Synonyms

Egocentrism; Imaginary audience; Personal fable

Definition

Adolescent egocentrism is generally a heightened preoccupation with the self occurring during adolescence. Specifically, newly developed cognitive abilities give adolescents an exaggerated sense of uniqueness from others and also allows the adolescent to monitor their own thoughts though they do not clearly distinguish their own thinking from the thinking of others.

Description

Egocentrism is generally the tendency to view the world from one’s internal point of view with less recognition that others beyond oneself may hold different views, perspectives, and beliefs. Egocentrism is particularly strong during infancy and childhood, though it manifests itself in different ways, while egocentrism to some extent remains throughout adulthood as well. Adolescent egocentrism is defined by the fact that egocentric thought and behavior is heightened in adolescence when compared to typical adulthood, as well as the fact that newly developed cognitive abilities lead to specific manifestations of egocentrism that are distinct to adolescence.

Piaget [3] introduced the concept of egocentrism in childhood through his description of his Cognitive Developmental Theory. Piaget’s [3] work for the most part describes the various ways that egocentrism is displayed in infancy and childhood. Piaget explains that infants and young children are unable to differentiate their self from the rest of the world in which they exist. Children are also unable to differentiate the possibility that others may view (both literally and figuratively) situations from a perspective other than their own [3]. Piaget also describes the concept that children endow inanimate objects with intention and emotion (known as “child animism”) and “…believe that everything gravitates around us” (p. 244). While Piaget describes in detail egocentricity during the developmental periods of infancy and childhood, he gives less attention to egocentricity in adolescence specifically.

Elkind [1, 2] later expounded upon the concept of egocentrism in adolescence in his description of two phenomena he terms the imaginary audience and personal fable. The imaginary audience occurs when the adolescent believes that everyone near them is preoccupied with the adolescent’s appearance and/or behavior. Elkind [1] conceptualized the imaginary audience consisting of two parts; the self-critical and the self-admiring. For example, the adolescent may be overly critical of a physical imperfection and views everyone around them as being equally attentive and critical of this imperfection. The opposite is also true in that the characteristics that adolescents possess during this stage (e.g., loudness, vulgarity) are largely due to the adolescent feeling the need to be the center of attention. This need is driven by the self-admiration an adolescent feels and the belief that everyone around them is also admiring their behavior and appearance. Like other manifestations of egocentrism, the imaginary audience is due to the inability of adolescents to differentiate between the interests of themselves and others [1]. Elkind [2] postulates that the imaginary audience phenomenon declines with age as the adolescent continues to differentiate the self from the rest of the world, thus recognizing that every person has their own preoccupations in life. It should also be noted that there are times throughout an individual’s adult life when the imaginary audience can be experienced, though this differs from the adolescent experience because the phenomenon tends to be fleeting and less pervasive in adulthood [2].

Subsequent to the imaginary audience is another form of adolescent egocentrism, which is the personal fable. The personal fable can be defined as a grandiose sense of uniqueness leading to a belief that nothing bad will happen to one personally [1]. The personal fable is established by the failure of the adolescent in differentiating between what is unique to one’s self from that which is ordinary to everyone. This exaggerated belief of being “unique” may largely be due to quickly developing cognitive abilities that occur in adolescence. For example, as adolescents begin to realize that they can infer the intentions of others based on subtle nonverbal behavior (part of one’s developing social cognition), they falsely believe that they are the only ones with such advanced cognitive abilities. Thus adolescents may believe that they are too important or special to die, get arrested, become pregnant, fail school, etc. [2]. For example, adolescents may engage in risky behaviors such as drinking and driving, believing that this behavior might lead to an accident for others, but that it would not happen to them. Unlike the imaginary audience, the personal fable begins to decrease when the adolescent begins to develop intimate relationships with friends. The participation in intimate relationships by the adolescent helps them understand that their personal thoughts and feelings are not as unique as they original thought [2].