The Relationship of Self-Understanding in Childhood to Social Class,Community Type,and Teacher-Rated Intellectual and Social Competence

Abstract

The relationship of children's self-understanding to social class, community type (modem vs. traditional), and ratings made by teachers was investigated in Iceland. Subjects were seventy-three 12-year-olds in Reykjavik, distributed evenly across six social classes, and twenty-one 12-year-olds primarily from families in the lowest two social classes residing in two traditional rural communities. In clinical-developmental interviews, the children were asked to describe themselves. Responses were assigned to one of four content categories: physical (appearance and possessions), active (abilities and activities), social (social personality and relationships), or psychological (thoughts and feelings). Classroom teachers also rated children on scales of intellectual and social competence. As predicted, the results indicate that children in the higher social classes offered more psychological descriptors than those in the lower social classes. Children rated as intellectually and socially competent by their teachers described themselves more often in social terms. There was little evidence for an independent effect of community type on configurations of content in self-understanding.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bjomsson, S. , & Edelstein, W. (1977). Explorations in social inequality: Stratification dynamics in social and individual development in Iceland (Studien und Berichte, Nr. 38). Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut fur Bildungsforschung.

Broddason, T. , & Webb, K. (1975). On the myth of social equality in Iceland. Acta Sociologica, 18, 49-75.

Cantor, N. , & Kihlstrom, J. (1987). Personality and social intelligence. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Damon, W. , & Hart, D. (1982). The development of self-understanding from infancy through adolescence. Child Development, 53, 841-864.

Damon, W. , & Hart, D. (1988). The development of self-understanding in childhood and adolescence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Edelstein, W. (1983). Cultural constraints on development and the vicissitudes of progress. In F. Kessel & A. Siegel (Eds.), The child and other cultural inventions (pp. 48-81). New York: Praeger.

Geertz, C. (1975). On the nature of anthropological understanding. American Scientist, 63, 47-53.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hart, D. , & Damon, W. (1986). Developmental trends in self-understanding. Social Cognition, 4, 388-407.

10.

Hart, D. , Kohlberg, L. , & Wertsch, J. (1987). The developmental social-self theories of James Mark Baldwin, George Herbert Mead, and Lve Semenovich Vygotsky. In L. Kohlberg (Ed.), Child psychology and childhood education: A cognitive-developmental view (pp. 223-258). New York: Longman.

11.

Hart, D. , Lucca-Irizarry, N. , & Damon, W. (1986). The development of self-understanding in Puerto Rico and the United States. Journal of Early Adolescence, 6, 293-304.

12.

Harter, S. (1983). The development of the self and the self-system. In M. Hetherington (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (4th ed., Vol. 4, pp. 285-385). New York: Wiley.

13.

Hess, R. (1970). Social class and ethnic influences upon socialization. In P. Mussen (Ed.), Carmichael's manual of child psychology: Vol. 2 (pp. 457-557). New York: Wiley.

14.

Hess, R. , & Shipman, V. (1965). Early experience and the socialization of cognitive modes in children. Child Development, 34, 869-886.

15.

Hollingshead, A. (1961). Elmstown's youth. New York: Wiley.

16.

Levine, R. , & White, M. (1986). Human conditions: The cultural basis for educational development. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

17.

Livesly, W. , & Bromley, D. (1973). Person perception in childhood and adolescence. New York: Wiley.

18.

Luria, A. R. (1976). Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations (M. Lopez-Morillas & L. Solotaroff, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

19.

Maccoby, E. (1980). Social development: Psychological growth and the parent-child relationship. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

20.

McGuire, W. , & McGuire, C. (1987). Developmental trends and gender differences in the subjective experience of self. In T. Honess & K. Yardley (Eds.), Self and identity: Perspectives across the lifespan (pp. 134-146). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

21.

Montemayor, R. , & Eisen, M. (1977). The development of self-conceptions from childhood to adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 13, 314-319.

22.

Shweder, R. , & Bourne, E. (1984). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In R. Shweder & R. Levine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self and emotion (pp. 158-199). New York: Cambridge University Press.

23.

Tomasson, R. (1980). Iceland: The first new society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

24.

Triandis, H. (1989). The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts. Psychological Review, 96, 506-520.

25.

Wertsch, J. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

26.

Wright, E. , & Perrone, L. (1977). Marxist class categories and income inequalities. American Sociological Review, 42, 32-55.