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your ultimate guide to the essential topics you need to master for the MCAT. Brought to you by the physicians at Med School Coach. Every week, Sam Smith breaks down high yield MCAT topics, ensuring you're primed for success on test day. Join SAM as we explore the most crucial subjects outlined by the AAMC, pulled from official practice materials and third-party resources. Get ready to elevate your MCAT game with topics tailored to maximize your score potential. Hello, I'm Sam Smith.
This podcast is going to cover psychosocial development and identity. First, what I'm going to do is I'll discuss some of the basic ideas regarding identity and self-concept, just basically define some terms that you're going to want to know. And then I'll get into the different theories of identity formation, which include, but are not limited to Freud's psychosexual development theory, Erickson's psychosocial development theory, George Herbert meets the me and the I, Pooley's looking self-class, and a few more.
And during this I'll mention a few ways the MCAT likes to ask questions about these different theories. And this material will show up in one out of the four sections. That is the psych-soci section. So let's get into it.
All right. So the first thing I want to go over here is self. So first of all, how do we define self? What is the difference between self-concept, self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-image? These all kind of sound like similar terms. And what is this thing called locus of control? Let's answer all of these questions. So self-concept is how someone perceives or evaluates themselves. And it belongs under
the umbrella term of self-awareness and self-concept contains two different selves. So that's the existential self and the categorical self. The existential self is our sense of being separate or distinct from others. Essentially, it's you saying, okay, I am my own person distinct from all these other people. And so I think people with schizophrenia and other mental disorders may have trouble with this. You know, you might start to have delusions where you think,
These people can hear my thoughts or you have other voices in your head and you might start to think, okay, maybe I'm not my own person. And then the second type of self is the categorical self. So this is kind of the categories in which you fall into such as age, gender, skill, size, height, all those different things. So, you know, me, for example, I am a middle-aged suburban mother and I also work as a dentist. So those are just a few of the categories that I have fallen under.
All right, so that is self-concept. What's self-esteem? Well, self-esteem is the respect and regard one has for oneself. So somebody with low self-esteem is not going to have much self-respect and they tend to feel that they are inferior to others. On the other hand, we have self-efficacy, which sounds kind of like the same thing. But what it is is the belief in one's ability to succeed in a particular situation.
So you can have low self-esteem, but still be capable of having high self-efficacy. So what's an example of this? Well, sometimes perfectionists can have high self-efficacy or low self-esteem. So take this example. You are a very popular architect. Everyone loves the buildings you design.
You design buildings for people all over the world. And you feel very competent there, right? You're like, man, I'm a bad asset designing buildings. You know, I've been hired by the prime minister of India to do this. I've been hired by the US president. All these people love my architecture. I'm very competent.
Yet, you may inside tend to feel like people don't really like you or you might feel like people find you uninteresting. And so that would be low self esteem. And therefore you think that being the best architect ever will make you famous, make people like you more. So this essentially drives you to become a perfectionist at architecture because you think that's what's going to make people interested in you. And really it just goes back to the fact that you have low self esteem.
So in summary, perfectionists are people that sometimes can have low self-esteem, but high self-efficacy. Self-image is a term used to describe how we see ourselves, both internally and externally. You know, maybe you think of yourself as really attractive, maybe you're a little bit cocky, you know, you're like, I'm a hot girl slash gal. And maybe you think of yourself as a hard worker, you know, maybe you think that you're a little bit lazy. Whatever it is, this is how we see ourselves both internally and externally. There is also a term called social identity that you should probably know.
And social identity is one sense of self as a member of a social group or of social groups. And sociologists often use the concept of social identity to explain how people understand who they are and why they do what they do. So, you know, this kind of looks more at the culture that you associate yourself with or different groups of people that you associate yourself with and how that influences the decisions you make.
Alrighty, the last term I want to talk about here is locus of control. Locus of control refers to the degree to which people believe that A, they either have control over outcomes of events in their life, or B, they have no control over outcomes of events in their lives, i.e., external forces beyond their control, what are determining the outcomes of these events.
So let's break that down a little bit. A person can either have an internal or an external locus of control. People with internal locus of controls believe that all their failures or successes are due to their own efforts and abilities. Whereas somebody with an external locus of control believes that their successes or failures are due to things out of their control. You know, things like society, luck, chance, they'll chalk their successes and failures up to any of these different things.
The classic example of this is in test taking. So let's say you and your friends all just take a test, together you get out of the test, you're all talking about the test, and there's two types of friends, right? There are the friends that say, ah shit, that test was super hard, I obviously didn't study enough. And then there'll be those friends who will be like, ah, this test was bullshit.
You know, the teacher never taught us this, and why did the teacher put that on it? And they didn't say this was going to be on it. So you'll have people that have an internal locus of control that will blame themselves for their poor performance on the test. You know, they'll say, I didn't study enough. And then there's those that will blame external factors like the teacher or they'll blame, say they didn't get enough sleep the night before. They'll blame these different things that in the end will help them pass the blame on from themselves, you know, on to other factors so that it's easier for them to accept that they did
poorly on the test. It's important to note here that many people believe that internal versus external locus of control is a personality trait that's set at birth. You know, I think I was taught this in Intro to Psychology in College. That's how that was presented to me is, you know, this is something that you're born with. However, more recent evidence suggests that this is actually shaped via childhood experiences. So in an article in Psychology Today says that children who are raised by parents who encourage their independence
and help them learn the connection between actions and their consequences tend to have a more well-developed internal locus of control. All right, so those are some basic terms that you may see in terms of self on the MCAT. Let's next get into identity development and theories regarding identity development. And this is gonna be kind of the meat and potatoes of the podcast. You are 100% going to see a question regarding at least one of these different theories on the MCAT, probably multiple theories.
And I'm going to go over a bunch of these different theories. I'm going to go over Erickson's eight psychosocial stages of development. I'll go over Freud's very weird psychosexual development theory. I'll go over Piaget's theory of cognitive development. I'll go over Colberg's theory of moral development. Cooley's looking glass self. George Herbert means the me and the I. And lastly, I'll talk about Vygotsky's sociocultural development theory.
All right, the first thing I want to go over here is my man, Erickson's eight stages of psychosocial development. And so his theory was based a little bit upon Freud's theory, which I'll go over next. And it basically says that at different points in a person's life, they come to these crises and they must resolve conflicting ideas at these crises in order to move on and become a productive member of society. And if this person has to get stuck at a stage and not be able to move on, not be able to answer this
crises or resolve this crisis, then they get stuck at a stage. And this results in a feeling of inadequacy and these people may not become a productive member of society if they get stuck at these stages. And honestly, I think this was probably the number one hardest thing for me to memorize on the MCAT for whatever reason.
So I'll give you a little mnemonic at the end that helped me a bit. Just know you'll have to know the ages here and also the crises that are going on at these ages. All right, so the very first crisis that a child comes upon, and this is between the ages of zero and 18 months, is a crisis that's called trust versus mistrust. And essentially what's going on is the baby must learn to trust adults. And for instance, if a baby is neglected, maybe not fed on time,
left alone to its own devices, then the baby will learn to mistrust. And so if this conflict of trust versus mistrust is not resolved, then this baby may have problems with anxiety, fear, separation, etc., down the line when they become older. The second stage
occurs at 18 months to three years of age, and that is autonomy versus shame and doubt. At this stage, young children begin to develop a sense of independence. And if they are able to pass this stage and resolve this conflict, then they are confident in their ability to survive and move about the world.
But if not, then they begin to develop a sense of low self-esteem and they start to doubt the world. Again, and this occurs between the ages of 18 months and three years. And then between the ages of three and five years old, they go through this conflict known as
initiative versus guilt. So at this point, children start to assert themselves, they start to gain some confidence, and they begin to plan activities, make up games, and initiate activities with other children. And if given this opportunity to develop these relationships and play these games, children develop a sense of initiative and feel that they are securing their ability to lead others and make decisions. And if they are not able to resolve this conflict, then they may start to feel guilty.
They may start to say, oh, I'm a burden. People don't want to play with me. Anytime I go play, it's because people feel bad for me, et cetera. The next stage in development is industry versus inferiority. And this occurs between the ages of five and 13. And in the context of development, industry just refers to competence. And in this stage, the child wants approval for demonstrating specific competencies. They might start being good at math and
good at video games, good at sports, whatever it is, they start to develop this competence at some task. And they are able to show that they can do things that are valued in society. And if they're unable to feel they are giving to society and they cannot resolve this conflict, then what happens is they develop a sense of inferiority.
and teachers actually have a lot to do with pushing students through this crisis. So if teachers are very accepting and teachers are very encouraging and they say, hey, you're doing great at this, you're adding super well or you know how to do fractions, great. Then this encourages students and helps them get a sense of industry or competence.
The next stage in Erickson's theory of psychosocial development is identity versus role confusion. And this occurs between the ages of 13 and 21. And this is when adolescents start to try to figure out their role in life. How are they going to fit into society? What are they going to do for their lives? How are they going to contribute to society?
And this can lead obviously to very dark places and underscores the importance of people feeling like they are contributing to society in some way, right? Because if they feel they contribute to society and they have some identity in life, then that's great. They get past the stage and go on to live a healthy life. But if they can't figure out what they want to do where they fit in in society, you know, they can have problems down the road, you know, whether that's with mental health or other things that people struggle with in life.
So at this stage in life, identity versus role confusion, they're just trying to figure out what their role is in life. The next stage is intimacy versus isolation. And this occurs between the ages of 21 and 39. And this centers around forming long lasting intimate relationships.
And I'm not just talking about marriage, talking about long-term healthy relationships, friendships, these friendships that you're going to have the rest of your life. Successful completion of this stage or this conflict results in healthy relationships. However, failure to resolve this stage or resolve this conflict results in social isolation or owning too many cats. I'm kind of guessing here, but the next stage then is
generativity versus stagnation. And this occurs between the ages of 40 and 65. And in this context, generativity is a concern for establishing and guiding the next generation, which is essentially the same thing as leaving a legacy.
So this stage people begin to realize that at some point they're going to die and they want to be able to leave behind something or some change or some betterment of society. And failure to resolve the stage results in a feeling of unproductiveness or a disconnection from society.
people might start to think, okay, why am I continuing to work really hard at my job or whatever if it's just going to go away when I die? And obviously then the successful completion of the stage has people saying, okay, great, I have built something that is going to carry over to the next generation. And the eighth and final stage of Erickson's psychosocial development theory is
ego integrity versus despair. And so what I want you to do here is just imagine yourself sitting in a rocker on your front porch. You're 67 years old. You're sipping some whiskey. Maybe you've got a cigar in your mouth and you're just chilling. You're watching the sunset and you just retired from an illustrious career as a well-known urologist.
and you sit here and you're just thinking, man, I've had a great life. I invented the wireless catheter and now I've made millions of dollars and I've made millions of lives better. It could be then said that you have had success at this stage, right? You've had a successful life and you're able to reflect on that life and say that you've been successful, you've helped people, et cetera, and you feel happy.
However, if you're not successful at this stage, you reflect back on your life and you think, man, what did I do with my life? And you get a sense of despair. So at this stage, people are reflecting back on their lives and either saying, yeah, I've done great. And that's called ego integrity. And then there's other people that are saying, man, I wish I would have done different things. And they're not happy and that is despair.
All right, so those are the eight stages of Erickson's psychosocial development theory. And what the MCAT is going to do is they are going to ask you to identify which stage of development the people in a study are experiencing. And that may either be in the form of their age or that may be in the form of the stage conflicts that are going on at this age. And here's the mnemonic that I use to kind of
try to keep these all in order in my brain. And that is trust autonomy to initiate the industry. Identify intimacy and generate integrity. Again, that's trust autonomy to initiate the industry. Identify intimacy and generate integrity.
which is just a bunch of bullshit basically, but it kind of helps you keep straight the order of these different conflict stages. And just for a quick example, one place I've seen on the MCAT is they'll present you some kind of study in a passage. You'll read, you know, let's say something like, okay, we have taken 10 year olds and we've separated them into two groups and then exposed one of these groups to violent videos.
then we will measure their levels of external violence that are expressed after they watch these videos. And then you'll have some kind of question after this passage, which is almost unrelated to the passage that will say, what stage of development are these children at according to Erickson's theory of psychosocial development? And the answer in this case is industry versus inferiority.
And you'll just have to know this based on the age, which of course in this study was 10 years old. So yeah, this just gets at the fact that you need to have these ages memorized and you need to have these stages memorized.
All right, let's get on to the next theory of development. And this is Freud's theory of psychosexual development. So Freud was an interesting guy. He did a lot of work studying brain anatomy. He studied cocaine. He was also a very weird guy. He came up with the Oedipus complex, which essentially states that every guy is unconsciously wants to have sex with his mother and kill his father, kind of strange, and
Freud's psychosexual theory of development suggests that children develop through a series of five stages related to the different erogenous zones. So the stages are the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latent stage, and then the genital stage.
And what Freud's theory says is that fixation at any one of these psychosexual stages determines your personality. And what do I mean by fixed? Well, Freud defined fixed as when your libido, which is the energy that drives mechanisms of the mind and sexual energy, which is kind of what he defined it as, goes unfulfilled. So when you get fixed at a certain stage, that just means your libido or your sexual energy is unfulfilled.
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The first stage, as I said, was the oral stage. And this occurs between the ages of zero and one years of age. And the mouth is kind of the focus of our libido, of our sexual energy in this stage, right? Mouth, oral, same thing. And this has a lot to do with how feeding occurs during this age period.
because you are suckled or you are breastfed. And it's important to note here that Freud actually used the fact that we are born with a suckling reflex in order to support the idea that this first psychosexual development stage is the oral stage. And Freud claimed that if a child's oral needs are not met between the ages of zero and one, then they may develop habits such as overeating, smoking, nail biting, these different unhealthy habits that involve the oral cavity.
Next comes the anal stage, which is between the ages of one and three years old. And during the stage, children begin to be able to control their bodily functions, right? That's urinating, defecating, whatever it is they are potty trained. They learn how to go to the bathroom. And fixation at the stage tends to result in being either overly orderly or overly obsessed.
And you can kind of think of that as anal, right? If someone's really anal, what does that mean? That just means they're really orderly, even obsessed with being orderly. And I actually just learned where this term comes from. It's kind of funny. So anal comes from the term anal retentive, which actually refers back to when kids are being potty trained and they don't want to go to the bathroom because they don't want to be messy.
And so they just hold it in and they just sit there because, you know, they don't want to be messy. They don't want to have to clean it up, whatever it is. And then that kind of got shortened to anal, which means to be overly obsessed with order. Kind of interesting. All right. So to summarize the anal stage, again, this is between the ages of one to three and fixation at the stage results in being either
overly orderly and obsessed or very, very dirty. So you got to remember at this stage, it can be either very dirty or very clean. It's kind of the extremes. All right, in the next stage is the phallic stage. And this occurs between the ages of three to six years old. And this is where for me, it gets a bill wild. So at this stage, Freud believes that children begin to learn that the genitals are a source of pleasure.
This is also when the children start to be attracted to their opposite sex parent. So the son is attracted to the mother. This is known as the Oedipus complex. And the daughter is attracted to the father. This is called the electro complex. And the electro complex is pretty weird. Essentially,
What Freud said is that the girl briefly desires the father, but then realizes that she does not have a penis, at which point she develops penis envy and wishes to be a boy. Which, this is interesting, I never really knew this, so now I know that anytime one of my friends that's a girl is dissin' on some dude, I'm just gonna say you know what?
you have penis envy and then leave it at that. Just kidding, I'm not actually gonna say that, but this is kind of crazy, right? This is part of Freud's theory and it was highly criticized at the time and still is for being sexist and obviously this is part of that. And so getting fixed at this phallic stage, which is again between the ages of three and six, results in a person becoming sexually dysfunctional.
The next stage is the latency stage, which occurs between the ages of 6 and 12 years old. And this is when sexual desires start to dissolve, your libido just kind of chills and hangs out. And it's here that children begin to develop morals, and they start to adopt their parents' beliefs. There's no fixation here. Nothing really weird happens at this stage. Just know there's kind of this latent hangout stage between the ages of 6 and 12 years old.
according to Freud. And the last stage is the genital stage, which occurs after the age of 12. And what happens here is that the sexual desires reemerge, and children and teens start to experiment with relationships. And successful completion of this stage results in healthy, long-term relationships, you know, getting married, settling down, being able to do all that stuff.
And Freud theorized if you are to get stuck at this stage to get fixed, then you would not be able to have any types of long-term healthy relationships. You never get married. You never settle down. And there is a good mnemonic that helped me remember these different stages for the MCAT. That is Old Age parrots love grapes.
So, again, that is oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital. Old-age parrots love grapes. So, that is Freud's theory of psychosexual development. Definitely the weirdest of the bunch. Kind of funny a little bit. Interesting, I guess.
The next one I'm going to talk about is Piaget's stages of cognitive development. So the Swiss cognitive theorist Gene Piaget developed his theory on the concept that children build their reality based on their experiences as they move about and interact with the world. And his theory said that children's development must
precede their learning. So it must come before their learning. This is an important distinction between his theory and Vikotsky's theory. So Jean Piaget, or I believe he went by Jim, his theory centered around four stages of cognitive development. And at each stage, different, very specific events occur. So the first stage is the sensory motor stage. The second is the pre-operational stage. The third is the concrete operational stage. And then the last one is the formal
operational stage. And at the first stage, which again is sensory motor, this occurs between the ages of zero and two years old, there is one very important event that occurs. And that is that children develop object permanence. That is, they begin to understand that just because they can't see an object doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
And this is when peekaboo no longer is entertaining to them, right? Because they start to say, oh, well, your face is under your hands. It doesn't mean that it's gone forever. You know, and at this point, they get a little sassy about it. And then that's it. The second stage, which is the pre-operational stage, occurs between the ages of two and seven. And this is when children begin to pretend play.
You know, they might have these pretend play weddings. They might have these fantasy games or have toys that they do these complex fantasy things with. And they also start to become egocentric. That is, they believe that the whole world revolves around them. And obviously, some people never make it out of the stage. And then the next stage is the concrete operational stage, which occurs between the ages of 7 and 11.
And there's one very important event that occurs at the concrete operational stage. And that is that children begin to understand the principle of conservation, i.e. that changing the form of an object does not necessarily change the amount.
And the example that's always given is that you take a really thick glass of water and by thick I mean the glass itself is like short and fat and squatty and you take that glass and you pour it into a very tall thin glass and some children are going to say, oh well now you have more water because it fills this really tall skinny glass up more.
But once a child understands the principle of conservation, then they begin to see that, in fact, you do not have more water. The last stage in Jim's theory is the formal operational stage, which occurs after the age of 11.
And at this point, children are able to start to use abstract reasoning and develop moral reasoning, which of course depends upon the peers that they interact with, their parents, their teachers, you know, who they interact with in society. So let me quickly recap Piaget's theory for you. So the first stage is sensory motor.
that occurs between the ages of 0 and 2. This is when children develop object permanence. Then you have the pre-operational stage between the ages of 2 and 7. And then you have the concrete operational stage between the ages of 7 and 11. And this is when children develop the principle of conservation. And then lastly, you have formal operational after the ages of 11. And children are able to start using abstract moral reasoning. And the MCAT will
Ask questions in a very similar manner to the example I gave before. They might give you a study with five-year-olds or whatever, and then say in some question, what stage of development are they at, in which case you'd answer your pre-operational? Or they might ask you, you know, according to Piaget, which characteristic are children expected to possess? And then you would have to know, okay, I'm at the pre-operational stage, and I know there that children are likely to be egocentric, and so then I pick that answer.
So essentially have the ages memorized and then have the events at each stage memorized. And of course, you may also see questions as standalone questions at any point on the MCAT.
The next theory is Kohlberg's theory of moral development. So Lawrence Kohlberg wanted to expound on Piaget's ideas. He came up with his theory by interviewing a bunch of kids and then presenting them with these different moral dilemmas.
And you've probably heard this moral dilemma that I'm about to tell you. So I'm just going to give you this quick spark notes version of it. So he would present this to these kids. And this is one out of like the 10 dilemmas he would present to them. But he would say, OK, there's this guy named Heinz and his wife has cancer. Also, there's a chemist who just invented a cure for this type of cancer that Heinz's wife has.
However, Heinz cannot afford the treatment. And Heinz goes and begs the chemist, you know, let me have this drug. It is going to say my wife, but the chemist won't sell it to him. So Heinz goes into this chemist shop and steals the medicine. And then Colberg would ask him, is this morally right in the situation to steal the medicine from this chemist in order to save the wife's life? Based on these interviews, he came up with three stages of moral development.
And each of these three stages is broken down into two different stages. So really it's more like six stages, but there's kind of these three main stages. And that is pre-moral, conventional, and post-conventional. And so it's important to note that these stages don't have ages associated with them. I'm just guessing that's because children develop their morals at different ages, you know, depending on outside factors like their parents, their peers, whatever. And I like to kind of think of these stages as once you hit one stage,
and you're able to develop this moral sense, then you slowly work your way to the next stage, and you kind of work your way up until the very top. So think about it that way as I'm going through these. So this first stage is the pre-moral stage, and there's two different stages within it. The first is called obedience and punishment. At this stage, individuals act moral in order to avoid punishment.
And then the next stage within the pre-moral stage is individualism and exchange. And at this stage, children begin to realize that different people have different views on morality. Morality differs from one person to another. The second stage in morality is called conventional. And this is obviously broken down into two more stages, which the first stage is called good boy, good girl. And this is when children act moral so that they receive praise.
So I know that what you say to a dog is, good boy, good girl. So it's kind of confusing, like, what are we saying these children are dogs. But all this stage is trying to say is that children act moral in order to receive praise from an adult, appear, whatever it may be. And then the second stage within conventional is called law and order. And that is when children act moral in order to maintain social order.
And going back to the Heinz example, they'd say, well, we got to arrest this dude for stealing medicine, right? We got to maintain social order. And we're not going to do that unless we arrest him, because there can't be stealing in society. The next stage then is the third stage, and it's called post-conventional, which is broken down into two other stages. The first of which is called social contract. And at the social contract stage, children understand that members of society should agree upon moral standards. And they start to
think about the right of the individual. And at this point, they might say, OK, an individual life is worth stealing for. Then the last stage here is the universal ethical principle. And this is the point in which a child has developed their own set of moral guidelines that they can apply to different situations. And again, ages aren't important to understand here. It's just more of a concept of going through these stages with time and developing these different moral guidelines.
The next theory I want to talk about is Charles Cooley's Looking Glass Self. This theory says that we revise our personality based on how we think others view us, which is kind of a strange concept, right? It goes to say that our self image is created by what we assume different people think about us. So let's take social media as an example.
People post images to Instagram and Facebook and other people view these images and either comment on them or like them or give some kind of feedback, right? And so from this feedback, people can start to develop their self image. Maybe they'll think, oh, I'm hot. Lots of people like my picture or, you know, maybe I'm not very attractive. There's only five people that like my Instagram picture.
Or maybe you post a scandalous photo and a bunch of people like it and you're like, wow, people must really like me from where my body or now I must have a great body. And so this kind of creates a self-concept from what we think others are thinking about us. And that's all in terms of likes and dislikes and comments and all that other types of feedback. So that's Charles Cooley's Looking Glass Self. Essentially, we revise our personality based on how we think others are viewing us.
The next one I want to talk about is George Herbert Meads, the I and the me. So Meads said that the development was based on three stages. These stages are the preparatory stage, the play stage and the game stage. In the preparatory stage, children will imitate things that they see in life. Then in the play stage, they will begin to take on the role of others. They'll play fireman, they'll play all these different roles you see kids playing. And then in the game stage,
children will learn to take on multiple roles. So that's kind of the foundation to Mead's theory. The most important thing to understand, I think, is what he termed the eye in the me. So the eye is our individual identity. This is what we would be if we were 100% alone, you know, in the mirror, just talking to ourselves, whatever, nobody around us. This is how we would act. And
The me is our perception of the way that society views us. So me goes on to say that we balance the me and the I in order to determine our personality or that our personality is a balance between this me and this I. Another way I like to think about this is that the me is the socialized or conformed part of you.
This is the part of you that knows how to act essentially around other people, how to be social, how to get others to like you. Whereas the eye is kind of like the blackout drunk version of you. The very spontaneous, just doing whatever you want to do in the moment.
The last theory here is Vygotsky's social development theory. Vygotsky believed that social interaction was fundamental to social development. So he believed that social interaction actually preceded development. That is, social interaction came before development actually happened.
And this is the opposite way around as what Piaget believed. So let me break this down for you a little bit. So as I said, Vikotsky believed that interactions with other people in society must occur first in order for you to develop. I.e. you need to have these social interactions in order for you to develop as a human. You know, that includes taking in these social cues, taking in culture, all these other things must come from other people.
Whereas Piaget said that we must first develop in order to go around and be able to interact with our surroundings. So it's kind of a reverse order there, right? And Piaget went on to say that if we're able to explore our surroundings, then we're able to kind of ask these questions. And eventually we start to even develop further. So the difference there is that Piaget believe we first must develop in order to be able to go and explore our surroundings, which then leads to more development, essentially.
Fikovsky's theory also talks about elementary mental functions and higher mental functions. So elementary mental functions are those that are with us at birth, whereas higher mental functions are those that we game throughout life through observing others and through others teaching us how to do these higher mental functions. So this place is a big emphasis number one on learning and number two on the
importance of teachers and parents in society. Like Gatsky also coined the term zone of proximal development. And zone of proximal development refers to the difference between what a learner can learn without help and what he or she can achieve with help. Take for example fifth grade me. So fifth grade me could easily add fractions. Okay, so I knew how to add fractions.
Now, I didn't know how to multiply fractions and I didn't know how to divide fractions, but I wasn't smart enough to be able to actually do fractional division. I either, there's no way anyone could teach me how to do it. I just, the concept wasn't there. I couldn't understand it. I could, however, understand how to multiply fractions if taught. So that means that my zone of proximal development is in multiplying fractions.
And this is usually shown as like a Venn diagram looking thing, you know, go Google that. I recommend doing that just to kind of see what I'm talking about in terms of the zone of proximal development. Just know that this is what you don't know, but are able to learn.
through some kind of teaching. And it's important to note here that the teacher in this case is sometimes called a more knowledgeable other, which is abbreviated MKO. So if you see MKO in a passage or something, you're like, what the hell is that? Just think teacher. Yes, it's kind of a stupid term for a teacher, but just understand that that means teacher.
All right, so now you know the main identity development theories that probably are gonna be on the MCAT. So hopefully this helps you get some of those right. And before I go, I briefly want to recap each of these theories in a sentence or two. Erickson's theory of psychosocial development has eight different stages. It's the hardest to remember. The mnemonic to remember is trust autonomy to initiate the industry, identify intimacy and generate integrity. Freud's theory of psychosocial development
is the weirdest. You have all these weird stages, which are the oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital. And the mnemonic to remember here is that old age parrots love grapes. Next was Piaget's theory, and history had four different stages. That was the sensory motor stage, the pre-operational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage.
and each of these stage had different events to know at each. Then we had Goldberg's theory of moral development, and there are three main stages to this theory, which are the pre-moral stage, the conventional stage, and then the post-conventional stage. Then we had the
Theory created by George Herbert Mead, which was the me and the I. And the I is kind of our internal personality, whereas the me is our social personality or how we think society sees us. And our overall personality is a balance of this me and I components. And we had the theory created by Cooley that was the looking glass self that says we revise our personality based on how we think others view us.
And then lastly, we had Vygotsky's social development theory, which essentially says that social interaction precedes development and that we must watch people or have people teach us things in order to learn and to develop. All right, so that concludes the psychosocial development and identity podcast. Thanks for listening, as always.
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