Chapter Five
Entering the Social World:
Socioemotional Development in
Infancy and Early Childhood
5.1 Trust & Attachment:
Learning Objectives
• What are Erikson’s first three stages of
psychosocial development?
• How do infants form emotional attachments to
mother, father, and other significant people in
their lives?
• What are the different varieties of attachment
relationships, how do they arise, and what
are their consequences?
• Is attachment jeopardized when parents of
infants and young children are employed
outside of the home?
Erikson’s Stages of Early Psychosocial
Development
• Each of 8 stages involves a unique challenge
– Successful resolution results in a particular
strength of psychosocial development
– Failure may stunt development, the
relevant strength, and impede resolution of
future challenges
• Three of his stages and strengths are
relevant to infancy and the preschool years
Erikson’s Stages (cont’d)
• Basic trust vs. mistrust (infancy)
– Infants depend on caregivers to meet their needs and
provide comfort
– If needs are not met, the child develops wariness and
a lack of comfort
– When caregivers responsively and consistently meet
these needs, the child develops a basic sense of
trust and openness
– Hope: the strength involving openness to new
experience, tempered by wariness that discomfort or
danger may arise; acquired with a proper balance of
trust and mistrust
Erikson’s Stages (cont’d)
• Autonomy vs. doubt (1-3 years)
– Children realize they can have control over
their own actions and act independently
– If autonomy is not achieved, children can
feel ashamed of their capabilities and start
to doubt them
– Will: a strength involving children’s
knowledge that they can act on their world
intentionally but within limits; arises from a
blend of autonomy, shame, and doubt
Erikson’s Stages (cont’d)
• Initiative vs. guilt (3-5 years)
– Guilt can arise when taking initiative places
children in conflict with others or when they pursue
their own ambitions without cooperating with
others
– Initiative may develop when children successfully
play with different roles (e.g., as a parent) and
explore possibilities for themselves
– Purpose: a strength involving balance between
individual initiative and a willingness to cooperate
with others
The Growth of Attachment
• Attachment to caregivers is a critical aspect of
Erikson’s first stage (basic trust vs. mistrust)
• Evolutionary psychology: many human
behaviors are successful adaptations to the
environment
– Humans are social beings who also form
parent-child attachments
– These are adaptations promoting survival
to the reproductive years, thereby
sustaining the species’ existence
The Growth of Attachment (cont’d)
• Attachment: an enduring socioemotional
relationship with an adult
– Ensures survival
– Likeliest when the caregiver is responsive
and caring
– Often formed with mothers, because they
usually are primary caregivers
– Can occur with any responsive and caring
person
• Bowlby proposed four stages of attachment
Steps Toward Attachment
• Preattachment stage (birth to 6-8 weeks)
– Infants rapidly learn to recognize their mothers
– Infants display many behaviors that elicit adult
caregiving (e.g., crying, smiling)
• Attachment in the making (6-8 weeks to 6-8
months)
– Infants behave differently toward familiar versus
unfamiliar adults
– Infants are more easily consoled by familiar adults
and act happier in their presence
Steps Toward Attachment (cont’d)
• True attachment (6-8 months to 18 months)
– Infants have singled out a “special” adult as their
secure and stable socioemotional base
• Reciprocal relationships (18 months on)
– Toddlers act as true partners in the relationship,
taking initiatives in interaction
– Can anticipate that parents will return after a
separation, which benefits coping
– Toddlers begin to understands parents’ feelings and
goals
• May use these to guide their own behavior (e.g., social
referencing)
Father-Infant Relationships
• Attachment to fathers tends to follow that with
mothers
• Fathers tend to spend more time playing with
children than taking care of them
• Fathers play with children differently than
mothers (more rough and tumble)
– Mothers more often read to children and
talk with them
• Children tend to seek out the father for a
playmate; mothers are preferred for comfort
Forms of Attachment
• Ainsworth’s Strange Situation paradigm
– Three phases (~3 minutes each)
• Child and mother first occupy an unfamiliar room
filled with toys
• Mother leaves room momentarily
• Mother then returns to room
– Observe child’s reactions during each
– Classified four types of attachment
• Three were insecure types (least frequent)
• One is secure (frequent)
Four Types of Attachment
Relationships
• Secure attachment (60-65%): baby may or may not cry
upon separation; wants to be with mom upon her return
and stops crying
• Avoidant attachment (20%): baby not upset by
separation; ignores or looks away when mom returns
• Resistant attachment (10-15%): separation upsets
baby; remains upset after mom’s return and is difficult
to console
• Disorganized attachment (5-10%): separation and
return confuse the baby; reacts in contradictory ways
(e.g., seeking proximity to the returned mom, but not
looking at her)
Strange Situation Paradigm Criticisms
• Cultures may vary in what they consider
appropriate responses to separation and
reunion; ergo, we cannot rely on these alone
• Attachment Q-set: observers watch moms and
children interact at home, then rate numerous
attachment-related behaviors to form a total
score
– Scores from Strange Situation and Q-set correlate
highly and both predict later quality of relationship
(e.g., insecurely attached infants later report anger
with parents and low intimacy with them)
Consequences of Attachment
• Environmental instability and stress may
cause changes in the quality of attachment
(from secure to insecure)
– Early attachment may not well predict later
outcomes partly due to these factors
• Early secure attachment predicts
– successful and confident peer relationships
– fewer conflicts with friends
– more stable and higher-quality romantic
relationships
Consequences of Attachment (cont’d)
• Early disorganized attachments predicts
problems with anxiety, anger, and aggression
• Two mutually nonexclusive explanations of
why early attachment is a strong predictor
1. Early relationships teach children to trust and
confide in others, leading to skilled social
relationships
2. Parents who establish early secure attachments
remain warm and supportive throughout
childhood
What Determines Quality of
Attachment?
• Secure attachment results from predictable,
sensitive, and responsive parenting: Why?
– Internal working model: a child’s set of
expectations about parents’ availability and
responsiveness, in general and during stress
• Positive model: this person is dependable,
caring, plus concerned about my needs and
willing to meet them
• Negative model: this person is uncaring,
undependable, unresponsive, and even
annoyed by my needs
What Determines Quality of
Attachment? (cont’d)
• Temperament also contributes to attachment
– Fussy and difficult-to-console babies are
somewhat less likely to form secure attachments
• Particularly for rigid and traditional mothers than
accepting and flexible ones
• Parental training helps parents interact more
affectionately, responsively, and sensitively
– Promotes secure attachments and positive
internal working models
Attachment, Work, & Alternate
Caregiving
• Quality of mother-child attachment for 15- and 36month-olds is unrelated to
–
–
–
–
daycare’s quality or length of stays
number of changes in daycare
age when this care began
type of childcare (e.g., childcare center vs. in the home with a nonrelative)
– child forming attachments to nonparental caregivers
• Insecure attachments are likelier given low-quality
or frequent childcare combined with moms who
already are unresponsive and insensitive
Features of High-Quality Daycare
• Low ratio of children to caregivers
• Well-trained, experienced staff
• Low staff turnover
• Ample opportunities for educational and
social stimulation
• Good communication between parents and
daycare workers about the program’s goals
and routines
• Sensitive and responsive caregiving is key
5.2 Emerging Emotions:
Learning Objectives
• At what ages do children begin to express
basic emotions?
• What are complex emotions, and when do
they develop?
• When do children begin to understand other
people’s emotions? How do they use this
information to guide their own behavior?
Experiencing and Expressing
Emotions
• Emotions have functional (adaptive) value (e.g., guiding
behavior and facilitating relationships)
• Theorists distinguish complex from basic emotions
– Basic emotions consist of
• a subjective feeling
• a physiological change
• an overt behavior
– They consist of joy, sadness, anger, fear, distress,
disgust, interest, and surprise
– All have emerged by 8 to 9 months
• Studying infants’ facial expressions and overt behaviors
reveals their probable trajectory
Development of Basic Emotions
• Newborns: pleasure and distress
• 2 to 3 months: sadness
• 2 to 3 months: social smiles
– occur upon seeing a human face
– sometimes accompanied by cooing
– express pleasure at seeing another
 4 to 6 months: anger
- reflects an increasing understanding of
goals and their frustration
Development of Basic Emotions
(cont’d)
• 6 months: stranger wariness
- child looks away and begins to fuss
- occurs once children start to locomote
- adaptive as a natural restraint against wandering
away from familiar others
- occurs less with strangers in a familiar
environment
- wanes once children can recognize friendly faces
• 6 months: disgust
 adaptive in signaling toxins (e.g., feces) or
potential illness (e.g., vomit)
Emergence of Complex Emotions
• Complex emotions include guilt,
embarrassment, and pride
• To be experienced, child first must understand
the self and behavior in relation to whether
they have met standards or expectations
• This self-understanding emerges around 1518 months
• Complex emotions emerge at 18-24 months
Later Developments
• With increasing cognitive development, children
experience basic and complex emotions in more
and different situations
– Ex.: fear of the dark or imaginary creatures declines
during elementary school
• understand appearance vs. reality
– Ex.: elementary school but not preschool children
would experience
• shame for not defending a peer
• normative fear about school, health, and personal harm
Cultural Differences in Emotional
Expression
• Many basic and complex emotions are
expressed similarly around the world
• Expressing emotions differs across cultures
– Asian children are encouraged to show
emotional restraint
– European-American 11-month-olds cried
and smiled more than Chinese infants of
same age
Cultural Differences (cont’d)
• Cultures differ in which events trigger emotions
• Asian children are proud of class-wide
achievement
• American children are proud of public personal
achievement, whereas Asians are embarrassed
• American children express anger at others for
ruining their property or hurting them
• Asian-Buddhist children would inhibit anger and
feel shame instead for their possible role in the
event
Recognizing & Using Others’
Emotions
• Adults are more skilled at recognizing subtleties in
emotion and detecting when others are faking an
emotion
• 4-6 months: differentiate among faces expressing
happiness, sadness, and fear
• Like adults, infants attend more to facial expressions
of negative emotions than happy or neutral ones
(adaptive value)
• Infants understand a facially displayed emotion as
shown by them matching their emotions to other
people’s
Recognizing Others’ Emotions
(cont’d)
• Social referencing: 12-month-old infants use adults’
(e.g., parents’) facial and vocal emotion displays to
direct their own behavior
– A child will
• avoid an object if parent expresses fear or disgust
• approach the object if parent shows happiness
• 14-month-olds remember earlier observed emotional
reactions of parents to particular objects
• 18-month-olds use the reactions of one adult to another
adult’s behavior to guide their own behavior
Recognizing Others’ Emotions
(cont’d)
• Factors contributing to children’s emotion
understanding
– parents and children frequently discussing past
emotions (especially negative ones, such as fear
and anger)
– parents explaining how feelings differ and feelings’
situational elicitors
– a positive and rewarding relationship with parents
and siblings
– possibly contributes due to more frequent discussions
about a full range of emotions
Regulating Emotions
• Emotion regulation: controlling in some way what
one feels and how to communicate the feeling
• Dependent on cognitive processes
- Attention (e.g., reducing anger by diverting attention to less
provocative stimuli, thoughts, or feelings)
- Reappraisal (e.g., lessening an emotion’s intensity by
differently interpreting the significance or meaning of an event
or feeling)
• Across age, some children more poorly regulate
their emotions compared to others, which can
create adjustment problems (e.g., peer conflicts)
Regulating Emotions (cont’d)
• 4-6 months: use simple strategies to regulate
emotions (e.g., turning away from a scary image)
• 24 months: because it better gets an adult’s attention
and help, express sadness rather than fear or anger
• Older children and adolescents
– become better able to control their own emotions rather
than relying on others
– use mental strategies to regulate emotions
– tailor their strategy to the particular situation (e.g., whether
its avoidable or not)
5.3 Interacting with Others:
Learning Objectives
• When do youngsters first begin to play with
each other? How does play change during
infancy and the preschool years?
• What determines whether children help one
another?
The Joys of Play
• Even two 6-month-olds look, smile, and point at each
other
• 12 months: parallel play, in which children play alone
but are keenly interested in what others are doing
• 15-18 months: simple social play, in which children
do similar activities and talk or smile at each other
• 24 months: cooperative play, theme-based play
where children take special roles (e.g., hide-andseek)
Make-Believe
• Values and traditions are expressed through
make-believe or imaginary characters
• Entertaining, while promoting cognitive
development
• Helps children explore frightening topics
• Imaginary playmates promote imagination,
sociability, and adjustment
• Pretend play is a regular part of preschooler’s
play
 16-18 months understand difference between pretending vs.
reality
Solitary Play
• Usually not an indicator of problems
• Can reflect uneasiness with others for which
professional help should be sought if child
– wanders aimlessly among others
– hovers over others who are playing
Gender Differences in Play
• 24-36 months: children spontaneously prefer
playing with same-sex peers
– Not restricted to gender-typed games
– Resist adult encouragement to play with the opposite
sex
– Increases through to pre-adolescence
• Why? Gender-typed play styles, such as
• boys prefer rough and tumble, competition, and
dominance
• girls are more cooperative, prosocial, and
conversation-oriented
Gender Differences in Play (cont’d)
Why the same-sex play preference? (cont’d)
• Girls are more enabling
– Their acts and remarks support others and sustain
interactions
• Boys are more constricting
– try to be the victor by exaggerating, and threatening or
contradicting the other
• Evolutionarily adaptive?
– Males strive to establish a high rank to gain access to
more mates
– Females have affiliation goals, because they
traditionally left their community to join another
Parental Influence
Parental involvement in child’s play can lead to
later improved peer relations when parents
serve as
• playmate, scaffolding the child’s play and
rendering it more sophisticated
• social director, arranging play dates and
official play activities (e.g., swimming)
• coach, helping children learn how to initiate
interactions, make joint decisions, and resolve
conflicts (when done appropriately)
Parental Influence (cont’d)
• Parents also serve as mediators to help
children resolve disputes, share, and identify
mutually acceptable activities
• Parent-child attachment relationships indirectly
influence children’s play
• When of high quality & emotionally satisfying
– children generalize this positive internal working model
to peer relationships
– children are more confident about exploring their
environment, yielding more opportunities to form new
relationships
Helping Others
• Prosocial behavior: one that benefits another
– Ex.: cooperating, being polite
• Altruism: prosocial behaviors not directly
benefiting the self, but driven by feelings of
responsibility toward others
– Ex.: sharing one’s lunch with a friend who forgot
his; helping a lost child
• Adaptive? Increases person’s chances of
receiving help, thereby promoting survival,
later sexual reproduction, and passing along
these genes
Helping Others (cont’d)
• 18 months: recognize others’ distress signals
and will try to comfort them; will help
someone in need (e.g., helping a teacher pick
up markers she/he dropped)
• By 3 years: are gradually starting to
understand others’ needs and learning
appropriate altruistic responses
– Still somewhat limited because of
egocentrism in distinguishing others’ needs
or desires from their own
Skills Underlying Altruistic Behavior
• Perspective-taking: accurate perception of
another’s physical, social, or emotional
viewpoint as distinct from one’s own
– Empathy is one manifestation: the actual
experience of another’s feelings
– The state and trait of empathy promote
helping
Situational Influences
Why do even kind children sometimes act
cruelly? Help is likelier when children
– feel responsible for the person in need,
which reminders of friendship’s or
affiliation’s importance can promote
– believe they have the skills to be helpful
– are in a good rather than a bad mood
– incur fewer costs or sacrifices for helping
The Contributions of Heredity
• Prosocial behavior is more similar in identical
twins than fraternal ones
• Genes influence aspects of temperament
related to prosocial behavior
• Certain children are aware of another’s need,
but
– feel so distressed that they cannot figure out how
to help due to poor emotion regulation skills
– their inhibition (shyness) prevents them from
helping, despite knowing how
Socialization of Altruism
Children are more prosocial and/or empathic
when parents
• model warmth and concern for others
• model being cooperative, helpful, and responsive
• discipline warmly and supportively, set guidelines,
and give feedback
• use reason while disciplining, stating how children’s
actions affect others
• provide children opportunities to behave prosocially
in and outside the home
5.4 Gender Roles & Gender Identity:
Learning Objectives
• What are our stereotypes about males and
females? How well do they correspond to
actual differences between boys and girls?
• How do young children learn gender roles?
• How are gender roles changing? What further
changes might the future hold?
Images of Men & Women:
Facts & Fantasy
• Social role: cultural guidelines as to how we
should behave, especially with others
– Gender roles are one of the first learned
• Learning gender stereotypes
– Our world is not gender neutral
– 18 months: girls and boys look longer at
gender-stereotyped pictures of toys
– 4-year-olds: extensive knowledge of genderstereotyped activities and some behaviors or
traits
Images of Men & Women:
Facts & Fantasy (cont’d)
• Preschool: believe boys are physically, but girls
verbally, aggressive
• Post-preschool: continuously growing beliefs
about gender-stereotyped traits and
occupations
– Males will have more prestigious jobs (earn more
money, have greater power)
– Boys are strong and dominant, whereas girls are
emotional and gentle
– Recognize gender stereotypes as behavioral
guidelines that are not necessarily binding
Gender-Related Differences
How do boys and girls actually differ?
• Verbal ability: girl toddlers have larger
vocabularies; thereafter read, write, and spell
better, and have fewer language problems
• Mathematics: in cultures not limiting females
to traditional stereotypes, this gender gap has
diminished in the past 25 years
• Spatial ability: from infancy onwards, boys
more accurately and rapidly solve visualspatial problems
Gender-Related Differences (cont’d)
• Social influence: girls comply more with adult
directions and more readily accept others’
influence attempts, possibly because they
value group harmony
• Aggression: starting at 17 mos., boys are
more physically aggressive (across cultures)
• Girls are likelier to engage in relational
aggression
– Hurt others by damaging their peer relationships
(e.g., gossip, ignore, spread rumors)
Gender-Related Differences (cont’d)
• Emotional sensitivity: girls are more empathic; can
better express and interpret others’ emotions
• Caveats about gender differences
- They depend on experience
- Historical changes affect them
- Most differences are small, reflecting only the
average difference between groups of boys and
girls
• Ex.: some girls may outperform boys on
spatial tasks, while some boys may be more
emotionally sensitive than girls
Gender Typing
• Parents are equally warm and encouraging to
boys and girls
• However, results show parents to model and
differentially reinforce “appropriate” gendertyped behaviors, with
– girls playing with dolls, dressing up
– boys engaging in rough-and-tumble play,
playing with blocks, mild aggression
• Results support social learning theory
Gender Typing (cont’d)
• Differential reinforcement of gender-typed
traits and behaviors is likelier in
– parents with traditional views of each
gender’s rights and roles
– fathers, who punish their sons more for
gender-atypical behavior, and are more
accepting of dependence in girls
• Mothers rarely contradict or question
children’s gender-stereotyped statements
Gender Typing (cont’d)
• Peers influence gender roles in two ways
– Children learn more about their role from like-sex
than opposite-sex peers by engaging so often in
same-sex play
• sharpens one’s sense of gender group membership
• heightens the contrast between each gender’s roles and
behaviors
– Peers treat boys even more harshly than girls for
“feminine” activities and interests
Gender Identity
Gender identity: sense of self as male or female
• When is this formed? Kohlberg’s three stages
– Gender labeling: understanding that one is a girl
or boy and labeling the self as such (2-3 years)
– Gender stability: understanding that one will
forever be a boy or girl (preschool)
– Gender constancy: understanding that one’s
maleness or femaleness does not transform
across situations, or with personal wishes and
superficial changes (4 to 7 years)
Gender Identity (cont’d)
• Kohlberg: only after obtaining gender constancy
(Stage 3) do children start learning gender roles
– Some results show this learning to occur
earlier, after mastering gender stability (Stage
2)
– Gender constancy does help children think
more flexibly about gender roles (e.g., ok for
girls to play with trucks or boys with dolls)
– This theory addresses when but not how
children learn about gender or genderappropriate behaviors
Gender Identity (cont’d)
• Gender-schema theory: addresses “how” children
learn about gender and gender roles
– Children decide if objects, activities, or behaviors
are “male” or “female” and then decide whether
they should learn more about these
• Once children understand or refer to themselves by
gender, they play more often with genderstereotyped toys (17-21 mos.) and watch gendertyped TV shows and evaluate toys more positively if
a child of their sex likes the toy
Biological Influences
• Evolutionary theory: men and women evolved
different traits and behaviors adaptive to their
unique investments (e.g., childrearing for
women and resource provision for men)
• Identical twins are even more similar than
fraternal twins in preference for sex-typical
toys and activities
• In utero testosterone exposure predicts
preference for masculine-typed activities
Biological Influences
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH): genetic
disorder of the adrenals secreting large amounts
of androgen; affects girls, such that
– their enlarged clitoris can resemble a penis
– they prefer masculine activities and male friends
– hormone therapy and sex operations do not undo
these preferences
– greater prenatal androgen exposure exacerbates
these preferences
– it seems to affect brain regions critical for
gender-role behavior
VIDEO: Child with Gender Identity
Disorder
Evolving Gender Roles
• Family lifestyles, culture, and history influence children’s
gender roles
• Family Lifestyles Project: studied 1960-70s
counterculture members who socialized their children
without traditional gender beliefs
– Children did not stereotype occupations or object use (e.g., girls
can use a hammer or boys an iron)
– Children did prefer same-sex friends or activities
• Evolutionary history partly continues to influence certain
roles (e.g., women being nurturing or men being
protectors and providers)