PSYC 2315: CH. 11- The Self, Identity, and Personality

Self-esteem

The global evaluative dimension of the self. Self-esteem is also referred to as self-worth or self-image. -For example, a person may perceive that she or he is not merely a person but a good person. Of course, not all people have an overall positive image of themselves. -self-esteem refers to global self-evaluations,

Self-understanding

The individual's 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 -It provides the underpinnings for the development of identity.

identity versus identity confusion

Erikson's fifth stage of development, which occurs during the adolescent years; adolescents are faced with finding out who they are, what they are all about, and where they are going in life. -Erikson maintains that adolescents face an over-whelming number of choices. As they gradually come to realize that they will be responsible for themselves and their own lives, adolescents search for what those lives are going to be.

Family Processes

Individuality and connectedness

Levinson's Seasons of a Man's Life by Levinson

reported the results of extensive interviews with 40 middle-aged men. The interviews were conducted with hourly workers, business executives, academic biologists, and novelists. Levinson bolstered his conclusions with information from the biographies of famous men and the development of memorable characters in literature.

narrative identity

"refers to the stories people construct and tell about themselves to define who they are for themselves and others. Beginning in adolescence and young adult-hood, our narrative identities are the stories we live by"

What are some good strategies for increas-ing self-esteem? Five ways to improve self-esteem are:

(1) identify the causes of low self-esteem and the domains of competence important to the self, (2) provide emotional support and opportunities for social approval, (3) take responsibility for one's own self-esteem, (4) achieve goals, and (5) develop effective coping strategies.

Self-Regulation in infancy and early childhood

-Initially, beginning at about 12 to 18 months of age, infants depend completely on their caregivers for reminder signals about acceptable behaviors. At this age, infants begin to show compliance with caregivers' demands. For example, a parent might say, "No. Don't touch!" And the infant doesn't touch. -The next phase of developing self-regulation takes place at approximately 2 to 3 years of age. At this point, children begin to comply with the caregiver's expectations in the absence of external monitoring by the caregiver. Thus, most 2-to 3-year-old children are aware of where they may and may not play and which objects they may and may not touch if they are at home, on a playground, or in the homes of friends and relatives. -Limitations: toddlers often ignore safety and disregard exhortations. -For example, when 2-year-olds are confronted with an unexpected delay (such as not being able to go outside and play), they often whine and beg to engage in the activity. But there are clear signs of advances in self-initiated regulation, as when young children announce a toy cleanup without prompting from caregivers. -Preschoolers become better at self-control, learning how to resist temptation and giving themselves instructions that keep them focused

Identity is a self-portrait composed of many pieces, including the following:

-The career and work path the person wants to follow (vocational/career identity) -Whether the person is conservative, liberal, or middle-of-the-road (political identity) -The person's spiritual beliefs (religious identity) -Whether the person is single, married, divorced, and so on (relationship identity) -The extent to which the person is motivated to achieve and is intellectually active (achievement, intellectual identity) -Whether the person is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual (sexual identity) -Which part of the world or country a person is from and how intensely the person identifies with his or her cultural heritage (cultural/ethnic identity) -The kinds of things a person likes to do, which can include sports, music, hobbies, and so on (interests) -The individual's personality characteristics, such as being introverted or extraverted, anxious or calm, friendly or hostile, and so on (personality) -The individual's body image (physical identity)

Crisis

A period of identity development during which the individual is exploring alternatives. -Most researchers use the term exploration rather than crisis.

Optimism

A style of thinking that involves having a positive outlook on the future and minimizing problems. Referred to as a style of thinking.

self

All of the characteristics of a person.

self-awareness

An aspect of self-understanding that becomes especially important in early adulthood is self-awareness—that is, the degree to which a young adult is aware of his or her psychological makeup, including strengths and weaknesses. Many individuals do not have very good awareness of their psychological makeup and skills, as well as the causes of their weaknesses -For example, how aware is the person that she or he is a good or bad listener, uses the best strategies to solve personal problems, and is assertive rather than aggressive or passive in resolving conflicts? Awareness of strengths and weaknesses in these and many other aspects of life is an important dimen-sion of self-understanding throughout the adult years, and early adulthood is a time when individuals can benefit considerably from addressing some of their weaknesses.

Ethnic identity

An enduring aspect of the self that includes a sense of membership in an ethnic group, along with the attitudes and feelings related to that membership. -Thus, for adolescents from ethnic minority groups, the process of identity formation has an added dimen-sion: the choice between two or more sources of identification—their own ethnic group and the mainstream, or dominant, culture

life review

Another important aspect of self-understanding in adult-hood is the life review. Life review is prominent in Erikson's final stage of psychosocial development, which is integrity versus despair. Life review involves looking back at one's life experiences, evaluating them, interpreting them, and often reinterpreting them. As the past marches in review, the older adult surveys it, observes it, and reflects on it. Reconsideration of previous experiences and their meaning occurs, often with revision or expanded understanding taking place. This reorganization of the past may provide a more valid picture for the individual, bringing new and significant meaning to one's life. It may also help prepare the individual for death and in the process reduce fear. -One aspect of life review involves identifying and reflecting on not only the positive aspects of one's life but also on regrets as part of developing a mature wisdom and self-understanding

Helson's Mills College Studies

Another longitudinal investigation of adult person-ality development was conducted by Ravenna Helson and her colleagues. They initially studied 132 women who were seniors at Mills College in California in the late 1950s. In 1981, when the women were 42 to 45 years old, they were studied again. -Helson and her colleagues distinguished three main groups among the Mills women: family-oriented (participants who had children), career-oriented (whether or not they also wanted families), and those who followed neither path (women without children who pursued only low-level work). Despite their different college profiles and their diverging life paths, the women in all three groups experienced some similar psychological changes over their adult years. However, the women in the third group changed less than those committed to career or family.

contemporary life-events approach

Approach emphasizing that how a life event influences the individual's development depends not only on the event but also on mediating factors, the individual's adaptation to the life event, the life-stage context, and the sociohistorical context.

The Optimistic Child

By Martin Seligman described how parents, teachers, and coaches can instill optimism in children, which he argues helps to make them more resilient and less likely to develop depression.

Connectedness

Characteristic consisting of two dimensions: mutuality, sensitivity to and respect for others' views; and permeability, openness to others' views.

Individuality

Characteristic consisting of two dimensions: self-assertion, the ability to have and communicate a point of view; and separateness, the use of communication patterns to express how one is different from others.

Self-concept

Domain-specific evaluations of the self. -Individuals can make self-evalua-tions in many domains of their lives—academic, athletic, appearance, and so on. -self-concept to domain-specific evaluations

identity foreclosed

Eighteen-year-old Tim's parents want him to be a medical doctor, so he is planning on majoring in premedicine in college and has not explored other options

psychosocial moratorium

Erikson's term for the gap between childhood security and adult autonomy that adolescents experience as part of their identity exploration. -During this period, society leaves adolescents relatively free of responsibilities, which allows them to try out different identities. Adolescents in effect search their culture's identity files, exper-imenting with different roles and personalities. They may want to pursue one career one month (lawyer, for example) and another career the next month (doctor, actor, teacher, social worker, or astronaut, for example).

Self-Understanding in middle and late childhood:

Five key changes characterize the increased complexity of chil-dren's self-understanding in middle and late childhood: Psychological characteristics and traits. Social descriptions. Social comparison. Real self and ideal self. Realistic.

George Vaillant's Studies

George Vaillant has conducted three longitudinal studies of adult development and aging: (1) a sample of 268 socially advantaged Harvard graduates born about 1920 (called the "Grant Study"); (2) a sample of 456 socially disadvantaged inner-city men born about 1930; and (3) a sample of 90 middle-SES, intellectually gifted women born about 1910. These individuals have been assessed numerous times (in most cases every two years), beginning in the 1920s to 1940s and continuing today for those still living. The main assessments involve exten-sive interviews with the participants, their parents, and teachers. - Vaillant categorized 75-to 80-year-olds as "happy-well," "sad-sick," or "dead." He used data collected from these individuals when they were 50 years of age to predict which categories they were likely to end up in at 75 to 80 years of age. Alcohol abuse and smoking at age 50 were the best predictors of which individuals would be dead at 75 to 80 years of age. Other factors at age 50 were linked with being in the "happy-well" category at 75 to 80 years of age: getting regular exercise; avoiding being overweight; being well educated; having a stable marriage; being future-oriented; being thankful and forgiving; empathizing with others; being active with other people; and having good cop-ing skills. Wealth and income at age 50 were not linked with being in the "happy-well" category at 75 to 80 years of age.

Self-Esteem in Adulthood

Given that older adults have more physical problems, why wouldn't they have lower self-esteem than young or middle-aged adults? One possible reason is that many older adults don't interpret their "losses" as negatively, and don't become as emotionally upset, as younger adults would -For example, being asked to retire at age 63 may not be nearly as devastating as being fired from a job at 40. -argues that knowledge-related goals decrease in older adults, whereas emotion-related goals increase. And many older adults have the ability to reach their emotion-related goals of honing their social network to spend most of their time with the people with whom they have enjoyed satisfying close relationships in the past

Self-Understanding in early childhood:

Here are five main characteristics of self-understanding in young children: Confusion of self, mind, and body. Concrete descriptions. Physical descriptions. Active descriptions. Unrealistic positive overestimations.

bicultural identity

Identifying both with one's own ethnic minority group and with the majority culture. -That is, they identify in some ways with their ethnic group and in other ways with the majority culture

The four statuses of identity are as follows:

Identity diffusion, identity foreclosure, identity moratorium, identity achievement

Self-Understanding in Adolescence

Let's examine other ways in which the adolescent's self-understanding differs from the child's: Abstract and idealistic thinking. Self-consciousness. Contradictions within the self. The fluctuating self. Real and ideal selves. Self-integration.

Midlife Crises

Levinson (1978) views midlife as a crisis, believing that the middle-aged adult is suspended between the past and the future, trying to cope with this gap that threatens life's continuity. George Vaillant (1977) concludes that just as adolescence is a time for detect-ing parental flaws and discovering the truth about childhood, the forties are a decade of reassessing and recording the truth about the adolescent and adulthood years. However, whereas Levinson sees midlife as a crisis, Vaillant notes that only a minority of adults experience a midlife crisis.

novice phase

Levinson sees the twenties as a novice phase of adult development. At the end of one's teens, a transition from dependence to independence should occur.

Berkeley Longitudinal Studies

Most longitudinal studies indicate that neither extreme stability nor extreme change characterizes most people's personalities as they go through the adult years. One of the longest-running inquiries is the series of analyses called the Berkeley Longitudinal Studies. Initially, more than 500 children and their parents were studied in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The book Present and Past in Middle Life profiles these individuals as they became middle-aged. - John Clausen (1993), one of the researchers in the Berkeley Longitudinal Studies, holds that too much attention has been given to discontinuities for all members of the human species, as exemplified in the adult stage theories.

identity moratorium

Nineteen-year-old Sasha is not quite sure what life paths she wants to follow, but she recently went to the counseling center at her college to find out about different careers

Self-regulation in middle/late childhood and adolescence

One of the most important aspects of the self in middle and late childhood is the increased capacity for self-regulation -This increased capacity is characterized by deliberate efforts to manage one's behavior, emotions, and thoughts that lead to increased social competence and achievement

Evidence for the importance of the Big Five factors indicates that they are related to such important aspects of a person's life as health, intelligence and cognitive functioning, achievement and work, and relationships. The following research supports these links:

Openness to experience. Conscientiousness. Extraversion. Agreeableness. Neuroticism. P. 357

Costa and McCrae's Baltimore Study

Paul Costa and Robert McCrae have studied the Big Five factors of approximately a thousand college-educated women and men from 20 to 96 years of age. Longitudinal data collection initially began in the 1950s to the mid-1960s on people of varying ages and is ongoing. Costa and McCrae found a great deal of stability across the adult years in the Big Five personality factors—openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. -For example, a recent study found that emotional stability, extraversion, openness, and agreeableness were lower in early adulthood, peaked between 40 and 60 years of age, and decreased in late adulthood, while conscientiousness showed a continuous increase from early adulthood to late adulthood

Self-Esteem in Childhood and Adolescence

Researchers have found that the accuracy of self-evaluations increases across the elementary school years -Young children tend to provide inflated views of themselves, but by about 8 years of age most children give more realistic appraisals of their skills -For example, older elementary school children who report a positive self-image of themselves in sports indeed are the ones who are reported by peers to be good at athletics. -Adolescents in general have long been described as having low self-esteem -A current concern is that too many of today's college students grew up receiving empty praise and as a consequence have inflated self-esteem

Self-regulation in adulthood

Self-control plays an important role in adult development. For example, higher levels of self-control are linked to better health and adjustment. Self-control increases in early and middle adulthood. Researchers have found a decline in perceived self-control of health and cognitive functioning in older adults

Perspective taking

The ability to assume another person's perspective and understand his or her thoughts and feelings -especially thought to be important in whether children develop prosocial or antisocial attitudes and behavior. In terms of prosocial behavior, taking another's perspective improves children's likelihood of understanding and sympathizing with others when they are distressed or in need.

Self-regulation

The ability to control one's behavior without having to rely on others for help. -Self-regulation includes the self-generation and cognitive monitoring of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to reach a goal. An individual might develop better self-control in the physical, cognitive, or socioemotional domain than in other domains.

generativity versus stagnation

The seventh stage in Erikson's life-span theory; it encompasses adults' desire to leave a legacy of themselves to the next generation. -Generativity encompasses adults' desire to leave a legacy of themselves to the next generation -By contrast, stagnation (sometimes called "self-absorption") develops when individuals sense that they have done nothing for the next generation.

Selective optimization with compensation theory

The theory that successful aging is related to three factors: selection, optimization, and compensation. The theory states that individuals can produce new resources and allocate them effectively to tasks they want to master. Selection, optimization, and compensation involve the following: -Selection -Optimization -Compensation

Trait-Situation Interaction

The trait theories have identified a number of character-istics that are important to consider when attempting to understand an individual's personality Today, most personality psychologists believe that personality is a product of trait-situation interaction. In other words, both traits and situational (context) factors must be considered to understand personality. Also, some people are more consistent on some traits and other people are consistent on other traits.

Big Five factors of personality

The view that personality is made up of openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. -Evidence for the importance of the Big Five factors indicates that they are related to such important aspects of a person's life as health, intelligence and cognitive functioning, achievement and work, and relationships

identity diffused

Thirteen-year-old Sarah has neither begun to explore her identity in any meaningful way nor made an identity commitment

narrative approach

This involves asking individuals to tell their life stories and evaluate the extent to which their stories are meaningful and integrated

identity achieved

Twenty-one-year-old Marcelo extensively explored several career options in college, eventually getting his degree in science education, and is looking forward to his first year of teaching high school students

the Grant Study

Vaillant's study that involved a follow-up of Harvard University men in their early thirties and in their late forties who initially had been interviewed as undergraduates. Other research has also found that midlife is not characterized by perva-sive crises. For example, a longitudinal study of 2,247 individuals found few midlife crises. -The emotional well-being of these individuals did not significantly decrease during their middle-aged years -In fact, some studies have documented psychological gains among middle-aged adults. For example, one study revealed that individuals from 40 to 60 years of age were less nervous and worried than those under 40. The middle-aged adults reported a growing sense of control in their work as well as increased financial security, greater environmental mastery (ability to handle daily responsibilities), and more autonomy than their younger counterparts.

Issues in Self-Esteem

What are the consequences of low self-esteem? Low self-esteem has been implicated in overweight and obesity, anxiety, depression, suicide, and delinquency -A recent study revealed that youth with low self-esteem had lower life satisfaction at 30 years of age -There are "only modest correlations between school performance and self-esteem, and these correlations do not indicate that high self-esteem causes good performance" - In some studies, adult job performance is linked to self-esteem, but the correlations vary greatly and the direction of the causation is not clear - Is self-esteem related to happiness? -Is self-esteem related to physical appearance? -Is low self-esteem linked to depression? -Does self-esteem in adolescence foreshadow adjustment and compe-tence in adulthood?

Commitment

a personal investment in identity.

adaptation to the life event

appraisal of the threat and coping strategies, for example

During early adolescence, most youth are primarily in the identity statuses of:

diffusion, foreclosure, or moratorium.

mediating factors

physical health and family supports, for example

instrumental reminiscence therapy

recalling the times one coped with stressful circumstances and analyzing what it took to adapt in those contexts) improved the adaptive ability and resilience of older adults in coping with adverse situations

attachment-focused reminiscence therapy

reduced depressive symptoms, perceived stress, and emergency room visits in older African Americans

Personality

refers to the enduring personal characteristics of individuals. Personality is usually viewed as the broadest of the three domains and as encompassing the other two (self and identity).

self-awareness

reflects young children's expanding psychological sophistication.

Identity moratorium

the status of individuals who are in the midst of a crisis but whose commitments are either absent or only vaguely defined.

Identity foreclosure

the status of individuals who have made a com-mitment but have not experienced a crisis. This occurs most often when parents hand down commitments to their adolescents, usually in an authoritarian way, before adolescents have had a chance to explore different approaches, ideologies, and vocations on their own.

Identity diffusion

the status of individuals who have not yet experi-enced a crisis or made any commitments. Not only are they undecided about occupational and ideological choices, but they are also likely to show little interest in such matters.

Identity achievement

the status of individuals who have undergone a crisis and have made a commitment.

Trait theories

theories emphasizing that personality consists of broad dispositions, called traits, which tend to produce characteristic responses -In other words, people can be described in terms of the basic ways they behave, such as whether they are outgoing and friendly or whether they are dominant and assertive

possible selves

what adolescents hope to become as well as what they dread they will become -Another aspect of self-understanding that is important in the adult years involves possible selves - Recall that possible selves are what individuals might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming -Adults in their twenties mention many possible selves that they would like to become and might become. Some of these are unrealistic, such as being happy all of the time and being very rich. As individuals get older, they often describe fewer possible selves and portray them in more concrete and realistic ways. By middle age, individuals frequently describe their possible selves in terms of areas of their life in which they already have performed, such as "being good at my work" or "having a good marriage" -Also, when some individuals are middle-aged adults, their possible selves center on attaining hoped-for selves, such as acquiring material possessions, but when they become older adults, they are more concerned with maintaining what they have and preventing or avoiding health problems and dependency

Identity

who a person is, representing a synthesis and integration of self-understanding.