Self and Moral Development in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence

1. Domains of self-concept:
2. The role of physical appearance as a domain of self-concept:
3. How do children in middle childhood make social comparisons, and to whom are they most likely to compare themselves?
4. Self-enhancing bias:
   a. How does this change and evolve as children enter into middle childhood and adolescence?
5. Downward social comparisons
   a. Who is more likely to make downward social comparisons?
   b. What kind of praise is most beneficial for children with low self-esteem? How does this differ from those with high or moderate self-esteem?
6. Self-efficacy
7. Narcissism
8. Pathways to narcissism versus high self-esteem (the role of parental value)
   (affect, behavior and cognition as moral components).
9. Classic theories of moral development
   a. Freud’s theory:
   i. You don’t really need to know the specifics of this theory. There is no empirical support for his theory and is based from a sexist and culturally-insensitive perspective.
   b. Piaget’s theory of morality:
   i. Premorality
   ii. Heteronormous
10. Immanent justice
    iii. Autonomous
    c. Kohlberg’s theory:
    i. The Heinz Dilemma:
    ii. Preconventional morality
    iii. Conventional morality
    iv. Postconventional morality
11. Problems with classic theories:
    a. Moral vs conventional rules
    b. Justice versus caring
12. Prosocial behavior:
    a. Empathy
    b. Sympathy
    c. Needs based reasoning
    d. How might empathy and sympathy influence prosocial behavior differently for older and younger children?
    e. Under what circumstances might empathy become counterproductive (and lead to less prosocial behavior)?
13. Antisocial behavior:
    a. Lying
    i. What age group is most likely to lie? What age group is best at lying?
    b. Aggression
    i. Types of aggression:
14. Instrumental aggression
15. Relational aggression
    ii. Social information processing
16. Hostile attribution biases
17. Bullying and victimization (we will provide a lot more information about this topic during class, so you can add to this section of your notes as we cover this topic during lecture).

Reflection Questions:

1. Why do you think that understanding cognitive development during middle childhood would be useful for your work and practice?
2. What would you like to discuss in greater detail during class? Explain why you chose this topic.
3. What concepts were surprising or confusing? Explain.