The Breakfast Club: Social Identity & Adolescent Egocentrism

At Sullivan Heights, we have divided ourselves in different levels of hierarchy. The top level of the pyramid is the principals. They are prone to act as leaders and role models in the school. It is their duty to create a educational atmosphere and shape a vision of academic success. The next level is the staff of the school. They are there to maintain the school in proper shape and to set excellent examples in front of students. However, teachers always try to improve their teaching skills in order for them to teach at their best and for students to learn to their utmost. After that comes the senior students of the school which include the grade 11's and 12's. These students set a great example for the junior students. They are the ones who are more experienced and show leadership attributes to the junior students. At the bottom of the pyramid, come the junior students which are in grades 8 to 10. They have little to no experience in high school as these are their first couple of years here. They are learning how to become a high school student and how to be confident in their actions.

Based on this hierarchy, we value the top of the pyramid. Essentially we value what the principals have to say or believe. Those are the decisions and rules and regulations that we follow in order to be part of the school community. The decisions that the principals make are the ones that are followed by the staff and students. Although, they are considered as the head of the school, they are the ones that have the most power and the most authority to take an action in the school community.

In my opinion, I totally agree with Piaget's theory of adolescent egocentrism. I agree with his theory because this actually exists and teenagers do what they think is right and don't want to listen to what others have to say to them. They are self-centered where they don't care what others think about them and just want to do what they think is correct.

Gender & Identity Beyond Pink and Blue

We have identified four "agents of socialization" when it comes to socially constructed differences between males and females.

1. Family
2. Peers
3. Culture and/or religion
4. Media

Each of these have their own positive and negative examples, messages, and impacts.

Firstly, the tradition in the twenty-first century of family households has shifted a bit where as many years ago there used to be a more traditional way of living in a family. For instance, a positive example for family in today's generation results in a household where chores are distributed equally between male and female children. Chores include cleaning and cooking. On the other hand, a negative example would be that chores assigned based upon more traditional roles. For example, girls would normally cook and clean whereas boys would mow the lawn and do the laundry.

Secondly, peers have a huge influence on us in many ways. A positive example can be that by talking to your opposite gender and the same gender is useful and helpful in many ways. For example, getting opinions from girls and boys in helpful because you are hearing from both sides and how they think about something. Perhaps, if you want to make a strong decision, you should be prolonged to ask both genders to see what they think. On the other side of the spectrum, a negative example would be asking the same gender about what they think about something. By doing this, you will not hear the opinions of the opposite gender and this way you can be misguided.

Furthermore, our religion and culture also has an affect on our daily lives. In today's generation a household system has no head of the family. The mom and the dad have equal rights and have a equal say in everything which would be considered as a positive example. On the other hand, in some religions, the head of the family is usually the dad. He is the one who controls everything and he is more superior than the mom. For example, everything needs to get approved by him in order for something to happen. This is considered as a negative example because the mom and dad don't have equal rights. Therefore, the mom lacks and is limited to what she can say in the household.  

Lastly, media has a great impact on our lives. A positive example would be that some advertisements, images, commercials and magazines are only aimed towards one gender. For example, a Gillette razor commercial is only aimed towards men whereas a Victoria secret commercial is only aimed towards women. A negative example can be that, research shows that there are many fewer females than males in almost all forms of mainstream media and those who do appear often portrayed in very stereotypical ways. In everything from advertising, television programming, newspapers and magazines, women and girls are more likely to be shown in a home, performing domestic chores such as doing laundry or cleaning. Men are also stereotyped by the media where they are often associated with competition, aggression and violence. They have considerably more economic and political power in society than women.

Personality Profile

In this post, I will discuss and summarize my findings from the 2 personality quizzes that I completed. The quizzes helped me figure out my strengths and weaknesses in particular areas. I will start out by listing my strengths that I already knew. My strengths that I already knew are body movement and logic/math. These are some of my strengths that I already knew before starting the quizzes. I like to play a variety of sports and take part in various physical activities. My logical thinking and math skills are exceptional as I am very keen about them. Another strength of mine that I discovered and was a bit surprising to me was that I am spatial meaning I can remember things by visualizing. Therefore, I like to learn things from visual clues. For example, graphs, diagrams, pictures and maps. Some of my weaknesses that I already knew about myself were that I am not a naturalist and I am not musical. On the other hand, I discovered that I am not linguistic. Furthermore, the results that I found out from the second quiz were that I have a slight preference of Introversion over Extroversion. I also have a slight preference of sensing over intuition. In contrast to that, I have a moderate preference of thinking over feeling. Lastly, I have marginal or no preference of judging over perceiving. These results were pretty accurate in my opinion as they represented my personality.