Lecture 5: Social and Moral Development Flashcards
Self concept
-how you think about yourself
- develops during early childhood
- initially predominantly ‘concrete’, with basic descriptions of emotions/attitudes: eg ‘I can run really fast’ if asked what’s good about themselves, asked to describe themselves eg ‘I’m a cheerful person’ they focus on basic things they can do or simple descriptions or how they are
- refined in middle childhood with use of personality traits to describe self
- later adolescence, becomes more complex. Understand that me-self dependent on context
Influences of self esteem
Age
• high in early childhood
• young children high self-esteem, over-estimate their abilities
• drops during first years of school
social comparison: reality of mixing with others
• more ‘realistic’ in middle childhood
• generally stable, and high, for majority from 8 years
Culture
• gender differences: about achieving, the individual, then self-esteem will be high, community more about the culture, collective, modestly highly valued, then self-esteem might look like have lower self-estem however to do to with how tests have been devloped
• japan cf America (generally nation about themselves, Japan-idea of modesty, sharing achievements value far more)
Child-rearing practices
• nurturing/loving environment better chance of having good self-esteem
Influences of self esteem
Age
• high in early childhood
• young children high self-esteem, over-estimate their abilities
• drops during first years of school
social comparison: reality of mixing with others
• more ‘realistic’ in middle childhood
• generally stable, and high, for majority from 8 years
Culture
• gender differences: about achieving, the individual, then self-esteem will be high, community more about the culture, collective, modestly highly valued, then self-esteem might look like have lower self-estem however to do to with how tests have been devloped
• japan cf America (generally nation about themselves, Japan-idea of modesty, sharing achievements value far more)
Child-rearing practices
• nurturing/loving environment better chance of having good self-esteem
Influences of identity development
- personality
- family
- peers, friends, school
Gender Identity
Early childhood
• By age 2 can label self and others as male/female
• 3 prefer gender-stereotypical toys
• 4 develop rigid stereotypes eg occupation
Middle childhood
• knowledge of stereotypes increases
• can consider conflicting social information and therefore can display gender-stereotype flexibility
Development of gender identity: Social Learning Theory
- behaviour comes first, then self-perception
- evidence that parents do treat children differently depending on gender
- engage in behaviour from looking at others, the more you engage in a behaviour that was likely to be reinforced if it conformed to stereotypes, that came first then that’s how you start to label yourself
Development of gender identity: Cognitive-Developmental Theory
- self-perception comes first
- Kohlberg: Development of Gender Constancy linked to cognitive maturity
- cognitive understanding, ability to cognitively process the idea of gender and what it meant and then to label yourself
Moral development
-3 components
- Emotional: empathy for distress, guilt if cause of distress
- Cognitive: developing social cognition enables decision-making re moral dilemmas
- Behavioural: behaviour may not necessarily follow on from emotions/thoughts
Theories of moral development: Psychoanalytic perspective
- Morality appears between 3&6 yrs
- Children jealous of same-sex parent, but fear loss of relationship so compensate by identifying with same sex parent-super-ego
- Current psychoanalytic research emphasises attachment (still focusing on emotion)
Theories of moral development: Social Learning Theory
• Develops through modelling then reinforcement
• Internalisation of social norms important, but cannot explain all moral behaviour
-Eg where society and ethical principles conflict
-Child more active in constructing morality
Theories of moral development: Piaget
Two stages
- Heteronomous Morality (5-10 years)
- rules given by authority figures
- rules are immutable and must be obeyed
- focus on consequences of behaviour rather than the intentions eg experiment with kid carrying try vs taking cookie - Autonomous Morality (from 10 years)
- rules are socially constructed and flexible
- base judgements on intentions
Evaluation of Piaget’s theory of moral development
- Children can take intentions into account at a younger age if intentions are made more obvious
- Young children do question adult authority in certain contexts
- Many children show heteronomous and autonomous reasoning
- Kohlberg extended and refined Piagets theory from 10 yrs to adulthood
Theories of moral development: Kohlberg
- Presented ‘moral dilemmas’ to 10 yrs to adults
- ‘Heinz’ dilemma
- looked at how participants justified their decisions-not about decision you come to, its about how you justified the decision that you came to
- categorised into 6 stages
- believed stages were universal and invariant
Influences on moral reasoning
- personality: flexibility to improve moral reasoning
- children-rearing processing: caring/supportive, discuss moral concerns openly
- Schooling-moral dev improves in late adolescence if remain in education
- Cultural variation-emphasis on individualism vs collectivism
