Theories of
Social Development
How Children Develop (3rd ed.)
Siegler, DeLoache & Eisenberg
Chapter 9
Guiding Questions



What do various theories say about the social
development of children?
What do ethological and evolutionary theories
say about the process by which children
develop socially?
How can the major theoretical perspectives of
children’s social development be applied to
everyday observations and interactions with
children?
Theories of Social
Development: The Goal

Theories of social development
attempt to account for important
aspects of development:


Emotion, personality, attachment, self,
peer relationships, morality, and gender
Such theories must:


Explain how children’s development is
influenced by the people and
individuals around them
Examine the ways that human beings
affect each other
Major Theoretical Perspectives
of Children’s Social
Development

Psychoanalytic Theories

Learning Theories

Theories of Social Cognition

Ecological Theories of Development
Major Psychoanalytic
Theories
Freud’s
Theory of Psychosexual
Development
Freud’s
Theory of Personality Structure
Erikson’s
Theory
Life-Span Developmental
Central Themes of the
Psychoanalytic Perspective



Concept that early experiences shape later
development emphasizes the continuity of
individual differences
Also emphasize discontinuous aspects of
development with stage theories outlining
abrupt shifts in development
Emphasis on biological drives (especially
Freud) but also interaction with the
environment
Sigmund Freud

Neurologist interested in the origins of
mental illness

Greatly impacted Western culture and on
thinking about social and personality
development

Concluded many emotional problems
were rooted in childhood experiences
Freud’s Theory of
Psychosexual Development

Proposes a series of universal stages in which
psychic energy becomes focused in different
erogenous zones
 Psychic energy: the biologically based,
instinctual drives that energize behavior,
thoughts, and feelings
 Erogenous zones: areas of the body that
become erotically sensitive in successive stages
of development
Freud’s Personality Structure
Id



The biological drives with which the infant is born
The earliest and most primitive personality structure
Unconscious and operates with the goal of seeking
pleasure
Ego


Emerges in the first year
The rational, logical, problem-solving component of
personality
Superego


Develops during the ages of 3 to 6
Based on the child’s internalization (or adoption as his or
her own) of the parents’ attributes, beliefs, and standards
Stages of
Psychosexual Development
Stage
Oral
(first year)
Description
The primary source of satisfaction and pleasure is
oral activity. During this stage, the mother is
established as the strongest love-object.
Anal
The primary source of pleasure comes from
(1-3 years) defecation.
Phallic
Characterized by the localization of pleasure in the
(3-6 years) genitalia.
Latency
Characterized by the channeling of sexual energy
(6-12 years) into socially acceptable activities.
Genital
Sexual maturation is complete and sexual
(12+ years) intercourse becomes a major goal.
If fundamental needs are not met during any stage, children may
become fixated on these needs, continually attempting to satisfy them.
Superego Development

For boys, the path to superego development is
through the resolution of the Oedipus complex, a
psychosocial conflict in which a boy experiences a
form of sexual desire for his mother and wants an
exclusive relationship with her



Freud argued that the son’s desire for his mother and hostility
toward his father is so threatening that the episode is repressed
and infantile amnesia results.
The complex is resolved through the boys’ identification with his
father.
Freud thought that girls experience a similar but less
intense conflict, the Electra complex, involving erotic
feelings toward the father, resulting in their
developing a weaker conscience than boys do.
Erik Erikson’s Life-Span
Developmental Theory

Successor to Freud’s theory, has also been influential

Erik Erikson accepted the basic constructs of Freud’s theory,
but enlarged the theory to include other factors such as
culture and contemporary issues.

Eight age-related stages (five during childhood and
adolescence)
 Each stage is characterized by a specific crisis that the
individual must resolve.
 If the dominant issue of a stage is not successfully
resolved before the next stage begins, the person will
continue to struggle with it.
The Early Developmental Process
According to Erikson
Stage
Trust vs. Mistrust
(first year)
Autonomy vs.
Shame and doubt
(1–3½ years)
Initiative vs. Guilt
(4–6 years)
Description
Developing trust in other people is the crucial issue.
The challenge is to achieve a strong sense of
autonomy while adjusting to increased social
demands.
Resolved when the child develops high standards
and the initiative to meet them without being crushed
by worry about not being able to measure up.
The child must master cognitive and social skills,
learn to work industriously, and play well with others.
Industry vs.
Inferiority
(6–puberty)
Identity vs. Role
Adolescents must resolve the question of who they
Confusion
really are or live in confusion about what roles they
(adolescence–early should play as adults.
adulthood)
Current Perspectives

The most significant of Freud’s
contributions to developmental
psychology were:



His emphasis on the importance of early
experience and emotional relationships
His recognition of the role of subjective
experience and unconscious mental activity
Erikson’s emphasis on the search for
identity in adolescence has had
lasting impact.
Major Learning
Theories
Behaviorism
Operant
conditioning
Social learning theory
Central Themes of the
Learning Perspective

Greatly emphasize the role of the environment (external factors) on
the developing child

More contemporary learning theorists emphasize the importance of
cognitive factors and the active role children play in their own
development

Emphasize continuity in development, proposing that the same
principles operate throughout life and that there are no stages

Focus on mechanisms of change (i.e., learning principles) and argue
that individual differences arise because of different histories of
reinforcement and observation
Watson’s Behaviorism

John Watson is the founder of behaviorism




Believed that children’s development is determined by their
social environment and that learning through conditioning was
the primary mechanism of development
Demonstrated the power of classical conditioning with famous
“Little Albert” experiment
Exclusive focus on conditioning is now widely considered overly
simplistic
However, his approach to extinguishing fear has been widely
used to rid people of phobias.

This approach, known as systematic desensitization, is a
form of therapy based on classical conditioning in which initially
debilitating responses to a given stimulus are gradually
deconditioned.
Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

B. F. Skinner conducted
research on the nature
and function of
reinforcement.

His discoveries include the
importance of attention as a
powerful reinforcer, and the
difficulty of extinguishing
behavior that has been
intermittently reinforced (i.e.,
responded to inconsistently).

Skinner’s work on
reinforcement also led to a
form of therapy known as
behavior modification, in
which reinforcement
contingencies are changed to
encourage more adaptive
behavior.
Social Learning Theory

Emphasizes observation and imitation,
rather than reinforcement, as the primary
mechanisms of development

In a classic series of studies, Albert Bandura
and his colleagues found that preschool
children can acquire new behaviors through
observing others.

Discovered that children’s tendency to reproduce what they
learned depended on vicarious reinforcement (i.e., whether the
person whose actions they observed was rewarded or punished)
Bandura’s Research

Preschool children initially watched a short
film in which an adult model performed
highly aggressive actions on an inflatable
Bobo doll (weighted at the bottom so it
pops up when knocked down).

One group of children observed the model
rewarded with candy and soda for the
aggressive behavior.

Another group saw the model punished.

The remaining children saw the model
experience no consequences.
Bandura’s Research
Findings:

Observing someone else receive a
reward or punishment for the behavior
affects the subsequent reproduction of
the behavior.

Boys were initially more aggressive than
girls, but the girls increased their level of
imitation when offered rewards.

Over time, Bandura placed more
emphasis on the cognitive aspects of
observational learning.

Unlike most learning theorists, Bandura
argued that child-environment influences
operate in both directions, a concept
referred to as reciprocal determinism.
Reciprocal Determinism

In recent years, Bandura has
emphasized the importance of
perceived self-efficacy.

An individual’s beliefs about how
effectively he or she can control his or
her own behavior, thoughts, and
emotions in order to achieve a desired
goal
Current Perspectives

Learning theories are based on principles derived
from empirical research.
 They, in turn, have generated extensive research and
valuable practical applications

The weaknesses of the learning approach are its
limited attention to biological factors and (with the
exception of Bandura’s theory) to the impact of
cognition.

Relevant for research and children’s welfare in that
therapeutic approaches to treat children are based
on learning principles.
Major Theories of
Social Cognition
Selman’s
Stage Theory of Role Taking
Dodge’s
Information-Processing
Theory of Social Problem Solving
Dweck’s
Theory of Self-Attributions
and Achievement Motivation
Major Themes of the Social
Cognitive Perspective

Focus on children’s ability to thinking and reasons about their own
and other people’s thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors

Emphasis on self-socialization—children’s active shaping of their
own development through their own activity preferences, friendship
choices, and other behaviors

Active child and individual differences are major themes

Some social cognitive theories emphasize stages while others
emphasize continuity
Selman’s Stage Theory
of Role Taking

Focuses on role taking – the ability
to adopt the perspective of another
person, thereby better
understanding that person’s
behavior, thoughts, and feelings


Preschoolers, for example, cannot take the
perspective of another and hence have
very limited social cognition.
Selman proposed that children go
through four increasingly complex
and abstract stages in their thinking
about other people.
Selman’s
Stages of Development
Stage
1
2
3
4
Description
Children come to appreciate that another
6-8 years
person can have a different perspective
from their own, but they attribute this to the
other person’s not having the same
information they do
Children become able to think about the
8-10 years other person’s point of view
Children can systematically compare their
10-12 years own and the other’s points of view
Adolescents can compare another person’s
12+ years
perspective to that of a generalized other
Dodge’s Information-Processing
Theory of Social Problem Solving

Emphasizes the crucial role of cognitive
processes in social behavior

Children’s use of aggression as a problemsolving strategy

Found that highly aggressive children seem
to have a hostile attributional bias—an
expectation that others are hostile to them,
which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
Dweck’s Theory of Self-Attributions and
Achievement Motivation

Emphasizes the role of self-attributions in academic
achievement

Children with a entity/helpless orientation attribute
success and failure to enduring aspects of the self and
tend to give up in the face of failure



Such “helpless” children tend to base their sense of self-worth on
the degree of approval they receive from other people
To be assured of praise, they avoid situations in which they are
likely to not be successful
Children with an incremental/mastery orientation attribute
success and failure to the amount of effort expended and
persist in the face of failure.
Dweck’s Theory of Self-Attributions and
Achievement Motivation

Older children’s cognitions about themselves are more
complex

Some children have an entity theory of intelligence and tend to
think that a person’s level of intelligence is fixed and
unchangeable.
 When they experience failure, they conclude that they are not
very smart and that there is nothing they can do about the
situation.

Other children hold an incremental theory of intelligence and
believe that intelligence can increase as a function of
experience.
 These children tend to try harder after failure.
Implications


Praising children for
working hard supports an
incremental model and a
mastery-oriented
motivational pattern.
In contrast, offering
praise and criticism
focused on enduring
traits can lead to an entity
model and a helpless
orientation.
Current Perspectives

Social cognitive theories have
made important theoretical
contributions and have been
supported by research.

However, they provide an
incomplete account because they
do not address biological factors
in development.
Major Ecological
Theories
of Development
Ethological
and Evolutionary
Theories
The
Bioecological Model
Ecological Perspectives
Ethological
Evolutionary
Bioecological
Ethological and Evolutionary
Theories

Ethological and evolutionary theories
are concerned with aspects of human
development that are presumed to be
based on our evolutionary heritage.

These theories primarily focus on
species-specific behavior.
Ethology

Studies the evolutionary
bases of behavior,
attempting to understand
behavior in terms of its
adaptive or survival value

Ethologists argue that a
variety of innate behavior
patterns in animals,
including imprinting, were
shaped by evolution.
 Imprinting is a form of
learning in which the young
of some species of newborn
birds and mammals
become attached to and
follow adult members of the
species.
 Although human newborns
do not imprint, they work to
maintain visual contact with
adult humans.
The Ethological Perspective

Research also examined gender differences
in play patterns

Ethologists argue that gender differences are
affected by evolved predispositions, with
females having an innate preference for
objects that afford opportunities for
nurturance; males, for objects that invite
movement.

Support for the argument comes from research showing
that nonhuman primates exhibit similar patterns of
gender preferences as human children.
Evolutionary Psychology

A relatively new approach that applies the Darwinian
concepts of natural selection and adaptation to human
behavior.


A major premise of evolutionary psychology is that organisms,
including humans, are motivated to behave in ways that preserve
their genes in the gene pool of the species.
Evolutionary psychologists argue that the large size of
our brains necessitates a prolonged period of immaturity.

A consequence is humans’ neural plasticity in learning from
experience.

They also see play as an evolved platform for learning.

Prolonged immaturity requires a great deal of nurturance from
parents.
Evolutionary Psychology

Parental-investment theory stresses the
evolutionary basis of many aspects of parental
behavior, including the extensive investment
parents make in their offspring.

Parents’ genes are perpetuated only if their
offspring survive and reproduce.

A dark side of the evolutionary picture is the fact
that the rate of murders committed by
stepfathers against children residing with them
is hundreds of times higher than the rate for
fathers and their biological children.
Evolutionary Psychology

Further, an implication
of the evolutionary
view of development is
that radical departures
from the speciestypical environment
(for example, in
neonatal intensive
care) could have
negative consequences
on development.
The Bioecological Model
Urie Brofenbrenner presents the child’s environment as
composed of a series of nested structures, with every level
having an impact on development.
 The microsystem is the immediate, bi-directional
environment that a person experiences.
 The mesosystem encompasses the connections among
various microsystems.
 The exosystem consists of environmental settings that the
person does not experience directly but that can affect the
person indirectly.
 The macrosystem is the larger cultural context within
which the other systems are embedded.
 The chronosystem consists of historical changes that
influence the other systems.
Current Perspectives

Ecological theories are important because they
place individual development in a much broader
context than do other theories of social
development.

Evolutionary psychology has been criticized
because many of its tenets cannot be tested and
because it overlooks the human capacity to
transform our environments and ourselves.

The bioecological model has made important
contributions to thinking about development, but
can be criticized for its general omission of
specific biological factors.