Egocentrism Patrick L. Hill and Daniel K. Lapsley University of Notre Dame To appear in E Anderman & L. Anderman (Eds), Psychology of Classroom Learning: An Encyclopedia
believes that dreams take place in one’s room at night (realism), that moving objects have life and consciousness (animism) or that the moon follows them because it wants to (artificialism), is displaying egocentrism just as surely as the child who s unable to differentiate self-other perspectives. Egocentrism is regarded typically as a problem of early cognitive development, although such “childish” thought may not be entirely absent even in later periods of development.
Word Count: 1422 Egocentrism and Development. 1. Define egocentrism. 2. Discuss how egocentrism changes (normatively) as a function of development. 3. Illustrate the ways in which egocentrism affects perspective-taking in academic as well as social domains. 4. Summarize what is known about individual and contextual factors that promote or inhibit appropriate development in this area. 5. Offer suggestions for teachers in dealing with egocentrism.
Definition Egocentrism is a concept derived from Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. It refers to a lack of differentiation between some aspect of self and other. The paradigm case is the failure of perspectivetaking that characterizes young children who are unable to infer what another person is thinking, feeling or seeing. Unable to infer accurately the perspective of others the egocentric child attributes to them his or her own perspective instead. Hence egocentrism describes a confusion of social perspectives that results from centering on one’s own perspective. But egocentrism is a broader concept that encompasses a number of additional curiosities of early cognitive development, including realism (the confusion of objective and subjective), animism (confusion of animate and inanimate) and artificialism (confusion of human activity or intentions with natural causes). What these forms of egocentrism have in common is the inability to differentiate subjective and objective perspectives. Children project subjective qualities onto external objects or events; are unable to “decenter” from their own perspective; or else assimilate objective reality to their subjective schemas, deforming reality as a result. So the child who
Elkind (1967) famously reconstructed Piaget’s four broad stages of cognitive development to show that each stage is imbued with a form of egocentrism. In the sensori-motor period, for example, egocentrism is evident when the infant stops looking for hidden objects; as if such objects no longer exist if out of sight. The sensori-motor child is egocentric with respect to objects to the extent that object permanence is confused with object perception. Sensori-motor egocentrism is overcome when children are able to form mental representations of absent objects, an ability that emerges with the symbolic functions of preoperational thought, the next stage of cognitive development. At this stage objects have permanent existence, even when not perceived, because they exist symbolically as cognitive representations. Although preoperations liberate the child from sensori-motor egocentrism, it ensnares the child in a form of egocentrism with respect to symbols. Indeed, most of the classic examples of egocentrism are linked to this stage of cognitive development. Hence children in early childhood are unable to infer the cognitive, affective or visual perspective of others. Their thinking is prone to realism, animism and artificialism. They fail conservation problems. They are unable to differentiate between symbols and their referents; they confuse make-believe play and reality. This preoperational egocentrism is overcome by the emergence of concrete operations, the next stage of cognitive development. At concrete operations the child can now hold two mental representations at once (e.g., symbol and referent, objective and subjective) and hence distinguish between them. Although concrete operations liberate the child from preoperational egocentrism, it nonetheless falls prey to a form of