Development of Self

Development of Self

When infants are born, they have no concept of self; they are unable to distinguish between who is “me” and who is not “me.” Their entire world is interconnected, and they are still discovering where they end and their caregiver or their surrounding environment begins (Fini et al., 2023).

The Self in Infancy and Toddlerhood

One important step in discovering who they are is discovering what they have control over (Rosen, 2016). The sense of independence or freedom to control yourself and your actions is called autonomy. In the first few weeks of life, an infant may discover that they have complete autonomy over their ability to wiggle their arms and legs, but they don’t have control over whether their caregiver picks them up or feeds them. This awareness of the difference is the beginning of developing a sense of self (Guenther, 2022).

Just as infants learn autonomy by discovering what they have control over, they are also discovering relatedness through their connections with others (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2008). Caregiver interactions such as smiling, saying an infant’s name, and providing comfort and physical contact all help infants learn about their sense of self (Ross et al., 2017).

Determining exactly when an infant has a sense of self, or self-awareness, is no easy task. After all, the sense of self is slowly developing alongside the infant’s cognitive and physical development and interactions with their caregivers. At the age of twelve months, the infant may know how to interact with a caregiver or manipulate a toy for entertainment, but the infant’s sense of self typically does not include their appearance. The reason is that infants lack self-recognition, the ability to recognize and be aware of themselves in reflective surfaces or photos (Anderson, 1984).

The realization that one’s body, mind, and activities are distinct from those of other people is known as self-awareness (Kopp, 2011). The most common technique used in research for testing self-awareness in infants is a mirror test known as the “Rouge Test” (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979). The rouge test works by applying a dot of rouge (colored makeup) on an infant’s face (e.g., nose) and then placing them in front of the mirror. Before the age of eighteen months, most infants regard their reflection with either wariness or openness; the face is perceived as that of a stranger or potential playmate. In other words, they do not seem to notice the red mark. This indicates to researchers that their self-recognition is incomplete; they do not recognize their face. After eighteen months, most touch their nose, indicating a sense of self-awareness and self-recognition. These infants are indicating that they know their face and recognize it, and that red mark is not part of their self-awareness. Infants may meet these milestones, like many others, at various ages based on their experiences including environmental and social influences.

For example, some research indicates that when mothers scaffold learning (such as by asking who is in the mirror), infants learn to recognize themselves earlier (Bard et al., 2006). Other research indicates that when parents engage in imitation (such as a parent imitating their toddler’s play behavior), infants also may learn self-recognition earlier (Cebioğlu & Broesch, 2021). The mirror self-recognition test is a useful indication of emerging self-awareness in toddlers and fairly easy to try at home to learn more about a toddler’s experience of the world (Brandl, 2018; Suddendorf & Butler, 2013). Even after recognizing themselves in a mirror, infants may not pick themselves out in group photos until they are about twenty-four months of age, indicating that self-awareness is still developing (Courage et al., 2004).

How does self-awareness develop if there are no mirrors? Ross and colleagues (2017) examined a group of eighteen-month-old infants in Scotland and Zambia, of whom 90 percent of Scottish but only 15 percent of Zambian infants had regular access to mirrors. Although the Scottish infants performed better on the mirror test, the Zambian infants performed significantly better on a body-as-obstacle test. Body-as-obstacle is the situation that occurs when our body position or placement interferes with our goals. In this test of self-awareness, infants were placed on a mat that needed to be moved; they needed to recognize that they must step off the mat before attempting to pull it. Acquiring self-recognition and self-awareness allows infants to explore and interact in their world much more fully, including being able to engage in pretend play and better communicate with others about their experiences (Lewis & Ramsay, 2004). Children likely show differences in the aspects of self-recognition they demonstrate based on their cultural and familial experiences. For example, some may acquire body awareness first, whereas others may acquire visual awareness first. Infants and toddlers also show self-awareness in other ways, such as by using personal pronouns (Courage et al., 2004). Each of these aspects of self-awareness develops in the first few years of life.

Although it is widely used, the mirror self-recognition test is an indirect measure of self-awareness specifically related to physical awareness and has some limitations (Koerth-Baker, 2010). For example, failing the mirror self-awareness test does not necessarily mean an absence of self-recognition, as performance is based on familiarity and experience with mirrors (Nielsen et al., 2006) and performance varies across cultures (Keller et al., 2004).  Finally, the task oversimplifies a complex, multidimensional construct (i.e., all-or-nothing response) that may not be purely visual (Koerth-Baker, 2010).

Understanding self-awareness requires moving beyond physical self-recognition and considering cognitive self-awareness, which involves children reflecting on their own thoughts, beliefs, and internal mental states. For example, many children begin to use words such as “me” and “mine” in the second year of life, suggesting that the “I” now has linguistic (i.e., cognitive) labels that can be applied reflexively to itself: I call myself “me.” Around the same time, children also begin to express social emotions such as embarrassment, shame, guilt, and pride and require a level of self-awareness (Tangney et al., 2007). These emotions tell the child how well they are doing in the group. When they do things that win the approval of others, they feel proud of themselves. When they fail in the presence of others, they may feel embarrassment or shame. When they violate a social rule, they may experience guilt, which may motivate them to make amends.

Cognitive psychologist Philippe Rochat (2003) described a more in-depth developmental path in acquiring self-awareness through various stages. He described self-awareness as occurring in five stages beginning from birth.

Table 11.1

Stages of acquiring self-awareness

The Self in Early Childhood

At about age three, young children do not yet have a strong sense of self. Although they can identify themselves in mirrors and photos, their self-concept is limited (Harter, 1999). The term self-concept refers to a cognitive idea of who you are, including all the beliefs you have about yourself. Typically, a self-concept for a three-year-old will include basic vital facts such as their name, gender, and age, and perhaps their relation to another person, such as an older sibling. In comparison, an eight-year-old will often include evaluative components such as hobbies they are good at, and psychological components such as personality traits.

Around age four, children may start to include new information in their self-concept. Self-concept refers to how individuals see themselves, including their beliefs, attitudes, and values about their abilities, personality traits, physical appearance, and social identity. It involves an overall perception of oneself and can be influenced by factors such as experiences, feedback from others, and social comparisons. One child may say they like Batman and coloring books, whereas another may mention dancing and the color yellow. However, at age four, these components are based on concrete, factual statements and are not evaluative. Starting around age five or six, some children might start to evaluate their skills internally, but expressing this view outwardly as part of their self-concept is still rare and will usually start later in childhood (Putnick et al., 2020).

Video 11.2 Changes in self-concept

During middle childhood, children’s self-concept changes dramatically. Their sense of self is influenced by peers and family members as well as by societal messages that they receive, such as through the media (Collins & Madsen, 2019). Children in middle childhood become hyperaware of themselves and the way others perceive them. Starting in the early elementary grades, they notice the way classmates and other children react to them, and they begin to reflect on and monitor their self-projection, or the way they are portraying themselves around different audiences such as new classmates, close friends, teachers, parents, and other family members (Howe et al., 2022). A child may be more polite and restrained around potential new friends—for instance, funnier and more outgoing around already-close friends, yet serious and intellectual around teachers, and more emotional and dependent around parents. Achieving this requires a sophisticated level of social competence, a skill we use to understand and respond to the differing expectations of various contexts and audiences.

By middle childhood, the sense of self is more realistic than it was during early childhood. In elementary school, they begin to perform intense social comparisons with classmates and become highly proficient at identifying the skills, personalities, and attributes of their peers. Children use these social comparisons to evaluate whether they are superior, inferior, or average compared to their classmates on a variety of dimensions, but particularly academic ability, athletic ability, and social status.

In addition, a more complex self-concept has emerged. While in early childhood, self-descriptions tend to be focused on physical characteristics and might include the child’s hair color, gender, and age, by middle childhood, self-concept is increasingly abstract, multifaceted, and evaluative. Specifically, children in middle childhood start to move from thinking in concrete terms (“I have brown hair”) to more abstract qualities (“I am a good friend”; “I’m persistent”). They begin to understand and describe themselves using internal characteristics and psychological traits. They now start to consider their hobbies and interests—whether a genre of music, sports, or art activities—as part of their self-concept. They also include personality characteristics, such as funny, kind, smart, quiet, or brave. Finally they might consider their own abilities such as proclaiming themselves to be good at gymnastics, bad at writing, and/or okay at math. This rich development in self-concept continues into adolescence.

The Self in Adolescence

Early in adolescence, cognitive developments result in greater self-awareness, greater awareness of others and their thoughts and judgments, the ability to think about abstract, future possibilities, and the ability to consider multiple possibilities at once. As a result, adolescents experience a significant shift from the simple, concrete, and global self-descriptions typical of young children; as children, they defined themselves by physical traits, whereas adolescents define themselves based on their values, thoughts, and opinions.

Adolescents can conceptualize multiple “possible selves” that they could become and long-term possibilities and consequences of their choices. Exploring these possibilities may result in abrupt changes in self-presentation as the adolescent chooses or rejects qualities and behaviors, trying to guide the actual self toward the ideal self (whom the adolescent wishes to be) and away from the feared self (whom the adolescent does not want to be). For many, these distinctions are uncomfortable, but they also appear to motivate achievement through behavior consistent with the ideal and distinct from the feared possible selves.

Further distinctions in self-concept, called differentiation, occur as the adolescent recognizes that their personality and behavior may be different across contexts. For example, adolescents may behave differently with their siblings and parents compared to their friends. They may be shy in new situations and outgoing in more familiar ones. Differentiation appears fully developed by mid-adolescence. Peaking in the 7th-9th grades, the personality traits adolescents use to describe themselves refer to specific contexts, and therefore, may contradict one another. The recognition of inconsistent content in the self-concept is a common source of distress in these years, but this distress may benefit adolescents by encouraging integration of one cohesive sense of self.