The Development of Self-Concept in the Child: Mirror Theory Versus Model Theory

Summary

The overall trend of the data, with significance reached in a number of comparisons, indicates that a child's self-concept is more closely related to his parents' perceptions of him than to his parents' self-conceptions. These differences between mirror and model relationships were greatest on the Activity dimension and smallest on the Worth dimension. Within this general pattern there were some interesting sex variations. Girls had higher correlations than boys for both model and mirror relationships, indicating that they are more dependent on parents for their self-concept than are boys. There was also a slight tendency for mirror correlations to be stronger for cross-sex parent-child relationships. With respect to modeling, both boys and girls tended to model father more than mother. We suspect that this is a function of the father being perceived as a more powerful figure than the mother.

The correlations for both the modeling and the mirroring relationships were lower than expected: model correlations ranged from —.14 to .31 and mirror correlations from -.05 to .41. This means that most of the variance in self-concept is unaccounted for by the familial factors we've considered. Thus, while the data do favor the “looking-glass” conception of self-concept formation, the findings are more suggestive than they are conclusive of the relative importance of mirroring versus modeling processes.