What Are the Causes of Egocentrism in Adolescence?

Piaget is a concept used to describe the psychological characteristics of children before the age of 6 or 7. Piaget believes that in the early stages of psychological development, the ego and the outside world have not clearly separated. Babies associate everything with their bodies as if they were the center of the universe. In other words, infants and young children can only judge and understand things, situations, relationships with others, etc. according to their own needs and feelings, and they cannot take other people's viewpoints at all, do not pay attention to the intentions of others, and do not look at them from the perspective of others. Questions cannot be viewed according to the laws and characteristics of things.

Piaget is a concept used to describe the psychological characteristics of children before the age of 6 or 7. Piaget believes that in the early stages of psychological development, the ego and the outside world have not clearly separated. Babies associate everything with their bodies as if they were the center of the universe. In other words, infants and young children can only judge and understand things, situations, relationships with others, etc. according to their own needs and feelings, and they cannot take other people's viewpoints at all, do not pay attention to the intentions of others, and do not look at them from the perspective of others. Questions cannot be viewed according to the laws and characteristics of things.

Chinese name

Self-centered

Foreign name

Egocentric

Applied discipline

psychology

Application range

Developmental psychology

Self- centered speech

As opposed to social speech. Refers to children speaking not to a certain listener, but to speak for themselves or for the happiness of connecting with people who happened to be present at the time. They mostly focus on a single matter, not providing information or asking questions. Or communicate for the purpose of inadvertently influencing others, often ignoring their reactions and opinions. Piaget divides egocentric speech into three categories: repetition. Repeat a few words or sounds for pleasant pronunciation. Monologue. Children speak to themselves and express their thoughts through voice. Collective monologue. Children speak to themselves loudly in front of many people and do not pay attention to the listener. The presence of the listener only provides a stimulus and therefore does not cause a dialogue. Piaget believes that self-centered speech is a kind of non-social speech, which is a manifestation of self-centered consciousness unique to children 2 to 7 years old. The research results of many psychologists at home and abroad have shown that self-centered speech is widespread in early childhood. With age, egocentric speech decreases and social speech increases. Former Soviet psychologist Wigowski and others believe that self-centered speech is actually a transitional form in which external speech is transformed into internal speech. form. ^[1]

Self-centered development

Egocentricity

Self-centeredness in infancy. When children are born, they have no self-awareness, and psychological activities are just exercises of instinct. From the beginning, however, children showed real initiative, the assimilation of early sensory movements. At first, the child assimilated a part of the world into his sucking action, and even regarded the world around him as a suckable world. Soon, the same world was seen as the world he saw, the world he heard, and so on. At this time, because the different actions have not been coordinated with each other, each action associates a part of the body with the object to form an isolated whole, and the frame of reference for each action is only the body itself. Then an egocentric state with its own body as the axis is formed. This self-centered state is unconscious and unconscious.

Self- centering

After the child is 2 years old, he enters the pre-operational thinking stage. Due to the emergence of language, children's behavior has undergone profound changes, resulting in self-centered thinking. This self-centered thinking stands out in a symbolic game. Because children have not yet formed the interests and habits of adults, and they do not have a deep understanding of the real world. In order to effectively meet their intellectual and emotional needs like adults, they can only be satisfied through games. In play, the child needs a tool for self-expression, and a signal system that he creates and obeys his will. This is a symbolic game. Here, instead of children conforming to reality, they assimilate reality to themselves. The pre-operation level of self-centeredness is mainly manifested in self-centered thinking.

Egocentricity and decentralization

In the early stages of cognitive development, children often lack judgment (Piaget, 1926; Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). In the stage of perceptual movement, egocentrism manifests itself as a child's inability to distinguish the subject, the object of the action, and the action itself. As their physiology matured, decentring of psychological development began. Babies recognize that specific behaviors can produce expected results and that novel stimuli can lead to new, related behaviors. For example, if one wants to turn on the light, he cannot turn the radio knob. Decentralization is a process that runs through all stages of individual life development. This process urges people to look at and analyze problems more objectively.

In the pre-computing stage, egocentricity manifests itself as the inability to distinguish the perspectives and experiences of oneself and others. When a 4-year-old girl tells you about her anecdote while in the zoo, she behaves as if you have experienced it. 300 When a 3-year-old boy talked to his grandmother on the phone and talked about something in his room, he might point to it directly without realizing that his grandmother couldn't see it on the phone at all.

The third concentration of egoism appeared in the period when children transitioned from the concrete operation phase to the formal operation phase. As children's ability to form hypothetical systems has evolved, they have begun to make assumptions about their own behavior and those of others in the established systems. For example, a boy in his early teens believes that cooperation is a better mode of interaction than competition, and he insists that cooperation should benefit others and the entire group. If the boy finds that the teacher, parents, and peers have some competitive experience, or even willing to compete, he will be very angry. He might think so, since cooperation would be more beneficial, why would these people insist on their unreasonable attitude that is enthusiastic about defeating their opponents and take pleasure in it? This kind of self-centeredness shows that they have not realized that their hypothetical system cannot be adopted by others.

In the early teens, decentralization enabled teens to realize that one's ideals cannot be accepted by everyone. We live in a pragmatic and utilitarian society. Most people's goals are not consistent with what they desire. Young people will gradually find that their life planning must be constantly adjusted to meet the expectations and needs of others. As their formal computing thinking matured, their egocentricity gradually subsided.

The early characteristics of adolescents in adolescents have two characteristics that affect not only their social interactions, but also their way of solving problems. These two characteristics are: first, adolescents may feel a sense of alienation as their range of consciousness expands. They often think about the possibility of something happening or look forward to the future, and even worry about the possible consequences of some current things, such issues will fill their minds at this stage. David Elkind (1967) described this phase as the formation phase of personal fables. At this time, most of them would pay attention to their unique feelings and maintain a certain belief. Teenagers think that all of this is unique and that they are so insightful about the world that they are not understood by others and feel lonely. These ideas can hinder their access to information and further affect their social interaction. Second, individuals in their early teens often consider themselves to be the center of others' attention. Elkind (1967) calls this phenomenon an imaginary audience. They don't know that everyone has their own ideas and plans, but think that their ideas are the focus of others' attention. This subjective nature of self-consciousness makes them weird and unnatural in social interaction. On the one hand, they think that others are watching their every move. This preconceived notion is also an important factor in decentralization, turning attention to others and how they behave in the eyes of others. On the other hand, this ability to pay attention to the opinions and evaluations of others also enhances self-awareness.

Egoism is not a problem that only exists during adolescence. At each stage of the development of consciousness, people rely heavily on their own experience and perceptions to reduce the anxiety caused by uncertainty. With the development of formal computing, people gradually become more reasoning and less experience, and more knowledge than observation, which may make people's worldview limited to their familiar beliefs. We may never admit novelty and just treat it as a special case of a familiar idea. We may deny living facts simply because they do not conform to our previous knowledge structure, because it is easier for everyone to believe in their previous assumptions than to constantly question their expectations. ^[2]