ABSTRACT
Learning about the self is a collaborative process. We combine our own experiences (e.g., successes and failures) with others’ evaluative feedback (e.g., praise and criticism) to learn about what we excel at, what we can improve on, and even what kind of person we are. Prior research has revealed the power of such feedback, finding that differences in the content or target of praise (e.g., effort praise vs. ability praise) can influence children’s motivation, achievement, and even their self-concepts. Yet we still understand little about the cognitive mechanisms that underlie how children learn about the self based on others’ feedback. Recent work on early social learning has demonstrated how young children learn about the external world by drawing rational inferences from information provided by others. Here we propose that the same inferential processes may also support how children learn about the inner world (i.e., the self). We discuss a few key hypotheses that test this idea, present relevant findings, and discuss how this new research direction bridges literatures on motivation and social learning.
