A study on the developmental process of individual orientedness and social orientedness

Abstract

Two concepts : social orientedness and individual orientedness, relating to two -dimensionality of self-consiousness, were proposed in order to grasp personality traits and adjustmental level and developmental level. Three questionnaires : an orientedness scale, a SD self-concept scale, and a self-esteem scale were administered to adolescent and adult subjects. The results showed that orientedness scores rose with increasing age, but a difference between males and females on both changing phase and process was found. Each orientedness changed in content, such as social orientedness following the next process : from dependency and others-direction to coexistence ; on the other hand, individual orientedness followed the next process : from egocentrism to autonomy. These orientednesses mean the content of horizontal axis and vertical axis of two-dimensional developmental schema. From the relation with self-esteem, and discrepancy scores between real self image and two ideal-images : ‘social ideal self’, ‘individual ideal self’, by SD self-concept scale, it was clear that the individuation process on emotional aspect, and the socialization process on the cognitive one could be observed. © 1993, The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. All rights reserved.