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8A · Thinking about ourselves and others
Self-identity
How we form a self-concept and an identity, the beliefs we hold about our own competence and control, and the major developmental theories of how identity forms.
Self-concept, self-esteem & self-efficacy
Self-concept is the sum of beliefs about who you are; self-esteem is how you evaluate yourself; self-efficacy is belief in your ability to succeed at a specific task; locus of control is whether you see outcomes as internally or externally controlled.
The self-concept includes our various identities (the roles and group memberships we internalize) and self-schemas. Self-esteem is global self-worth, while self-efficacy (Bandura) is task-specific and predicts persistence (cross-ref 7C social-cognitive theory). Locus of control: people with an internal locus feel they control their outcomes; an external locus attributes outcomes to luck/fate/others. Learned helplessness (7C) can follow from an external locus.
Don't confuse
Self-esteem (overall self-worth) vs. self-efficacy (confidence on a specific task) — a reliable AAMC distractor pair.
Theories of identity & moral development
The big developmental theories: Erikson (psychosocial stages), Kohlberg (moral reasoning), Mead and Cooley (the social self), Vygotsky (sociocultural), and Freud (psychosexual).
- Erikson's psychosocial stages — eight lifespan stages, each a crisis (e.g., trust vs. mistrust in infancy; identity vs. role confusion in adolescence; intimacy vs. isolation in young adulthood; integrity vs. despair in old age).
- Kohlberg's moral development — three levels: preconventional (avoid punishment / self-interest), conventional (social approval / law and order), postconventional (social contract / universal ethical principles).
- Mead — the social self develops through interaction; the "I" (the spontaneous, unsocialized self) and the "me" (the socialized self — the self as one imagines the generalized other, society's internalized expectations, sees it). Stages: imitation → play → game.
- Cooley's looking-glass self — we form our self-image from how we imagine others see us.
- Vygotsky — cognitive/identity development is driven by social and cultural interaction; the zone of proximal development.
- Freud's psychosexual stages — oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital.
Don't confuse
Mead's "generalized other" vs. Cooley's "looking-glass self" (both social-self, but Mead = internalizing society's general expectations; Cooley = self-image from imagined judgments of others). And keep Erikson (psychosocial) separate from Freud (psychosexual) and Kohlberg (moral).
Worked question
A 16-year-old tries on different friend groups, political views, and career ideas, frequently asking himself "who am I really?" In Erikson's framework, he is working through the stage of: