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Egocentrism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Egocentrism is the inability to differentiate between self and

other. More specifically, it is the inability to untangle subjective
schemas from objective reality; an inability to understand or
assume any perspective other than their own.[1][2]

Although egocentrism and narcissism appear similar, they are

not the same. A person who is egocentric believes they are the
center of attention, like a narcissist, but does not receive
gratification by one's own admiration. Both egotists and
narcissists are people whose egos are greatly influenced by the
approval of others, while for egocentrists this may or may not
be true.
Egocentrism
Although egocentric behaviors are less prominent in adulthood,
the existence of some forms of egocentrism in adulthood indicates that overcoming egocentrism
may be a lifelong development that never achieves completion.[3] Adults appear to be less
egocentric than children because they are faster to correct from an initially egocentric perspective
than children, not because they are less likely to initially adopt an egocentric perspective.[4]

Therefore, egocentrism is found across the life span: in infancy[5] early childhood,[4][6]
adolescence,[7] and adulthood.[4][8] It contributes to the human cognitive development by helping
children develop theory of mind and self-identity formation.

Contents
1 During infancy
2 During childhood
3 During adolescence
4 During adulthood
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links

During infancy

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The main concept infants and young children learn by beginning to show egocentrism is the fact
that their thoughts, values, and behaviors are different from those of others, also known as the
theory of mind.[9] Initially when children begin to have social interactions with others, mainly the
caregivers, they misinterpret that they are one entity, because they are together for a long duration
of time and the caregivers often provide for the children's needs. For example, a child may
misattribute the act of their mother reaching to retrieve an object that they point to as a sign that
they are the same entity, when in fact they are actually separate individuals. As early as 15 months
old,[5] children show a mix of egocentrism and theory of mind when an agent acts inconsistently
with how the children expect him to behave. In this study the children observed the experimenter
place a toy inside one of two boxes, but did not see when the experimenter removed the toy from
the original box and placed it in the other box, due to obstruction by a screen. When the screen was
removed the children watched the experimenter reach to take the toy out of one of the boxes, yet
because the children did not see the switching part, they looked at the experimenter's action much
longer when she reached for the box opposite to the one she originally put the toy in. Not only does
this show the existence of infants' memory capacity, but it also demonstrates how they have
expectations based on their knowledge, as they are surprised when those expectations are not met.

During childhood
According to George Butterworth and Margaret Harris, during childhood, one is usually unable to
distinguish between what is subjective and objective.[10] According to Piaget, "an egocentric child
assumes that other people see, hear, and feel exactly the same as the child does."[11]

Jean Piaget (18961980) developed a theory about the development of human intelligence,
describing the stages of cognitive development. He claimed that early childhood is the time of
pre-operational thought, characterized by children's inability to process logical thought.[12]
According to Piaget, one of the main obstacles to logic that children possess includes centration,
"the tendency to focus on one aspect of a situation to the exclusion of others."[13] A particular type
of centration is egocentrism literally, "self-centeredness." Piaget claimed that young children are
egocentric, capable of contemplating the world only from their personal perspective. For example,
a three-year-old presented his mother a model truck as her birthday present; "he had carefully
wrapped the present and gave it to his mother with an expression that clearly showed he expected
her to love it."[14] The three-year-old boy had not chosen the present out of selfishness or
greediness, but he simply failed to realize that, from his mother's perspective, she might not enjoy
the model car as much as he would.

Piaget was concerned with two aspects of egocentricity in children: language and morality.[15] He
believed that egocentric children use language primarily for communication with oneself. Piaget
observed that children would talk to themselves during play, and this egocentric speech was merely
the child's thoughts.[16] He believed that this speech had no special function; it was used as a way
of accompanying and reinforcing the child's current activity. He theorized that as the child matures
cognitively and socially the amount of egocentric speech used would be reduced.[16] However,

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Vygotsky felt that egocentric speech has more meaning, as it allows the child's growth in social
speech and high mental development.[16] In addition to Piaget's theory, he believed that when
communicating with others, the child believes that others know everything about the topic of
discussion and become frustrated when asked to give further detail.[15]

Piaget also believed that egocentrism affects the child's sense of morality.[15] Due to egocentrism,
the child is only concerned with the final outcome of an event rather than another's intentions. For
example, if someone breaks the child's toy, the child would not forgive the other and the child
wouldn't be able to understand that the person who broke the toy did not intend to break it.[15] This
phenomenon can also be backed by the evidence from the findings of the case study by Nelson,
who studied the use of motives and outcomes by young children as aiding to form their moral
judgements.

Piaget did a test to investigate egocentrism called the mountains study. He put children in front of a
simple plaster mountain range and then asked them to pick from four pictures the view that he,
Piaget, would see. The younger children before age seven picked the picture of the view they
themselves saw and were therefore found to lack the ability to appreciate a viewpoint different from
their own. In other words, their way of reasoning was egocentric. Only when entering the concrete-
operational stage of development at age seven to twelve, children became less egocentric and could
appreciate viewpoints other than their own. In other words, they were capable of cognitive
perspective-taking. However, the mountains test has been criticized for judging only the child's
visuo-spatial awareness, rather than egocentrism. A follow up study involving police dolls showed
that even young children were able to correctly say what the interviewer would see.[17] It is thought
that Piaget overestimated the extent of egocentrism in children. Egocentrism is thus the child's
inability to see other people's viewpoints, not to be confused with selfishness. The child at this
stage of cognitive development assumes that their view of the world is the same as other peoples.

In addition, a more well-known experiment by Wimmer and Perner (1983) called the false-belief
task demonstrates how children show their acquisition of theory of mind (ToM) as early as 4 years
old.[6] In this task, children see a scenario where one character hides a marble in a basket, walks out
of the scene, and another character that is present takes out the marble and put it in a box. Knowing
that the first character did not see the switching task, children were asked to predict where the first
character would look to find the marble. The results show that children younger than 4 answer that
the character would look inside the box, because they have the superior knowledge of where the
marble actually is. It shows egocentric thinking in early childhood because they thought that even if
the character itself did not see the entire scenario, it has the same amount of knowledge as oneself
and therefore should look inside the box to find the marble. As children start to acquire ToM, their
ability to recognize and process others' beliefs and values overrides the natural tendency to be
egocentric.

During adolescence
Although most of the research completed on the study of egocentrism is primarily focused on early

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childhood development, it has been found to also occur during adolescence.[18] David Elkind was
one of the first to discover the presence of egocentrism in adolescence and late adolescence. He
argues, "the young adolescent, because of the physiological metamorphosis he is undergoing, is
primarily concerned with himself. Accordingly, since he fails to differentiate between what others
are thinking about and his own mental preoccupations, he assumes that other people are obsessed
with his behavior and appearance as he is himself."[19] This shows that the adolescent is exhibiting
egocentrism, by struggling to distinguish whether or not, in actuality, others are as fond of them as
they might think because their own thoughts are so prevalent. Adolescents consider themselves as
"unique, special, and much more socially significant than they actually are."[13]

Elkind also created terms to help describe the egocentric behaviors exhibited by the adolescent
population such as what he calls an imaginary audience, the personal fable, and the invincibility
fable. Usually when an egocentric adolescent is experiencing an imaginary audience, it entails the
belief that there is an audience captivated and constantly present to an extent of being overly
interested about the egocentric individual. Personal fable refers to the idea that many teenagers
believe their thoughts, feelings, and experiences are unique and more extreme than anyone
else's.[20] In the invincibility fable, the adolescent believes in the idea that he or she is immune to
misfortune and cannot be harmed by things that might defeat a normal person.[13] Egocentrism in
adolescence is often viewed as a negative aspect of their thinking ability because adolescents
become consumed with themselves and are unable to effectively function in society due to their
skewed version of reality and cynicism.

There are various reasons as to why adolescents experience egocentrism:

Adolescents are often faced with new social environments (for example, starting secondary
school) which require the adolescent to protect the self which may lead to egocentrism.[21]
Development of the adolescent's identity may lead to the individual experiencing high levels
of uniqueness which subsequently becomes egocentric this manifests as the personal
fable.[22]
Parental rejection may lead to the adolescents experiencing high levels of self-consciousness,
which can lead to egocentrism.[23]

A study was completed on 163 undergraduate students to examine the adolescent egocentrism in
college students. Students were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire to determine the level
of egocentrism present. The questions simply asked for the reactions that students had to seemingly
embarrassing situations. It was found that adolescent egocentrism was more prevalent in the female
population than the male.[24] This again exemplifies the idea that egocentrism is present in even
late adolescence.

Results from other studies have come to the conclusion that egocentrism does not present itself in
some of the same patterns as it was found originally. More recent studies have found that
egocentrism is prevalent in later years of development unlike Piaget's original findings that
suggested that egocentrism is only present in early childhood development.[25] Egocentrism is

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especially dominant in early adolescence, particularly when adolescents encounter new

environments, such as a new school or a new peer group.[13]

In addition, throughout adolescence egocentrism contribute to the development of self-identity; in

order to achieve self-identity, adolescents go through different pathways of "crisis" and
"commitment" stages,[26] and higher self-identity achievement was found to be correlated with
heightened egocentrism.[27]

During adulthood
The prevalence of egocentrism on the individual has been found to decrease between the ages of 15
and 16.[28] However, adults are also susceptible to be egocentric or to have reactions or behaviours
that can be categorized as egocentric (Tesch, Whitbourne & Nehrke, 1978). [29]

Frankenberger tested adolescents (1418 years old) and adults (2089) on their levels of
egocentrism and self-consciousness.[30] It was found that egocentric tendencies had extended to
early adulthood and these tendencies were also present in the middle adult years.

Baron and Hanna looked at 152 participants and tested to see how the presence of depression
affected egocentrism.[31] They also tested adults between the ages of 18 and 25, which found that
the participants who suffered from depression showed higher levels of egocentrism than those who
did not.

Finally, Surtees and Apperly found that when adults were asked to judge the number of dots they
see and the number of dots the avatar in the computer simulation sees, the presence of the avatar
interfered with the participants' judgment-making during the trials. Specifically, these were the
trials where the number of dots seen by the participant was inconsistent from the number of dots
the avatar saw.[32] Such effect on the participants diminished when the avatar was replaced with a
simple yellow or blue line, which concluded that somehow the avatar having a personal attribute
implicitly caused the participants to include its "vision" into their own decision making. That said,
they made more errors when they saw prompts such as "the avatar sees N" when N was the number
of dots the participant saw and not the avatar, which shows that egocentric thought is still
predominant in making quick judgments, even if the adults are well aware that their thoughts could
differ from others.

See also
Amae Epistemic virtue Religiocentrism
Attribution (psychology) Intellectual virtue Solipsism
Chronocentrism Narcissistic defences Spoiled child
Egotism Personality disorder

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References
1. Anderman, Eric M.; Anderman, Lynley H. (2009). "Egocentrism". Psychology of Classroom Learning:
An Encyclopedia. 1: 355357.
2. Young 2011, p. 134 (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4jzwt9fUo1kC&pg=PA134).
3. Pronin, Emily; Olivola, Christopher Y. (2006). Encyclopedia of Human Development. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Reference. pp. 441442. Retrieved 20 Oct 2014.
4. Epley, Nicholas; Morewedge, Carey K; Keysar, Boaz (2004-11-01). "Perspective taking in children and
adults: Equivalent egocentrism but differential correction". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
40 (6): 760768. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2004.02.002.
5. Onishi, K. H., Baillargeon, R. (2005). "Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs?". Science. 308
(5719): 255258. doi:10.1126/science.1107621. PMC 3357322 . PMID 15821091.
6. Wimmer, H., Perner, J. (1983). "Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of
wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception" (PDF). Cognition. 13 (1): 103128.
doi:10.1016/0010-0277(83)90004-5. PMID 6681741.
7. Adams, G. R., Jones, R. M. (1982). "Adolescent egocentrism: Exploration into possible contributions of
parent-child relations". Journal of Youth and Adolescent. 11 (1): 2531. doi:10.1007/BF01537814.
PMID 24310645.
8. Keysar, B., Barr, D. J., Balin, J. A., Brauner, J. S. (2000). "Taking perspective in conversation: The role
of mutual knowledge in comprehension". Psychological Science. 11 (1): 3238.
doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00211. PMID 11228840.
9. Premack, D., Woodruff, G. (1978). "Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?". Behavioral and
Brain Sciences. 1 (4): 515526. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00076512.
10. Butterworth G Harris M (1994). Principles of developmental psychology. Hillsdale, NJ England:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
11. McLeod, Saul (2010). "Preoperational Stage".
12. Pronin, E., & Olivola, C. Y. (2006). "Egocentrism". In N. J. Salkind. Encyclopedia of Human
Development. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference. pp. 441442. Retrieved 2006. Check date
values in: |access-date= (help)
13. Berger, Kathleen Stassen (2014). Invitation to the Life Span, Second Edition. New York: Worth
Publishers.
14. Crain, William C. (2005). Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications, Fifth Edition. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. p. 108.
15. Fogiel, M (1980). The psychology problem solver: a complete solution guide to any textbook. New
Jersey, NJ US: Research & Education Association.
16. Junefelt, K (2007). Rethinking egocentric speech: towards a new hypothesis. New York, NY: Nova
Science Publishers, Inc.
17. Sammons, A (2010). "Tests of egocentrism" (PDF). Psychlotron.org.uk. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
18. Goossens L.; Seiffge-Krenke I.; Marcoen A. (1992). "The many faces of adolescent egocentrism: Two
European replications". Journal of Adolescent Research. 7 (1): 4358. doi:10.1177/074355489271004.
19. Elkind D (December 1967). "Egocentrism in adolescence". Child Dev. 38 (4): 102534.
doi:10.2307/1127100. JSTOR 1127100. PMID 5583052.
20. Vartanian LR (Winter 2000). "Revisiting the imaginary audience and personal fable constructs of
adolescent egocentrism: a conceptual review". Adolescence. 35 (140): 63961. PMID 11214204.
21. Peterson K. L.; Roscoe B. (1991). "Imaginary audience behavior in older adolescent females".
Adolescence. 26 (101): 195200. PMID 2048473.

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22. O'Connor B. P.; Nikolic J. (1990). "Identity development and formal operations as sources of adolescent
egocentrism". Journal of Youth and Adolescence. 19 (2): 149158. doi:10.1007/BF01538718.
PMID 24272375.
23. Riley T.; Adams G. R.; Nielsen E. (1984). "Adolescent egocentrism: The association among imaginary
audience behavior, cognitive development, and parental support and rejection". Journal of Youth and
Adolescence. 13 (5): 401417. doi:10.1007/BF02088638.
24. Rycek RF, Stuhr SL, McDermott J, Benker J, Swartz MD (Winter 1998). "Adolescent egocentrism and
cognitive functioning during late adolescence". Adolescence. 33 (132): 7459. PMID 9886002.
25. Myers, David G. (2008). Psychology. New York: Worth. ISBN 1-4292-2863-6.
26. Marcia, J. E. (1980). "Identity in adolescence". In Adelson, J. Handbook of Adolescent Psychology. New
York: Wiley.
27. O'Connor, B. P. & Nikolic, J. (1990). "Identity development and formal operations as sources of
adolescent egocentrism". Journal of Youth and Adolescence. 19 (2): 149158. doi:10.1007/BF01538718.
PMID 24272375.
28. Louw, DA (1998). Human development, 2nd Ed. Cape Town, South Africa: Kagiso Tertiary.
29. Tesch S.; Whitbourne S. K.; Nehrke M. F. (1978). "Cognitive egocentrism in institutionalized adult".
Journal of Gerontology. 33 (4): 546552. doi:10.1093/geronj/33.4.546.
30. Frankenberger K. D. (2000). "Adolescent egocentrism: A comparison among adolescents and adults".
Journal of Adolescence. 23 (3): 343354. doi:10.1006/jado.2000.0319.
31. Baron, P; Hanna, J (1990). "Egocentrism and depressive symptomatology in young adults". Social
Behavior and Personality. 18 (2): 279285. doi:10.2224/sbp.1990.18.2.279.
32. Surtees, A. D. R. & Apperly, I. A. (2012). "Egocentrism and automatic perspective taking in children
and adults". Child Development. 83 (2): 452460. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01730.x.
PMID 22335247.

Further reading
Caputi M.; Lecce S.; Pagnin A.; Banerjee R. (2012). "Longitudinal effects of theory of mind on later
peer relations: The role of prosocial behavior". Developmental Psychology. 48 (1): 257270.
doi:10.1037/a0025402. PMID 21895361.
Young, Gerald (2011). Development and Causality: Neo-Piagetian Perspectives. New York, NY:
Springer. ISBN 978-1-441-99421-9.

External links
The Human Mind Is Naturally Prone To the Following Look up egocentrism
Egocentric Tendencies (http://www.criticalthinking.org in Wiktionary, the free
/articles/natural-egocentric.cfm) by Foundation for dictionary.
Critical Thinking

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