The Importance Of Self Esteem And Social Identity

The second part of developing the self is the play stage. At the play stage children develop skills in communicating through symbols and role taking occurs (Marshall, 2013). They start to process the perspective of another person and then respond in such a way that person might or would respond from that imaginary viewpoint. Through this process children learn how to circumnavigate their social environments that they live in and interact with every day. The third part of developing the self is the game stage. At this stage, children understand society as a whole, that people preform in a way that they believe but as a social norm or what society expects from them, and that people take on several roles in society. Children start to understand that others have perceptive about them and must react to what they do or say and then react to these notices.

From around 3 many children become more confident around people they do not know well and find it easier to be separated from their parent/carer they enjoy being with other children and gain enjoyment from playing with them. They will need some physical contact but will look for more verbal reassurance and approval. This is because their language has developed;

The board displays many materials the infant can grasp, which different textures. The infant can lay on their stomach and hold their head for support, so the infant can have this board laid out in front of them to play with. However, the infant can only “creep”, but not crawl until about 7 months, so the board needs to be near the infant for him or her to play with (Boyd & Bee, 2015, p. 87). In cognitive development, the infant is in the sensorimotor stage, where infant’s use information from their senses and motor actions to learn about the world. By 4 to 6 months, they are in the secondary circular reaction where the infant uses repetitive actions oriented around external objects (Boyd & Bee, 2015, pg 106). In social/emotional development, the infant is just learning subjective self, even though he or she may not have complete understanding of subjective self until 8 to 12 months. This interactive play board allows the child to understand that he or she is making these materials move; therefore, they are becoming aware that “I exist”. The mirror in the middle of the board allows the child to see their reflection and eventually become conscious that the person they are seeing in the mirror is them self and not some other

Hamlin, Wynn and Bloom came up with a theory that infants 6-10 months old are born with knowledge of social behavior. To confirm this, they performed experiments.

Bower, Broughton and Moore (1972) work also found similar results to objecthood being found in early infancy. They used a lab experiment of the study, instead of using Piaget’s blanket technique they waited for the infant to reach the object. They found that the infant counted to reach for the object for up to 90 seconds after it had become invisible. This is a clear indication that the infant thought it would be in the same place however it wasn’t.

Child development is not as easy as that. Infants need to see themselves multiple times in the mirror to develop self-recognition. I was surprised with what I learned because it made me start to think about development in general not only with self-recognition. Development is not something that happens overnight. This study proves it because an infant will not realize themselves the first time they look in a mirror they will need to get used to the things around them and realize they are looking at the other objects so the person they are looking at has to be themselves. This is an important study because is an infant does not have self-recognition there could be something wrong with them. All stages of development are important because the sooner doctors find out their development is behind the sooner the problem can be fixed so the child will not be behind in their stages of

Michael Garin O.D. author of Depth Perception (EyeHealthWeb 2012) refers to the term depth perception, as our ability to determine distances between objects and see the world in three dimensions. To gain understanding, researchers decided to indicate an approximate age in which the development of depth perception is established. Gibson and Walk (1960) conducted a visual cliff study that determined infants between six and eight months, who have begun to crawl, usually understand the concept of depth perception. The infants that had already begun to crawl, refused to engage the “cliff” even when their mother attempted to lure them over the seemingly groundless illusion (Rathus 2015 pg. 90-91). Campos and his colleagues (1970) assessed the heart rate of these infants who encountered the unsupported surface to determine their emotional response. At one month old, the heart rate of the infant remained unaltered indicating the absence of depth perception. At two months old, the infant exhibited signs of a decreased heart rate indicating interest. However, the nine month old experienced an increased heart rate which indicated fear. The study openly suggests that an infant will benefit from the experience of crawling before a fear of height is established (Rathus 2015 pg.

The phenomena of perception refer to the sensory processes that enables human beings to recognize and organized the information that is received from the environment. Such process allows individuals to perceive the world and objects. For such process to occur, theorists research visual perceptual patterns during the period of infancy. Research has found that there are differences between the way a newborn infant perceives the world in comparison to adults, as their visual system is not fully developed at such an early age. An infant’s visual system is heterochronus which disables them from seeing a complete view of the world, compared to adults.

So now at an older age, we have a conscious self that has difficulty expressing itself with any confidence. If the social aspects of the child’s upbringing suffered similar insults, the emotional maladaptation may be joined by a lack of confidence in the other attributes of a child’s growth. A lack of self-confidence in his/her own abilities may develop and consequently, a poor sense of self-esteem. While this may or may not be accurate, it must not be forgotten that the opposite is just as likely. If the child’s caretakers are able to accommodate a child’s natural abilities and provide appropriate and accurate positive feedback, a healthy understanding of social inferences – social responsibility and social regulation might occur. Barring any relevant negative biological influences, any positive – or negative – acceptance of self may be the likely outcome of this positive upbringing (Craig & Dunn, pp. 234-235).

Within social psychology, the social identity tradition (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971) argues that individuals possess more than their characteristic personal identities, which are activated during interpersonal contact with others; in addition, people can engage in intergroup behavior as informed by their social identities (Gudykunst & Bond, 1980). Such social identities comprise memberships in any psychologically relevant grouping with which an individual identifies, including kin, peers, profession, nation, and cultural identity (Galang, Quiñones, Adriano, Portillo, & Carvajal, 2015). The ingroup identification afforded by social identities then allows individuals to distinguish between people belonging to and excluded from the ingroup (Brewer & Yuki, 2007), and to bolster one’s self-concept through affiliation with high-status groups and individuals (Gudykunst & Bond, 1980). In addition, these social identities are created and manifested in different ways across cultures as a function of the values endorsed by society, the ways in which society’s members construe themselves, and the manners in which their interpersonal relationships are structured (Feitosa, Salas, & Salazar, 2012).

The development of children’s identity particularly their self-perceptions, is of a widespread interest. This small-scale study was based on previous research by Rosenberg (1979). The aim was to determine the differences between self-descriptions and the shift of the locus of self-knowledge with age. The design involved semi-structured interviews of two participants aged 8 and 16 years. The participants wrote some statements about who they were, which were coded according to Rosenberg’s (1979) themes of self-descriptions. The responses about the locus of self-knowledge were also analysed to assess the shift with age and other themes were also analysed. The results showed that

Self-perception evolves at each stage of growth and development. As children enter school, they become more self-aware. Therefore, peers, activities, and friendships play a fundamental role in the elaboration of an individual?s self-perception. These various factors help to mold the personality and character of a child. Children between the ages of five to eleven place a lot of value on their physical skills and achievements, social acceptance, appearance, and level of control. Many young people have a tendency to compare themselves with other people their age. This time of self-discovery is often clouded by the need to fit in and often to a rigid set of linear social rules of what other children their age think of them. Therefore, the parents must make their children feel competent, loved, and have self-respect (Burns, Dunn, Brady, Starr, & Blosser, 2013).

“Do new-borns have the ability to detect faces? Discuss with reference to theories and evidence on face recognition in infancy”.

Every person shapes their opinions through their perception of reality. These perceptions can be influenced by a person’s upbringing, socioeconomic status, race, gender, religion, age, and many more. The characteristics are labels a person self-identifies with that make up what is known as a person’s social location (Henslin 2017). A person’s social location changes both how they interact with the world and how the world interacts with them. Most often, these interactions are shaped around whether a person’s particular characteristic is classified as being a part of a dominant group or a minority group.

Self-esteem has been a major factor in people's daily lives including their routine. Without realizing the impact self esteem has on us, we have certain levels of it and we depend on it daily to do tasks and activities. Although the meaning of self-esteem is constantly being changed by the way our society views it, it is the base to one's self worth and the way we view ourselves. Today, in our society we are trying to find out how much is too much and how much is enough to be mentally healthy and not get carried away to the point of becoming a narcissist. Self-esteem can be tough, you can learn to love yourself and cope with your insecurities. Nevertheless boosting someone else's self-esteem is not an effective way to ensure a healthy and successful individual.