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Child Development - A Thematic Approach
, Fifth Edition
Danuta Bukatko - College of the Holy Cross
Marvin W. Daehler - University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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| | Chapter Outline
Chapter 12:
Self and Values
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The concept of self
To study the development of self, researchers find it useful to distinguish between the objective self ("me") and the subjective self ("I").-
Self as object
Self as object, the self-concept, is a collection of traits and characteristics used to define oneself (a form
of self-observation). As part of a self-concept, a child first develops self-recognition, an ability that begins to emerge at about eighteen months of age. By
two years of age, children easily identify pictures of themselves. This self-awareness
may lead to self-conscious emotions such as embarrassment and pride.
In preschoolers self-concept consists of definitions involving categorical self, the classification of oneself in terms of easily observable categories such
as sex and age. By about seven years of age, self-descriptions shift from
categorical activities ("I run fast") to relational statements (comparisons of qualities with others). Thus, during the elementary
school years, social comparison becomes an important factor in defining the self-concept. As children approach
and enter into the adolescent years, they view self in terms of more abstract and increasingly differentiated qualities. They are also able
to view self in terms of multiple and conflicting perspectives. Differences
in self as a result of cultural influences are substantial.
When observing others, young children initially use information from others
to determine what they should be doing rather than to determine how well
they are doing. Young children often overestimate their abilities. As children
increasingly compare themselves to others, their estimates of ability become more realistic. -
Self as subject
A component of the subjective self is the sense of agency, the belief that
one can influence and control one's surroundings. Babies are presumed to be born with effectance motivation, the desire to control the environment. As children mature, they acknowledge
their own efforts and the contributions of others. Some children have the
sense that what happens to them is under their direct control, which provides them with a strong mastery orientation. Other children believe that luck, fate, or other people primarily determine
what happens to them, which may give rise to a sense of learned helplessness. These interpretations about the causes of success and failure are related to notions of possessing stable
entities (that cannot be changed) or malleable traits. When focused on traits
as entities, a child is likely to be concerned about performance on tasks;
when focused on the malleability of traits, a child is more likely to be concerned with learning.
Research Applied to Parenting: Preventing Learned Helplessness
Learned helplessness may arise in an environment where children have little
opportunity to master controllable events and are not provided with appropriate feedback by parents, teachers,
and others to attain mastery. Criticism or praise focused on the child rather
than on the process of learning and problem solving is more likely to contribute
to learned helplessness. Parents can take several steps to reduce the risk of learned helplessness,
including avoiding frequent criticism and punishment of children, encouraging
children to increase their efforts by identifying their positive approaches
to problem solving, attributing poor performance to factors that are temporary rather than
intrinsic to the children, and viewing difficult tasks as opportunities to
learn rather than as tests of ability. Evidence suggests that attribution
retraining programs can help children recognize that they can exert greater control over their own behavior. |
Other components of the subjective self include the senses of individuality,
stability, and reflection. A child's sense of individuality and stability changes throughout childhood. The sense of reflection may not emerge until late adolescence and may form
the basis for distinguishing conscious and unconscious psychological processes. -
Self-esteem: evaluating self
Individuals who evaluate themselves in terms of positive feelings are said to have high levels of self-esteem, or self-worth. By eight years of age children can make global assessments
of their sense of self-worth. However they also evaluate themselves in terms
of competencies for specific domains. Self-esteem depends on the success the child achieves
in a highly regarded domain and the perceived evaluations of parents, peers,
teachers, and others. Children with low self-esteem show greater discrepancies
between their perceived competence and the importance of a domain. Whereas children with high self-esteem
minimize the importance of those domains in which they are not particularly
competent, children with low self-esteem continue to value the domains in
which they lack skill. The young child's overall sense of self-worth may be most heavily influenced by the child's attitudes toward his or her physical appearance during elementary and middle
school; as children get older, social acceptance appears to become more important.
Self-esteem, especially for girls, tends to decline in early adolescence, perhaps
because of the many important transitions taking place at this time in development.
Controversy: Is Praise Always a Good Thing?
Many parents and professionals believe that praising children promotes competent and well-adjusted children.
Praise can act as a motivator and positive reinforcer. However, praise is
also a value judgment. Children may become so concerned with the judgment
that they avoid risk and work only for the praise itself. |
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Identity
The growing sense of self serves as the basis for the construction of an identity, a broad, coherent, internalized view of who a person is and what he or she
wants to be.
Although an identity crisis may occur during adolescence, it is not universal. Conflicts with family
members increase during adolescence and mood changes are likely to be greater
than at other times in development. Cultural factors seem to play a substantial
role in the likelihood of adolescents' experiencing an identity crisis.
Little is known about the development of ethnic identity, the sense of belonging to a specific cultural or ethnic group. Identity with
a minority culture does not appear to lead to conflict, and in general self-esteem is strong among minority children.
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Self-regulation and self-control
As infants develop total dependence on caregivers to having some ability
to be independent, they must learn to monitor and direct their own activities to achieve certain goals (self-regulation) and comply with the expectations of others (self-control).-
Developmental changes
Infants and very young children depend on caregivers to help regulate their behavior (co-regulation). Shortly before their
second birthday, children can respond to parents' verbal instructions on how and when to regulate their behavior. By two years
of age, self-control is self-initiated and children can more efficiently inhibit themselves, as indicated by their performance on delay-of-gratification tasks. -
The influence of language and attention
Lev Vygotsky theorized that language plays a primary role in the regulation of behavior. The verbal requests of others are more effective
in the early preschool years, but with development the child's own private speech becomes effective in controlling behavior. Private speech
is most likely to occur in situations that challenge the child. By the late preschool years, children begin to use
strategies for redirecting attention. -
Individual differences
Stable individual differences in self-regulation have been observed, with some children showing consistent flexibility of behavior when confronting
situations that require flexibility. Individual differences in self-regulation
may be influenced by genetic factors but are also most certainly a result
of socialization practices.
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Moral development
Moral development is the study of the process by which an individual comes
to understand what society accepts as right and wrong.-
Freud's theory
According to Sigmund Freud, the child acquires morality through the process
of identification with the same-sex parent following resolution of the Oedipal
or Electra complex. When the five- or six-year-old identifies with the same-sex
parent, she or he internalizes the parent's moral standards. At this point in psychosexual development, the child's superego emerges; the superego acts as both a conscience (what not to do) and an ego ideal (appropriate and desirable behaviors).
One controversial aspect of Freud's explanation of moral development concerns the claim that girls develop
weaker superegos than boys. In addition, little empirical support exists
for Freud's theory that guilt results in an internalization of moral standards. Children begin to show evidence of moral behavior well before five or six years of age. -
Social learning theory
According to social learning theory, children acquire moral behavior in
the same way they do any other behavior: through the processes of reinforcement and observational learning.
Parents and others either reward or punish the child's behavior as well as provide models for the child to observe and imitate.
Critics of social learning theory point out that this theory does not adequately consider the child's thinking or reasoning about moral issues. Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory has addressed the role of cognitive processes in
the development of morality. -
Cognitive-developmental theories
Piaget suggests that children progress through a series of stages of moral
reasoning as a result of shifts in cognitive ability. Children's understanding of rules progresses from comprehending at about age six that
rules are sacred and cannot be violated to a final stage at about age ten when
they understand that rules are the result of mutual consent among the participants
in a game.
In his research on how children reason about moral dilemmas, Piaget found
that when children are in a stage of moral realism, or heteronomy, they judge an act by the objective and visible consequences
rather than by the intentions of the actor. They also have a belief in immanent justice, the idea that some punishment must follow a transgression. After age ten,
children enter a stage of moral relativism, or autonomy, which is evidenced by their ability to take into account the
motives of the transgressor.
Many of the general aspects of Piaget's theory have been confirmed, but some particulars have been challenged.
For example, not all children show internal consistency in their moral reasoning,
and some very young children can be sensitive to the intentions of a given act.
Kohlberg hypothesized three levels of moral reasoning, with two substages
at each level, that occur in a universal progression. At the preconventional level, the child's behavior is motivated by external pressures, avoiding punishment (stage 1) and gaining rewards (stage 2). At the conventional level, the child is concerned with being good and avoiding the disapproval of others
(stage 3) and not violating rules (stage 4). Finally, at the postconventional level, the child develops an understanding of the basis for laws and rules. The child is concerned with self-respect
and maintaining the social contract (stage 5) and ultimately shows concerns
for general moral principles whether or not they violate the laws of society
(stage 6). Kohlberg emphasized changes in the child's perspective-taking ability as the basis for stage changes in moral reasoning.
Some specific aspects of Kohlberg's theory have not been supported, such as the relationship between perspective-taking
ability and advances in moral reasoning. In addition, Kohlberg's theory may be biased by Western philosophies of moral principles; individuals
from certain other cultures do not reason about some of the dilemmas as individuals
from Western cultures do.
Kohlberg found that most males reason at a higher stage than most females. Carol Gilligan argues that
females develop a morality of care and responsibility in contrast to the morality of justice that describes the more typical pattern of moral reasoning by males. Only
a few studies have found reliable sex differences in the level at which males and females
reason about morality.
Elliot Turiel has proposed that moral development proceeds independently
in several different domains. Turiel believes that the moral domain consists
of rules that regulate the individual's rights or welfare, whereas the societal domain consists of knowledge about social conventions. Turiel has found that children as young as three years make distinctions
among transgressions in the moral domain and the societal domain.
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Prosocial behavior
Prosocial behavior is any positive action performed to benefit others. Altruism is a specific prosocial behavior carried out to benefit others without expectations
of reward.-
The development of prosocial behavior and altruism
Even young infants demonstrate a rudimentary form of empathy, a response to the feelings of others that includes sympathetic concern. By
ten to fourteen months old, children display a wide range of empathic reactions to
the distress of another. Between one and two years of age, children begin
touching or patting the person in distress or seek to provide a comforting
object such as a blanket or toy. Preschoolers are more varied in their empathic responses; they will help the
victim, punish the agent of the child's distress, protect the victim, and ask for adult help. Although some children
show greater empathy with age, others may actually help or share less. Psychologists have found few reliable sex differences in the development
of altruism. A consistent relationship between empathy and helping behavior
is seen when nonverbal measures of empathy are used.
Atypical Development: Conduct Disorders
Conduct disorders are among the most frequent reasons why children are referred
to mental health centers. Children with conduct disorders display a wide
range of unacceptable behaviors, however, their behaviors share the common
problem of violating or seriously disregarding the social and moral values of the community.
Many different factors contribute to the display of conduct disorders. Evidence
exists that among them is the absence or reduction of empathy toward others
in emotionally laden situations. The effectiveness of various therapeutic approaches for dealing
with conduct disorders is mixed. However, one approach that may prove useful
is to promote more empathic understanding in children who display conduct
disorders. |
Using a series of prosocial dilemmas, Nancy Eisenberg found that American
children demonstrate a developmental progression in their prosocial reasoning.
This progression moves from a self-centered concern about the consequences
of prosocial behavior to a more internalized and principled foundation on which prosocial behavior s
initiated. In non-Western cultures where societal norms and values differ,
variations in prosocial reasoning occur.
The child's socialization experiences also influence altruism. Parental reward, either material or social, and parents' own behavior, which provides a model for the child's behavior, are both major factors in the development of altruism. When parents
use induction, that is, reason with children about the consequences of their prosocial behavior or lack thereof, children are encouraged to be empathic
and show more helping behavior. Children whose parents use power assertion (forceful commands or physical punishment) to influence behavior are less
empathic and less altruistic in their behavior. -
Prosocial behavior and academic achievement.
Recent research has shown a link between prosocial behavior and academic
achievement. Children rating themselves as more likely to help others showed higher levels of academic achievement as adolescents. -
Additional factors in prosocial behavior and values
Little research has been conducted to evaluate the influence of religious
education and other social programs on the development of values, even though parents often consider
these programs to have a major impact on moral development. At an early age,
children provided with religious training appear to be able to distinguish
between issues of justice and human welfare and social conventions unrelated to their religious
training.
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