The self

• Erikson’s 4th psychosiocial stage of development is industry vs inferiority

  • Occurs in ages 5-13 years

  • Children attempt to find the virtue of competence

    • They may develop self-confidence in abilities when competent and a sense of inferiority when not

  • There is a lot of social comparison at this stage

Self-Understanding

• Self-understanding becomes more complex at this stage

  • Children describe themselves in terms of psychological characteristics and traits

    • Older children are more likely to describe themselves as adjectives such as “I am… popular, nice, helpful, mean, smart, and dumb.”

  • They’re also more likely to recognize social aspects of the self

    • E.g. referring to themselves as a Girl Scout, or a Dustdevil [member of a sports team].

  • Children now think about what they can do in comparison with others

Understanding Others

• There is an increased capacity for perspective thinking - envisioning another person’s perspective and understanding their thoughts and feelings

• It is especially important in determining whether children develop prosocial or antisocial attitudes and behaviors

  • Prosocial - are more likely to understand and sympathize with others when they are distressed or in need

  • Antisocial - are more likely to have difficulty in peer relations, to engage in more aggressive and oppositional behavior, and to be reluctant to give to others

Self-Concept

• Self-concept - an organized collection of beliefs about the self

  • These beliefs are also called self-schemas and include personality traits, abilities, physical features, values, goals, & social roles

• Self-concepts are domain-specific evaluations

  • Child, sibling, friend, student, athlete, etc

Self-Esteem

• one of the functions of self-concepts is to evaluate the self. The result of this evaluation is termed self-esteem.

• Self-esteem refers to one’s overall assessment of one’s worth as a person

  • Refers to a global self-evaluation that does not always match reality

    • High: confident, take credit for their success, seek venues to demonstrate their skills, less discouraged by failures (tend to show initiative to keep practicing); self-concept is more stable

    • Low: confused and more tentative, experience emotional highs and lows; slef-concept is less clear and more susceptible to fluctuations

• The belief that one can master a situation and produce favorable outcomes iss called self-efficacy.

Emotional development

• the things

  • Improved emotional udnerstanding

  • Increased understanding that more than one emotion can be experiences in a particular situation (e.g., bittersweet, happiness, anxiety)

  • Increased awareness of the events leading to emotional reactions

  • Capacity for genuine empathy

  • Use of self-strategies for redirecting feelings

• Emotional regulation is characterized by deliberate efforts to manage one’s behaviors, emotions, and thoughts.

Moral Development

• older children have autonomous morality; they consider the intentions of individuals, believe rules are subject to change, and are aware that punishment does not always follow wrongdoing.

Moral personality

• Moral personality - a pattern of moral characteristics that is distinctively one’s own

• People with moral identity construct the self with reference to moral categories

  • Violating moral commitment places their integrity at risk

• People with moral character have the willpower, desire, and integrity to stand up to pressure and overcome distractions

  • They display honesty, truthfulness, trustworthiness, compassion, dependability, loyalty, and conscientiousness.

Gender in Context

• gender stereotypes are broad categories that reflect general impressions and beliefs about males and females

  • Masculine traits: risk taker, dominant, aggressive, forceful, outspoken

  • Feminine traits: affectionate, understanding, gentle, reserved

• The traits people display may vary with the situation; the nature and extent of gender differences may depend on context

• Example helping behavior

  • Women are more likely to volunteer their time to help a child with a personal problem or engage in caregiving behavior

  • Men are more likely to help if the situation poses a sense of competence or involves danger (helping a person stranded by the roadside in the middle of the night).

Parent-child relationships

• At this stage…

  • Parents spend less time with children

  • Parents influence in-school achievement and children’s participation in sports, music, or other extracuirricular activities

  • Parents use fewer physical forms of punishment as children age

    • The psychological effects tend to remain through adulthood

• Parents as managers:

  • Manage children’s opportunities

  • Monitor their behavior

  • Initiate and arrange social interactions

Peer Relations

• Peer interactions are especially important in middle and late childhood.

  • Engaging in positive interactions with peers

  • Resolving conflicts in nonaggressive ways

  • Maintaining quality friendships

• Time spent in social interaction with peers increases from approximately 10% at 2 years of age, to more than 30% in middle and late childhood

Peer Status

• Sociometric status describes the extent to which children are liked or disliked by their peer group

Bullying

• As the size of peer groups and the frequency of social iteractions increase, these become less closely supervised by adults.

• Bullying is any verbal or physical behavior intended to distrub some percieved as less powerful.

  • Gender and age are both risk factors to consider

    • Boys and younger middle school students re most likley to be affected

  • Webb et. at. (2021) reported that in a study of 30k children, 20% had experienced peer bullying in school, and 15% had experienced cyberbullying

• Outcomes:

  • Low self-esteem, isolation tendencies, depression, suicidal ideation, and attempted suicide.

Friends

• friendships are an important aspect of children’s development, and they can serve six functions:

  • Companionship - provides child with a familiar partner and playmate, someone willing to spend time with them

  • Stimulation - provides child with interesting information, excitement, and amusement

  • Physical support- provides resources and assistant

  • Ego support - provides expectation of support, encouragement, and feedback; helps maintain a self-vie of being competent, attractive, and worthwhile.

  • Social comparison - provides a warm, close, trusting relationship with another individual; a safe space to self-disclose and share private thoughts.