One of the topics I found most fascinating from this weeks lectures was egocentrism in children. Some of the videos we viewed in class were quite shocking, for example when the little girl seemed to follow the story of the footprints and who ate the muffins perfectly but could not see that someone could potentially not have all the information she has. Also, children were shown a view of the mountains (as shown below) and then were asked what would you see from a different perspective and they still responded with what they were seeing.
Egocentrism is defined as children having the power to only think of themselves and putting themselves first. It also makes "putting themselves in someone else's shoes" impossible. They cannot imagine how someone else would feel in a certain situation, only how they feel.
I never put much thought into this particular topic until seeing and reading about this. Now that I have thought about it, I have looked back at my experience with my own little brother and seen how this does prove to be quite a true stage in children. My little brother would always do things that only benefitted him and I or my parents would ask him, "How do you think that made ____ feel?" and he really seemed not to know. He only could think about how he felt and what would make him happy. Even though most people grow out of this phase, I would say some adults seem to always put themselves first, I suppose everyone has egocentric behaviors and thoughts at sometime or another.
I agree people in general are very egocentric but children are even more egocentric. I like thinking about the biological aspect of how children might be egocentric. Children might be egocentric because of evolutionary causes and the innate behavior to survive at any cost. They worry about themselves all the time and focus on the needs that are apparent to them. When a child is hungry he cries or screams so that his/her mother will feed him/her. They want to live and live a good healthy life and need nutrients and needs their needs to be met.