PSYB30H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: 18 Months, Physical Attractiveness, Identity Crisis
Document Summary
Self-concept: the set of ideas and inferences that you hold about yourself, including your traits, social roles, schema, and relationships. Chimpanzees and self-recognition: first 1 or 2 days, chimps act as if reflection in mirror is another chimp. They show other-directed social responses, like they would when meeting a strange chimp in the wild: after that, the chimps began to react with self-directed responses. This indicates that self-recognition must have been learned at some point. Only the great apes like chimps and orangutans can recognize themselves in the mirror. It has been demonstrated in elephants, dolphins, whales, and magpies. Chimps that were taken from their mothers soon after birth and raised in isolation are unable to recognize themselves in the mirror and never become adapted to the reflection. When the chimps were introduced to social situations, they began to show some self-recognition. This indicates that social experience is important is self- recognition.
