Self and Social Understanding

Self and Social Understanding

1. Social cognition & the Self

   • Categorical self
   • Remembered self
   • Enduring self

2. Freud's Infant Egocentrism

   • differentiation of self is based on satiation of biological needs
   • Infants only care about themsevles - can't distinguish between themselves and world

3. SELF-AWARENESS

   • explicit self-awareness = self-recognition
   • Influences
     • sensitive caregiving
     • Feedback
   • To do with emotions of yourself and others
   • Self-conscious emotions (secondary emotions)
   • Possessiveness = sign of self-assertion

4. William James: The Self

   • SELF = both knower and known
   • we are both someone who knows things and someone who is known (by others)
   • I-self: know that we are separate from others
   • Me-self: traits we possess

5. RED DOT TASK

   • draw red dot/mark on child's forehead
   • place them in front of mirror
   • a) touch themselves on the forehead to try and rub it off
   • b) touch mirror image of themselves to try and rub it off

6. COOLEY: LOOKING GLASS SELF

   • we evaluate ourselves based on how others evaluate us!
   • How do I look in front of others?
   • How do others feel about me?
   • How can we change ourselves to satisfy others?

7. CHILDREN'S THEORY OF MIND

   • contributes to perspective-taking
   • enriched understanding of yours and others' mental lives
   • aware of inner self + your own private thoughts/feelings
   • DESIRE THEORY OF MIND
     • thinking that people always act consistent with their attitudes/desires
     • do NOT realise things such as BELIEFS yet
   • FACTORS
     • Language & Verbal reasoning
     • Social interaction
     • Security of attachment
     • Make believe play
     • Executive Function

8. FALSE-BELIEF TASK

   • 1. show child smarties box
   • 2. ask them what's inside it - they say Smarties
   • 3. Show them that there's PENS inside, not Smarties
   • 4. Then ask child what Sarah (hypothetical person) would think if they were shown Smarties box
   • 5. Child says Sarah would think there are PENS in box
   • Child does not yet understand that what THEY know is not necessarily what OTHERS know!

9. Recursive thought

   • ability to see situation from 2 DIFF PERSPECTIVES
   • understand 2ND-ORDER BELIEFS: that someone's belief about beliefs of someone else is not always right

10. SELF-CONCEPT

    • Preschool
    • Toddlers
    • Early Childhood
    • Adolescence
    • George Herbert Mead: Self as Generalized Other
      • Children adopt the same view as the one others have of them
    • SELF-ESTEEM
      • Culture
        • Asian children tend to have lower self-esteem despite being generally good at academics
      • Childrearing
      • Children: ALL OR NOTHING APPROACH
      • Middle Childhood: use SOCIAL COMPARISONS
      • Adolescence: develop NEW dimensions of self-esteem
      • ACADEMIC COMPETENCE
      • PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS
      • SOCIAL COMPETENCE
      • PHYSICAL/ATHLETIC COMPETENCE
    • Multiple Selfs
      • Having diff versions of self in diff situations

11. ACHIEVEMENT-RELATED ATTRIBUTIONS

    • MASTERY-ORIENTED
      • Success = result of own ability
      • Incremental view of performance
    • LEARNED HELPLESS
      • Failures due to inherent lack of ability
      • Static view of performance
    • INTERNAL psychological cause
      • ABILITY
      • EFFORT
    • EXTERNAL psychological cause

12. Attribution Retraining

    • Train learned helpless children to re-evaluate performance, ability
    • Encouragement
    • Constructive criticism and guidance

13. IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION

    • Define who you are
    • What you value
    • Directions you want to pursue in life
    • IA (Identity Achievement)
    • IM (Identity Moratorium)
    • IF (Identity Foreclosure)
    • ID (Identity Diffusion)
    • FACTORS AFFECTING IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT
      • personality
      • famiy
      • Peers
      • School/community

14. PREJUDICE: Ingroup vs Outgroup

    • In group favouritism very easy to form
    • Prejudice can start young - kids get msgs about group status everywhere
    • Issue of decline of overt racial bias

15. REDUCE prejudice

    • promote intergroup contact
    • Promote multicultural classrooms
    • Cross-race friendships
    • Teaching children that traits are CHANGEABLE
    • Volunteerism

16. SOCIAL PB-SOLVING

    • 1. Encode social cues
    • 2. Interpret social cues
    • 3. Formulate social goals
    • 4. Generate pb-solving strategies
    • 5. Evaluate each strategy and choose best one
    • 6. Enact strategy
    • 7. Peer reaction/response
    • Depends on child's mental state

17. PATHS

    • Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies
    • Intervention method for preschool children