Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [251]
Social competence: The elements of social competence are readiness to engage with peers, ability to sustain give-and-take with them, and popularity with or acceptance by them. Developmentalists measure popularity by such methods as asking the children in a particular play group which of their playmates they “especially like” and which they “don’t especially like”; simply by subtracting the negative responses from the positive ones and adding up the scores, they get an index of each child’s popularity in the group.
Self and group: In play groups, and even more in classrooms, close contact with other children spurs the development of the sense of psychological self (as distinguished from the physical sense of self of the toddler at the mirror). By eight, children begin to recognize that inwardly as well as outwardly they are different from others and that they are, in fact, unique.89
At the same time they become keenly aware and observant of group norms—for instance, the rules of games (choosing sides, taking turns, tossing a coin for first side at bat), and group loyalty (“telling on” a peer to parents or teachers is grounds for ostracism). Even at the elementary school level it is important to children to wear whatever is the fad in their group. As they near adolescence, the need to conform to peer-group norms—tastes in clothing, forms of speech, smoking, music, slang, drug use, sexual behavior—becomes extremely powerful. Adolescent peer-group norms and values differ among ethnic groups and social and economic levels, but the need to conform is omnipresent. After early adolescence, it wanes throughout the teen years.90
Sex-typed behavior: Fifty years ago, it was well established that throughout childhood, and particularly with the approach of adolescence, children increasingly exhibit behavior considered appropriate to their sex. In the 1960s, with the emergence of the women’s liberation movement, many people believed that most sex-typed behavior would prove to be socially prescribed rather than inherent, and would shortly disappear. Much of it has; but some remains and apparently is likely to continue.
That may be due in part to biology. In the 1970s radioimmunoassay studies showed that hormone levels begin to rise at around seven—long before secondary sex characteristics appear and sex-typed behavior becomes exaggerated.91 It is probably no coincidence that from seven on, few girls play games as rough as those of boys or get as dirty, and that until adolescence few boys are as conscious of their clothing and hair as most girls.
Yet despite all the changes that the women’s movement sought to initiate four decades ago, the preadolescent accentuation of sex-typed behavior continued to reflect social learning of one’s probable position as an adult in society. Even in 1990, most girls still saw their future in less optimistic terms than boys; that year, a nationwide poll of three thousand boys and girls in grades four to ten found that although in the elementary school years the self-esteem of girls was only slightly lower than that of boys, by middle school it declined markedly and continued at that level in high school. However, a decade later a meta-analysis of later self-esteem studies totaling forty-eight thousand young Americans showed only a minor advantage in self-esteem for males at all ages, a result its four female researchers said surprised them. They offered a number of explanations, but it may well be that the women’s movement had slowly had an effect in our society.92
Empathy and