Identity (Psychology) in children

Children's (Grades 4--8) gender identity was examined as a predictor of academic self-concept, achievement, attitudes, and conduct. Three gender identity components were assessed: (a) feelings of being typical of one's gender, (b) feeling content with one's gender assignment, and (c) feeling pressured to conform to one's gender. It was expected that gender typicality and contentedness would be positive influences, whereas felt pressure would be a negative influence. Results were partially supportive, but showed that relationships varied substantially with child gender and the gender-normative relevance of a given academic domain (math vs. English). It was concluded that gender identity factors have importance not only for children's personal/social adjustment but also for their academic outcomes.

The present dissertation introduces three new measures of gender identity and examines their relations to psychosocial adjustment (i.e., self-concept and peer acceptance) in preadolescence. The sample consisted of 182 4th- through 8th-grade children. The three measures assessed (a) feelings of overall similarity to and compatibility with one's gender (goodness-of-fit), (b) feelings of pressure to conform to sex-role stereotypes (felt pressure), and (c) belief that one's sex is superior to the other sex (intergroup bias). Both concurrent and short-term longitudinal analyses indicated that goodness-of-fit was beneficial to psychosocial adjustment, whereas both felt pressure and intergroup bias undermined psychosocial adjustment. Furthermore, goodness-of-fit mediated many of the relations of domain-specific sex-typing measures (e.g., traits) to adjustment. The present dissertation helps identify some of the inherent limitations in previous work on gender identity, provides new insight into the relation of children's gender identity and psychosocial development, and raises suggestions for future inquiry.

This study examined how narcissism affects preadolescent children's choices of peer targets for aggression. Based on the idea that narcissists have a grandiose sense of self that requires nourishment, we hypothesized that narcissistic children are especially likely to attack peers who threaten, or fail to nourish, their grandiose self. We assessed narcissism and the degree to which each child's aggression toward peers depended on (a) the child's perceived liking by each peer, (b) the child's liking of each peer, (c) each peer's actual liking of the child, and (d) the child's perceived similarity to each peer. Participants were 197 children in the fourth through eighth grades at a university school. Narcissism predicted the four types of target-specific aggression in disparate ways for boys and girls. Narcissistic boys were especially likely to direct aggression toward male peers whom (a) they perceived as disliking them, (b) they disliked, and (c) they perceived as dissimilar to themselves. Narcissistic girls were especially likely to attack female peers whom they perceived as similar to themselves. Narcissism may enhance different motives for boys and girls in same-sex peer relatinships. We propose that narcissism enhances investment in status and rivalry amoung girls while enhancing the motive to attack dissimilar peers among boys.

Growth is a property that is unique to living things. Studies demonstrate that even preschool children use growth to determine whether objects are alive. However, little identifies explanations that children use to attribute growth. The goal of the present study was to investigate how people reason about growth. We hypothesized that older children would outperform younger children in understanding that growth is inevitable for living things, while adults would consistently perform at ceiling levels. Our hypothesis was partially supported. Although adults consistently outperformed children, older children rarely outperformed younger children. Still, both younger and older children performed above chance in attributing growth. Moreover, all participants were more likely to use biological explanations to explain growth. Taken together, this research qualifies the early hypotheses of Piaget (1929) and Carey (1985) that children lack a well developed biological domain before age nine, but suggests that a biological domain, though less developed, is present. Based on these findings, implications for more efficient approaches to science education are discussed.

One of the hypotheses put forth by the Gender Self-Socialization Model (GSSM) is the stereotype emulation hypothesis. This hypothesis states that one role of gender identity is to motivate children to follow gender stereotypes that they have internalized. The GSSM also states that each of the constructs of gender identity, gender stereotypes, and gender typing is product of the cognitive interplay between the other two. Egan and Perry (2001) conceptualized gender identity as multidimensional, and one of these dimensions is felt pressure against other gender behavior. This study found that there was an interaction between one aspect of gender identity (felt pressure) and gender stereotypes, supporting the stereotype emulation hypothesis. This study also found that the interaction between felt pressure and sexism was more powerful in predicting adjustment in children than looking only at the main effect of felt pressure.