Developmental Psychology: Social and Emotional

Although the development of cognitive, perceptual, and linguistic skills is essential to our survival and success in life, in the end the purposes to which we put those skills are determined by our social relations and emotional reactions. The development of emotions and social relations is difficult to study for the same reason that it is one of the most interesting areas of developmental psychology: it involves a number of different forces, many of which are hidden in the highly complex social and cultural environment that surrounds the child.
In this Topic, we begin by focusing on several approaches that have been taken to the problem of social and emotional development. The first section is more historical than scientific: it describes the theories proposed by Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson to explain the influence of early experiences on personality. While neither of these theories is particularly current, they both illustrate some important themes in developmental psychology; namely, the importance of social relations, the role of basic drives towards pleasure (Freud) or social relations (Erikson), and, particularly in Erikson's case, the fact that development does not end with physical maturation but last throughout the life course.
In the second section, we discuss a radically different approach to social and emotional development that nonetheless shares some of Freud and Erikson's basic assumptions. John Bowlby's theory of infant attachment is introduced, and we describe the relevance to it of Harry Barlow's research on monkeys reared in isolation and Mary Ainsworth's research on the ways in which attachment behavior varies from child to child.
Finally, in the third section we revisit the biology-society dichotomy in the context of gender development. Gender is one of the most important individual variables that can be used to describe people; it neatly divides most of us into one of two groups, and the expectations and norms of each group remain highly different despite efforts towards equalization. We discuss some evidence for biological influences, other evidence for the role of social influences, and the ways in which these two sources of developmental difference may interact.

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Terms

Anal Stage - The second stage in Freud's developmental theory. During this period the child obtains pleasure through defecation, but this comes into conflict with toilet training. Children who do not adequately resolve this conflict become "anal retentive."

Ethology - The study of animal behavior in the natural environment.

Genital Stage- The final stage in Freud's development theory. During this period the adolescent focuses on obtaining pleasure through reproductive relationships with members of the opposite sex and a productive relationship with society as a whole.

Insecurely Attached -A category of attachment behavior created by Mary Ainsworth to describe the behavior of infants in her Strange-Situation Test. Insecurely attached infants become upset at the departure of the mother and are not comforted by the mother's return.

Latency Period -This period follows the phallic stage and precedes the genital stage in Freud's developmental theory.

Oral Stage -This is the first stage in Freud's developmental theory. During this period, the child obtains pleasure through the mouth from the mother's breast. A child who does not advance beyond this stage will display "oral fixations," e.g. cigarette smoking.

Phallic Stage -This is the third stage in Freud's developmental theory. During this period, the child becomes aware of his or her parents as sexual objects, which leads to repression of aggressive and sexual urges towards them and identification with either the mother or the father.

Securely Attached -A category of attachment behavior created by Mary Ainsworth to describe the behavior of infants in her Strange-Situation Test. Securely attached infants become upset at the departure of the mother but are easily comforted when she returns.

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Psychodynamic Approaches to Social Development

Although psychodynamic approaches to social and emotional development are not currently popular in scientific psychology, they have had an enormous influence on the way we think about early childhood relationships. Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, although based on his clinical observations of adults, was primarily concerned with the impact of early social relationships on later behavior. Later theories, such as Erik Erikson's, were similarly concerned with early relationships but broadened the discussion of them beyond the simple drives (and complicated consequences) of

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Freud's theory.

1.1 Freud's Theory of Psychosexual Development

Freud divided childhood development into several stages. The first of these stages is the oral stage, during which the desire for pleasure (the libido) is satisfied through the mother's breast. During the second stage, the anal stage, the child derives pleasure through the excretion of feces. This comes into direct conflict, however, with attempts by the caregiver to toilet train the child. During the third stage, the phallic stage, the child derives pleasure through stimulation of the genitals. Here, according to Freud, the paths of male and female children diverge. Male children begin to desire their mother sexually, but they realize that they cannot do so without killing their father or somehow taking his place (Freud called this the "Oedipal complex"). Since actually killing their father is forbidden, male children instead identify with him, attempting to model their own beliefs and behaviors after his. Female children, on the other hand, begin to desire sexually their father, in part as a consequence of their own lack of a penis, which sexual intercourse can (in a way) rectify. They begin to resent their mother, in part as a consequence of feeling that their mother is responsible for their lack of a penis. However, since both having sex with the father and killing the mother are forbidden, they satisfy their desires by identifying with the mother. After the phallic stage, both male and female children go into a latency period that lasts until the early teen years, when they emerge into the genital stage. In this stage, pleasure is produced through heterosexual relations.

The implausibility of this account--and its blatant sexism--should be obvious, but it is important to keep in mind that Freud had an enormous effect on both lay and professional concepts of social and emotional development. Many of his assumptions are shared by today's researchers despite their rejection of almost all of his conclusions. Freud brought several assumptions to the foreground: that early life experiences before the age of six can have an enormous effect on the rest of an individual's life; that unconscious processes are the most important determinants of behavior; and that the child's social environment was as important to development as its genetic endowment.

1.2 Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development

Erik Erikson's theory of social development has not driven a great deal of research, but it is one of few examples of a theory that attempts to explain development over the whole of the life course. Erikson was psychoanalytically trained; like Freud, he believed that basic drives propelled humans through a series of life stages. Unlike Freud, however, he believed that social needs were the most important determinants. In Erikson's theory, each stage of life is characterized by attempts to resolve a particular social need. The stages are as follows: 1) Trust vs. mistrust (0-1 yrs); 2) Autonomy vs. shame/doubt (1-3 yrs); 3) Initiative vs. guilt (3-5 yrs); 4) Industry vs. inferiority (5-12 yrs); 5) Identity vs. identity confusion (adolescence); 6) Intimacy vs. isolation (young adulthood); 7) Generativity vs. stagnation (middle adulthood); and 8) Integrity vs. despair (late adulthood). Erikson believed that in each stage the individual confronted particular choices about how to define themselves and their place in society. In the first year, for instance, infants learn either to trust or not to trust their primary caregiver. The result of this choice has a permanent effect on the individual's development; if trust is not learned, the individual may be plagued by isolation and loneliness throughout life.

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Attachment and Early Caregiving

What is the effect of early parenting on a child's social and emotional development? Does a child's relationship to a caregiver set a pattern of social relationships that holds throughout life? A variety of answers have been give to these questions. For a long time, the kinds of psychodynamic approaches described in the previous section dominated researchers' understanding of very early social relationships. In the 1940s and 1950s, however, research in animals and in human orphans showed that early social development could be understood much more simply. Researchers such as Harlow, Bowlby, Ainsworth, Erikson, and others argued that children have a need for caring social relationships, and that it is the presence and quality of such relationships--not the complicated internal dynamics postulated by Freud0--that shape the child's social and emotional development.

2.1 Harlow's Monkeys

In the 1950's, Harry Harlow conducted a series of experiments on rhesus monkeys showing that comfort and social interaction were important to survival. In some studies, infant monkeys were raised in complete isolation. They received food and water, and their cages were kept clean and warm, but nonetheless they became extremely fearful, depressed, and unable to gain acceptance among other monkeys when they were finally brought out of isolation. In other studies, infant monkeys were raised with "surrogate" mothers: wire and cloth contraptions that were meant to resemble the monkeys' mothers. What Harlow found was that monkeys were much more likely to treat a soft cloth surrogate mother as they would a real mother--a source of comfort and security--than a wire surrogate mother, even when the wire surrogate was the monkeys' only source of food. This was taken as evidence that infant primates have an innate need for physical comforting.

2.2 Bowlby's Attachment Theory

At the same time that Harlow was conducting his monkey experiments, John Bowlby was developing his theory of infant attachment. Bowlby's theory was influenced both by psychodynamic theories and by ethological research. He claimed that children's need for a comforting, secure adult figure was evolutionarily advantageous since it helped prevent the child from entering into dangerous situations. Thus children have an innate need for a caregiver: they become distressed in the caregiver's absence and comforted upon the caregiver's return, and they are more active and exploratory when the caregiver is present than when he or she is not.

2.3 Ainsworth's Strange Situation
Mary Ainsworth, who worked with Bowlby, translated his theory into an experimental paradigm called the Strange-Situation Test. In this test, the infant is brought into a room with toys. The infant's mother and a stranger enter and exit the room in a pre- specified sequence, and the child's reactions (e.g. crying, exploration, rapidity of comforting by the mother) to each change are measured. Ainsworth developed a scheme to distinguish different types of children based on the results of the Strange-Situation Test. Children who become upset in the absence of the mother but are quickly comforted when the mother returns are called "securely attached." Children who avoid the mother or seem to resent her upon her return, who are not easily comforted or are not exploratory even in the mother's presence, are labeled "insecurely attached." Insecurely attached infants can be subdivided into "avoidant" or "resistant." Further subdivisions in Ainsworth's scheme have also been made. Secure attachment appears to be a good predictor of later personality measurements such as self-esteem, confidence, positive social relations, etc.

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Gender Development

Gender is probably the most important individual difference in our society. Although the range of opportunities available to men and women continue to converge, the difference between social roles and styles remain striking. How do these differences develop? To what extent are they due to social norms and expectations or to biological differences? Definitive answers to these questions are still a long way off, but research on both the biological and social aspects of the development of gender has led to important insights. While thinking about differences between men and women, it is important to keep the distinction between sex and gender in mind. In psychology, the former is used to refer to the clear biological differences between men and women (e.g. reproductive organs, secondary sexual characteristics) and the latter is used inclusively to refer to the all of the differences between men and women, including the vast amount of differences that are due to social influences.

3.1 Biology

It is clear that there are almost always striking differences between the bodies of people who have two XX chromosomes and those who have an X and a Y (although there are some notable exceptions, such as when a genetic male is born with a genetic mutation that causes insensitivity to testosterone). These purely physical differences may themselves be responsible for some of behavioral differences that are observed. For instance, the fact that women have the capacity to carry a child influences some of the activities in which they may choose to involve themselves. More interesting are the differences in behavior that may be directly caused by sex differences in hormonal or neural systems. For instance, testosterone has been associated with aggression in males. The fact that females both have less testosterone than males and tend to be less physically aggressive suggests that hormonal differences are important determinants of behavior.

3.2 Society

Eleanor Maccoby's research has shown that male and female children segregate themselves by sex very early in childhood. In their separate groups, they choose different kinds of games and establish different kinds of social hierarchies. Males may create larger sub-groups and engage in active and direct competition with each other. Female children, on the other hand, have been characterized as forming smaller, more intimate groups in which competition is more likely to take place on a social plane than on a physical one. While these differences may be instigated by biological differences--such as increased levels of aggression in males--they are continued and exaggerated by the social segregation of the two groups. Young girls and boys learn gender expectations and gender-appropriate behaviors by observing their parents, older children, and media representations of behavior.

The biology vs. society debate is never a very productive one, but it continually recurs in discussions of gender differences. A useful model to follow in understanding the interaction between the two is that slight gender differences--such as boys' slight preference for active competition--may create a basis for social influences that greatly amplify those original differences. Of course, biology does not drop out of the picture entirely; it continues to influence, and be influenced by, experience.