Personality development in an expanding social world PDF

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Self-concept is very useful for understanding development during middle childhood, as it interacts with personality and social behavior. The child forms an increasingly stable image of himself, and his self-concept becomes more realistic. He knows his skills and limitations better, and uses that kno...

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PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT IN AN EXPANDING SOCIAL WORLD

Introduction How does personality develop and change during middle childhood? Again, the answer depends on our theoretical perspective. How we will describe the application to this stage of psychodynamic theories, cognitive development and social learning. We will then focus on how the incipient sense of self interacts with personality development. Three theories of self-concept in middle childhood Freud described middle childhood as a period of dormancy. For him, the period between six and 12 years is a period in which jealousy and family problems (as well as sexual impulses) remain latent. If so, the child could direct their emotional energy to peer relationships, creative activities, and learning the roles prescribed by the culture at school or in the community. However, Freud had much less to say about the latency period (and the adolescent's subsequent genital period) than he did about the first six or seven years of life. Thus, it was up to Erikson to expand his ideas and formulate a more complete theory. But, unlike Freud, Erikson highlighted the psychosocial factors of personality development. Erikson proposed that the conflict of industriousness versus inferiority is the essential part of middle childhood. Under the impetus of formal instruction, much of the child's energy and time is concentrated on acquiring new knowledge and skills. The child can now better channel his or her energy into learning, problem solving and achievement. When he succeeds in school, he incorporates into his self-image the sense of industriousness: he realizes that the effort produces results and continues to advance in the domain of the environment. On the contrary, the child who does not achieve academic mastery begins to feel inferior to his peers. This feeling of inferiority can be part of your personality throughout your life. However, not being successful in school work can be compensated by the fact that you achieve it in other appreciated activities such as sports, music or art. The second approach — the theory of cognitive development — has increasingly been applied to personality and social development. Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, for example, have written much about the development of self-concept and morality in the child—ideas about equity and justice, right and wrong, right and wrong. Other researchers have focused on the importance of the child's selfconcept as a determinant of their behavior.

Finally, the theory of social learning has made important contributions to the knowledge of how some behaviors are learned in the family and in the group of peers. During middle childhood, peers increasingly play the role of role models and reinforce or punish behavior. The three theoretical approaches combine and help us understand the socialization of the child within his culture during middle childhood. It changes the way they interact with peers, adults, and family members: the impatient four-yearold becomes a co-op boy of eight, who in turn will later be the rebel of 13. None of the three theories fully explains social development during middle childhood, but together they give us a more complete picture. The self-concept Self-concept is very useful for understanding development during middle childhood, as it interacts with personality and social behavior. The child forms an increasingly stable image of himself, and his self-concept becomes more realistic. He knows his skills and limitations better, and uses that knowledge he has of himself to organize his behavior. As you grow older, more complex images of your physical, intellectual, and personality characteristics form, as well as the characteristics of others. He attributes to himself, and also to others, increasingly specific traits —stable personality characteristics. He strives to behave congruently and expects the same from others. The children compare themselves to others their own age (Marsh and others, 1991) and come to this conclusion: "I'm better than Susana in sports, but I'm not as good at math as Alberto" or "Maybe I'm not as pretty as Rebecca, but I'm better than her at making friends." In turn, this incipient self-concept offers a kind of "filter" with which it evaluates its behavior and that of others (Harter, 1982). However, the initial self-concept is not always objective. For example, first-graders tend to have more positive perceptions of their competition in areas such as sports than older boys (Eccles, 1993). During the primary school period, children learn gender stereotypes, improve their personal preferences and become more flexible (Serbin and others, 1993). Self-esteem Unlike the self-concept that tells us who we are and what we can do, self-esteem incorporates an evaluative element; it indicates whether we see ourselves in a positive or negative light. High self-esteem means that we are happy with ourselves and often feel competent in our social and other abilities; low selfesteem means that we are not happy with ourselves and that we feel incompetent. Like self-concept, self-esteem originates in the preschool period and is influenced by the child's experiences of success and failure, as well as interactions withparents. During the school stage, self-esteem has a significant correlation with

academic performance. Children who succeed in school show higher self-esteem than those who do not (Alpert-Gillis and Connell, 1989). However, the correlation between self-esteem and academic achievement is far from perfect. Many children who do not perform well in school manage to gain a healthy respect for themselves. If they come from a culture or subculture in which school is not considered important, their self-esteem may not be related to academic achievement. Depending on the treatment they receive from their parents and the opinion their friends have of them, those who are not good at an activity such as sports may find other areas in which to stand out. The child's selfesteem is deeply influenced by the fact that the family, peers and the immediate community have a good opinion of the child. This is how African Americans manage to acquire healthy self-esteem even though they often suffer from the racial prejudice of society at large (Spencer, 1988). The acquisition of self-esteem is a circular process. Children tend to succeed in life if they are sure of their abilities: success then strengthens and increases their selfesteem. Similarly, a "vicious circle" can be established when their performance is unsatisfactory due to lack of self-esteem; due to poor performance, their selfesteem tends to decline even further. In general, personal successes or failures drive them to see themselves as leaders or followers, as champions or losers. However, fortunately many children who start their lives with social or academic deficits in the long run end up finding something they know how to do well and thus reverse the process. Many teachers turn to praise to build self-esteem in their students. Praise is very useful when used sparingly and awarded only to legitimate achievements. But when it occurs in excess without a convenient link to achievement, it can prevent children from objectively recognizing their weaknesses and qualities. Students may begin to think, "I'm great no matter what I do." This attitude creates confusion and problems in peer relationships and at school (Damon and Hart, 1992), and causes frustration when achievements do not correspond to expectations. In recent years, researchers have begun to warn us that when children are told that the most important thing in life is their concept of themselves, they hear the implicit message that they are the center of the universe, which prevents them from overcoming selfcenteredness. Moreover, critics claim that, if they receive too much praise, they fail to distinguish between good and evil. For example, they sometimes deny having committed misdeeds even if they are caught in fraganti, as they are convinced of their integrity (Damon, 1991). Knowledge and social reasoning Elementary school children must adapt to the subtleties of friendship and authority, antagonistic or expanding gender roles, as well as many social norms and norms. One way to do this is what we might call "direct socialization" by parents and teachers: rewarding right behavior and punishing wrong behavior. Another way is

to look at models and imitate them. Generally speaking, conditioning and learning by observation contribute a lot to helping them to know good and evil. Children also get to know the world through psychodynamic processes. They acquire feelings of anxiety in certain situations and then learn the defense mechanisms to reduce anxiety. Social cognition is an indispensable element of socialization during middle childhood: thinking, knowledge, and understanding related to the world of self in social interactions. Cognitive developmental theory shifts emphasis to what the child thinks partly as a result of reward, punishment, observation, and psychodynamics, but also because of what the child resolves for himself. We will first examine how social cognition is acquired during middle childhood and then review its links to the emergence of moral reasoning. Development of social cognition Social cognition becomes an increasingly important factor in behavior during middle childhood and adolescence. The child begins to observe his social world and gradually understands the principles and rules that govern him (Ross, 1981). Theorists of social cognition think that all knowledge—whether scientific, social, or personal—occurs in an organized system or structure and not in a set of disjointed fragments. The child's knowledge of the world does not develop in a fragmentary way; on the contrary, the child tries to interpret his experiences as an organized whole. Preschool's knowledge of the world is limited by self-centeredness. In middle childhood, the child gradually shows a less self-centered interest that takes into account what others think and feel. A primary component of social cognition is social inference, that is, conjectures and assumptions about what another person feels, thinks, or proposes (Flavell, 1985; Flavell and others, 1993). For example, a toddler hears his mother laugh and assumes she is happy. An adult might hear something forced into the mother's laughter and infer, therefore, that she is covering up her sadness. Although young children cannot make complex inferences, at age six they often deduce whether someone else's thoughts are not the same as their own. By the age of eight they realize that we can reflect on someone else's thoughts. By the age of 10, they infer that someone else is thinking and that the object of these cavilations are the child's thoughts. A child might think "John is angry with me and knows I know he's angry." The accuracy of social inference is achieved gradually at the end of adolescence (Shantz, 1983). A second component of social cognition is knowledge of social responsibility. Little by little, children accumulate information and knowledge about the obligations of friendship (including equity and loyalty), respect for authority and the concepts of legality and justice. A third component is the understanding of social norms such as customs and conventions. Many customs are initially learned mechanically or by

imitation and then applied rigidly. Later, the child becomes more flexible and reflective when it comes to accepting the customs of his culture. Piaget's ideas on moral reasoning and judgment Over the years, children learn somehow to distinguish between good and evil, between kindness and cruelty, generosity and selfishness. A mature moral judgment involves more than mechanical learning of social rules and conventions. It requires making decisions about good and evil. How children learn morality is the subject of much discussion. Social learning theorists argue that conditioning and learning by observation are the primary means. In the opinion of psychodynamic theorists, morality is born as a defense against anxiety and shame. According to cognitive theorists, morality, like intellectual development, is acquired in progressive stages that are related to age. Here we will explain this approach. Piaget defined morality as an individual's respect for the rules of social order and as the sense of justice, which consists of taking an interest in reciprocity and equality among individuals (see Hoffman, 1970). According to Piaget (1965), the child's moral sense comes from the interaction between his incipient structures of thought and his gradually increasing social experience. The moral sense develops in two stages. In the stage of moral realism (at the beginning of middle childhood) the child thinks that all rules are to be obeyed as if they were set in stone. For him they are real things, indestructible and not abstract principles. For example, games must be conducted with strict adherence to the rules. At this stage, the child also judges the morality of an act from its consequences, and is unable to judge intentions. Thus, a toddler will think that the child who accidentally breaks 12 dishes while putting on the table is more to blame than one who intentionally smashes a plate out of sheer anger. Towards the end of middle childhood one reaches the stage of moral relativism. Now the child understands that individuals cooperatively create and accept rules and that these are susceptible to change when necessary. This knowledge allows the child to realize that there is no absolute good or evil and that morality is not based on consequences, but on intentions. Kohlberg's six-stage theory Lawrence Kohlberg (1981, 1984) extended Piaget's two-stage theory of moral judgment to six stages. In formulating his theory, he presented the subjects (children, adolescents, and adults) with stories with moral problems and then asked them questions about them to discover the kinds of reasoning they used. The main character of each story faced an ethical dilemma that the interviewee had to solve. Here's a classic example:

In Europe, a woman was about to die of a special class of cancer. There was a drug that, in the opinion of the doctors, could save her. It was a form of radio that a pharmacist from the same town had just discovered. Its preparation was very expensive, but the pharmacist charged 10 times more than it cost him to make it. He paid $200 for the radio and sold a small dose for $2,000. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, turned to all of his friends for a loan, but was only able to raise $1,000, which was half the cost of the drug. He told the pharmacist that his wife was dying and asked her to sell her cheaper or to allow her to pay for it later. But he received the answer: "No. I discovered the drug and I want to make money from it." Heinz felt hopeless; at night he entered the pharmacy and stole it for hiswife. Did Heinz do well to steal? What do you think? Why do you think that? Was the pharmacist right to charge much more than the drug was worth? Explain your answer. The subjects' answers to the above questions revealed that moral reasoning unfolds in an orderly and phased manner. Kohlberg defined three general levels: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional moral reasoning. Each level is further subdivided into two stages. Note the two interrelated trends that characterize progress through the six stages: 1) At first the reasoning is based on external consequences and later on internalized moral principles; 2) at first the reasoning is highly concrete and later very abstract. Kohlberg's theory was corroborated in research in which it was found that children, at least Westerners, generally go through the stages in the predicted order. Kohlberg and his colleagues gained considerable support for their theory from a longitudinal study of 48 children conducted over 20 years (Colby et al., 1983). Kohlberg's theory, however, has raised many objections. Researchers have pointed out how difficult it is to rigorously follow their procedures and agree on how to rate the child's response to the test (Rubin and Trotten, 1977). Others have attacked the theory on the basis of moral absolutism: it disdains important cultural differences that determine what is considered ethical or not in a culture (Baumrind, 1978; Wainryb, 1995; Carlo and others, 1996). Kohlberg himself (1978) admitted the need to take into account the social and moral norms of the group to which the subject belongs. In particular, it concluded that the sixth stage of moral development might not apply to members of all cultures. Kohlberg's theory presents other weaknesses (Power and Reimer, 1978). Her research evaluates moral attitudes and not ethical conduct; there can be a big difference between reflecting on moral issues and observing ethical behavior. Here's an example: in almost every culture, stealing is bad and honesty is highly appreciated. The reader is, of course, an honest person. Suppose you see a passerby dropping a 25-cent coin. You pick it up and give it to you. Suppose it's a 10-note. You would do the same, right? Suppose you drop a wad of 100 notes, which does not distinguish the passerby well, who has already turned the corner

and there is no one in sight. Be very honest and think about what you would do. Ask yourself what a poor but honest person would do if she lived in a very marginalized neighborhood. Moral decisions are not made in a vacuum; on the contrary, they are often adopted in "crisis situations". However noble our ethical principles may be, conduct does not always reflect our thoughts or convictions when it comes time to comply with them. Gilligan's alternative approach Carol Gilligan (1982) proposed that, because Kohlberg based his theory entirely on interviews with male subjects, he did not consider the possibility of moral development taking place differently in women and men. In other words, she accused him of sexual bias, noting that women's responses to Kohlberg's moral dilemmas almost always place them at a lower level in his model. According to Gilligan, the difference is because men and women apply different criteria when making a moral judgment. In the traditional culture of the United States and other countries, men and women are taught from an early age to appreciate different qualities. Males are educated to seek independence and appreciate abstract thought. Instead, women are taught to be affectionate and caring, and to appreciate human relationships. Gilligan thinks there are two types of moral reasoning. One is fundamentally based on the concept of justice, the other on human relationships and interest in others. The former characterizes male thought and the latter is more common in female thought. The traditional man concentrates on rights, while the traditional woman considers moral problems based on her interest in the needs of others. However, Gilligan clarifies that the gender differences in moral reasoning (as in the rest of these dissimilarities) are not absolute. Some women make moral judgments from the point of view of justice and some men do so from a perspective of interest in the people. Gilligan's subjects were primarily adolescents and young adults of both sexes. Other researchers have studied younger children without discovering sexual differences in the moral judgment made by children under the age of 10. However, some 10- or 11-year-olds give rather aggressive answers to test questions — the kind of answers that girls rarely give. For example, in one studio they heard a story about a porcupine that, because it needed a house for the winter, was going to live with a family of moles. Soon they realized that the barbed was stinging them at all times. What should they do? Only children used to answer "Kill the porcupine with bullets" or "Take away the barbs." Girls tended to look for solutions that did not hurt either moles or porcupine, i.e., solutions that concerned the well-being of both (Garrod and others, 1989).

Eisenberg's approach In the view of Nancy Eisenberg (1989a, 1989b), Kohlberg's mistake was not to attach too much importance to abstract justice, but rather to make the stages very rigid and absolute. Their argument holds that the child's moral development...