Chapter 11: Self and social understanding Flashcards
Define social cognition.
How children come to understand their multifaceted social world
Although non-social and social cognition share many features, why is social cognition more complex?
A person’s behaviour is affected not only by other’s actions but also by inner states that we cannot observe directly.
By the end of the second year, ________ becomes a powerful tool in self-development.
language
What is the coherent understanding of people’s own and others’ rich mental lives called?
theory of mind
Which area of the brain seems to play a crucial role in theory-of-mind development?
prefrontal cortex
Define self-esteem
the judgements we make about our own worth and the feelings associated with those judgements
Why is self-esteem among the most important aspects of self-development?
because evaluations of our own competencies affect emotional experiences, future behaviour, and long-term psychological adjustment
Around 6-7, children in Western cultures have formed at least four broad self-evaluations. What are these four self-evaluations?
academic competence, social competence, physical/athletic competence, and physical appearance
What can lead to a drop in self-esteem over the first two years of schooling? .
Pre-schoolers typically have difficulty realistically judging their own competencies, often underestimating the difficulties of task. During early school years they compare their ability to that of peers, resulting in the development of a more realistic sense of self-esteem that matches their objective performance
What are two factors that influence the development of self-esteem?
- Culture
2. Child-rearing practices
What are our common, everyday explanations for the causes of behaviour called?
attributions
Which categories do we group the causes of our own and other’s behaviour?
- External, environmental causes
- Internal, psychological causes, which are further divided into:
a. Ability
b. Effort
What are mastery-oriented attributions?
attributing success to the internal cause of ability
What is the view that ability cannot be improved through effort called?
entity view of ability
What provides the cognitive foundation for adolescents’ to form an identity?
their well-organised self-descriptions and differentiated sense of self-esteem
