The ego or egocentrism is the inability to differentiate between the self and the other. More specifically, it is the inability to unravel subjective schemata from objective reality. An inability to understand or assume any perspective other than your own.
Jean Piaget argued that young children are self-centered. This in no way means that they are selfish, but they do not yet have enough mental ability to understand other people who may have different opinions and beliefs regarding their own. Piaget did a test to investigate egocentricity called the study of mountains. He put the children in front of a simple sawof plaster and asked them to choose, from four portraits, the vision that he, Piaget, would see. The younger children chose the portrait of themselves they were looking at. However, this study has been criticized justifying that it is simply the knowledge of the spatial vision of children and not of egocentricity. A subsequent study involving police puppets showed that young children were able to correctly say what the interviewer was seeing. It is to be thought that Piaget overestimated the levels of self-centeredness in children.
Although self-centeredness and narcissism seem similar, they are not the same. A person who is egocentric believes that they are the center of attention, like a narcissist, but does not receive gratification for their own admiration. Both egoists and narcissists are people whose egos are greatly influenced by the approval of others, while for egocentrists this may or may not be true.
Although self-centered behaviors are less prominent in adulthood, the existence of some forms of self-centeredness in adulthood indicates that overcoming self-centeredness can be a lifelong development that is never completed. Adults appear to be less self-centered than children because they are quicker to correct from an initially self-centered perspective than children, not because they are less likely to initially adopt a self-centered perspective.
Therefore, self-centeredness is found throughout life: in early childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It contributes to human cognitive development by helping children develop the theory of mind and the formation of their own identity.
