From a Sense of Self to Understanding Relations Between Social Groups

Abstract

Our sense of self arises from our understanding that we are unique and different from others that are close to us, and that these other people have similarities and differences among themselves and in relation to us. Understanding the self and others as separate entities requires reasoning about the social world, including understanding people, interpersonal relations, institutions, and social structure. This chapter introduces the socio-developmental perspective in a didactic overview on the socio-cognitive self-development of children. It equips the reader with fundamental background knowledge that is useful for the understanding of reporting research results with children of different age. What this overview makes clear, among others, is how closely children’s self is intertwined from the beginning with the social world they live in, how fundamental the role of social categorization is for children’s understanding of the social world and themselves as part of it, how the notion of their position in social structure becomes more and more sophisticated over the course of their self-development, and how much children advance with age in the flexible mastering of complex, often contradicting social affordances within interpersonal, intergroup, and institutional contexts.