PSY 1200 Lecture : Chapter 11
28 May 2023
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1 The Self
Theorists and researchers who focus on the self usually argue that the self is the
central aspect of the individual’s personality and that the self lends an integrative
dimension to our understanding of different personality characteristics
(Cloninger, 2019; Crocker & Brummelman, 2019; Vater, Moritz, & Roepke,
2018). Several aspects of the self have been studied more than others. These
include self-understanding, self-esteem, and self-concept. Let’s now turn our
attention to how these aspects of the self develop across the life span.
SELF-
UNDERSTANDING AND
UNDERSTANDING
OTHERS
What is self-understanding? Self-understanding is the cognitive
representation of the self, the substance of self-conceptions. For
example, an 11-year-old boy understands that he is a student, a boy, a
football player, a family member, a video game lover, and a rock music
fan. A 13-year-old girl understands that she is a middle school student, in
the midst of puberty, a girl, a soccer player, a student council member,
and a movie fan. Self-understanding is based, in part, on roles and
membership categories (Harter, 2012, 2013, 2016). It provides the
underpinnings for the development of identity. How does self-
understanding develop across the life span?
Infancy
Studying the self in infancy is difficult mainly because infants cannot tell
us how they experience themselves. Infants cannot verbally express their
views of the self. They also cannot understand complex instructions from
researchers.
A rudimentary form of self-recognition—being attentive and positive
toward one’s image in a mirror—appears as early as 3 months of age
(Mascolo & Fischer, 2007). However, a central, more complete index of
self-recognition—the ability to recognize one’s physical features—does
not emerge until the second year (Thompson, 2006).
One ingenious strategy to test infants’ visual self-recognition is the use of
a mirror technique, in which an infant’s mother puts a dot of rouge on
the infant’s nose and then an observer watches to see how often the
infant touches its nose. Next, the infant is placed in front of a mirror, and
observers detect whether nose touching increases. Why does this matter?
The idea is that increased nose touching indicates that the infant
recognizes the self in the mirror and is trying to touch or rub off the
rouge because the rouge violates the infant’s view of the self. Increased
touching indicates that the infant realizes that it is the self in the mirror
but that something is not right since the real self does not have a dot of
rouge on it.
Figure 1 displays the results of two investigations that used the mirror
technique. The researchers found that before they were 1 year old,
infants did not recognize themselves in the mirror (Amsterdam, 1968;
Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979). Signs of self-recognition began to appear
among some infants when they were 15 to 18 months old. By the time
they were 2 years old, most children recognized themselves in the
mirror. In sum, infants begin to develop a self-understanding called self-
recognition at approximately 18 months of age (Hart & Karmel, 1996).
FIGURE 1THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-RECOGNITION IN INFANCY. The
graph shows the findings of two studies in which infants less than 1 year of age
did not recognize themselves in the mirror. A slight increase in the percentage
of infant self-recognition occurred around 15 to 18 months of age. By 2 years of
age, a majority of children recognized themselves. Why do researchers study
whether infants recognize themselves in a mirror?
Photo: Digital Vision/Getty Images
In one study, biweekly assessments from 15 to 23 months of age were
conducted (Courage, Edison, & Howe, 2004). Self-recognition gradually
emerged over this time, first appearing in the form of mirror recognition,
followed by use of the personal pronoun “me” and then by recognizing a
photo of themselves. These aspects of self-recognition are often referred
to as the first indications of toddlers’ understanding of the mental state
of “me”—“that they are objects in their own mental representation of the
world” (Lewis, 2005, p. 363).Page 355
Late in the second year and early in the third year, toddlers show other
emerging forms of self-awareness that reflect a sense of “me” (Laible &
Thompson, 2007). For example, they refer to themselves by saying “Me
big”; they label internal experiences such as emotions; they monitor
themselves, as when a toddler says, “Do it myself”; and they say that
things are theirs (Bullock & Lutkenhaus, 1990; Fasig, 2000). One study
revealed that it is not until the second year that infants develop a
conscious awareness of their own bodies (Brownell & others, 2009). This
developmental change in body awareness marks the beginning of
children’s representation of their own three-dimensional body shape and
appearance, providing an early step in the development of their self-
image and identity (Brownell, 2009).
The development of the self in infants and toddlers does not occur in a
social vacuum (Thompson, 2015). Interactions with caregivers, older
siblings, and others support the development of the self in infants and
toddlers. Through labeling and describing physical aspects and internal
