Children’s Construction of the Self Across Contexts, People, and Time

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

How do children construct an understanding of the self, and how does this developing understanding vary across contexts, people, and time? The four talks in this symposium investigate these questions using a range of methods with samples from preschool to adolescence.

On the one hand, young children often believe that their own preferences (but not those of others) are immutable, especially if those current preferences are strong (Talk 1). Yet, in reality, children’s values and preferences are quite sensitive to particular social contexts, and to the values held by others. Children’s socio-political values come to mirror those of their parents by age 6, although children are not explicitly aware of this relation (Talk 2). Likewise, adolescents’ day-to-day self-concepts are shaped by perceptions of parents’ and peers’ conditional regard for them. The more adolescents perceive other people’s valuing them to depend on their meeting these people’s expectations, the lower adolescents’ self-esteem and self-authenticity on that day (Talk 3). However, even by age three, children are capable of actively managing others’ expectations and perceptions of the self. Preschoolers track different people’s beliefs and actively navigate situations to uphold other people’s inflated beliefs about them (Talk 4).

Collectively, these findings offer novel insights into how children reason about the self and navigate other people’s perceptions of them. Although children perceive their self-concepts to be quite stable, children’s self-concepts are in fact dynamic: varying across contexts, in relation to different people, and over time.

Sub Unit

• Social, Emotional, Personality

Chair

• Isobel A Heck, University of Chicago

Individual Presentations

• The Peter Pan effect: Why children believe their preferences won’t change as they age - Presenting Author: Christina Starmans, University of Toronto

• Intergenerational relations between parents’ and children’s authoritarian values - Presenting Author: Isobel A Heck, University of Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Molly C Gibian, University of Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Sarah Elizabeth Gaither, Duke Univeristy; Non-Presenting Author: Vivian Zayas, Cornell University; Non-Presenting Author: Katherine D. Kinzler, University of Chicago

• Do You Value Me for Who I Really Am? Daily Experiences of Conditional Regard in Adolescence - Presenting Author: Eddie Brummelman, Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA); Non-Presenting Author: Hae Yeon Lee, Stanford University; Non-Presenting Author: Carol S Dweck, Stanford University

• Young children’s ability to rationally revise and maintain others’ beliefs about the self - Presenting Author: Mika Asaba, Yale University; Non-Presenting Author: Hyowon Gweon, Stanford University