Development of personality and self-concept

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The development of personality and self-concept is one aspect of the psychological development of the individual. It means a long-term, differential change in personality traits . The knowledge of what their own individual accounts, is increasing. The structure of self-related knowledge develops parallel to cognitive and verbal skills, which means that the individual has more and more prerequisites for developing the self-concept .

Research into self-concept and personality are part of psychology , more precisely: developmental psychology and personality theory . Among other things, both try to answer the question of why people change and yet remain who they are. For a long time, psychology assumed that a person's personality and self develop in childhood and adolescence and then no longer change in adulthood. In the course of the enforcement of “lifespan psychology”, numerous studies were carried out which suggest the possibility of changes in later adulthood and in old age.

Terminology

The terms self , self-concept and personality

"The term personality is understood to mean the totality of the characteristics and behavioral dispositions of a person, which characterize him relatively stable over time and across different situations and distinguish him from others". Five-factor models are the most widely used to describe personality in adolescence and adulthood (the so-called Big Five ) .

In contrast to the descriptive-structuring perspective of personality psychology, the examination of the self or the self-concept involves the question of why people are the way they are. The concept of the self is understood to mean the content of knowledge that the individual develops about himself and the cognitive processes through which this knowledge is acquired. It is important to emphasize that “the self” should not be thought of as a 'person in the person', not an 'I' who wants or does something. Instead, what is meant is a complex and abstract structure made up of interlinked content and processes. Therefore, in psychology today, instead of the 'self' (in quotation marks!), It is preferred to speak of 'self-concept' or 'self-concepts' so that the impression does not arise that 'self' is an entity or essence (as in psychoanalysis that ' I '). The “self-concept” is understood to mean the “totality of assessments and evaluations of an individual related to the person”, i.e. “the totality of attitudes towards oneself.”

“Who am I and what defines me as a person?” - there is a consensus on the relevance of this question in psychology, and most of the relevant textbooks deal systematically and in detail with the subject of personality and self. Despite a long research history, there is still no consensus on the terminology that is most appropriate to the topic: is it about the search for identity or the development of the self, a self, a self-concept or a personal personality? The terms often come from different psychological traditions and are based on the respective image of man, are sometimes used synonymously without explanations, but are often defined differently. The concept of the ego comes from psychoanalysis just like Erikson's concept of identity , which, however, should not be confused with George Herbert Mead's social-constructivist concept of identity .

Current studies and theories in developmental psychology use the terms personality , self and self-concept .

development

Psychological development means the regular, directed, long-term change in the experience and behavior of an individual over the entire life span. So what is meantis the individual development ( ontogenesis ), not the development of the psychic in the development of the human race ( phylogenesis or anthropogenesis ). In order for changes to be considered a development, they must not be caused by chance, but must systematically emerge from one another. Developmental psychologists are less in agreement on what development is aimed at. For a long time the changes were seen only as a higher development, as an increase in skills. Today, the majority of people assume that development includes both gain and loss, as well as building and reducing skills. In the beginning, developmental psychology almost only examined childhood and adolescence, today the focus is on development over the entire life span. Other concepts are related to the concept of development, such as maturation, imprinting , stability and continuity.

Theories of self-concept development

William James described the self as a dual system in one of the first psychological textbooks (1890); he distinguished the self as a knowing subject ("I") from the self as an object of knowledge ("Me"). The first aspect relates to the characteristics of the individual that have to do with their behavior - that is, their personality. The second aspect means the self-concept and identity - the knowledge about oneself. According to James, the self-concept is made up of different areas: the material self (knowledge of one's own body), the spiritual self (knowledge of one's own spiritual properties) and the social self, the knowledge of how others see oneself.

This conception has also shaped current models of self-concept research. The aspect of the social self was taken up and continued by symbolic interactionism . For Charles Cooley (1902) the self-concept reflects the perceived attributions of others; he called it the " looking-glass self ". More important than what others think of me is what I believe they will think. According to George Herbert Mead (1934), the ability to adopt a perspective plays a decisive role: this allows you to see yourself from the perspective of others.

The approaches of Freud, Erikson and Marcia

The psychoanalysis has a very different view of the self and its development. Inner psychological conflicts and the solution to these are central to this. According to Freud (1930, 1933), the wishes of the id collide with the norms of the superego; the mediating, reality-related instance of the ego has to resolve the conflict.

Erikson (1974, 1988) regards the development of the self as a gradual sequence of normative psychosocial conflict situations that are linked to age. If the child copes with tasks at an early stage, for example if it gains basic trust , experiences autonomy, etc., it has created the basis for the development of a coherent self-image, its own identity. According to Erikson, identity formation is the most important developmental task of adolescence; but it doesn't stop there.

Marcia (1980) developed Erikson's step model of psychosocial development . The identity status results from two dimensions - “Commitment”, the self-commitment, and “Exploration”, the search for possibilities in a crisis. In the status of diffuse identity , the individual has no clear conception of himself. In the adopted identity , the individual has adopted values ​​and goals from persons in authority without considering alternatives. An important step in identity development happens when a crisis occurs. Different values ​​and goals are weighed against each other. In the stage of the developed identity , the individual - after carefully weighing many alternatives - has committed himself to an identity and feels bound to corresponding values ​​and goals. In contrast to Erikson, Marcia assumes that individuals can also switch between the stages, that there is no uniform course from lower to higher levels. The developed identity is the most stable stage.

Current approaches

In the mid-1970s, Shavelson , Hubner, and Stanton (1976) presented a hierarchical model of the self-concept , which is characterized above all by its multidimensionality and a structured structure. It assumes that the self-concept is complex and divided into several levels. The model has been revised several times, but its validity has been largely confirmed in numerous empirical studies.

Information-theoretical models emphasize the assumption that humans actively construct their own knowledge. The information is processed in different phases. The self is then the current result of the processing of self-related information. Such a model was presented by Sigrun-Heide Filipp (1984) in which she wanted to explain the process of self-concept development and the self-concept as a product at the same time. The sources of self-related knowledge can be: information from other people, direct or indirect, comparisons with others and (from late childhood) thinking about yourself, with reference to past or expected (self) experiences in the future.

Theories of Personality Development

The self as the totality of self-related knowledge is at least partially a reflection of what really defines the person, that is, of their objective characteristics and competencies: their personality. Accordingly, the development of the self-concept follows the personal development. Three theoretical paradigms can be distinguished: The first paradigm starts with the measurement of personality traits ; the best-known example is the 5-factor model according to McCrae and Costa (1997), the so-called " Big Five ". They differentiate between five main dimensions of personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness , extraversion , tolerance and neuroticism . According to McCrae and Costa, they are essentially genetically determined, mature over the entire lifespan and lead to specific attitudes, interests, habits and self-concepts.

The second paradigm focuses on the influence of the (social) environment on personal development; According to such theories, age-related changes in personality are due to systematic changes in the relationship to the social environment. A position in between are taken by theories that consider personality traits to be fairly stable over the lifespan and at the same time emphasize the changeability of the person. According to these theories, the person and the environment develop in mutual influence.

Methodically oriented towards Kohlberg, Jane Loevinger (1976, 1997) worked out her theory of ego development with the help of an open survey procedure, which she called “personality development” in her 1997 publication. It locates the beginning of development in a very general way “in the mists of infancy” (1997, p. 203) and characterizes the further development in a normative phase model with eight stages, each of which builds on one another. However, it assumes that not everyone reaches all levels, especially not the last level of "integration", which is characterized by the full development of personality and is seldom observed. Others take the confrontation with and the mastering of developmental tasks and critical life events as the starting point of their theories on the development of personality and self-concept. As early as 1948, Robert J. Havighurst described his concept of development tasks . These are partly universal, partly culture-specific, partly self-defined and are linked to certain periods of life. Coping with the tasks is a prerequisite for a healthy development of the personality. The similarity to Erikson's concept of development crises is striking.

Development of self and personality over the life span

Beginnings of the Self in Early Childhood

The first abilities to pre-conceptually distinguish between self and non-self can already be found in babies from three months of age. You can distinguish between your own face and someone else's face: when viewing video recordings with infants, you show more interest in the face of a strange child than in your own face. The fact that toddlers have an initial conceptual idea of ​​themselves becomes apparent in the course of their second year of life: from around 18 months, children pass the so-called rouge test . If you put a red stain on the child's face without them noticing and then sit in front of a mirror, they'll touch their face and try to remove the spot of color, while younger children try to wipe the stain off the mirror. After this milestone in self-development, children at the end of the second year of life begin to refer to themselves in conversations with their own name and to use personal pronouns such as "I" and "you", in other words, to develop linguistic competence, to refer to yourself. At 14 months, children can safely differentiate between themselves and others.

These early forms of the self initially all relate only to the present (“synchronous self-concept”); a temporally persistent (“diachronic”) self-concept requires the development of an autobiographical memory ; this happens at around four years of age. This could be determined by a modified Rouge test and by analyzing childish narratives.

From preschool age, children are able to see each other from a different perspective. In addition to the “real self”, the subjective assessment of one's own person, there is now the “other-intended self”, which includes expectations of others towards one's own person. Large discrepancies between the two lead to negative emotions of guilt and shame in the child.

The self-concept is still quite unstructured in this age group, consists of relatively incoherent self-aspects, for example physical characteristics (eye color), favorite activities (“I like to play with dolls”), social and physical characteristics. Preschoolers describe themselves positively to an unrealistic degree, and the representation of themselves is characterized by the “all or nothing” principle, ie a child of this age cannot imagine having good and bad qualities at the same time (for example being nice and nasty).

The self in school age

With the start of school, the group of the same age becomes more important, and social comparisons become the decisive source of self-centered knowledge (“comparative predicate self-assignment”); performance-related comparisons become more relevant. In the case of self-conceptual skills, the so-called fish pond effect (“Big fish little pond effect”) often occurs ; it refers to the fact that one's own performance in the environment of weaker children increases one's ability to self-concept; in a group of more capable children the opposite is true. It could be shown that this effect occurs independently of the respective culture.

Schoolchildren's self-concept becomes more abstract and systematic, and the hierarchical structure becomes more and more apparent; In concepts of a higher order (for example “traits” or personality traits) specific behaviors are integrated on a lower level.

The self in youth

Especially in young people it is about finding oneself and identity. Increased self-awareness and a high degree of self-reflection are typical for this age group. The self-concept is now enriched by past and expected future self-experiences ; Information from one's own biography is a new source of self-centered knowledge. This also leads to the development of a personality concept.

The own self can now be seen in a more differentiated way, and it is possible for the young people to combine positive and negative aspects of the self-concept and to see them depending on the social context (“I am considerate towards my friends, but I can also be selfish at sports competitions. "). Behavioral differences can increasingly be traced back to different social roles . On the one hand, the self-image becomes more and more differentiated, on the other hand, the need to find out what the “real me” is also increases.

The physical development during puberty brings the body self-concept into focus. It consists of four aspects: athletic competence, attractiveness, fitness and physical strength. Boys achieve more positive values ​​than girls in all areas of the body self-concept. Girls rate themselves much more negatively; the internalization of unrealistic and exaggerated ideals of female beauty also contributes to this. The negative body image has been linked to eating disorders and depression .

The development of the self in adolescence is also decisively shaped by detachment from the parental home; Young people now determine their space of experience themselves, and thus also what they experience about themselves. Maintaining a bond with parents seems to be important for self development and later mental health .

Research on self-concept has recently also focused on the importance of the Internet and social media , which have become an indispensable part of young people's lives. The question of the extent to which the virtual world affects the formation of identity and self-concept development is particularly interesting for research.

The adult self

For a long time, developmental psychology assumed that humans are "developed" when they enter adult life. The behavior should now be increasingly shaped by the characteristics of the personality - largely thought to be stable - that would be appropriately depicted in the self-concept. However, this approach neglects the importance of the self as a developmental condition: Life always has the goal of giving our development and thus also our self a certain form. However, this also presupposes that the individual has developed ideas of how it should be and how further development could proceed - if he has developed so-called " possible selves ".

In middle adulthood, people experience the highest degree of autonomy : They have arranged their lives to match their self-image and experience themselves as the creators of their own life. Your self-concept has become more and more complex and better integrated; In this phase of life, people are best able to balance positive and negative emotions.

Under favorable conditions, this integration of various life experiences leads to self-centered wisdom (this does not mean: to general wisdom), which means insight and judgment, even with difficult questions in life.

Especially in adulthood, “possible selves” are an important motivation to act, because here it becomes clear that now is the time for certain goals, because life is finite. The ideas of the future are more realistic and oriented towards the respective role (job, family) and responsibility. As adults can adjust their possible selves again and again to their possibilities, the personal self-worth , i.e. the attitude that a person has towards himself , remains high in this life span; it increases the most between 22 and 30 years and then remains stable overall. Self-esteem peaks around the age of 60 and then drops. This is due to the increasingly unfavorable profit-loss balance - due to possible health restrictions and the declining socio-economic status of older people. Significant caregivers may die , and the fear of death can be stressful.

It is not easy to explain that the self nevertheless remains relatively stable. A distinction is made between two "lines of defense". The first line is characterized by the rejection of threatening information: the person simply does not take notice of what could threaten the continuity of the self-image. The second line of defense is a reassessment of seemingly unpleasant events that are then no longer perceived as being that negative. Finally, there is also an adaptive developmental dynamic of the self, which ensures that the self remains stable without ignoring real changes. This enables an appropriate adaptation of one's own actions to changed conditions.

The question of whether personality traits change in adulthood is controversial in research. On the one hand, meta-analyzes (Ferguson, 2018) find that personality consolidates in early adulthood and remains stable into advanced adulthood. Other research, based on meta-analyzes of studies of changes in the Big Five over the life span (Roberts et al., 2006), shows significant personality changes also in adulthood. In particular, the emotional stability, conscientiousness and compatibility increase with age, the facets of dominance and self-confidence of the factor extraversion also increase, while the facets of sociability and activity decrease over the life span. The age-dependent differences become even clearer if one does not rely on self-reported information in questionnaires but on behavioral observations . There is still a need for further research here.

See also

literature

  • Lieselotte Ahnert (ed.): Theories in developmental psychology . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2014. ISBN 978-3-642-34804-4
  • Jens B. Asendorpf: Personality: what defines us and why . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2018. ISBN 978-3-662-56105-8
  • Jens B. Asendorpf: Personality Psychology for Bachelor . 4th, completely revised edition, Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2019. ISBN 978-3-662-57612-0
  • August Flammer: Development Theories . Psychological theories of human development . 4th, completely revised edition, Hans Huber, Bern 2009. ISBN 978-3-456-84607-1
  • Werner Greve, Tamara Thomsen: Developmental Psychology. An introduction to explaining human development . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2019. ISBN 978-3-531-17006-0
  • Bettina Hannover, Werner Greve: Self and Personality . In: Wolfgang Schneider, Ulman Lindenberger (Ed.): Developmental Psychology . 7th, completely revised edition, Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2012, pp. 543–578.
  • Gerd Jüttemann, Hans Thomae (ed.): Personality and development . 5th edition, Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2006. ISBN 3-407-22113-4
  • Günter Krampen, Werner Greve: Personality and self-concept development over the life span . In: Rolf Oerter, Leo Montada (Ed.): Developmental Psychology . 6th, completely revised edition, Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2008, pp. 652–687.
  • Frieder R. Lang, Mike Martin, Martin Pinquart: Developmental Psychology - Adulthood . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2012. ISBN 978-3-8017-2186-2
  • Arnold Lohaus (Ed.): Developmental Psychology of Adolescence . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2018. ISBN 978-3-662-55791-4
  • Arnold Lohaus, Marc Vierhaus: Developmental Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence for Bachelor's . 3rd, revised edition, Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2015. ISBN 978-3-662-45528-9
  • Hans Dieter Mummendey: Psychology of the 'Self'. Theories, methods and results of self-concept research . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2006. ISBN 978-3-8017-1949-4
  • Rolf Oerter, Leo Montada (Ed.): Developmental Psychology . 6th, completely revised edition, Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2008. ISBN 978-3-621-27847-8
  • Martin Pinquart: Development of personality and self-concept . In: Martin Pinquart, Gudrun Schwarzer, Peter Zimmermann: Developmental Psychology - Childhood and Adolescence . 2nd, revised edition, Hogrefe, Göttingen 2019, pp. 245–267.
  • Martin Pinquart, Gudrun Schwarzer, Peter Zimmermann: Developmental Psychology - Childhood and Adolescence . 2nd, revised edition, Hogrefe, Göttingen 2019. ISBN 978-3-8017-2861-8
  • Wolfgang Schneider, Ulman Lindenberger (Ed.): Developmental Psychology . 7th, completely revised edition, Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2012. ISBN 978-3-621-27957-4
  • Robert Siegler et al. a .: Developmental Psychology in Childhood and Adolescence . Translated from the American v. Katharina Neuser-von Oettingen. 4th edition, Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2016. ISBN 978-3-662-47027-5
  • Tamara Thomsen, Nora Lessing, Werner Greve and Stefanie Dresbach: Self-concept and self-worth . In: Arnold Lohaus (Ed.): Developmental Psychology of Adolescence . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2018, pp. 91–111.
  • Jenny Wagner, Frieder R. Lang: Development of the self and well-being . In: Frieder R. Lang, Mike Martin, Martin Pinquart: Developmental Psychology - Adulthood . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2012, pp. 161–179.
  • Cornelia Wrzus, Frieder R. Lang: Development of Personality . In: Frieder R. Lang, Mike Martin, Martin Pinquart: Developmental Psychology - Adulthood . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2012, pp. 141–159.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Cornelia Wrzus, F. Lang: personality development . In: Frieder R. Lang, Mike Martin, Martin Pinquart: Developmental Psychology - Adulthood . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2012, pp. 141–159, here : 142 ff.
  2. ^ A b Bettina Hannover, Werner Greve: Self and personality . In: Wolfgang Schneider, Ulman Lindenberger (Ed.): Developmental Psychology . 7th, completely revised edition, Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2012, pp. 543–578, here : 544.
  3. ↑ a b c d Martin Pinquart, Gudrun Schwarzer, Peter Zimmermann: Developmental Psychology - Childhood and Adolescence . 2nd, revised edition, Hogrefe, Göttingen 2019, p. 16 ff. And 247 ff.
  4. ↑ Werner Greve, Tamara Thomsen: Developmental Psychology. An introduction to explaining human development . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2019, p. 156.
  5. ↑ Hans Dieter Mummendey: Psychology of the 'Self'. Theories, methods and results of self-concept research . Hogrefe, Göttingen 2006, p. 7
  6. ↑ Tamara Thomsen et al. a .: Self-concept and self-worth . In: Arnold Lohaus (Ed.): Developmental Psychology of Adolescence . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2018, pp. 91–111, here:  92.
  7. ^ A b c d e f g h i j k Arnold Lohaus, Marc Vierhaus: Developmental Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence for Bachelor . 3rd, revised edition, Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2015, p. 181 ff.
  8. ^ A b Bettina Hannover, Werner Greve: Self and personality . In: Wolfgang Schneider, Ulman Lindenberger (Ed.): Developmental Psychology . 7th, completely revised edition, Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2012, pp. 543–578, here : 547 f.
  9. ^ A b Günter Krampen, Werner Greve: Personality and self-concept development over the life span . In: Rolf Oerter, Leo Montada (Ed.): Developmental Psychology . 6th, completely revised edition, Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2008, pp. 652–687, here:  668 ff.
  10. ^ A b Bettina Hannover, Werner Greve: Self and personality . In: Wolfgang Schneider, Ulman Lindenberger (Ed.): Developmental Psychology . 7th, completely revised edition, Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 2012, pp. 543-578, here : 558 ff.