CHARACTER

DEVELOPMENT

By
Rabia Umar
MS Clinical Psychology
Definition
Character
 The distinctive qualities that describe how
a person thinks, feels, and behaves.
 It can be defined as the collection of core
values possessed by an individual that
leads to moral commitment and action.
 The outward expression of your values
What are values?
Definition
Values are the accepted principles or
standards of a group or individual.
In psychology Value refers to the relative
importance that an individual places on an
item, idea, person, etc. that is part of their
life. These feelings are unique to the
individual.
Standards that are important to an
individual.
Describe someone with good
character
Traits of good character
 Trustworthiness
 Respect
 Responsibility
 Fairness
 Caring
Trustworthiness
Definition
 Trustworthiness is believing that the
person who is trusted will do what is
expected.
 She/he is honest, loyal,
reliable, responsible, etc
Respect
Definition
 Respect is an attitude that develops
through mature and mutually
enriching interpersonal relationships. 
 Moreover, respect is the attitude of
accepting others’ differences.
Responsibility
Definition
 Responsibility is being accountable for
one's actions and to know and follow
various rules, laws, and conduct codes. 
 Self control and think before you act.
Fairness
Definition
 Impartiality and honesty, free from self-
interest, prejudice or favoritism.
Caring
Definition
 A person who is concerned about others
and shows kindness.
 Caring people are polite, generous,
affectionate, tolerant, understanding,
loving, and forgiving.
 They go out of their way to make others
feel special, to make them happy or feel
more confident in themselves.
How to develop good character
1. Recognize what good character is
2. Evaluate your own character
3. Identify what you would like to change
4. Plan how would you like to do it
1. Recognize what good character is
 You must value good character and
believe it is important
 You must have enough respect for
yourself and value yourself enough to
want good character traits
2. Evaluate your own character
 Trustworthiness
 Respect
 Responsibility
 Fairness
 Caring
Rate yourself on a scale of 5.
3. Identify what you would like to change

 Identifywhat character traits you’d like to

improve. Pick any 3
4. Plan how you are going to improve your character

 For each trait you picked, think of two

things you can do to improve or develop
that trait.
 Write a paragraph or more in your notes
about one of the choosen trait
 Planning to meet this goal
 Why it is important?
Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) :
History
 Born: August 9, 1896, Switzerland
 Died: September 16,1980 (Age 84)
 Education: Received Ph.D. from
University of Neuchatel in 1918.
 Children: 3 children namely Jacqueline,
Lucienne and Laurent whose intellectual
development from infancy to language
was studied by Piaget.
 Introduction
 Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the 20th century's most
influential researchers in the area of developmental
psychology.
 He was originally trained in the areas of biology and
philosophy.
 Piaget wanted to know how children learned through their
development in the study of knowledge.
 He administered Stanford Binet's IQ test in Paris and
observed that children's answers were qualitatively different.
 Piaget's theory is based on the idea that the developing child
builds cognitive structures.
 He believes that the child's cognitive structure increases with
the development.
 Piaget's Theory of infant development was based on his
observations of his own three children.
What is Cognition?
 The term cognition is derived from the Latin
word "cognoscere" which means "to know"
or "to recognize" or "to conceptualize".
 Cognition is "the mental
action or process of
acquiring knowledge
and understanding through
thought, experience, and
the senses."
What is Cognitive Development? 
 Cognitive Development is the emergence of the
ability to think and understand.
 The acquisition of the ability to think, reason and
problem solve.
 It is the process by which people's thinking changes
across the life span.
 Piaget studied Cognitive Development by
observing children in particular, to examine how
their thought processes changed with age.
 It is the growing apprehension and adaptation to the
physical and social environment.
How Cognitive Development occurs?
 Cognitive development is gradual and orderly
changes by which mental process becomes
more complex and sophisticated.
 The essential development of cognition is the
establishment of new schemes.
 Assimilation and accommodation are both the
processes of the ways of cognitive
development.
 The equilibration is the symbol of a new stage
of the cognitive development.
Key Concepts:
 Schema : Schema is an internal representation of the
world. It helps an individual understand the world they
inhabit.
 They are cognitive structures that represent a certain
aspect of the world.
 For example, when a child is young, they may develop
a schema for a dog. They know a dog walks on four
legs, is hairy, and has a tail. When the child goes to the
zoo for the first time and sees a tiger, they may initially
think the tiger is a dog as well. From the child’s
perspective, the tiger fits their schema for a dog.
Cont…
 Assimilation: It is using an existing schema to deal
with a new object or situation. Here, the learner fits
the new idea into what he already knows. In
Assimilation, the schema is not changed, it is only
modified.
 For example, child’s parents may explain that this is
a tiger, a wild animal. It is not a dog because it
doesn’t bark, it doesn’t live in people's houses, and it
hunts for its food. After learning the differences
between a tiger and a dog, the child will modify their
existing dog schema and create a new tiger schema.
Cont…
 Accommodation: This happens when the existing schema
(knowledge) does not work and needs to be changed to deal
with a new object or situation. In accommodation, the
schema is altered; a new schema may be developed.
 For example, imagine a young boy raised in a home that
presents a stereotyped schema about another social group.
Because of his upbringing, he might even
harbor prejudice toward people in this group. When the
young man moves away to college, he suddenly finds
himself surrounded by people from this group. Through
experience and real interactions with members of this
group, he realizes that his existing knowledge is completely
wrong. This leads to a dramatic change, or accommodation,
in his beliefs about members of this social group.
Cont…
 Equilibration : Piaget believed that cognitive
development did not progress at a steady rate,
but rather in leaps and bounds. Equilibrium
occurs when a child's schemas can deal with
most new information through assimilation. As a
child progresses through the stages of cognitive
development, it is important to maintain a
balance between applying previous knowledge
( assimilation) and changing behavior to account
for new knowledge (accommodation).
Equilibrium helps explain how children are able
to move from one stage of thought to the next.
The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 yrs)-
Infancy
 Infants construct an understanding of the
world by coordinating sensory experiences
(seeing, hearing) with motor actions
(reaching, touching).
 Develop memory
 Infants progress from involuntary, instinctual
actions at birth to the beginning of problem
solving (intellectual) and symbolic abilities
(language) toward the end of this stage.
Preoperational Stage (2-7 yrs) -Toddler
and Early Childhood 

 This stage begins when the child starts to use

symbols and language. This is a period of
developing language and concepts. So, the child
is capable of more complex mental
representations (i.e., words and images).
 He is still unable to use 'operations', i.e., logical
mental rules. This stage is further divided into 2
sub-stages :
Cont…
 Preconceptual stage (2-4 yrs) : Increased use
of verbal representation but speech is self-
centered. The child uses symbols to stand for
actions; a toy doll stands for a real baby or the
child role plays mummy or daddy.
 Intuitive stage (4-7 yrs) : Speech becomes
more social, less egocentric. Here the child base
their knowledge on what they feel or sense to
be true, yet they cannot explain the underlying
principles behind what they feel or sense.
The following are the key features of this stage :
 Egocentrism: The child's thoughts and
communications are typically egocentric (i.e.,
about themselves or their own point of view).
E.g..: "if I can't see you, you also can't see me". It
is the inability to see the world from anyone else's
eyes.
 Animism: Treating nonliving objects as living
ones. For example: children dressing and feeding
their dolls as if they are alive.
 Concentration: The process of concentrating on
one limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring
other aspects. It is noticed in Conservation..
 Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 yrs)
-Childhood and Early Adolescence
The concrete operational stage is characterized by the
appropriate use of logic. Important processes during this stage
are :
 Seriation: The ability to sort objects in an order according to
size, shape or any other characteristic. For example: if given
different-sized objects, they may place them accordingly.
 Transitivity: The ability to recognize logical relationships
among elements in a serial order. Example.: if A is taller than
B and B is taller than C, then A must be taller than C.
 Classification: The ability to group objects together on the
basis of common features. The child also begins to get the
idea that one set can include another. Example.: there is a
class of objects called dogs. There is also a class called
animals. But all dogs are also animals, so the class of animals
includes that of dogs.
 Decentring: The ability to take multiple aspects of a
situation into account. Example: the child will no longer
perceive an exceptionally- wide but short cup to contain
less than a normally-wide, taller cup.
 Reversibility: The child understands that numbers or
objects can be changed, then returned to their original
state. Example: the child will rapidly determine that if
4+4=8 then 8-4=4, the original quantity.
 Conservation: Understanding that the quantity, length or
number of items is unrelated to the arrangement or
appearance of the object or item.
 Elimination of Egocentrism: The ability to view things
from another's perspective.
 The child performs operations: Combining, separating,
multiplying, repeating, dividing etc
Formal Operational Stage (12 yrs &
above) -Adolescence and Adulthood
 The thought becomes increasingly flexible and abstract,
i.e., can carry out systematic experiments.
 The ability to systematically solve a problem in a logical
and methodological way.
 Develops skills such as logical thought, deductive
reasoning as well as inductive reasoning and systematic
planning etc.
 Understands that the rules of any game or social system
are developed by a man by mutual agreement and hence
could be changed or modified.
Contribution to Education
 Piaget's theory helped educators, parents and
investigators to comprehend the capacity of
children in their different stages.
 He made us conscious with the way children and
adults think.
 A lot of school programs have been redesigned
taking as base Piaget's discoveries.
 Piaget made a revolution with the developmental
psychology concentrating all his attention to the
mental process and his role with behavior.
Social development from infancy to
adolescence
Erikson's (1986) theory
 Erickson's theory have eight stages of
social development.
 Each stage consist of development task
that confronts individual with crisis
Trust versus mistrust
 The developmental task requires warm
and care giving.
 Positive outcome is a feeling of comfort.
 Mistrust develops when infants are treated
too negatively.
Autonomy versus shame and doubt
 Kids asserts their independence and
realize their will.
 If infants are restrained too much or
punished too harshly, they develop a sense
of shame and doubt.
Initiative versus guilt
 In this stage, adults expected children to
become more responsible and able to take
little initiatives.
 Children develop uncomfortable guilt
feelings, if they are considered as
irresponsible.
Industry versus inferiority
 As kids move into elementary school
years, they direct their energy towards
(mastering knowledge) intellectual skills.
 The danger in these years is developing a
sense of inferiority and incompetence.
Identity versus role confusion
 Developmental task is to form sense of
self and personal identity.
 Success in life leads towards better sense
of self while failures causes role
confusion and a weak sense of self.
Intimacy versus isolation
 The developmental task is to form
positive close relationship with others.
 For such individuals loneliness can
become a dark cloud over their lives
Generativity versus stagnation
 Generativitymeans transmitting
something positive to next generation.
 Stagnation means the feeling of having
done nothing to help the next generation.
Integrity versus despair
 Adults review their lives, reflecting on
what they have done. If the retrospective
evaluations are positive, they have high
sense of integrity.
 In contrast older adults become
despairing, of their previous evaluations
are negative.
Thanks