Paige Owens 26 April 2012 Psych 300: Article 4 Review Adolescent Egocentrism: A Contemporary View Review The authors

of this study sought to determine whether adolescent egocentrism is displayed during adolescence in the same patterns (constructs of personal fable and imaginary audience) as when the constructs were first defined in 1967. They hypothesized that both imaginary audience and personal fable would decrease with increasing age from early to late adolescence. In this study, a sample of 2,390 adolescents was used to represent inner city, suburban, and rural adolescent populations to provide a reasonable cross-section. In order to reduce the prevalence of bias, or skewing of results, a representative sample like this one is a good quality control measure that is always beneficial to have. The large sample included 1,211 females, and 1,179 males from 16 public middle schools, junior high schools, high schools, and three colleges (two private, one public). The mean age of the participants was 15.15 years with a standard deviation of 2.61 years; and they were divided into early (11-14), middle (15-17), and late (1821) adolescent age groups. Imaginary audience and personal fable are the constructs associated with adolescent egocentrism. These constructs were measured using Elkind and Bowens Imaginary Audience Scale (IAS) and Elkinds Personal Fable (PF) scale. The IAS includes 12 items, in which adolescents consider the feelings about situations in which others may observe their appearance. The IAS consisted of 2 subscales- the transient self and the abiding self. The PF scale asked students to rate how true each statement was for them on a five-point Likert scale (1 = never true for me, 5 = always true for me). The PF scale also contained 2 subscalesinvulnerability and speciality. The materials used in this study were not further discussed; which struck me as a bad

Paige Owens 26 April 2012 Psych 300: Article 4 Review thing. Compared to other articles, the one written on this study seems very simple and leaves the reader with many questions, like what the adolescents were asked. The validity of this study may be at question since the questions were not provided. Because the discussion and results sections were startlingly short, it is difficult to assess whether the authors of this study were looking for a nomothetic or idiographic analysis. However, since there is a reasonably large sample size that was studied, I can only guess that they were going for the nomothetic approach. The brief results section revealed that middle adolescent males scored lower than late adolescent males on imaginary audience total scale, transient self scale, abiding self scale. Early and middle adolescent males scored lower than late on speciality scale; early adolescent males scored lower than late on personal fable total scale. No significant differences were found for males on the invulnerability scale. For females, there was no significant difference between imaginary audience total scale, transient self scale, abiding scale, or speciality scale scores. The only significant differences for females were observed in the personal fable scale, where late adolescents scored lower than early and middle adolescents. And in the invulnerability scale, where late scored lower than early and middle adolescent females. Regrettably, the study did not clarify what a lower or higher score actually meant or represented. The only conclusions that I could find that the authors drew from this study was that their findings differed from the original conceptualization and early research findings. Showing that, in this study, the personal fable and imaginary constructs of adolescent egocentrism do not emerge in early adolescence and decline in middle adolescence. I do not feel like the discussion section of this article adequately discussed the studys findings. However, the author mentions that the findings may be related to results in recent findings, suggesting a possible reemergence

Paige Owens 26 April 2012 Psych 300: Article 4 Review of egocentrism in late adolescence, especially in dramatically new life situations. Further, the author also mentions a number of possible social and academic implications of the reemergence of egocentrism upon entrance into college, and then further discusses outcomes from another study. The findings from this and other newly mentioned studies support the idea that nurture may be more important than nature. I liked the idea of this study, what was measured, and what was supposed to be determined, but I feel like the results were non-conclusive. If they were, I feel like the authors did a poor job in describing what they found and should have discussed their outcomes more, instead of the conclusions of others.