Chapter Five

Entering the Social World:

Socioemotional Development in Infancy
and Early Childhood

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 5.1 Beginnings: Trust &
Attachment Learning Objectives
• What are Erikson’s first three stages of
psychosocial development?
• How do infants become emotionally attached to
mother, father, and other significant people in their
lives?
• What are the different kinds 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 the
home?
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
 Erikson’s Stages of Early
Psychosocial Development
• Basic trust vs. mistrust
– With a proper balance of trust and mistrust, infants can
acquire hope
• Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
– A blend of autonomy, shame, and doubt gives rise to
will, the knowledge that within limits, youngsters can
act on their world intentionally
• Initiative vs. guilt
– Purpose is achieved with a balance between individual
initiative and a willingness to cooperate with others

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 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

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 Steps Toward Attachment

• Bowlby proposed four stages of attachment:

– Preattachment stage (birth to 6–8 weeks)
– Attachment in the making (6–8 weeks to 6–8 months)
– True attachment (6–8 months to 18 months)
– Reciprocal relationships (18 months on)

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 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 phase
– Classified four types of attachment
 Three insecure types; one secure

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 Four Types of Attachment
Relationships (1 of 2)
• 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

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 Four Types of Attachment
Relationships (2 of 2)
• 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)

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 Quality of Attachment (1 of 2)

• Quality of attachment during infancy predicts

parent-child relations during childhood,
adolescence, and young adulthood
– Securely attached infants depend on their parents for
care and support
– Infants with insecure attachment later report being
angry with their parents
– Babies attach to their mothers and fathers, and the
quality of the attachment is the same

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 Quality of Attachment (2 of 2)

• Mothers spend more time caregiving and are

more skillful at parenting than fathers.
– Fathers typically spend more time playing with their
babies than taking care of them
– Physical play is the norm for fathers; mothers spend
more time reading and talking to babies
– These gender differences have become smaller

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 Consequences of Attachment

• Consequences of Attachment
– Infant–parent attachment lays the foundation for all the
infant’s later social relationships
 Secure attachment:
o Prototype for later successful relationships
 Non-satisfying first relationship:
o More prone to problems in their social interactions as preschoolers
 School-age children are less likely to have behavior problems if
they have successful attachment relationships

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 What Determines Quality of
Attachment?
• Secure attachment results from predictable,
sensitive, and responsive parenting
– Internal working mode
 Positive model
 Negative model
• Parental training helps parents interact more
affectionately, responsively, and sensitively

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 Attachment, Work, & Alternate
Caregiving
• Day care’s quality or length of stays
– Early child care found no effects of the childcare
experience on attachment
– One exception: Mothers who were less sensitive and
responsive
 When placed in low-quality child care, children more likely to
have an insecure attachment.
– Children who experience many hours of child care
 More often overly aggressive; more conflicts with teachers;
less self-control
 More likely to experience low-quality care

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 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?

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 The Function of Emotions

• Emotions have functional (adaptive) value (e.g.,

guiding behavior and facilitating relationships)

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 Experiencing and Expressing
Emotions
• Theorists distinguish complex from basic
emotions
– Basic emotions consist of:
 A subjective feeling, a physiological change, and an overt
behavior
– Joy, sadness, anger, fear, distress, disgust, interest,
and surprise all occur in 8 to 9 months
• Studying infants’ facial expressions and overt
behaviors reveals their probable trajectory

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 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

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 Development of Basic Emotions:
Stranger Wariness and Disgust
• 6 months: stranger wariness
– Infants tend to be less fearful of strangers when the
environment is familiar
– Baby's anxiety depends on the stranger's behavior
– Adaptive as a natural restraint against wandering away
from familiar others

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 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 15–18 months
– Complex emotions emerge at 18–24 months

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 Later Developments

• With increasing cognitive development, children

experience basic and complex emotions in more
and different situations
– Regret and relief are expressed by around 5 and 6
years of age
– By 9 years, these emotions are being expressed
appropriately (cognitive growth)
 Reasons for fear shift from the dark and imaginary creatures to
school, health, and personal harm

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 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

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 Recognizing & Using Others’
Emotions
• 4–6 months: differentiate among faces expressing
happiness, sadness, and fear
– Engage in social referencing
– 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

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 Recognizing Others’ Emotions: Factors
in Emotional Understanding

• Factors contributing to children’s understanding of

emotion
– Parents and children frequently discussing past
emotions (especially negative ones, such as fear and
anger)
– Parents explaining how feelings differ and feelings’
situational elicitors
– Positive and rewarding relationship with parents and
siblings

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 Regulating Emotions

• Emotion regulation: controlling what one feels and

how to communicate feeling
– Dependent on cognitive processes
 Attention and reappraisal
• Not all children regulate their emotions well
– Those who don’t tend to have problems
 More frequent conflicts with peers
 Less satisfying peer relationships
 Less adaptive adjustment to school

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 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?

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 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

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 Make-Believe (1 of 2)

• Promotes cognitive development

• Helps children explore frightening topics
• Promotes language, memory, reasoning, and
understanding the thoughts, beliefs, and feelings
of others

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 Make-Believe (2 of 2)

• Culture influences
– India and Peru – parents do not routinely engage in
pretend play with their children and children do not
begin pretend play until older
– The content of pretend play reflects cultural values
 European American children—adventure and fantasy
 Korean American children—family roles and everyday activities

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 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

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 Gender Differences in Play

• 24–36 months: children spontaneously prefer

playing with same-sex peers
• Gender-typed play styles, such as
– Boys prefer rough and tumble, competition, and
dominance
– Girls are more cooperative, prosocial, and
conversation-oriented
– Girls are more enabling; boys are more constricting

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 Parental Influence

• Parental involvement in child’s play can lead to

later improved peer relations when parents serve
as:
– Playmate
– Social director
– Coach
– Mediator

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 Helping Others

• Prosocial behavior: one that benefits another

• Altruism: prosocial behaviors not directly
benefiting the self, but driven by feelings of
responsibility toward others
• 18 months: recognize others’ distress signals and
will try to comfort them
• By 3 years: are gradually starting to understand
others’ needs and learning appropriate altruistic
responses

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 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

© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.

 Situational Influences

• Feelings of responsibility
• Feelings of competence
• Mood
• Costs of altruism

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 The Contributions of Heredity

• Prosocial behavior is more similar in identical

twins than fraternal ones
• Genes influence aspects of temperament related
to prosocial behavior
– Some 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

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 Socialization of Altruism

• Children are more prosocial and/or empathic

when parents:
– Model warmth and concern for others, and are
cooperative, helpful, and responsive
– Use reason while disciplining, stating how children’s
actions affect others
– Provide children opportunities to behave pro-socially in
and outside the home

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 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?

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 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
– At 18 months: girls and boys look longer at gender-
stereotyped pictures of toys
– At 4 years: extensive knowledge of gender-stereotyped
activities and some behaviors or traits

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 Gender-Related Differences

• How do boys and girls actually differ?

– Verbal ability
– Mathematics
– Spatial ability
– Memory
– Social influence
– Relational aggression
– Emotional sensitivity
– Effortful control

© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.

 Gender Typing

• Parents are equally warm and encouraging to

boys and girls
• Parents model and differentially reinforce
“appropriate” gender-typed behaviors
• Results support social learning theory

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 Parental Differences

• Parental Differences
– Fathers, more than mothers, treat sons and daughters
differently
 Encourage gender-related play
 Punish their sons more but accept their daughter’s dependence
– Mothers tend to respond based on each child’s need,
and fathers respond based on gender stereotypes.

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 Gender Identity

• Gender identity: sense of self as male or female

• Kohlberg’s three stages
– Gender labeling: 2–3 years
– Gender stability: preschool
– Gender constancy: 4–7 years

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 Gender Identity Gender Schema
Theory
• 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
– After children understand gender, they focus on
gender-typical activities, their choices shifts along
gender-specific lines
• By school age, children know that gender roles
are flexible

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 Biological Influences (1 of 2)

• 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

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 Biological Influences (2 of 2)

• Sex hormones are key players in gender-role

learning and help explain genetic disorders:
– Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a genetic
disorder in which the adrenal glands secrete large
amounts of androgen
 Affects baby girls in that it can enlarge the clitoris to resemble a
penis
 Androgen also affects prenatal development of brain regions
critical for masculine and feminine gender-role behavior.

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 Evolving Gender Roles

• Gender roles are changing and have evolved over

time
• Studies of nontraditional families indicate that
some components of gender stereotypes are
more readily changed than others and more
readily influenced by experience than others

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