payment page
Researchers have different theories about how children learn about themselves and their roles in society. Some of these theories contradict each other, and each is criticized for different reasons, but each still plays an important role in sociological thought.
Freud’s Theory of Personality Development
Austrian physician Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, believed that basic biological instincts combine with societal factors to shape personalities. Freud posited that the mind consists of three parts that must interact properly for a person to function well in society. If any one of the three parts becomes dominant, personal and social problems may result. The three parts are the id, the superego, and the ego.
Id: According to Freud, the id develops first. A newborn’s mind consists only of the id, which is responsible for the satisfaction of physical desires. The id represents a human being’s most primitive desires, and a person ruled only by the id would do everything strictly for his or her own pleasure, breaking societal norms in the process and risking punishment.
Superego: As children move from infancy into childhood, their minds develop a superego, or conscience, which encourages conformity to societal norms and values. Someone with a hyperactive superego would be confined within a too-rigid system of rules, which would inhibit his or her ability to live normally.
Ego: A healthy mind also consists of the ego, or the part of the mind that resolves the conflicts between the id and the superego. Normally, the ego balances the desires of the id and superego, but when it fails, a person may have difficulty making decisions, which can lead to behavioral problems.
Mead’s Theory of Social Behaviorism
Sociologist George Herbert Mead believed that people develop self-images through interactions with other people. He argued that the self, which is the part of a person’s personality consisting of self-awareness and self-image, is a product of social experience. He outlined four ideas about how the self develops:
The self develops solely through social experience. Mead rejected Freud’s notion that personality is determined partly by biological drives.
Social experience consists of the exchange of symbols. Mead emphasized the particularly human use of language and other symbols to convey meaning.
Knowing others’ intentions requires imagining the situation from their perspectives. Mead believed that social experience depends on our seeing ourselves as others do, or, as he coined it, “taking the role of the other.”
Understanding the role of the other results in self-awareness. Mead posited that there is an active “I” self and an objective “me” self. The “I” self is active and initiates action. The “me” self continues, interrupts, or changes action depending on how others respond. According to Mead, self-awareness is not innate but learned through social interactions.
A critical concept in Mead’s theory is that of the generalized other. This term refers to the common behavioral expectations and attitudes of a society or social group. It represents the collective norms, values, and beliefs that individuals internalize through socialization. The generalized other develops during the later stages of self-development, as children move from understanding the perspectives of specific individuals (e.g. parents and friends) to understanding the broader expectations of society. Mead believed that the key to self-development is understanding the role of the other. He outlined three stages in the development of the self:
1. Preparatory Stage: In early childhood, children imitate the actions and language of those around them without understanding their meaning. For example, a child might imitate their parent's answer to a phone call but lacks comprehension of the social conventions associated with communication.
2. Play Stage: As children grow, they begin to role-play and take on the perspectives of specific others during play. For example, a child might pretend to be a firefighter, teacher, or parent, acting out what they perceive those roles to entail. Through this, they start to see themselves from the viewpoint of others and learn how their actions impact others.
3. Game Stage: At this stage, typically in later childhood, children learn to understand and navigate the expectations of multiple roles simultaneously. For instance, playing a team sport requires understanding their position as well as the roles and strategies of their teammates and opponents. This ability to see oneself through the perspectives of many others is crucial for the development of the “generalized other,” which refers to the collective norms, values, attitudes, and expectations of society that individuals internalize and use to guide their behavior.
Cooley’s Theory of the Looking-Glass Self
Like Mead, sociologist Charles Horton Cooley believed that we form our self-images through interaction with other people. He was particularly interested in how significant others shape us as individuals. A significant other is someone whose opinions matter to us and who is in a position to influence our thinking, especially about ourselves. A significant other can be anyone, such as a parent, sibling, spouse, or best friend.
In American society, we use the term significant other to mean a romantic partner, but sociologists use the term differently, and their usage was the original usage. The term significant other is just one example of a sociological term that the public has appropriated.
Cooley’s theory of socialization involves his notion of the looking-glass self. The looking-glass self refers to a self-image that is based on how we think others see us. He posited a three-step process in developing this self:
Step 1: We imagine that a significant other perceives us in a certain way.
Step 2: We imagine that he or she makes a judgment about us based on that perception.
Step 3: We form a self-image based on how we think our significant other sees us.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget began to investigate how children think when he was giving them intelligence tests. According to Piaget, the way children think changes as they mature physically and interact with the world around them. Piaget identified four periods of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.
Stage 1: Sensorimotor Period (birth to roughly age two):
During this stage, children learn by using their senses and moving around. The main achievement of this stage is object permanence, which is the ability to recognize that an object can exist even when it’s no longer perceived or in one’s sight.
Example: If a three-month-old baby sees a ball, she’ll probably be fascinated by it. But if someone hides the ball, the baby won’t show any interest in looking for it. For a very young child, out of sight is literally out of mind. When the baby is older and has acquired object permanence, she will start to look for things that are hidden because she will know that things can exist even when they can’t be seen.
Stage 2: Preoperational Period (age two to seven):
During this period, children keep getting better at symbolic thought, but they can’t yet reason. According to Piaget, children aren’t capable of conservation during this stage. Conservation is the ability to recognize that measurable physical features of objects, such as length, area, and volume, can be the same even when objects appear different.
Example: Suppose a researcher gives a three-year-old girl two full bottles of juice. The girl will agree that they both contain the same amount of juice. But if the researcher pours the contents of one bottle into a short, fat tumbler, the girl will then say that the bottle has more. She doesn’t realize that the same volume of juice is conserved in the tumbler.
Stage 3: Concrete Operational Period (age seven to eleven):
During this period, children start to become capable of performing mental operations or working problems and ideas through in their minds. However, they can perform operations only on tangible objects and real events.
Example: If a mother tells her four-year-old, “Your Aunt Margaret is my sister,” he may say, “No, she’s not a sister, she’s an aunt!” An eight-year-old is capable of grasping that Margaret can be both a sister and an aunt, as well as a daughter, wife, and mother.
Stage 4: Formal Operational Period (age eleven through adulthood):
During this period, children become capable of applying mental operations to abstract concepts. They can imagine and reason about hypothetical situations. From this point on, they start to think in abstract, systematic, and logical ways.
Example: A teenager is motivated to organize a donation drive at his school for flood victims in Bangladesh because he is capable of imagining the plight of the Bangladeshis and empathizing with them. He is also capable of setting up the structures necessary to solicit and collect donations.
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
Lawrence Kohlberg was interested in moral reasoning, or why people think the way they do about what’s right and wrong. Influenced by Piaget, who believed that the way people think about morality depends on where they are in terms of cognitive development, Kohlberg proposed that people pass through three levels of moral development:
The preconventional level: Children ascribe great importance to the authority of adults.
The conventional level: Children want to follow rules in order to get approval.
The postconventional level: People are more flexible and think in terms of what’s personally important to them. Only a small proportion of people reach this last stage of moral reasoning.
Psychologist Carol Gilligan argues that Kohlberg’s theory was inaccurate because he studied only boys. Gilligan posits that girls look beyond the rules of morality to find the caring thing to do, even if that action breaks a preexisting rule. Girls and women are also less likely to judge an individual’s actions as wrong because they see the complexities in relationships better than men do.
Criticisms of Development Theories
Each of the theories of development has flaws. Freud’s theories have always been controversial and are criticized today because they seem very male-centered. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is useful, but not all people reach the formal operational stage. Likewise, not all people reach Kohlberg’s postconventional level of moral reasoning.
