Early Childhood Development: Self-Concept and Identity

Components of Identity

• Career, political views, religious beliefs, relationships, ethnic identity, personality, and body image are components of identity.

Self-Concept

• Self-concept is the perception about oneself, including traits, preferences, social roles, values, beliefs, interests, and self-categorization.
• Self-understanding develops throughout the lifespan.

Self-Awareness in Infancy

• Infants recognize themselves in mirrors at 15-18 months.
• The dot-of-rouge experiment demonstrates self-awareness in infants.
• Infants learn to differentiate their physical self from the environment.

The Developing Sense of Self

• Infants have a basic sense of self in the first few months of life.
• By 8 months, infants have a distinct sense of self.
• By 18-20 months, infants respond to separation from caregivers with distress.
• By 30 months, most children recognize their own photograph.
• By 2 years old, children exhibit embarrassment, shame, and self-assertive behavior.

Self in Early Childhood

• Children have a confusing sense of self, mind, and body.
• Children describe themselves using concrete, physical descriptions.
• Children overestimate their abilities.

Self in Middle & Late Childhood

• Children shift to internal traits and abilities.
• Children internalize others' attitudes toward themselves.
• Children develop perspective-taking abilities (Selman, 1980).

Perspective Taking

• Perspective-taking is the ability to assume another's perspective.
• This ability develops through stages (Selman, 1980).
• Children who are good at perspective-taking are popular.

Self in Adolescence

• Adolescents have an abstract and idealistic sense of self.
• Adolescents are self-conscious and preoccupied.
• Adolescents experience contradictions within themselves.

Self in Adulthood

• Adults develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
• Adults accept their good and bad qualities.
• Adults evaluate their successes and failures through life review.

Self-Concept (Bandura, Erikson, Rogers)

• Self-concept consists of self-worth, ideal self, and self-efficacy.
• Self-worth encompasses meaning, purpose, and living up to one's identity and destiny.

Ideal Self

• The ideal self is the kind of person one would like to be.
• The ideal self has intellectual, emotional, and bodily aspects.

Self-Efficacy (Bandura)

• Self-efficacy is the confidence in one's ability to exert control over motivation, behavior, and social environment.
• Self-efficacy develops as people become competent in particular skills and situations.
• Self-efficacy is situation-specific.