11 Flashcards
Origins of Self-Recognition
Following the lead of the 19th-century philosopher and psychologist William James, modern researchers believe that the foundation of self-concept is the child’s awareness that he or she exists.
9- month-old in the photo is looking at the face he sees in the mirror. Babies at this age sometimes touch the face in the mirror or wave at it, but none of their behaviors indicates that they recognize themselves in the mirror.
- How would we know that infants recognize themselves in a mirror? One clever approach is to have the mother place a red mark on her infant’s nose; she does this surreptitiously, while wiping the baby’s face. Then the infant is returned to the mirror. Many 1-year-olds touch the red mark on the mirror, showing that they notice the mark on the face in the mirror.
- At about 15 months, however, an important change occurs: Many babies see the red mark in the mirror, then reach up and touch their own noses.
- By age 2, most children do this (Bullock & Liitkenhaus, 1990; Lewis, 1997). When these older toddlers notice the red mark in the mirror, they understand that the funny-looking nose in the mirror is their own
Examine this possibility would be to test infants who have never seen mirrors previously.
- Priel and deSchonen (1986) took this approach, testing infants from Israeli desert communities. These babies had never seen mirrors
- Nevertheless, the same developmental trend appeared in the desert infants as in a comparison group of infants living in a nearby city. No 6- to 12-month-olds in either group touched their noses after they saw the mark, a few 13- to 19-month-olds did, and nearly all the 20- to 26-month-olds did.
Self-awareness emerges between 18 and 24 months.
- During this same period, toddlers look more at photographs of themselves than at photos of other children.
- They also refer to themselves by name or with a personal pronoun, such as I or me, and sometimes they know their age and their gender.
- These changes, which often occur together, suggest that self-awareness is well established in most children by age 2
By 2 years of age, most children recognize themselves and refer to themselves by name or with I and me.
Other roots of self-awareness involve infants’ understanding of their own bodies. As adults, we know that when we raise our hand to scratch our nose, the hand we see “doing the scratching” is our hand; it’s part of our physical self.
- From experience watching their bodies move, infants learn this as- pect of self-awareness-“that’s not any old hand, that’s my hand”- b y 3 to 5 months of age. And play with objects also contributes to self-recognition (Keller et al., 2004), per- haps because it provides many opportunities for infants to explore how their arm and hand movements relate to the physical world.
Soon after children are self-aware, autobiographical memory (described in Module 7.1) begins to emerge
- That is, children begin to recognize continuity in the self over time; the “I” in the present is linked to the “I” in the past (Nelson, 2001).
- Awareness of a self that is extended in time is fostered by conversations with parents about the past and the future. Through such conversations, a 3-year-old celebrating a birthday understands that she’s an older version of the same person who had a birthday a year previously.
Children’s growing awareness of a self extended in time is also revealed by their understanding of ownership (Fasig, 2000). When a toddler sees his favorite toy and says “mine;’ this implies awareness of continuity of the self over time: “In the past, I played with that.” And when toddlers, like the girl in the photo, say “Mine!” they are often not being aggressive or selfish; instead, “mine” is a way of indicating ownership and, in the process, defining themselves
Once self-awareness is established, children begin to ac- quire a self-concept. That is, once children fully understand that they exist and that they have a unique mental life, they begin to wonder who they are. They want to define themselves.
The Evolving Self-Concept
A preschooler’s self-concept is linked to the concrete and real but an adolescent’s self-concept is more abstract and psychological.
Before you go any further, return to the teenager’s quotation on pages 343-344.
- In describing herself, this girl relies heavily on psychological traits. The first sentence alone includes eight adjectives referring to these traits: sensitive, friendly, outgoing, popular, tolerant, shy, self-conscious, and obnoxious.
- How do children develop such a complex view of themselves? For toddlers and preschoolers, self-concept is much simpler. If asked to describe themselves, preschoolers are likely to mention physical characteristics (“I have blue eyes”), their preferences (“I like cookies”), their posses- sions (“I have trucks”), and their competencies (“I can count to 50”).
All preschool children mention such characteristics, but they dominate European-American preschoolers’ descriptions of themselves.
- In contrast, in many Asian cultures, the self is defined, to a much greater extent, by children’s social relationships.
- For example, in describing themselves, Chinese preschoolers are more likely than European-American preschoolers to say, “I
love my mommy” or “I play with Qi at school;’ showing that the self is embedded in relationships with others
At about 5 to 7 years of age, children’s self-descriptions begin to change (Harter, 2005). Children are more likely to mention emotions (“Sometimes I get angry”). They are also more likely to mention the social groups to which they belong (‘‘I’m on the lacrosse team”).
- Finally, in contrast to preschool children, who simply mention their competencies, elementary-school children describe their level of skill in relation to their peers (“I’m the best speller in my whole class”).
Self-concepts change again as children enter adolescence (Harter, 2006). They now include attitudes (“I love algebra”) and personality traits (‘‘I’m usually a very happy person”). Adolescents also begin to make religious and political beliefs part of their self-concept (“I’m a Catholic” or ‘Tm a conservative Republican”).
- Another change is that adolescents’ self-concepts often vary with the setting. A teenager might say, ‘‘I’m really shy around people I don’t know, but I let loose when I’m with my friends and family.”
Yet another change is that adolescents’ self-concepts are often future oriented: Adolescents often describe themselves in terms of what they will be when they reach adulthood (Harter, 1990,2005). These descriptions may include occupational goals
(‘‘I’m going to be an English teacher”), educational plans (“I plan to go to a community college to learn about computers”), or social roles (“I want to get married as soon as 1finish high school”).
Two general changes are evident:
- First, self- concept becomes richer as children grow; adolescents simply know much more about themselves than preschoolers.
- Second, the type of knowledge that children have of themselves changes.
— Preschoolers’ understanding is linked to the concrete, the real, and the here and now.
— Adolescents’ understanding, in contrast, is more abstract and more psychological, and sees the self as evolving over time.
- The change in children’s knowl- edge of themselves should not surprise you, because it’s exactly the type of change that Piaget described. Concrete operational children’s focus on the real and tangible ex- tends to their thoughts about themselves, just as formal operational adolescents’ focus on the abstract and hypothetical applies to their thoughts about themselves.
- Adolescence is also a time of increasing self-reflection. Adolescents look for an identity to integrate the many different and sometimes conflicting elements ofthe self
Preschoolers
- Possessions
- Physical characteristics
- Preferences
- Competencies
School-Age Children
- Emotions
- Social groups
- Comparisons with peers
Adolescents
- Attitudes
- Personality traits
- Beliefs vary with the setting
- Future oriented
The Search for Identity
To learn more about possible identities, adolescents use the hypothetical reasoning skills of the formal operational stage to experiment with different selves (Nurmi, Poole, & Kalakoski, 1996).
- Adolescents’ advanced cognitive skills allow them to imagine themselves in different roles.
Much of the testing and experimentation is career oriented.
- Other testing is romantically oriented. Teens may fall in love
and imagine living with the loved one.
- Still other exploration involves religious and political beliefs
- Teens give different identities a trial run just as you might test drive different cars before selecting one. By fantasizing about their future, adolescents begin to discover who they will be.
The self-absorption that marks the teenage search for identity is referred to as adolescent egocentrism
- Unlike preschoolers, adolescents know that others have different perspectives on the world. At the same time, many adolescents believe, wrongly, that they are the focus of others’ thinking.
- Many adolescents feel that they are, in effect, actors whose performance is being watched constantly by their peers, a phenomenon known as the imaginary audience
Adolescent self-absorption is also demonstrated by the personal fable, teenagers’ tendency to believe that their experiences and feelings are unique, that no one has ever felt or thought as they do.
- Adolescents’ belief in their uniqueness also contributes to an illusion of invulnerability–the belief that misfortune only happens to others.
Adolescent egocentrism, imaginary audiences, personal fables, and the illusion of invulnerability become less common as adolescents make progress toward achieving an identity.
- What exactly is involved in achieving an identity?
- Most adolescents progress through different phases or statuses, though not necessarily in this order:
- Diffusion: Individuals in this status are confused or overwhelmed by the task of achieving an identity and are doing little to achieve one.
- Foreclosure: Individuals in this status have an identity determined largely by adults, rather than from personal exploration of alternatives.
- Moratorium: Individuals in this status are still examining different alternatives and have yet to find a satisfactory identity.
- Achievement: Individuals in this status have explored alternatives and have deliberately chosen a specific identity.
Unlike Piaget’s stages, these four phases do not necessarily occur in sequence.
- Most young adolescents are in a state of diffusion or foreclosure. The common element in these phases is that teens are not exploring alternative identities.
- They are avoiding the crisis altogether or have resolved it by taking on an identity suggested by parents or other adults.
- However, as individuals move beyond adolescence and into young adulthood and have more opportunity to explore alternative identities, diffusion and foreclosure become less common, and achievement and moratorium become more common
Typically, young people do not reach the achievement status for all aspects of identity at the same time (Dellas & Jernigan, 1990; Kroger & Green, 1996).
- Some adolescents may reach the achievement status for occupations before achieving it for religion and politics.
- Others reach the achievement status for religion before other domains. Evidently, few youth achieve a sense of identity all at once; instead, the crisis of identity is first resolved in some areas and then in others
CHOOSING A CAREER
One element of identity that has been examined in some detail is career development.
According to a theory proposed by Donald Super (1976, 1990), identity is a primary force in an adolescent’s choice of a career.
- At about age 13 or 14, adolescents use their emerging identities as a source of ideas about careers, a process called crystallization.
Teenagers use their ideas about their own talents and interests to limit potential career prospects. A teenager who is extroverted and sociable may decide that working with people would be the career for him.
- Another who excels in math and science may decide she’d like to teach math.
- Decisions are tentative, and adolescents experiment with hypothetical careers, trying to envision what each might be like.
At about age 18, adolescents extend the activities associated with crystallization and enter a new
phase.
- During specification, individuals further limit their career possibilities by learning more about specific lines of work and starting to obtain
the training required for a specific job
The end of the teenage years or the early 20s marks the beginning of the third phase. During implementation, individuals enter the workforce and learn first- hand about jobs.
According to Super, career development involves stages of crystallization, specification, and implementation.
In each of Super’s three phases of career development, there is
continuous give and take between an individual’s identity and career
choice.
- A person’s self-concept makes some careers more attractive
than others; occupational experiences, in turn, refine and shape a person’s identity.
- At the same time, however, some aspects of vocational
choice are remarkably stable across adolescence and young adulthood.
For example, interest in expressive or artistic activities is quite stable, as is interest in working with one’s hands or working outdoors (Low et aI., 2005). In other words, a 14-year-old who loves being outdoors and can’t stand being cooped up inside
What circumstances help adolescents decide on a career and achieve identity?
- Parents are influential (Marcia, 1980).
- When parents encourage discussion and recognize their children’s autonomy, their children are more likely to reach the achievement status.
- Apparently, these youth feel encouraged to undertake the personal experimentation that leads to identity.
- In contrast, when parents set rules with little justification and enforce them without explanation, children are more likely to remain in the foreclosure status. These teens are discouraged from experimenting personally; instead, their parents simply tell them what identity to adopt.
- Overall, adolescents are most likely to establish a well-defined identity in a family atmosphere where parents encourage children to explore alternatives on their own but do not pressure or provide explicit direction
Ethnic identity
For many adolescents growing up in North America today, achieving an identity is even more challenging because they are members of ethnic minority groups.
ethnic minority groups. They include African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans.
- These individuals typically develop an ethnic identity: They feel they are a part of their ethnic group and learn the special customs and traditions of their group’s culture and heritage
An ethnic identity seems to be achieved in three phases.
- Initially, adolescents have not examined their ethnic roots.
- In the second phase, adolescents begin to explore the personal impact of their ethnic heritage
- In the third phase, individuals achieve a distinct ethnic self-concept. One Asian American adolescent explained his ethnic identification like this: “I have been born Filipino and am born to be Filipino. I’m here in America, and peo- ple of many different cultures are here, too. So I don’t consider myself only Filipino,
but also American”
Older adolescents are more likely than younger ones to have achieved an ethnic identity because they are more likely to have had opportunities to explore their cultural heritage (French et al., 2006).
- Also, adolescents are most likely to achieve an ethnic self-concept when their parents encourage them to learn about their cultural heritage and prepare them for possible discrimination
Ethnic identity poses a special challenge for immigrant adolescents. Unlike native-born ethnic children, who have exposure to mainstream and ethnic culture from a young age, from the time immigrant adolescents enter a new country, they face the task of negotiating a culture largely unfamiliar to them. And many immigrant adolescents have already established a strong identity with their native land. Consequently, it’s not surprising that immigrant adolescents do not immediately identify with their new culture.
Do adolescents benefit from a strong ethnic identity? Yes.
- Adolescents with an ethnic identity have higher self-esteem, find interactions with others more satisfying, and do better in school
- Adolescents who have achieved an ethnic identity tend to have higher self-esteem and find their interactions with family and friends more satisfying (Roberts et ai., 1999). They’re also happier and worry less (Kiang et ai., 2006). In addition, adolescents with a strong ethnic identity do better in school than adolescents whose ethnic identities are weaker and are more likely to go to college
Some individuals achieve a well-defined ethnic self-concept and, at the same time, identify strongly with the mainstream culture. In the United States, for example, many Chinese Americans embrace both Chinese and American culture
- For other individuals, the cost of strong ethnic identification is a weakened tie to mainstream culture. Some investigators report that, for Hispanic Americans, strong identification with American culture is associated with a weaker ethnic self- concept
We shouldn’t be too surprised that identifying with mainstream culture weak- ens ethnic identity in some groups but not others.
Even within any particular group, the nature and consequences of ethnic identity may change over successive generations (Cuellar et ai., 1997).
- As successive generations become more assimilated into mainstream culture, they may identify less strongly with ethnic culture.
- Thus, parents may maintain strong feelings of ethnic identity that their children don’t share, and problems sometimes develop when immigrant parents cling to the “old ways” but their children embrace their new culture.
- For example, in one study of Chinese immigrants to Canada (Costigan & Dokis, 2006), children were less interested in school and had more conflicts with parents when they strongly identified with Canada but their parents did not.
Finally, let’s think about adolescents for whom an ethnic identity is a particular challenge-those whose parents come from different racial or ethnic groups. As recently as 1970, only 1% of U.S. children were multiracial; now 5% are multiracial (Jones & Smith, 2001).
- When children have one European-American parent and the other is African American, Asian American, or Hispanic, children tend to adopt the ethnic minority identity.
- A child with an Asian mother and a European-American father will probably consider herself Asian
Identity in biracial adolescents can be quite fluid. Some biracial adolescents first identify themselves as monoracial, then embrace a biracial identity; others shift in the opposite direction, converging on a single racial identity; and still others shift from one racial identity to another. Collectively, youth with shifting racial identities tend to have lower self-esteem than those with a consistent biracial identity
STORM AND STRESS
According to novelists and filmmakers, the search for identity is inherently a struggle, a time of storm and stress for adolescents. Although this view may make for best-selling novels and hit movies, in reality the rebellious teen is largely a myth.
- Think about the following conclusions derived from research findings (Steinberg, 1990).
- Most adolescents
* admire and love their parents,
* rely upon their parents for advice
* embrace many of their parents’ values
* feel loved by their parents.
Cross-cultural re- search provides further evidence that for most teens, adolescence is not a time of turmoil and conflict.
- Offer and his colleagues (1988) interviewed adolescents from 10 different countries: the United States, Australia, Germany, Italy, Israel, Hungary, Turkey, Japan, Taiwan, and Bangladesh.
- These investigators found most adolescents moving confidently and happily toward adulthood.
- most adolescents around the world re- ported that they were usually happy, and few avoided their homes.
Of course, parent-child relations do change during adolescence.
- As teens become more independent, their relationships with their parents become more egalitarian.
- Parents must adjust to their children’s growing sense of autonomy by treating them more like equals (Laursen & Collins, 1994).
- This growing independence means that teens spend less time with their parents, are less affectionate toward them, and argue more often with them about matters of style, taste, and freedom.
- Teenagers are also more moody and more likely to enjoy spending some time alone (Larson, 1997; Wolfson & Carskadon, 1998).
- But these changes are natural by-products of an evolving parent- child relationship in which the “child” is nearly a fully independent young adult
DEPRESSION
Challenges of adolescence and cause some youth to be depressed
Depressed individuals have pervasive feelings of sadness, are irritable, have low self-esteem, sleep poorly, and are unable to concentrate.
- About 5% to 15% of adolescents are depressed; adolescent girls are more often affected than boys, probably because social challenges in adolescence are often greater for girls than boys
Depression is often triggered when adolescents experience a serious loss, disappointment, or failure, such as the death of a loved one or when a much-anticipated date turns out to be a fiasco
- Of course, many adolescents and adults experience negative events like these, but most don’t become depressed. Why?
- One view emphasizes adolescents’ attributions, their personal explanations of success and failure
- Depression-prone adolescents are, for example, more likely to blame themselves for failure.
- And depression-prone teens more often believe that such personal “flaws” are stable and wide ranging (e.g., “I just don’t get along well with other people!”) instead of thinking of them as temporary or specific
Parents and families can also put an adolescent at risk for depression. Not surprisingly, adolescents more often become depressed when their parents are emotionally distant and uninvolved, and when family life is stressful due to economic disadvantage or marital conflict
- And because African American and Hispanic adolescents more often live in poverty, they’re more often depressed (Brown, Meadows, & Elder, 2007).
Finally, when parents rely on punitive discipline-hitting and shouting-adolescents often resort to the negative attributions (e.g., blaming themselves) that can lead to depression
Depression is often triggered when adolescents blame themselves for a negative even
Although attributions can lead to depression, biology also contributes, apparently through neurotransmitters.
- Some depressed adolescents have reduced levels of norepinephrine and serotonin, neurotransmitters that help regulate brain centers that allow people to experience pleasure.
- Some adolescents may feel depressed because lower levels of neurotransmitters make it difficult for them to experience happiness, joy, and other pleasurable emotions
To treat depression, some adolescents take antidepressant drugs designed to correct the imbalance in neurotransmitters.
- The well-known drug Prozac, for example, is designed to reduce depression by increasing levels of serotonin (Peterson, 1996). However, drug treatment has no lasting effects-it only works while people are taking the drugs-and it has been linked to increased risk of suicide (Vitiello & Swedo, 2004).
Consequently, psychotherapy is a better choice for treating depressed adolescents.
- One common approach emphasizes cognitive and social skills-adolescents learn how to have rewarding social interactions and to interpret them appropriately.
- These treatments are effective (Weisz, McCarty, & Valeri, 2006), and depressed adolescents do need help; left untreated, depression can interfere with performance in school and social relationships, and may also lead to recurring depression in adulthood (Nevid et aI., 2003).
Measuring Self-Esteem
How can we measure different aspects of self-esteem? The method depends on the age of the child.
With 4- to 7-year-olds, one popular approach devised by Harter and Pike (1984) uses pairs of pictures
- The sample pictures show a girl either solving a puzzle easily or having difficulty.
- During testing, children are first asked to point to the pictured child who is most like them.
- Then they point to the larger circle if they believe that they are “a lot” like the child in that picture or the smaller one if they believe they are “a little” like the child in that picture.
- Harter and Pike used 24 pairs of pictures like these to measure children’s self-worth in four areas: cognitive competence, physical competence, acceptance by peers, and acceptance by mother.
Young children’s self-esteem is measured by describing more and less competent people, then asking children which person is more like them.
Another productive approach with young children uses puppets (Ablow & Measelle, 2003; Measelle et al., 1998).
- One puppet describes itself to the child: “I like pizza:’ A second puppet then describes itself in opposite terms-“I don’t like pizza”- and then motions to the child, “How about you?” Children can respond
verbally (“I like pizza, too!”), by nodding their heads in agreement or dis-
agreement, or by pointing to one of the puppets.
- Children are presented
pairs of statements measuring academic competence (“I learn/don’t
learn things well”), achievement motivation (“I try/don’t try my best at
school”), social competence (“It’s hard/not hard for me to make new
friends”), and peer acceptance (“Kids are/are not nice to me”)
Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC)
Self-esteem in older children and adolescents can be measured
with a questionnaire. The child reads statements like the ones at the
beginning of this section. The most widely used self-esteem question-
naire of this sort is the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC) devised by Susan Harter (1985, 1988). The SPPC is designed to evaluate self-worth in children age 8 and older in five domains:
- Scholastic competence: How competent or smart the child feels in doing schoolwork
- Athletic competence: How competent the child feels at sports and games re- quiring physical skill or athletic ability
- Social acceptance: How popular or accepted the child feels in social interactions with peers
- Behavioral conduct: How adequate the child feels about behaving the way one is supposed to
- Physical appearance: How good-looking the child feels and how much the child likes his or her physical characteristics, such as height, weight, face, and hair
The SPPC includes six statements for each domain.
- A child’s answers to all six statements are used to create an average level of self-esteem in that domain. The averages for each of the five domains are then used to generate a self-perception profile for each child.
Notice that each profile ends with a bar graph depicting the child’s overall self- worth. Overall self-worth is measured on the SPPC with six more items, such as “Some kids like the way they are leading their life” and “Some kids like the kind of person they are.” Children’s responses to these statements are then averaged to create a measure of overall self-worth.
The SPPC is intended for use with children and young adolescents. For assessing self-esteem in older adolescents and young adults, Harter (1990) created a more extensive scale. This scale includes the five domains in the SPPC, along with job competence, close friendships, and romantic appeal.
STRUCTURE OF SELF-ESTEEM
The Self-Perception Profile for Children measures children’s overall self-worth and esteem in five specific areas.
By 4 or 5 years, which is the earliest we can measure self-esteem, children have a differentiated view of themselves.
- They can distinguish overall self-esteem as well as self- esteem in specific domains
- This structure should seem familiar because it’s like intelligence: In Module 8.1, we saw that hierarchical theories of intelligence begin with a general intelligence that is divided into more specific abilities, such as verbal ability and spatial ability.
Children’s overall self-worth is not simply the average of their self-worth in specific domains. Overall feelings of self-worth are related to but distinct from feelings of self-worth in specific domain
- She feels positive overall despite having low feelings of self-worth for her scholastic and athletic competence.
As children develop, they evaluate themselves in more domains, and their evaluations in each domain are increasingly independent.
- That is, younger children’s ratings of self-esteem are often like Allison’s: The ratings are consistent across the diferent dimensions.
- In contrast, older children’s and adolescents’ ratings more often resemble Colleen’s, with self-esteem varying from one domain to another.
During the school years, children’s academic self-concepts become particularly well defined (Marsh & Craven, 2006; Marsh & Yeung, 1997).
- As children accumulate successes and failures in school, they form beliefs about their ability in different content areas (e.g., English, math, science), and these beliefs contribute to their overall academic self-concept.
- A child who believes that she is skilled at English and math but not so skilled in science will probably have a positive academic self-concept overall.
- But a child who believes he is untalented in most academic areas will have a negative academic self-concept.
During adolescence, the social component of self-esteem becomes particularly well differentiated.
- Adolescents distinguish self-worth in many different social relationships.
- A teenager may, for example, feel very positive about her relationships with her parents but believe that she’s a loser in romantic relationships.
- Another teen may feel loved and valued by his parents but think that coworkers at his part-time job can’t stand him (Harter, Waters, & Whitesell, 1998).
Thus, between the late preschool years and adolescence, self-esteem becomes more complex, as older children and adolescents identify distinct domains of self- worth. This growing complexity is not surprising-it reflects the older child’s and adolescent’s greater cognitive skill and the more extensive social world of older children and adolescents.
CHANGES IN LEVEL OF SELF-ESTEEM
At what age is self-esteem greatest? The answer may surprise you-it’s during the preschool years. Most preschool children have very positive views of themselves across many different domains.
As children progress through the elementary- school years, self-esteem usually drops somewhat.
- Why? In reality, of course, all children are not above average. During the elementary-school years, children begin to compare themselves with peers
- When they do, they discover that they are not necessarily the best readers or the fastest runners. They may realize, instead, that they are only average readers.
- This realization means that children’s self-esteem usually drops
somewhat at the beginning of elementary school.
By the end of the elementary-school years, children’s self-esteem has usually stabilized (Harter, Whitesell, & Kowalski, 1992) as children learn their place in the “pecking order” of different domains and adjust their self-esteem accordingly.
- However, self-esteem sometimes drops when children move from elementary school to middle school or junior high (Twenge & Campbell, 2001).
- Apparently, when students from different elementary schools enter the same middle school or junior high, they know where they stand compared to their old elementary-school classmates but not compared to students from other elementary schools.
- Thus, peer comparisons begin anew, and self-esteem often suffers temporarily.
- But, as a new school becomes familiar and students gradually adjust to the new pecking order, self-esteem again increases.
There is more to developmental change in self-esteem, however. The pattern of change also depends on the specific domain and the child’s sex.
- Academic self-worth changes little with age and is similar for boys and girls.
- Social self-worth increases substantially from childhood to adolescence and is similar for boys and girls.
- Behavioral self-worth declines during the elementary-school years but increases somewhat in middle school and high school; girls have greater behavioral self-worth than boys in the elementary-school years but not during middle school and high school
GROWTH OF SELF-ESTEEM IN CHILDREN FROM ETHNIC GROUPS.
Growth of self-worth among U.S. children and adolescents also varies depending on their ethnicity.
Compared to European-American children, African Americans and Hispanic Americans have lower self-esteem during most of the elementary-school years.
However, in adolescence the gap narrows for Hispanic Americans and actually reverses for African American adolescents, who have greater self-esteem than their European- American peers (Gray-Little & Hafdahl, 2000; Herman, 2004; Twenge & Crocker, 2002).
- Scientists don’t fully understand why these changes take place, but one hypothesis involves ethnic identity.
- The idea is that beginning in early adolescence, many African American and Hispanic American teens take pride in belonging to a distinct social and cultural group, and this raises their sense of self-worth
In one study (Cole, 1991), roughly 25% of 9- and 10-year-olds had negative self-esteem on three scales of the Sppc.
Sources of Self-Esteem
Children’s self-esteem is determined by their actual competence and by how they are viewed by people who are important to them.
Research indicates two important sources of children’s self-esteem.
- One is based on children’s actual competence in domains that are important to them: Children’s self- worth is greater when they are skilled in areas that matter to them
- Children are more likely to view themselves positively when their parents are affectionate toward them and involved with them (Lord, Eccles, & McCarthy, 1994; Ojanen & Perry, 2007). Around the world, children have higher self-esteem when families live in harmony and parents nurture their children
Parents’ discipline also is related to self-esteem.
- Children with high self-esteem generally have parents who have reasonable expectations for their children and are also willing to discuss rules and discipline with their children (Laible & Carlo, 2004).
- Parents who fail to set rules are, in effect, telling their chil- dren that they don’t care-they don’t value them enough to go to the trouble of creating rules and enforcing them.
- In much the same way, parents who refuse to discuss discipline with their children are saying, “Your opinions don’t matter to me.” Not surprisingly, when children internalize these messages, the result is lower overall self-worth.
Children with low self-esteem typically have poor peer relations, are at risk for psychological disorders, are involved in antisocial activities, and do poorly in school.
Peers’ views are important, too. Children’s and particularly adolescents’ self-worth is greater when they believe that their peers think highly of them
Thus, children’s and adolescents’ self-worth depends on their being competent at something they value and in being valued by people who are important to them. By encouraging children to find their special talents and by being genuinely interested
in their progress, parents and teachers can enhance the self-esteem of all students.
Low Self-Esteem: Cause or Consequence?
Having low self-esteem is associated with many developmental problems (Baumeis- ter et aI., 2003). Children with low self-esteem are
* more likely to have problems with peers (Parker et aI., 2005; Verschueren, Buyck, & Marcoen, 2001),
* more prone to psychological disorders such as depression(Garber,Robinson,& Valentiner, 1997; McDonald et aI., 2005),
* more likely to be involved in bullying, aggressive behavior, and criminal activity (Donnellan et aI., 2005; Trzesniewski et aI., 2006), and
* more likely to do poorly in school (Marsh & Yeung, 199
Does low self-esteem cause children to have few friends, because peers want to avoid them? Or do poor peer relations cause children to have low self-esteem?
- Either claim is plausible, and what often happens is that low self-esteem contributes to the outcome but is itself also caused by the outcome.
- For example, the claim that “low self-esteem leads to poor peer relations” is supported by findings that over the course of a school year, children with low social self-esteem often withdraw from peer interactions, and by year’s end are more likely to be left out of social activities and to have few or no friends.
- But the claim that “poor peer relations reduces social self-worth” is also supported, this time by findings that children who have few friends at the beginning of a school year (but adequate social self-worth) tend to withdraw socially, and by year’s end, their self-worth has dropped (Caldwell et aI., 2004).
- Thus, poor peer relations reduce self-esteem in the peer context and disrupt future peer interactions, causing social self-worth to drop even more, making children even less likely to have good peer relations-the cycle goes on and on.
A similar vicious circle applies to the link between low academic self-esteem and poor performance in school: Over time, children who are unskilled academically do not keep up in school, which causes a drop in their academic self-esteem, making them less confident and probably less successful in future school learning, causing their academic self-esteem to continue to fall (Marsh et aI., 2005).
Thus, low self- esteem is a cause of future harmful outcomes and a consequence of past harmful outcome
There is widespread agreement that low self-esteem is not desirable and that parents and teachers should promote a child’s sense of self-worth.
- However, for children and adolescents who are antisocial and aggressive, high self-esteem actually has a cost. These children and adolescents sometimes use their lofty sense of self-worth to justify their aggressive behavior.
- In other words, their sense of self-worth leads them to believe that they deserve the rewards that can be achieved with aggression and that they are entitled to push around their “lesser” peers (Menon et aI., 2007).
- Thus, high self-worth actually puts antisocial, aggressive youth at risk for poor relationships with their peers, which can be quite harmful in the long run
Describing Others
As children develop, their self-descriptions become richer, more abstract, and more psychological. These same changes occur in children’s descriptions of others.
- Children begin by describing other people in terms of concrete features, such as behavior and appearance, and progress to describing them in terms of abstract traits
Children’s descriptions of others first focus on concrete features, then on psychological traits, then on integrating different characteristics.
7 year old: concrete features
- Vanessa is short. She has black hair and brown eyes. She uses a wheelchair because she can’t walk. She’s in my class. She has dolls just like mine. She likes to sing and read.
10-year-old: psychological traits
Kate lives in my apartment building. She is a very good reader and is also good at math and science. She’s nice to everyone in our class. And she’s very funny. Sometimes her jokes make me laugh so-o-o hard! She takes piano lessons and likes to play soccer.
By age 10, children move beyond the purely concrete and observable in describing others.
- During adolescence, descriptions become even more complex, as you can see in the following, from Tamsen as a 16-year-old:
Jeannie is very understanding. Whenever someone is upset, she’s there to give a helping hand. Yet, in private, Jeannie can be so sarcastic. She can say some really nasty things about people. But I know she’d never say that stuff if she thought people would hear it because she wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings.
- Tamsen now focuses on psychological traits such as understanding and concern for others’ feelings. It’s also more integrated: Tamsen tries to explain how Jeannie can be both understanding and sarcastic.
Descriptions referring to appearances or possessions become less common as children grow older, as do descriptions giving general information, such as the person’s age, sex, religion, or school.
- In contrast, descriptions of personality traits (for example, “friendly” or “conceited”) increase be- tween ages 8 and 14 years.
- This pattern of changes in children’s descriptions of others resembles children’s changing understanding of the self
By age 5, children use the information in their descriptions to predict others’ future behavior
- To illustrate, suppose kindergarten children are told that Alissa did something nice (e.g., helped another child finish a difficult
puzzle), but Celeste did something mean (e.g., scribbled in another child’s favorite book).
- Kindergarten children will judge that, in the future, Alissa is more likely than Celeste to help a child who is hurt, to give money to a needy child, and to hope that an elaborate art project turns out well for the child who created it.
- Thus, descriptions of others are useful, even for young children, because they allow children to predict how others will behave in the future.
