egocentrism

Egocentrism refers to the way that young children, and also adults, see the world from their own perspective and may find it hard even to realise that the world can be seen differently. An extreme example of this is the child's game of peek-a-boo, where a young child believes themselves to not be see-able if they can't see.

Piaget measured egocentrism by creating a model landscape and asking chidlren what could be seen from a location; young children say that something can be seen if they can see it, whereas older children are able to realise that one side of a hill is not visible from the other. Although adults are unlikely the think like this at the level of locations and seeing, we still may find it hard to understand that people think differently to us or have fundamentally different viewpoints or values.