood.

Identity – is a self-portrait od the different pieces of self in a coherent and integrated mode. It is one of the main psychological challenges in adolescence.

On Adolescent Identity

Erik Erikson and the adolescent crisis Erik Erikson (1950, 1968) first modern psychologist to emphasize the

importance of identity formation in psychological development in general, and particularly during adolescence. He is one of the first life span development psychologists.

Focuses on developing a sense of adult identity “From all possible and imaginable relations, (adolescent) must make a

series of ever-narrowing selections of personal, occupational, social and ideological commitments.” By reflection By interacting with others and responding to the reaction of other people to

them Adolescence is the social transition between childhood and adulthood. Psychosocial moratorium – a sort of time-out when, where possible, young

people have a chance to explore who they are and what they want to be, in both the near and distant future. They make decisions about their marital and vocational futures.

Role confusion – when the sense of identity is not developed.

Marcia’s identity status approach James Marcia (1980, 1994) extended Erikson’s ideas and

develop the identity status approach, which pays special attention to occupational and ideological aspect of identity.

Two dimensions of identity: Crisis( or exploration)

Is the adolescent facing an identity crisis? Is the person actively involved personal search among different

identity alternatives? Has the person resolved his or her crisis?

Commitment Has the person already made a commitment to a particular

identity? Is he or she showing a personal investment in that identity.

Possible identity statuses & prominent psychological characteristicsIdentity diffusion

No crisis, no commitment

Apathy; at risk of drug use; lack of intimate relationships with peers

Identity foreclosure

No crisis, commitment

Conformity to authority; rely on others to make important decisions for themAdolescent does not actually experience a personal searching period and choose an identity, but rather assumes other people’s occupational and ideological identity.

Identity moratorium

Crisis,no commitment

Highly anxious; unhappy; reject authority

Identity achievement

Crisis overcome, with commitment

Socially mature; high in achievement motivation; more involved in careers

People in the diffusion and moratorium statuses tend to make a commitment, and move into identity achievement status. Many adolescent in the foreclosure status, who experience no crisis, tend to remain in this state into young adulthood

Factors influencing identity formationDavid Shaffer (2009) Level of cognitive development Relationship with parents Education Cultural-historical references

The Development of Ethnic Identity

Aspects of Ethnic Identity(Martha Benal & colleagues, 1993) Ethnic self-identification – children identify themselves

as a member of their ethnic group. Ethnic constancy – children realize that importance

aspects of their ethnic group are constant over time and situations and that they will always be a member of ethnic group.

Ethnic-role behavior – children engage in behaviors or take on roles that characterize their ethnic group.

Ethnic knowledge – children became aware that their ethnic group has certain features, such as customs, types of food, language, that distinguish it from other groups.

Ethnic feelings and preferences – children have positive feelings about and preferences for characteristics of their ethnic group

Developing a strong sense of identity show healthy psychological development for most adolescents.

Bicultural identity – the ability of people to integrate their ethnic identity with that of the majority culture in which they are living.

II. Children’s Theory of MindUnderstanding Others

Public self – the me that other people see Private self – the I that represents Theory of mind –a person’s concept of mental

activity; used to refer to how children conceptualize mental activity and how they attribute intention to and predict the behavior of others.

Belief-desire reasoning – the process whereby we explain and predict what people do based on what we understand their desires and beliefs to be.

A. Basic Social-Cognitive Skills Underlying Theory of Mind

Elementary social-cognitive abilities: self-awareness – an ability to differentiate

oneself from other people seeing oneself and other individuals as

intentional agents - individuals who cause things to happen and whose behavior is designed to achieve some goal.

Perspective taking – the ability to take point of view of others Egocentrism – preschoolers’ tendency to assume that

other people see and understand the world as they do.

Share attention (or joint attention) Is where two people both attending to the same thing

or even and sharing that experience. Is more than a two-way ( or dyadic) relationship, but

involves at least a two people and a third object (which can be another person) meaning a three-way or triadic.

Not something babies come into the world knowing how to do although they do seemed biased toward social stimuli from birth.

By 2 or 3 months (or earlier) they can recognize self-produced, biological motion and soon turn to look into the same direction of another person.

B. The Development of Mind Reading

Mind Reading one central skill that is also requires

other than shared attention. It is putting yourself in another person’s shoes (or mankind), and trying to figure out what he or she is thinking.

False-Beliefs Tasks are the gold standard of mind-reading

tasks, and it is not until about 4 years of age when children typically solve them.

A type of task, used in theory-of-the-mind studies, in which the child must infer that another person holds a belief that is false

Solving False-beliefs Tasks

1. Beginning around 9 months of age, infants: Will gaze in the direction that adults are looking or pointing Engage in repetitive interaction with an adult and an object Imitate an adult’s actions Point or hold up objects to another person

2. These abilities increase over the second year of life3. Most 3-year-old children cannot solve the false-belief

tasks; however, they have some understanding that other people have desires and knowledge different from their own.

4. Most 4-year-old children can pass false-belief tasks. They are capable of mind reading (that is adopting others’ perspective and realizing that other people’s feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and knowledge can be different from their own)

Despite the impressive evidence that most 3 year old children can’t solve false-belief tasks, they seem to have some understanding that other people have desires and knowledge different their own.

There is some evidence that 2.5 and 3 year old children can pass standard false-belief tasks, but only when implicit (unconscious and not verbalize) as opposed to explicit (available to conscious awareness and verbalizable) measures are considered.

Influences on Children’s Performance on False-belief Tasks

Factors: Attachment Parenting styles Parent-child communication Language skills Maternal warmth The extent to which mothers use mental state

talk Executive function

the basic cognitive abilities involved in planning, executing, and inhibiting actions

Children need basic-level information-processing abilities to regulate their own behavior if they pass the task.

3- and 4- year old children’s performance on false-belief tasks is related to family size and structure Specifically having older but not younger sibling is

associated with better theory of mind. Sibling always compete with one another with the older having

the advantage, younger children are motivated to develop their latent talents

The advanced forms of mind reading are typically absent or significantly delayed in one particular class of developmental disability, autism.

Autism A developmental disorder characterized by severe social and

communication disabilities. Nearly 30 genes associated with autism but no single gene or

set of genes cause autism. One hypothesis is that the genes that are normally active by neuronal activity after birth malfunction, resulting in errors in synaptogenesis or other aspects of neural functioning. A part of the brain, the superior temporal sulcus (which is

involved in dynamic processing of emotion), function abnormally in adults and children with autism when processing social stimuli

Mind-blindness – or inability to read minds is claimed by Simon Baron-Cohen (1995, 2005) as the primary deficit of children with autism

Some Red Flags of Autism Spectrum DisorderImpairment in social interaction

Lack of appropriate eye gazeLack of warm, joyful expressionsLack of sharing interest or enjoymentLack of response to name

Impairment in communication

Lack of showing gesturesLack of coordination of nonverbal communicationUnusual prosody ( little variation in pitch, odd intonation, irregular rhythm, unusual voice quality)

Repetitive behaviors and restricted interests

Repetitive movements with objectsRepetitive movements or posturing of body, arms, hands, o4r fingers

C. Extending Theory of the MindChildren’s belief in Fantasy

Children extend their theory-of-mind abilities to help explain some natural phenomena not commonly associated to with social patterns

Animism - Preschool tend to treat inanimate objects as if they were alive

Promiscuous teleology children’s tendency to reason about

events and objects in terms of purpose. Deborah Kelemen (2004) use this term to

refer it to such thinking Teleology – the tendency to reason about

events in terms of purpose

III. The Development of Social Learning

Social Learning

Human’s ability to learn from one another that that permitted our ancestors to attain the ecological domain to essentially be the master of all they surveyed.

The acquisition of social information and behavior in which one individual comes to behave similarly to others (Boesch & Tomas, 1998)

A. Types of Social Learning

Mimicry - the duplication of a behavior without any understanding of the global of that behavior.

Emulation - one individual observes another interacting with an object to achieve a specific goal. The first individual then interacts with the object attempting to attain the same end but does not duplicate the same behavior as the model to achieve the goal.

Imitative learning - reproduction of observed behaviour before to achieve a specific goal. This requires an understanding of the goal that the model had in mind, as well as the reproduction of important components out the observed behavior.

Teaching (Instructed learning) - actor A modifies his or her behavior only in the presence of another, actor B, without attaining any immediate benefits. As a result of encouraging or discourage B's behavior, B acquires a new skill. To be done effecticely, teachingrequires both the instructor and studenttake the perspective of the other.

Mirror neurons A neuron, found in both monkeys and

humans, that fires both when an individual observes the same action performed by another.

B. What kind of Social Learning Do Children Engage in and How Does it Develop?

All culture have religion and a belief in some supernatural being or power might a believe in supernatural agents be a by Product of our Developing Symbolic System.

Deborah Kelemen(2004)-states that as we have just seen, young children believe that things occurs for a reason ,and they endow fantasy creature with opinion desires and knowledge.

Paul Bloom(2004)-argued that children’s distinction between Social and Nonsocial phenomenon seen early in Infancy ,sets the stage for humans natural distinction between body and soul.

Rene-Descartes-the 18th century French Philosopher-status that distinction referring to nonhuman animals as beast-machine, or Automata without minds of souls.