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The personal fable is a construct of adolescent egocentrism and is characterized by exaggerated feelings of uniqueness and invulnerability. Feelings of uniqueness may stem from fascination with one's own thoughts to the point where an adolescent believes that his or her thoughts or experiences are completely novel and unique when compared to  the thoughts or experiences of others. This belief stems from the adolescent's inability to differentiate between the concern(s) of his or her thoughts from the thoughts of others, while simultaneously over-differentiating his or her feelings. Thus, an adolescent is likely to think that everyone else (the imaginary audience) is just as concerned with the adolescent as the adolescent himself is;while at the same time, the adolescent might believe that he or she is the only person who can possibly experience whatever feelings they might be experiencing at that particular time and that these experiences are unique to themselves. According to David Elkind (1967), an adolescent's intense focus on himself or herself as the center of attention is what ultimately gives rise to the belief that one is completely unique, and in turn, this may give rise to feelings of invulnerability. Ultimately, the two marked characteristics of personal fable are feelings of uniqueness and invulnerability. Or as David Elkind states, "this complex of beliefs in the uniqueness of (the adolescent's) feelings and of his immortality might be called a "personal fable", a story which he tells himself and which is not true."

Early Literature on Adolescent Egocentrism and Cognitive Development
The term "personal fable" was first coined by a psychologist by the name of David Elkind in his 1967 work Egocentrism in Adolescence. Elkind’s work stemmed from Piaget's theory of cognitive development, which describes egocentrism as a lack of differentiation in a given area of subject-object interaction. According to Elkind in conjunction with Piaget’s theory, adolescent egocentrism is to be understood in the context of ontogeny (referring to the development of an organism across its lifespan). These ontogenetic changes in egocentrism are thought to drive the development of logical and formal operational thinking. Elkind described an operation as a “mental tool whose products, series, class hierarchies, conservations, etc., are not directly derived from experience.” However, a child in the concrete operational stage is not able to differentiate between these mental constructs and reality (their experiences). For instance, a child in the concrete operational stage may understand that a dog is an animal, but not all animals are dogs; however, the child is not able to grasp a hypothetical concept such as “suppose that dogs were humans”. The child is likely to respond “but dogs aren’t humans, they are animals.” According to Elkind, the onset of adolescent egocentrism is brought on by the emergence of the formal operational stage, which allows the adolescent to mentally construct hypotheses that are contrary to reality. It is at the onset of adolescence that the individual is “freed” from the confines of concrete thought, and begins to be able to grasp abstract or hypothetical concepts (thus the formal operational way of thinking arises). Here, the individual is now able to imagine the hypothetical situation involving dogs as humans and not animals. Thus, the individual is also able to imagine, and even come to believe, hypothetical situations in which everyone is as concerned with him or herself, and in which he or she is unique and invulnerable when compared to others. Such contrary-to-fact propositions are what characterize the personal fable, which can now be seen in light of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development in conjunction with Elkind’s ideas on adolescent egocentrism.

The Personal Fable in Early, Middle, and Late Adolescence
The onset of adolescent egocentrism tends to occur at about age 11-13 which is considered early adolescence. Since an adoelscent is thought to develop the formal operational stage of thinking during this age, the personal fable phenomenon is thought to develope as well. There are studies that support this hypothesis, showing that is it during early adolescence that the personal fable is most dominant (this includes both the uniqueness and invulnerability aspects of personal fable). It has also been shown that both feelings of uniqueness and invulnerability increase significantly from age 11 to age 13.

Middle adolescence generally considered to be around the age range of 14-16. Past research has demonstrated that personal fable peaks at about age 13 during early adolescence It has also been speculated that the personal fable phenomenon ought to decline as one moves into middle and then late adolescence.

Late adolescence is considered to range from the age of 17 to about 23. Although Elkind (1967) speculated that personal fable tends to decrease in late adolescence, there had been evidence of a possible re-emergence of personal fable (or at least adolescent egocentrism) during late adolescence. It is hypothesized that this re-occurence of adolescent egocentrism may act as a coping mechanism upon the transition to new educational and social contexts (moving away to college, for example). Perhaps further research into the prevalance of the personal fable in late adolescence is required. An additional study was done to ananlyze whether or not personal fable (and imaginary audience) decreased, increased, or stayed the same accross an age range from sixth grade to college. The results showed that there was no significant difference between age groups with regards to the personal fable phenomenon, although it did seem to decline slightly. Also, the results showed that the imaginary audience phenomenon seems to decrease as one ages, more so than personal fable.

Gender Differences
There has been evidence of a significant difference between genders in the uniqueness aspect of personal fable, where the females seem to have a higher sense of uniqueness than male adolescents. However, there has also been conflicting evidence suggesting that adolescent boys tend to feel more unique than adolescent girls. This same study that found that boys have a higher instance of feeling unique also found that male adolescents also felt more omnipotent (where the adolescent may feel that he is in complete control, all-powerful, and knows everything) when compared to girls. There is presently no knowledge of replication of this finding. Another study found that there was no significant difference between male and female adolescents with regards to personal fable in general. With regards to the invulnerability aspect of personal fable, it appears that boys tend to have higher instances of feelings pertaining to invulnerability and risk-taking than do girls. With feelings of invulnerability, it can be said that an adolescent is more likely to participate in risk behavior. A study was done to analyze the role gender plays is sexual risk-taking. The results indicated that females had a higher instance of sexual risk taking (which involved sexual intercourse at a younger age and not using no contraception. This finding is somewhat incongruent with the finding that boys tend to have higher feelings of invulnerability (and thus risk-taking behavior) than girls. Perhaps more research is needed to analyze this incongruency. Also, there was a study conducted to analyze the gender differences with regards to the chronicity (the pattern of the behavior across time) of the personal fable phenomenon across early, middle, and late adolescence. The results showed that the personal fable phenomenon, including invulnerability and uniqueness, tends to decrease as an individual moves into middle and late adolescence more so for females than for males.