Adolescent Egocentricism Information
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Reflect on two of Elkind's manifestations of adolescent egocentrism:
1. The imaginary audience
2. The personal fable
Next, create two case studies (350 words each), each illustrating one of these.
Case studies can be personal experiences or made up for the purpose of illustration. Examples should be unique.
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The solution provides information, assistance and advise in tackling the task (see above) on the topic of adolescent egocentricism. Resources are listed for further exploration of the topic.
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Elkind's Adolescent Environment
American psychologist and academic David Elkind is a specialist in child psychology. He observed that adolescents find it difficult to distinguish between what they perceive others think of them and people actually think of them. Drawing from the work of Piaget, he argues that teens are able to construct abstract thoughts and situate themselves within imaginary settings. But while they can imagine what other people are thinking and conceptualize unique thoughts of their own - their focus tends to be on the latter by and large because of the physiological changes at this stage - the body changes, the onslaught of hormones - all they make them focus on personal appearance and their own feelings and behaviors. In so doing, they create a paradigm of perception wherein they believe other people are as attentive to their behaviors and how they look just like how they feel, taking this to be the norm. He terms this paradigm as adolescent egocentrism with two particular mental constructs - the imaginary audience and the personal fable. According to Galanaki (2012) the imaginary audience is, "the adolescent's tendency to believe that others are preoccupied with his or her appearance and behavior, that he or she often performs as an actor in front of an audience," while the personal fable according to Galanaki (2012) is, "the adolescent's inner belief that he or she is special/unique, omnipotent, invulnerable and therefore he or she can take risks." Galanaki (2012) further discussed that the, "imaginary audience and the personal fable account for a large number of typical adolescent behaviors, for example, self-consciousness, ...
Education
- MPhil/PhD (IP), Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
- MA, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
- Certificate, Geva Ulpan (via Universita Tel Aviv)
- BA, University of the Philippines
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