Oct 10, 1979 - Received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development. Download to read ...
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1980
Adolescent Egocentrism-Sociocentrism and Self-Consciousness Robert D. Enright, 1 Diane G. Shulda, 2 and Daniel K. Lapsley 3
Received October 10, 1979
A standardized and objectively scored scale o f adolescent egocentrism-sociocentrism (AES] and a self-consciousness scale were given to 44 subjects each in the sixth, eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades and college. The A E S assesses three components o f egocentrism including the personal fable, the imaginary audience, and general self-focuses, as well as sociocentrism and nonsocial subscales. As predicted, the personal fable and imaginary audience declined with age. The self-focus subscale showed a curvilinear relationship with age, while, again as predicted, sociocentrism increased and nonsocial focuses declined. Adolescent egocentn'sm, as expected, correlated positively with self-consciousness even with age controlled. Implications for the theories o f egocentrism and sociocentrism in the adolescent years are discussed.
INTRODUCTION Elkind (1967) has developed a theory o f adolescent egocentrism which suggests that once abstract thinking emerges, those in early adolescence distort their perceptions of self and others in social contexts. More specifically, these adolescents think in the following ways: (a) They possess the imaginary audience
~Assistant Professor of Human Development, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin - Madison. Received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development. 2Doctoral candidate, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin Madison.
3Doctoral candidate, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin Madison. 101 0047-2891/80/0400-0101 $03.00/0 © 1980 Plenum Publishing Corporation
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and believe that others are paying far more attention to them than is actually the case. (b) They possess the personal fable, or a belief that the self is special and unique. And (c) the focus of their thoughts is inward to toward the self, rather than outward, toward other people. These beliefs and self-focuses are believed to produce self-consciousness in the egocentric adolescents (Elkind, 1967, 1978). As the adolescent matures, research and theory suggest that he or she abandons egocentric beliefs and gradually adopts more sociocentric, or otheroriented, focuses. This is seen in legal (Tapp and Kohlberg, 1971), political (Adelson, 1971; Crain and Crain, 1974) and social perspective taking (Selman, 1976a) developments. The mark of maturity in late adolescence is a systems or community perspective in which the person is concerned with larger, more global political issues rather than with just the self or one's immediate group. In a recent article, Enright e t el. (1979) report on an initial study to validate a measure of adolescent egocentrism-sociocentrism. The measure operationalized three aspects of adolescent egocentrism: (a) the personal fable; (b) the imaginary audience; and (c) the adolescent's general tendency, once abstract thinking develops, to focus inward on the self rather than outward onto other people. The measure also operationalized a sociocentric dimension re. garding the adolescent's focus on the world of politics, society, and government. A final operationatization regarded nonsocial focuses which were included to see whether adolescents, as they progressively become more egocentric and then sociocentric, decline in their noninterpersonal or nonsocial focuses. The findings of the pilot study (Enright e t al., 1979) were, in general, supportive of Elkind's theory. There was a higher incidence of the imaginary audience in a group of young adolescents when compared with a group of college students or late adolescents. The personal fable, while not showing as strong a trend, did decline in late adolescence. Nonsocial focuses also declined from early to late adolescence. Political or sociocentric focuses, contrary to expectation, did not increase as adolescent egocentrism declined. And, finally, an unexpected result showed that general self-focuses increased through late adolescence rather than declined, despite this construct being shown empirically via factor analysis to be part of the egocentrism construct. This latter Finding suggests that adolescent egocentrism is not necessarily a unidimensional construct with all subcomponents declining through the adolescent years. Since the initial report on the Adolescent Egocentrisrn-Sociocentrisrn Scale (AES) was of a pilot study, it was thought necessary to replicate the results with a revised measure and to further validate the scale. The purposes of the present study, then, are threefold. First, we report on adolescents' responses to the AES scale in a different American subculture than the pilot study. While the pilot data were collected in the southern United States, the present data were collected in the northern Midwest. Second, since the pilot study reported only on early adolescent groups (sixth and eighth grades) and a late adolescent
Egocentdsm-Sociocentrism and Self-Conscioumess
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group (college), we thought it necessary to chart the egocentrism-sociocentrism course across middle adolescence as well. Third, we are testing the construct validity of the egocentrism subscale of the measure with a measure of selfconsciousness. Elkind (1967, 1978) makes clear that the adolescent who is experiencing adolescent egocentrism will also experience self-consciousness, since he or she thinks the self stands out in its uniqueness and that others are generally paying attention to the adolescent. The two constructs, however, are distinct in theory, since self-consciousness is not concerned with cognitive distortions as a result of newly acquired abstract reasoning abilities as adolescent egocentrism is. Thus, our hypotheses are the following: 1. There will be a decline in the personal fable from early adolescent groups to late adolescent groups. 2. There will be a decline in the imaginary audience from early to late adolescent groups. 3. Self-focuses will increase from early to late adolescence. 4. There will be an increase in the importance given to sociocentric activities from early to late adolescence. The lack of such a finding in the pilot study is considered to be a sample-specific phenomenon, since Adelson (1971) and Tapp and Kohlberg ( 1971) have clearly shown the development of such focuses through the adolescent period. •5. There will be a decline in importance of nonsocial activities from early to late adolescence. 6. Adolescent egocentrism will be positively related to self.consciousness. It is expected that the relationship will be moderate rather than high, since both constructs do not measure the same aspects of the adolescent personality. 7. Self-consciousness will not relate to either sociocentrism or nonsocial focuses, since neither of the latter are self-awareness dimensions.
METHOD Subjects
A total of 220 adolescents, predominantly White and middle class, took part in the study. Forty-four adolescents volunteered at each of the following five grades: sixth, eighth, tenth, twelfth grades, and college. The experimenter went into classrooms and asked ff anyone would be willing to flU out two questionnaires about social issues. Only one or two students per grade were not willing to participate. Twenty-two males and 22 females participated at each age. College students were volunteers from a large university in the northern portion
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of the midwestern United States. The sixth- through twelfth-grade participants were volunteers from the same demographic area as the university. The sixthand eighth-grades subjects were in the same school. The high school chosen in the study was the one which the sixth- and eighth-graders would attend after their junior high graduation. Age groups lower than sixth grade were not chosen, since pilot testing had shown that the egocentrism test items are quite difficult for children to answer. Instruments
The Adolescent Egocentrism-Sociocentrism measure is a revision of the measure reported in the pilot study (Enright et al., in press). The pilot measure was revised to retain items which (a) showed significant relationships with age; (b) minimized sex differences, since egocentrism and sociocentrism are stagerelated constructs in theory; and (c) maximized internal consistency of the egocentrism, sociocentrism, and nonsocial constructs. A Likert-type scale is used in which a student reads a statement and decides on a 5-point scale the degree of importance which the statement holds for the subject. Scoring of each item ranges from 1 (no importance) to 5 (great importance). There are a total of 15 egocentrism items, 5 each in the subscales of personal fable,imaginary audience, and general self-focuses. There are also 15 sociocentric or political items and 15 nonsocial items. There is a total, then, of 45 items, which take about 20 minutes to complete. Examples of items are as follows: "Accepting the fact that others don't know what it's like being me" (personal fable); "Being able to daydream about great successes and thinking of other people's reactions" (imaginary audience); "Becoming real good at being able to think through my own thoughts" (selffocus); "Knowing what society's laws are" (sociocentric or political focus); "Watching television" (nonsocial focus). A total score per subscale is obtained by summing the totals per item (15) in that subscale. The egocentrism subscale, then, can range from 15-75, whereas the personal fable subscale can range from 5-25. A consistency check is also included in the test. At the end of every 9 items which comprise a page, the subject is asked to rank the top 3 items on the page. If the rating (no importance to great importance) for the items does not match the ranking on all five pages, the subject's data are discarded. As a control for order effects, each of the five pages of the AES measure has 3 egocentrism items (1 each in the three subscales of egocentrism), 3 sociocentrism items, and 3 nonsocial items. Each of these 9 items is randomly ordered on each page. Fenigstein et al,'s (1975) self-consciousness scale was used as the measure of that dimension for this study. Twenty-three items are presented. Each item is rated on a scale of 0 (extremely uncharacteristic of me) to 4 (extremely char-
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Egocentrism-Sociocentrism and Self-Consciousness
acteristic of me). Of the 23 items, 10 assess a private self-consciousness .dimension, 7 assess a public self-consciousness dimension, and 6 assess a social anxiety dimension. The scale has shown adequate factorial validity and reliability (Fenigstein et al., 1975); the private self-consciousness domain has been significantly related to both the Guilford-Zirnmerman Thoughtfulness Scale and the Paivio Imagery Scale (Turner et al., 1978); and all the subscales have been shown to be relatively independent of both the social desirability response set (Turner etal., 1978) and IQ (Carver and Glass, 1976).
Procedure All subjects were group administered the scales, which were counterbalanced to control for order effects. All groups were told that we were interested in their opinions about a variety of everyday experiences and that their responses would be treated confidentially and anonymously. The entire procedure took between 45 minutes and an hour per group.
RESULTS
Reliability. For reliability estimates, Cronbach's alpha of internal consistency was computed on the entire sample with the Adolescent EgocentrismSociocentrism Scale for egocentrism, a = 0.83, for sociocentrism, a = 0.92, and for the nonsocial scale, a = 0.87. The alpha for the self-consciousness scale was 0.70. Table I shows the internal consistencies for each age group. As can be seen, all groups can be reliably measured with these scales. Factor Structures. The internal factor structure of the egocentrism scale of the AES was next examined via a principal factors solution and varimax rotation across all age groups. Three factors with eigenvalues of 4.95, 2.03, and 1.28 respectively were defined. These three factors with the factor loadings for
Table 1. Internal Consistency Reliabilities via Cronbach's Alpha for Scales
Within Each Age Group a Egocentrism Sociocentrism Grade 6 Grade 8 Grade I0
0.75 0.83 0.89
0.89 0.89 0.90
Nonsocial
Self-consciousness
0.88 0.74 0.84
0.71 0.62 0.75
Grade 12
0.83
0.93
0.84
0.70
College
0.79
0.90
0.80
0.73
a N per age group is 44. All scaleshave 15 items, except for self-consciousness
which has 23.
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each item of thevarimax rotated matrix are presented in Table II. As can be seen, Factor 1 is primarily a self-focus category; Factor 2 is primarily a personal fable category; and Factor 3 is primarily an imaginary audience category, which is not as dearly defined as the others. Such a separation of the three subscales would be expected in theory if the three subdomains tap somewhat different aspects of adolescent egocentrism. When the items in the three egocentrism subscales are collapsed to create three scores (a personal fable, imaginary audience, and selffocus score), the same factor analytic solution produces one factor with an eigenvalue of 1.94 and loadings of 0.88 for personal fable, 0.51 for imaginary audience, and 0.67 for self-focus. Therefore, while the items separate into three factors, the scales themselves cluster together. This suggests that the three subscales tap a common underlying egocantrism dimension. Next, the sociocentrism and nonsocial scales of the AES were examined by the same procedure as above. For the sociocentrism scale, one factor emerged with an eigenvalue of 6.62 accounting for 93% of the variance. Since sociocentrism in theory taps a unidimensional construct, this finding was expected. Likewise, the nonsocial scale has one factor with an eigenvalue of 5.10 accounting for 80% of the variance. This was also expected because o f the unidimensional nature of this construct. The factor structure of the self-consciousness scale was examined by performing the principal factors solution on the three subscales, collapsing across items withing subscales. The structure of the entire 23 items was not thought necessary, since this has been done elsewhere (Fenigstein et el., 1975) and since the scale is not the primary variable of this study. The results revealed one factor only, so that a varimax rotation was not performed. The eigenvalue was 1.48 and the respective loadings were 0.51 for private, 0.77 for public, and 0.21 for anxiety. Subscale Relationships of the AES. The relationship of the three AES subscales of egocentrism, sociocentrism, and nonsocial were next examined via a principal factors solution. Here, two factors with eigenvalues of 1.33 and 1.17 emerged. Factor 1 was comprised of the egocentrism (0.66) and sociocentrisrn (0.65) dimensions, while Factor 2 was comprised of nonsocial (0.65). These results replicate the structure of the pilot study (Enright et al., I979) interpreted as a general social factor and as a nonsocial factor, respectively. A discriminant validation of egocentrism and sociocentrism can clearly show that the two dimensions, while related, tap quite different processess. The withindomain correlation via internal consistency for egocentrism is 0.83 and for sociocentrism is 0.91. The between-domains correlation comparing egocentrism and socioeentrism is only -0.49. This value is not only substantially lower than the internal relationships but also is in the negative direction, suggesting that egocentrism and sociocentrisrn operate quite differently in the adolescent years. Hypothesis Tests for Age Differences. Two-way analyses of variance by age group (sixth grade, eighth grade, etc.) and sex were performed on all sub-
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107
Table II. Factor Loadings for Each Egocentrism Item Faetorloadingsa
A priori scale assignment Personal fable PF I. Accepting the fact that others don't k n o w what it'slike being me. PF 2. Getting other people to better understand why I do things the way I do. PF 3. Explaining my unique feelings and viewpoints to others so they can get some idea about what I am like. PF 4. Trying to get other people to know what it is like being me. PF 5. Coming to accept that no one will ever really understand me.
Self-focus
aLoadings less than 0.30 were eliminated.
Imaginary audience
0.61
0.55 0.54
0.45
0.65 0.51
Imaginary audience IA 1. When walking in late to a group meeting, trying not to distract everyone's attention. IA 2. Trying to figure out how other peopie will react to my accomplishments and failures. IA 3. Being able to daydream about great successes and thinking of other people's reactions. IA 4. Being able to think about having a lot of money someday and how people will admire that. IA 5. Trying and being able to figure out if two people are talking about me when they are looking my way. Self-focus SF 1. Becoming real good at being able to think through my own thoughts. SF 2. Thinking about my own feelings. SF 3. Being real good at knowing what others are thinking of me. SF 4. Knowing my own thoughts and feelings. SF 5. Thinking about myself.
Personal fable
0.53
0.20
0.60
0.71
0.45
0.44
0.44
0.37
0.59 0.75 0.28 0.74 0.64
0.34
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scales and both measures. Tukey's post hoc procedure was followed for any analysis which showed a significant main effect for age. Hypothesis 1 was supported, with a significant decline in the personal fable, F(4, 210) = 5.83, p < 0.0001. Tukey's procedure revealed that the sixth-grade mean was significantly higher than all other age groups. The main effect for sex was also significant for the personal fable, F(1, 210) = 11.73, p < 0 . 0 0 1 . Females were higher than males when the data were collapsed across the age groups. No interactions between age group and sex occurred for any of the AES subscales. Means at each grade are shown in Table III while means within each sex at each grade appear in Table IV.. Hypothesis 2 was also supported for the main effect for age with the imaginary audience, F(4, 210) = 18.77, p < 0.0001. The post hoc analyses showed that the sixth-grade mean was higher than the tenth-grade, twelfthgrade, and college means. The tenth-graders were also significantly higher than the twelfth-grade and college means. The main effect for sex was again significant, females being higher, F(1,210) = 5.61,p < 0.02. Hypothesis 3 was partially supported for the self-focus subscale, F(4, 210) = 6.71, p < 0.0001. The post hoc procedure showed a curvilinear relationship of self-focus and age, not the increasing linear relationship expected on the basis of Table I11.Means and Standard Deviations by Grade Grade Variable Personal fable
6
8
10
12
SD
17.22 3.62 17.27 3.31 18.22 3.60 52.73 8.22 40.20 11.34 56.09 10.83
14.09 3.43 15.50 2.80 16.16 3.82 45.75 8.32 34.82 8.98 54.43 6.68
14.68 4.28 14.52 3.37 16.52 3.87 45.73 10.13 33.75 9.31 50.80 8.96
14.07 3.97 12.70 2.50 15.95 3.49 42.73 7.93 38.86 10.25 43.11 8.75
15.09 2.83 12.65 3.13 19.05 3.12 46.79 6.85 46.28 8.08 43.79 7.42
X SD
Imaginary audience )7 SD
Self-focus
.~ SD
Egocentrism
.~
Sociocentrism
X
Nonsocial
V
SD SD
Private self-consciousness Public serf-consciousness
College
,Y
22.23
21.39
22.64
SD
6.45
4.95
5.64
22.32 5.00
26.72 5.46
X
17.27 5.48
19.59 4.81
19.77 4.69
19.20 4.46
19.34 4.57
11.91 4.21 51.41 11.73
13.36 3.96 54.34 9.12
14.14 3.91
13.50 4.95 55.02 9.81
13.46 3.60 59.53 9.26
SD
Anxiety self-consciousness
,Y SD Self-consciousness X SD
56.55
10.84
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Table IV. Means by Sex
Grade Variable Personal fable Imaginary audience Self-focus Egocentrism Soeioeentrism Nonsocial Private selfconsciousness Public selfconsciousness Anxiety selfconsciousness Selfconsciousness
Sex
6
8
10
12
College
Grades collapsed
(M) (F) (M) (F) (M) (F) (M) (F) (M) (F) (M) (F) (M) (F) (M) (F) (M) (F) (M) (F)
15.77 18.68 16.18 18.36 17.41 19.04 49.36 56.09 42.09 38.32 53.41 58.77 22.64 21.82 15.86 18.68 11.81 12.00 50.32 52.50
12.86 15.32 14.32 16.68 14.95 17.36 42.14 49.36 35.72 33.91 55.41 53:45 20.64 22.14 16.59 22.59 13.18 13.55 50.41 58.27
13.77 15.59 14.27 14.77 15.50 17.54 43.54 47.91 33.95 33.54 52.22 49.36 20.91 24.36 17.45 22.09 13.14 15.14 51.50 61.59
14.00 14.13 13.00 12.40 14.95 16.95 41.95 43.50 39.41 38.32 44.59 41.64 20.64 24.00 17.55 20.86 12.05 14.95 50.23 59.82
14.63 15.57 12.50 12.81 18.86 19.23 46.79 47.62 47.55 44.95 41.77 45.90 28.00 25.38 19.31 19.38 13.59 13.33 60.90 58.09
14.21 15.83 14.05 14.99 16.34 18.00 44.60 48.82 39.75 37.79 49.48 49.86 22.56 23.51 17.35 20.72 12.75 13.76 52.67 58.00
the pilot results (Enright et al., 1979). The sixth-grade and college means were statistically equivalent. The sixth-grade mean was significantly higher than the twelfth-grade mean, whereas the college mean was significantly higher than both the eighth- and tenth-grade means. Early and late adolescence, then, are both characterized b y a heightened self-focus in this sample. As with the other egocentrism subscales, the self-focus showed a significant main effect for sex, with females being higher, F ( 1 , 2 1 0 ) = 12.78,p < 0.0001. When the three egocentrism subscales are collapsed, there is a significant main effect for age,/7(4,210) = 9 . 1 5 , p < 0.0001 and sex, F ( 1 , 2 1 0 ) = 1 5 . 6 6 , p < 0.0001. Sixth-graders are significantly higher than all other groups in egocentrism, and females are higher than males. Hypothesis 4 is supported via sociocentrisrn's main effect for age, F(4, 2 1 0 ) - = 11.38, p < 0 . 0 0 0 1 . College students show a higher degree o f sociocentrism than all other groups, and the tenth grade is significantly higher than the sixth grade. No sex or interaction effects were found. Hypothesis 5 is supported by the main effect for age with the nonsocial focus, F ( 4 , 2 1 0 ) = 21.32, p < 0 . 0 0 0 1 . The sixth-grade mean is significantly higher than the tenth-grade, twelfth-grade, and college means. The tenth-grade mean is also higher than either the twelfth-grade or college means. No sex or interaction effects occurred for this subscale.
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Self-consciousness did not present ~-nilar developmental patterns as the AES. Private self-consciousness showed a main effect for grade, F(4,210) = 6.46, p
