Module 1

Understanding Self and Others

Making deals is something
human do all the time
Specific Cognitive Abilities
needed to make deals & to avoid being cheated

Lida Cosmides & John Tobby (1992)

 Recognize many different people
 Remember one’s past interaction with people
 Communicate one’s belief and desires to others
 Understand the beliefs and desires to others
 Represent the cost and benefit of items service
that being exchanged
Social Cognition
 Thinking about one’s own thoughts, feelings,
motives, and behaviors, and those of other
people
 Thinking about the self, other people, and
social relationships
I. The
Development of
Self
A. The Development of a
Concept of Self
Some core concepts in the study
of self
Self – • A person’s awareness (& potentially definition)
Concept of one’s self, including physical and
psychological characteristics and skills.
• Involves knowledge of the self, as reflected in
toddlers, by visual-recognition.
Self – Esteem • The evaluative component of the self.
• The judgements people make of their general
worth as a person and the feelings associated
with their judgement.
5 Area of Self-Esteem
 Scholastic competence
 Social competence
 Behavioral conduct
 Athletic competence
 Physical appearance
Self – • The extent to which a person views him or
Efficacy herself as an effective individual
• The confidence one has in being able to
control events in one’s surrounding
• Develops with experience

Identity • A self-portrait of the different pieces of the self

Formation integrated in a coherent way, including:
• Physical aspects
• Sexual aspects
• Ideological aspects
• Intellectual aspects
• Relational aspects
• Vocational aspects
• Cultural/ethnic aspects
• Who am I? What do I want to be?
Early signs of self-
Awareness
Types of Early Self-Concept
(Case & Lewis, 1991)
 Implicit Self
 sometimes referred to as the “I”-self
 The character of infants from birth about 15 to 18
months old. Michael Lewis termed it as “the machinery
of the self.” At this age, the infants has no self-
awareness and are only able to distinct between
themselves and others and the realization that “I can
cause anything.”
 Explicit Self
 sometimes referred to as the “me”-self
 It involves a conscious awareness of the self or the
“Idea of me.”
Self-Concept
1. By 18 months old
 Most children recognizes
themselves in a mirror
2. Pre-School Age
 Children typically describes
themselves in terms of their
physical feature, things they
do, where they live or who
is in their family
3. Childhood to Adolescent
 Children’s self-description in
psychological terms increase
and differentiate
4. Early & Middle Adolescent
 Adolescents develop different
selves that vary with social
context.
 They often feel confused
about these opposing selves.
 They feel extremely concerned
about what others think about
them.
5. Late Adolescent & Early
Adulthood
 Preoccupation with what others
think decreases and the
different attributes of the self in
different context are not seen
as opposing
B. The Development of Self-
Esteem
the judgement people make of their general self-
worth and the feelings associated with those
judgements
Self-esteem can be viewed as
a product of 2 internal
assessments:
 The discrepancy between the perceived self
and the ideal self
 Support from social others
Self-Esteem & Self-Worth
 Pre-School Children
Children distinguish two
categories of self-esteem:
 Their physical & cognitive
competence and their
general competence
 By the 3rd/4th Grade
Children differentiate among
five categories of self-
worth/
self-esteem
They become more realistic
with their own competence
 Adolescence
 At the beginning of
adolescence, children’s
self-esteem typically
declines some often
associated with the
transition to high-school.
Self-esteem then
increased again in most
adolescents. Many
adolescences, experience
temporary period, of
discomfort that are soon
overcome.
C. The Development of Self-
Efficacy
People’s belief about their capabilities to produce
designated levels of performance that exercise influence over
events that affect their lives.” (Bandura, 1994, p.71)
It is the confidence one has in being able
to control
events in one’s surroundings.
It is a person’s perception of his or her ability to reach a
specific goal.
 Begins early, infants learn that they can exert
some control over their environment
 3-4 months learns that their actions has
consequences
The Optimistic Child
 Positive sense of self efficacy is facilitated by a generally
optimistic (and often unrealistic) opinion of their own abilities.
 Believes that they know more than they actually do and can
do more than they actually can provides them with positive
perceptions of their own skills.
 Can make relatively accurate predictions of how other
children are likely to perform but gets overly optimistic in
predicting their own future which is due to wishful thinking
(concept originally introduced by Piaget)
 Overestimates their abilities which enhances their self-
efficacy and gives them confidence to attempt new things
 Produces more positive outcomes than realistic children
The Possible Pitfalls of
Overestimating One’s Abilities
 Embarrassment that comes from publicly
displaying the skills that you do not have
 Can cause injury especially boys who
overestimates their physical abilities.
Childhood by its very nature
involves reaching beyond
one’s current abilities.
D. Building an Identity
 Self – complicated concept with many
different components that develops more in
infancy and childhood.
 Identity – is a self-portrait od the different
pieces of self in a coherent and integrated
mode. It is one of the main psychological
challenges in adolescence.
On Adolescent Identity
Erik Erikson and the adolescent
crisis
 Erik Erikson (1950, 1968) first modern psychologist to emphasize the
importance of identity formation in psychological development in
general, and particularly during adolescence. He is one of the first life
span development psychologists.
 Focuses on developing a sense of adult identity
 “From all possible and imaginable relations, (adolescent) must make a
series of ever-narrowing selections of personal, occupational, social
and ideological commitments.”
 By reflection
 By interacting with others and responding to the reaction of other
people to
them
 Adolescence is the social transition between childhood and adulthood.
 Psychosocial moratorium – a sort of time-out when, where possible, young
people have a chance to explore who they are and what they want to be,
in both the near and distant future. They make decisions about their
marital and vocational futures.
 Role confusion – when the sense of identity is not developed.
Marcia’s identity status approach
 James Marcia (1980, 1994) extended Erikson’s ideas and
develop the identity status approach, which pays
special attention to occupational and ideological aspect of
identity.
 Two dimensions of identity:
 Crisis( or exploration)
 Is the adolescent facing an identity crisis?
 Is the person actively involved personal search among different
identity alternatives?
 Has the person resolved his or her crisis?
 Commitment
 Has the person already made a commitment to a particular
identity?
 Is he or she showing a personal investment in that identity.
Possible identity statuses &
prominent psychological
characteristics
Identity No crisis, Apathy; at risk of drug use; lack of intimate
diffusion no commitment relationships with peers
Identity No crisis, Conformity to authority; rely on others to
foreclosure commitment make important decisions for them
Adolescent does not actually experience
a
personal searching period and choose an
identity, but rather assumes other people’s
occupational and ideological identity.
Identity Crisis, Highly anxious; unhappy; reject authority
moratorium no commitment
Identity Crisis overcome, Socially mature; high in achievement
achievement with commitment motivation; more involved in careers
 People in the diffusion and moratorium
statuses tend to make a commitment, and
move into identity achievement status. Many
adolescent in the foreclosure status, who
experience no crisis, tend to remain in this
state into young adulthood
Factors influencing identity
formation
David Shaffer (2009)
 Level of cognitive development
 Relationship with parents
 Education
 Cultural-historical references
The Development of Ethnic
Identity
Aspects of Ethnic Identity
(Martha Benal & colleagues, 1993)
 Ethnic self-identification – children identify themselves
as a member of their ethnic group.
 Ethnic constancy – children realize that importance
aspects of their ethnic group are constant over time and
situations and that they will always be a member of ethnic
group.
 Ethnic-role behavior – children engage in behaviors or
take on roles that characterize their ethnic group.
 Ethnic knowledge – children became aware that their
ethnic group has certain features, such as customs, types
of food, language, that distinguish it from other groups.
 Ethnic feelings and preferences – children have
positive feelings about and preferences for characteristics
of their ethnic group
 Developing a strong sense of identity show
healthy psychological development for most
adolescents.
 Bicultural identity – the ability of people to
integrate their ethnic identity with that of the
majority culture in which they are living.
II. Children’s
Theory of Mind
Understanding Others
 Public self – the me that other people see
 Private self – the I that represents
 Theory of mind –a person’s concept of mental
activity; used to refer to how children
conceptualize mental activity and how they
attribute intention to and predict the behavior of
others.
 Belief-desire reasoning – the process whereby we
explain and predict what people do based on what
we understand their desires and beliefs to be.
A. Basic Social-Cognitive Skills
Underlying Theory of Mind
Elementary social-cognitive
abilities:
 self-awareness – an ability to differentiate oneself
from other people
 seeing oneselfand other individuals as
intentional agents - individuals who cause things
to happen and whose behavior is designed to
achieve some goal.
 Perspective taking – the ability to take point of
view of others
 Egocentrism – preschoolers’ tendency to assume that
other people see and understand the world as they do.
Share attention (or joint attention)
 Is where two people both attending to the same thing or
even and sharing that experience.
 Is more than a two-way ( or dyadic) relationship, but
involves at least a two people and a third object (which
can be another person) meaning a three-way or
triadic.
 Not something babies come into the world knowing
how to do although they do seemed biased
toward social stimuli from birth.
 By 2 or 3 months (or earlier) they can recognize self-
produced, biological motion and soon turn to look
into the same direction of another person.
B. The Development of Mind
Reading
Mind Reading
 one central skill that is also requires other
than shared attention. It is putting yourself in
another person’s shoes (or mankind), and
trying to figure out what he or she is thinking.
False-Beliefs Tasks
 are the gold standard of mind-reading tasks,
and it is not until about 4 years of age when
children typically solve them.
 A type of task, used in theory-of-the-mind
studies, in which the child must infer that
another person holds a belief that is
false
Solving False-beliefs Tasks
1. Beginning around 9 months of age, infants:
 Will gaze in the direction that adults are looking or pointing
 Engage in repetitive interaction with an adult and an object
 Imitate an adult’s actions
 Point or hold up objects to another person
2. These abilities increase over the second year of life
3. Most 3-year-old children cannot solve the false-belief
tasks; however, they have some understanding that other
people have desires and knowledge different from their
own.
4. Most 4-year-old children can pass false-belief tasks. They
are capable of mind reading (that is adopting others’
perspective and realizing that other people’s feelings,
thoughts, beliefs, and knowledge can be different from
their own)
 Despite the impressive evidence that most 3 year
old children can’t solve false-belief tasks, they
seem to have some understanding that other
people have desires and knowledge different their
own.
 There is some evidence that 2.5 and 3 year old
children can pass standard false-belief tasks, but
only when implicit (unconscious and not
verbalize) as opposed to explicit (available to
conscious awareness and verbalizable) measures
are considered.
Influences on Children’s
Performance on False-belief
Tasks
Factors:
 Attachment
 Parenting styles
 Parent-child communication
 Language skills
 Maternal warmth
 The extent to which mothers use mental state talk
 Executive function
 the basic cognitive abilities involved in planning,
executing, and inhibiting actions
 Children need basic-level information-processing
abilities to regulate their own behavior if they pass
the task.
 3- and 4- year old children’s performance on false-
belief tasks is related to family size and structure
 Specifically having older but not younger sibling is
associated with better theory of mind.
 Sibling always compete with one another with the older
having the advantage, younger children are motivated to
develop their latent talents
 The advanced forms of mind reading are typically
absent or significantly delayed in one particular class
of developmental disability, autism.
Autism
 A developmental disorder characterized by severe social and
communication disabilities.
 Nearly 30 genes associated with autism but no single gene or set
of genes cause autism. One hypothesis is that the genes that
are normally active by neuronal activity after birth malfunction,
resulting in errors in synaptogenesis or other aspects of neural
functioning.
 A part of the brain, the superior temporal sulcus (which is involved
in dynamic processing of emotion), function abnormally in adults
and children with autism when processing social stimuli
 Mind-blindness – or inability to read minds is claimed by Simon
Baron-Cohen (1995, 2005) as the primary deficit of children with
autism
Some Red Flags of Autism
Spectrum Disorder
Impairment in social Lack of appropriate eye gaze
interaction Lack of warm, joyful expressions
Lack of sharing interest or enjoyment
Lack of response to name
Impairment in Lack of showing gestures
communication Lack of coordination of nonverbal
communication
Unusual prosody ( little variation in
pitch, odd intonation, irregular rhythm,
unusual voice quality)

Repetitive behaviors Repetitive movements with objects

and restricted interests Repetitive movements or posturing of
body, arms, hands, o4r fingers
C. Extending Theory of the
Mind
Children’s belief in Fantasy
Children extend their theory-of-
mind abilities to help explain
some natural phenomena not
commonly associated to with
social patterns
 Animism - Preschool tend to treat inanimate
objects as if they were alive
 Promiscuous teleology
 children’s tendency to reason about events and
objects in terms of purpose.
 Deborah Kelemen (2004) use this term to refer
it to such thinking
 Teleology – the tendency to reason about
events in terms of purpose
III. The
Development of
Social
Learning
Social Learning

 Human’s ability to learn from one another that

that permitted our ancestors to attain the
ecological domain to essentially be the master
of all they surveyed.
 The acquisition of social information and
behavior in which one individual comes to
behave similarly to others (Boesch & Tomas,
1998)
A. Types of Social Learning
 Mimicry - the duplication of a behavior without any understanding of
the global of that behavior.
 Emulation - one individual observes another interacting with an object
to achieve a specific goal. The first individual then interacts with the
object attempting to attain the same end but does not duplicate the
same behavior as the model to achieve the goal.
 Imitative learning - reproduction of observed behaviour before to achieve
a specific goal. This requires an understanding of the goal that the model
had in mind, as well as the reproduction of important components out
the observed behavior.
 Teaching (Instructed learning) - actor A modifies his or her behavior only
in the presence of another, actor B, without attaining any immediate
benefits. As a result of encouraging or discourage B's behavior, B
acquires a new skill. To be done effecticely, teachingrequires both the
instructor and studenttake the perspective of the other.
Mirror neurons
 A neuron, found in both monkeys and
humans, that fires both when an individual
observes the same action performed by
another.
B. What kind of Social Learning
Do Children Engage in and
How Does it Develop?
 All culture have religion and a belief in some supernatural being
or power might a believe in supernatural agents be a by Product
of our Developing Symbolic System.
 Deborah Kelemen(2004)-states that as we have just seen, young
children believe that things occurs for a reason ,and they endow
fantasy creature with opinion desires and knowledge.
 Paul Bloom(2004)-argued that children’s distinction between
Social and Nonsocial phenomenon seen early in Infancy ,sets
the stage for humans natural distinction between body and soul.
 Rene-Descartes-the 18th century French Philosopher-status that
distinction referring to nonhuman animals as beast-machine, or
Automata without minds of souls.