Discovering the Self: Social and Personality Development in Middle Childhood

1. Chapter 10 SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

2. Learning Objectives

3. THE DEVELOPING SELF

4. Who Am I? During middle childhood, children begin to view themselves: • Less in terms of external physical attributes • More in terms of psychological traits

5. Psychosocial Development in Middle Childhood Success in the industry-versus-inferiority stage brings with it feelings of mastery and proficiency and a growing sense of competence • Industry = feelings of mastery and proficiency and a growing sense of competence • Inferiority = feelings of failure and inadequacy

6. Erik Erikson's middle childhood • Encompasses the INDUSTRY-VERSUS­INFERIORITY STAGE • Period from ages 6 to 12 years of age • Characterized by a focus on efforts to attain competence in meeting the challenges related to: • Parents • Peers • School • Other complexities of the modern world

7. Understanding One's Self: A New Response to “Who Am I?” How do school-agers change? • Children realize they are good at some things and not so good at others • Self-concept and self-esteem continue to develop • Children's self-concepts become divided into personal and academic spheres

8. Looking Inward: The Development of Self As children get older, their views of self become more differentiated, comprising several personal and academic spheres. What cognitive changes make this possible? (Source: Based on Shavelson, Hubner, & Stanton, 1976.)

9. Social Comparison Children use social comparison to themselves to abilities, expertise, and opinions of others Festinger (1959) • When objective measures are absent children rely on social reality • How others act, think, feel, and view the world

10. Sometimes… Children Make Downward Social Comparisons • With others who are: • Less competent • Less successful • To raise or protect their self-esteem

11. Self-Esteem: Developing a Positive-or Negative-View of the Self Develops in important ways during middle childhood • Children increasingly compare themselves to others • Children are developing their own standards • For most children self-esteem improves in middle childhood

12. Change and Stability in Self-Esteem Generally, overall self-esteem is high during middle childhood, but it begins to decline around the age of 12 • School transition • Chronically low self-esteem for some

13. A Cycle of Low Self-Esteem

14. Breaking the Cycle of Failure • Promoting development of self-esteem • Using authoritative child-rearing style Why do you think this style is recommended?

15. Race and Self-Esteem Early research found that African Americans had lower self-esteem than whites • More recent research shows these early assumptions to be overstated • African Americans • Hispanic Americans • Asian Americans

16. Why Does This Occur? Social Identity Theory • Members of a minority group accept negative views held by majority group only if they perceive little realistic possibility of changing power and status differences between groups

17. Are Children of Immigrant Families Well Adjusted? • Tend to have equal or better grades than children with US born parents • Often more highly motivated to succeed and place greater value on education than do children in nonimmigrant families • Show similar levels of self-esteem to nonimmigrant children • Report feeling less popular and less in control of their lives

18. Moral Development: Kohlberg • Proposes series of fixed stages in development of moral reasoning • Uses moral dilemmas to assess moral reasoning • Provides good account of moral judgment but not adequate at predicting moral behavior

19. Kohlberg Stages

20. Kohlberg Criticisms • Based solely on observations of members of Western cultures • Theory initially based largely on data from males

21. MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN GIRLS

22. Carol Gilligan • Way boys and girls raised leads to differences in moral reasoning • Suggests Kohlberg's theory inadequate and places girls’ moral reasoning at lower level than boys’

23. Gilligan's Stages of Morality in Girls

24. Review and Apply

25. Review and Apply

26. Review and Apply

27. RELATIONSHIPS: BUILDING FRIENDSHIP IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

28. Friends in Middle Childhood • Provide emotional support and help kids to handle stress • Teach children how to manage and control their emotions • Teach about communication with others • Foster intellectual growth • Allow children to practice relationship skills

29. Damon's Stages of Friendship

30. Damon's Stages of Friendship

31. Damon's Stages of Friendship

32. Likes me…likes me not!

33. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN’S FRIENDSHIP

34. King or Queen of the Hill…Status Hierarchies • Children's friendships show clear hierarchies in terms of status • Status is the evaluation of a role or person by other relevant members of a group

35. High Status Children • Form friendships with high status children • More likely to form exclusive and desirable cliques • Tend to play with a greater number of children • Have greater access to resources such as games, toys, books, and information

36. Popular Children

37. Social Problem-Solving and Information Processing

38. Low Status Children • Form friendships with other lower status children • Tend to play with a lower number of children than higher status children • Are more likely to play with younger or less popular children • Tend to follow the lead of higher status children

39. Unpopular Children

40. Unpopular Children Lack of popularity may take two forms Neglected children • Receive relatively little attention from their peers in the form of either positive or negative interaction Rejected children • Are actively disliked and their peers may react to them in an obviously negative manner

41. Teaching Social Competence Several programs teach children set of social skills that underlie general social competence • Before we review these, take a few minutes to visit with a classmate about what kind of program would best enhance social competence. • Report to the class.

42. Schoolyard-and Cyber-Yard-Bullies At school • 160,000 U.S. schoolchildren stay home from school each day because they are afraid of being bullied • Almost 85 percent of girls and 80 percent of boys report experiencing some form of harassment in school at least once • Others encounter bullying on the Internet, which may be even more painful because often the bullying is done anonymously or may involve public postings

43. Schoolyard-and Cyber-Yard-Bullies The bully • About 10 to 15 percent of students bully others at one time or another • About half of all bullies come from abusive homes • Bullies tend to watch more television containing violence, and they misbehave more at home and at school than do • nonbullies • When their bullying gets them into trouble, they may try to lie their way out of the situation, and they show little remorse for their victimization of others

44. Bully School-bullied • Some 90 percent of middle-school students report being bullied at some point in their time at school, beginning as early as the preschool years • Characteristics • Loners who are fairly passive • Often cry easily • Lack the social skills that might otherwise defuse a bullying situation

45. Reducing Bullying • One of the most effective ways to reduce the incidence of bullying is through school programs that enlist and involve students • For example, schools can train students to intervene when they see an instance of bullying, rather than watching passively • Empowering students to stand up for victims has been shown to reduce bullying significantly

46. Gender and Friendships: The Sex Segregation of Middle Childhood

47. Boyfriend, girlfriend…any friend? • Avoidance of opposite sex becomes very pronounced during middle childhood • Children's friendships are almost entirely sex-segregated • When sexes interact it is called “border work,” is often romantic, and helps emphasize clear boundaries between sexes

48. Boys and Friendship

49. Girls and Friendships

50. Are friendships color-blind?