Cross-sectional And Longitudinal Analysis Of The Relationship Between The Fundamental Dimensions Of Social Cognition And Children’s Self-esteem

The content of social cognition and social judgment can be differentiated into two fundamental dimensions: communion and agency. Communal dimension relates to moral judgment or social interaction such as virtuous or dissocial and it usually stands for others’ benefit, so it’s others-oriented. On the contrary, agentic dimension is self-oriented which is related to individuals’ pursuit of their own achievements or to show their abilities such as being industrious or lazy. A variety of research showed these two types of dimension play a prominent role in various operations involved in social perception. Some studies found that cognition regarding others is dominated by communal dimension, while research investigating self-judgment showed that people are more likely to base self-esteem on agentic dimension. One explanation of this phenomenon is provided by Double Perspective Model, which suggests that self-esteem is dominated by agency over communion because self-perceptions are formed from the agent(versus recipient) perspective which is focus on self-interest. However, this theory is based on adults, and situation will be different in children because their developmental tasks differ from that of adults.This study assumed what should drive children’s judgments of self-esteem was the degree to which they endorsed agency-related traits or the communion sides of their personality and if one had been accomplished, the focus should turn to the other, this is the Threshold Hypothesis. Two studies explored the relationship between the fundamental dimensions of social cognition and self-esteem of children and further to provide evidence for “Threshold Hypothesis”.In the first study, self-report questionnaires were used and an implicit association test was conducted simultaneously to explore the influence of agency and communion on children’s explicit self-esteem as well as implicit self-esteem. 208 children aged 4.50 to 10.48 participated in this study. Grade was defined as the corresponding grade groups. Among them, 44 children in preschool group, 51 children in lower grades(including Grade 1 and Grade 2 in primary school),53 children in middle grades(including Grade 3 and Grade 4) and 60 children in higher grades(including Grade 5 and Grade 6). The results indicated that:(1) insignificant effect of agency or communion on explicit self-esteem in preschool group, communion traits contribute more topredict explicit self-esteem in the lower group, while the main effect of agency on explicit self-esteem for the middle group and the higher group was significant;(2) neither agency nor communion can predict the level of children’s implicit self-esteem.The second study was to explore long-term effect of agency and communion on children’s self-esteem, as well as the development characteristics of these variables. 200 primary school students were tracked in three consecutive years by using the Fundamental Dimensions of Social Cognition Scale and Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale. The results showed that:(1) children’self-esteem and traits which based on fundamental dimensions significantly increased with grade;(2) communion traits at the first year significantly predicted self-esteem at the second and the third year, communion traits at the second year predicted self-esteem at third year.In conclusion, the immediate prediction of the fundamental dimensions on explicit self-esteem of children showed a trend from none to communion and then turn into agency; there was insignificant effect of agency and communion on implicit self-esteem of children; the long-term predictive function of communion on children’s explicit self-esteem which absent when point to agentic dimension. These two researches provided empirical support of the Threshold Hypothesis. What should drive children’s judgments of self-esteem is the degree to which they endorse agency-related traits or the communal sides of their personality. Communion traits predicted younger children’s self-esteem due to its importance, but when the level of communion exceeds a threshold point, that is if social acceptance has been accomplished, the focus should turn to maintaining and not on gaining even more social acceptance. Once socially accepted,self-esteem should be driven then by the agency dimension.