The Self-Perception and Personality of Children Based on Eders Experiment

Personality is what makes us who we are. It determines the kind of friends we make, how we will react to certain situations, our interests, and so much more. It is what separates the awkward, shy nerd from the crude, fearless jock. It is what makes us, us. This topic will be examined in a number of ways, First, personality and the three concepts behind self-perception (self-concept, self-esteem, and identity) will be defined. This information can be tied into how self-concept develops at different age groups, especially childhood.

An experiment by Eder was done to explore whether or not young children are able to describe themselves consistently and differentiate themselves from other children. Their self-concepts are described by nine or ten different dimensions. This idea of self-concept can also tie into the trait theory, which generalizes personality into five different traits: openness to experiences, conscientiousness, extrovertedness, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Personality is defined as an organized set of attributes, values, and behaviors that make everyone unique (Sigelman and Rider). For example, a brother in a family can be described as soft-spoken, shy, and reclusive, while the sister can be described as outgoing, energetic, and crass. No two personalities are exactly the same. However, just as how each personality is unique, they can differ depending on who is making the judgement. While peers may describe the brother as shy and reclusive, he may describe himself as intelligent and high-energy around his friends. This relates to the self-perceptions a person has of themselves.

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There are three main concepts behind self-perceptions: self-concept, self-esteem, and identity. Self-concept can be described as how people see themselves; it describes one's own attributes. This can range anywhere from a positive self-concept (e.g. I am good at running) to a negative self-concept to even an unrealistic self-concept (e.g. I am the fastest runner in the world). Self-esteem is how we value ourselves as a person. This is related to one's self-concepts; believing that you are terrible at everything can lead to having a low self-esteem, and generally feeling bad about yourself.

Identity is an overall sense of who we are and what roles that we play in society (Sigelman and Rider), For example, one could identify themselves as a heterosexual, Christian male in their senior year at college who loves to volunteer. All of these concepts are used to describe one's sense of self, and where they are in the world.

Rebecca Eder, a psychologist, sought out to investigate how young children perceive themselves based off of Tellegen's (1882) nine dimensions of personality. Eder addressed three goals with this experiment: to determine if children aged three-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half have concepts of themselves that reflect self-understanding, to see if children have differing self- concepts, and whether or not these concepts were stable over a one-month period. For the experiment, Eder interviewed a number of boys and girls who were either three-and-a-half, five- and-a-half, or seven-and-a-half years old. These children were enrolled in private schools and came from middle-class families.

During the interview process, children were taken into a room with a researcher and presented two puppets that corresponded to the child's gender. This was done due to the fact that the children had a hard time identifying with puppets of the opposite gender. The children were told that the puppets wanted to write a story about them, as to make the experiment seem like a game to the children. This was done due to the fact that children had a hard time answering questionnaires or openly describing their personalities.

The puppets then asked the children 50 questions reflecting high and low ends of a dimension (e.g. I hardly ever get sad vs. I get sad a lot).. The children were asked which puppet most resembled them, restating what the puppet said with their answer. There were responses were scored by the accompanying researcher based on the dimension (Eder).

Ten dimensions were chosen: achievement, aggression, alienation, control, harm, avoidance, social closeness, social potency, stress reaction, traditionalism, and well-being. These dimension were adapted from Tellegen's nine dimensions of personality (1985). Achievement can be operationally defined as being a hard worker and a perfectionist. Aggression is defined as wanting to hurt or frighten others. Alienation is defined as feeling left out and alone.

Control is defined as having the desire to plan and not doing things spur of the moment. Harm avoidance is the evasion of dangerous situations that could endanger one's safety. Social closeness is the seeking of friendship and the desire to help others. Social potency is the leadership dimension. It defined as the desire to stand out and draw attention. The stress reaction is becoming angry or scared in times of hardship. Traditionalism can be defined as politeness or caring for manners. Finally, well-being is the happiness dimension. It describes how joyful or enthusiastic a person is (Eder).

The results of the dimensions were scored and analyzed for all of the children. It was found that young children do, in fact, have a self-concept and are able to describe themselves. Differences were also found amongst all of the age groups, indicating that there were even differences between the youngest children. Finally, these results were found to be consistent. A retest for half of the children in each group one month later. It was found that these children gave similar answers to the ones they had given the first time.

In particular, we were shown footage of two individual children from the experiment. There was a boy and a girl. Each child was in the seven-year-old category. The children completed the personality assessment separately, choosing which puppet they identified with the most based upon the personality dimension that was presented. There were 55 questions asked of the children, with nine different dimensions: achievement, aggression, alienation, harm avoidance, social closeness, social potency, stress reaction, traditionalism, and well-being.

This was similar to the report that Eder published, except that nine dimensions were used instead of ten and 54 questions were asked rather than 50. There were seven questions about achievement, five questions about aggression, six questions regarding alienation, seven about harm avoidance, five regarding social closeness, six regarding social potency, seven about the stress reaction, five regarding traditionalism, and seven about well-being (Eder).

The boy taking the test looked hesitant about the questions at first, and appeared to become bored towards the end. It was found that he answered towards the high-end of achievement five times out of seven, never answered towards the high-end for aggression, one for the high-end of alienation, four for harm avoidance, two for social closeness, three for social potency, never answered towards the high-end for stress reaction, two for traditionalism, and answered towards the high-end for all of the well-being questions. These results possibly indicate that the boy considers himself an extremely hard worker. He finds that he prefers harder tasks over easier ones almost always, He believes that he is not aggressive and that he does not enjoy taking his frustration out on others.

The boy typically does not feel left out or alone, preferring to believe that others wish him well. He occasionally seeks out danger, but is also just as likely to avoid it. According to him, the boy more often prefers to play alone rather than with people, and considers himself somewhat of a leader. The boy views himself as a very calm individual, believing that he never becomes scared or angry in stressful situations. He typically does not care about manners, and identifies himself as an extremely cheerful person.

On the other hand, the girl taking the test seemed very excited to get started. She often interacted with the puppets outside of the questions, openly talking to them as if they were real people. She even went so far as to make the puppets hold hands during the test. It was found that she answered towards the high-end of achievement five times out of seven, never answered towards the high-end for aggression, five for the high-end of alienation, four for harm avoidance, one for social closeness, three for social potency, answered towards the high-end five times for stress reaction, one for traditionalism, and answered towards the high-end for two of the well- being questions.

These results possibly indicate that the girl considers herself an extremely hard worker. She finds that she prefers harder tasks over easier ones almost always, She believes that she is not aggressive and that she does not enjoy taking her frustration out on others. The girl often feel left out or alone, believing that others wish her harm. She occasionally seeks out danger, but is also just as likely to avoid it. According to the girl, she prefers to play alone and with other people equally. and considers herself somewhat of a leader. The girl views herself as being upset a lot of the time, believing that it is easy for her to become scared or angry in stressful situations. She typically does not care about manners, and identifies herself as being unpleasant or sorrowful a lot of the time.

Both the boy and the girl scored similarly on many dimensions. They scored the same on achievement, aggression, harm avoidance, and social potency. They scored very similar on social closeness and traditionalism. However, they were also very different in some dimensions. There was a four-point difference on alienation dimension. This indicates that the girls feels much more lonely than the boy. She often feels left out of social situations where the boy almost always feels accepted, There was a five-point difference on the stress reaction dimension. This indicates that the girl is much easier to provoke than the boy. She is more apprehensive while the boy believes that he can handle stress well.

Finally, there was another five-point difference on the well-being factor. Where the boy believes that he is an extremely cheerful and content individual, the girl believes that she tends to be more somber and lethargic.

According to Sigelman and Rider, the girl's lower self-esteem could have been influenced by a number of different factors, including heredity, competence, social feedback, and a secure attachment to loving parents. With heredity, genes can influence a number of factors, including one's self-esteem. As children grow older, they will begin to discover that they are better or worse in some areas. This competency may affect their self-esteem when they cannot come to terms with their shortcomings. Around childhood, children will also begin to compare themselves to their peers, further emphasizing what they are or aren't good at.

For example, a child may think he is a fast runner. However, upon comparing himself to a faster classmate, he may feel that he is inadequate, lowering his self-esteem. Social feedback from teachers, parents, and peers also plays an important role in a child's self-esteem. Positive social feedback, allowing children to feel positively about themselves, will generally raise self-esteem, while negative feedback will decrease it. Children will have a self-concept that reflects how significant people in their lives treat them.

Secure, democratic parents help to provide positive feedback by allowing their children to have a say in matters. This makes them feel as if their opinions matter, raising their self-esteem. Parents whose children have formed secure attachments are also more likely to compliment their children when they do something right by communicating with them regularly.

This assessment could be tied to the trait theory. The trait theory states that personality is a set of trait dimensions that varies from person to person. Trait theorists believe that personality traits are enduring, and that they are not stage-like like many other analysts assume. Using the trait theory, personality scales are constructed and tested in order to identify similar personality groups. There are believed to be five major personality traits, called the Big Five.

These traits are openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Openness to new experiences can be described as having a natural curiosity and an interest in new things. Conscientiousness is how organized and disciplined one is. Extraversion can be described as being outgoing and sociable. Agreeableness is how cooperative and trustworthy one is in regards to the situations and people around them. Neuroticism describes how emotionally unstable or anxious one is. These traits appear to be universal, not being dependent on certain cultures or contexts (Sigelman and Rider). They also appear to be genetically influenced, emerging early in life--as can be seen by the experiment run by Eder.

Using the Big Five under of the trait theory provides a similar grounds for analyzing the two children who participated in the puppet show. The two different sets of traits have some similar dimensions that can be correlated to one another. For example, since the boy scored more towards the lower end of social closeness, it could thus be assumed that he might score low in the openness to experience category. Since he scored more towards the lower end of aggression and stress reaction and towards the higher end of well-being, he might score low in neuroticism. Because the boy scored high in well-being, but lower in social potency and social closeness, he might be only slightly extroverted. Because he scored lower for social closeness and higher for well-being, it can be assumed that he is very agreeable.

Finally, by scoring very high in achievement, but low in traditionalism, it can be assumed that he would score somewhat high as far as conscientiousness goes. The girl would show very similar outcomes in the Big Five traits of openness to experiences and conscientiousness for the same reasons. However, because she scored at the lower end of aggression and well-being, and towards the lower end of well-being, she might score very high in neuroticism--possibly indicating some emotional instability. Because the girl scored low in well-being and social closeness, but somewhat higher in social potency, she might be slightly more introverted than extroverted.. Because she scored lower for social closeness and well-being, it can be assumed that she believes herself to be somewhat disagreeable at times.

By analyzing both Eder's experiment and the Big Five personality traits, general conclusions can be drawn about the children in regards to self-perception and personality. Both children have a self-concept of themselves being high achievers that are compassionate for others. While they typically find that they prefer to play alone, they are not careless and do not take unnecessary risks. It appears that the young girl has a lower self-esteem than the boy, relating more to scenarios that revealed herself to be more discontent and easily scared, believing that she is often left out.

The boy views himself fairly well and appears to be happy with his life. Both children identify as seven-year-olds attending elementary school. Eder's experiment also revealed that children are able to form consistent self-concepts at a young age. These self- concepts are unique depending on the age group of the child. Much like snowflakes, people are unique in every way.

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