Development of Self-Understanding in Middle Childhood

These two approaches to describing the self (i.e., cognitive and affective) are derived from a distinction originally made by the 19th-century psychologist and philosopher William James (for a review of self-representations in children, see Harter, 2006). James (1890) distinguished between two fundamental aspects of the self: the “I” and the “me.” The “I” refers to a subjective awareness of yourself as a person, sometimes referred to as the self as subject or agent. The “me” refers to facts that are objectively known about you, sometimes called the self as object. For James, a person must first construct an “I-self” in infancy, who then, throughout childhood and adulthood, constructs the “me-self” (for historical reviews, see Harter, 1992, 1999). These dual aspects of the self were subsequently elaborated by sociologists like Charles Cooley (1902) and George Herbert Mead (1934), who described a “looking-glass self,” the idea that you see yourself as others see you (cf. Harter, Stocker, & Robinson, 1996). Thus, the middle childhood period involves both the cognitive construction of self-concept, based on knowledge of your own skills and abilities (i.e., self-competence), and the affective construction of self-esteem, based on the internalization of positive regard from others (i.e., self-worth).