From a Sense of Self to Understanding Relations Between Social Groups
Our sense of self arises from our understanding that we are unique and different from others that are close to us, and that these other people have similarities and differences among themselves and in relation to us. Understanding the self and others as s
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From a Sense of Self to Understanding Relations Between Social Groups Dalila Xavier de França … Populational location in different social positions that reflect and intervene in the relations of individuals to each other. Mathias (2014: 132)
Abstract Our sense of self arises from our understanding that we are unique and different from others that are close to us, and that these other people have similarities and differences among themselves and in relation to us. Understanding the self and others as separate entities requires reasoning about the social world, including understanding people, interpersonal relations, institutions, and social structure. This chapter introduces the socio-developmental perspective in a didactic overview on the socio-cognitive self-development of children. It equips the reader with fundamental background knowledge that is useful for the understanding of reporting research results with children of different age. What this overview makes clear, among others, is how closely children’s self is intertwined from the beginning with the social world they live in, how fundamental the role of social categorization is for children’s understanding of the social world and themselves as part of it, how the notion of their position in social structure becomes more and more sophisticated over the course of their self-development, and how much children advance with age in the flexible mastering of complex, often contradicting social affordances within interpersonal, intergroup, and institutional contexts. Keywords Socio-cognitive self-development
Self Social categorization
Introduction Our sense of self arises from our understanding that we are a particular kind of object, that we are unique and different from others that are close to us, and that these other people have similarities and differences among themselves and in relation to us. Understanding the self and others as separate entities requires reasoning about the D.X. de França (&) Sergipe Federal University—UFS, Aracaju, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 J. Vala et al. (eds.), The Social Developmental Construction of Violence and Intergroup Conflict, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42727-0_2
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social world, including understanding people, interpersonal relations, institutions, and social structure. The phenomena of self-perception and perception of others have been studied in the field of Social Cognition (Fiske and Taylor 1991). The theory of mind (Legerstee 2005; Delval 2007), which can be defined as the ability to attribute mental states or understand what others think or believe (Premack and Woodruff 1978; Leslie 1987) has provided important contributions to the knowledge of social interactions in children. Children are active processors of their own experiences. From birth onwards their expressions of crying, smiling, and discomfort gain significance through interaction with others. Every movement of a child causes a reaction in others and so gains intentionality, a
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