10.4 Emotional Development, Gender Development, Peer Relations, and Ecological Systems
Key Takeaways
The social smile appears around 6–8 weeks, stranger wariness emerges around 6–8 months and peaks near the end of the first year, and separation protest peaks around 12–18 months before declining.
Self-conscious emotions such as embarrassment, pride, and shame appear around 18–24 months, after children begin to recognize themselves in a mirror (the rouge test).
Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental account of gender holds that gender identity (about age 2–3), gender stability (about 4), and gender constancy (about 5–7) build on one another; gender schema theory adds that children organize information through gender categories.
Parten (1932) described a sequence from solitary and parallel play to associative and cooperative play, and sociometric studies classify children as popular, rejected, neglected, controversial, or average.
Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory nests the child within the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.
Emotional Development, Gender Development, Peer Relations, and Ecological Systems
The Developmental content area lists emotion, social and personality development, and socialization, family, and cultural influences as separate subtopics. Attachment and temperament appear in Section 10.1, parenting in Section 10.2, and moral development in Section 9.4. This section fills in emotional milestones, gender development, peers, and the wider ecological context.
1. Milestones of Emotional Development
| Approximate Age | Milestone | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Birth | Distress, contentment, interest, disgust | Newborns show endogenous (reflexive) smiles during sleep |
| About 6–8 weeks | Social smile in response to faces and voices | Marks emerging social responsiveness |
| 3–4 months | Laughter | Elicited by active stimuli such as tickling or peekaboo |
| 2–7 months | Basic emotions (anger, sadness, joy, surprise, fear) become clearly identifiable | Fear becomes more prominent in the second half of the first year |
| About 6–12 months | Stranger wariness (stranger anxiety) | Emerges around 6–8 months and is common by the end of the first year; depends on context and the caregiver's presence |
| About 8–18 months | Separation protest | Rises after about 8 months and peaks around 12–18 months across many cultures (Jerome Kagan) |
| About 9–12 months | Social referencing | Infants use a caregiver's expression to interpret ambiguous situations (the visual cliff, Section 9.1) |
| About 18–24 months | Self-conscious emotions (embarrassment, pride, shame, guilt, envy) | Require self-recognition and, for pride and shame, awareness of standards |
- Self-recognition (the rouge test): Michael Lewis and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (1979) secretly dabbed rouge on infants' noses and placed them before a mirror. Touching their own nose, rather than the mirror image, appears in most children between about 18 and 24 months.
- Still-face paradigm: Edward Tronick (1978) had mothers interact normally, then hold a neutral, unresponsive face. Infants of a few months old first try to re-engage, then look away and become distressed, showing that infants expect contingent social responses and actively regulate their emotions.
- Emotion regulation shifts from caregiver-managed soothing in infancy to self-regulation with language and executive control. Effortful control (Section 10.1) predicts later social competence.
- Delay of gratification: In Walter Mischel's marshmallow studies, preschoolers who waited longer for a larger reward tended to have better adolescent outcomes, often using distraction strategies. A larger follow-up (Tyler Watts and colleagues, 2018) found the predictive link was much weaker once family background and early cognitive ability were controlled.
- Understanding emotions: Preschoolers learn to label emotions and their causes; by about age 6–8, children understand that a person can feel mixed emotions and that people can hide their true feelings (understanding display rules).
2. Gender Development
Distinguish sex (biological categories based on chromosomes, gonads, and hormones) from gender (the social and psychological roles, identities, and expectations associated with sex).
Cognitive-Developmental Theory (Lawrence Kohlberg, 1966)
Children actively construct gender concepts in stages:
- Gender identity (about 2–3 years): Labeling oneself and others as a boy or girl.
- Gender stability (about 4 years): Understanding that gender stays the same over time (a boy grows into a man).
- Gender constancy (about 5–7 years): Understanding that gender does not change with superficial transformations such as clothing or hairstyle.
Ronald Slaby and Karin Frey (1975) found that boys with higher gender constancy spent more time watching same-sex models, consistent with the idea that understanding gender motivates children to learn gender-typed behavior.
Gender Schema Theory
Sandra Bem (1981) and Carol Martin and Charles Halverson (1981) proposed that children develop gender schemas that organize perception and memory. Children attend to and remember schema-consistent information and distort inconsistent information (for example, recalling a picture of a girl sawing wood as a boy sawing wood). Unlike Kohlberg's account, gender schemas guide behavior as soon as basic gender identity is in place, well before constancy.
Social Learning Influences
Walter Mischel and Albert Bandura emphasized reinforcement and modeling: parents, peers, and media reward gender-typed behavior, and children imitate same-gender models. Fathers tend to enforce gender norms more strongly than mothers, especially with sons.
Biological Influences
Girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who were exposed to high prenatal androgen levels, show more interest in toys typically preferred by boys (Sheri Berenbaum and Melissa Hines, 1992), suggesting that prenatal hormones contribute to some gender-typed preferences.
Gender Segregation
By preschool, children prefer same-gender playmates. Eleanor Maccoby (1998) described this gender segregation as strongest in middle childhood, with boys' groups larger and more rough-and-tumble and girls' groups smaller and more conversation-based.
3. Peer Relations and Play
Mildred Parten's Stages of Social Play (1932)
| Type of Play | Description |
|---|---|
| Unoccupied behavior | Watching anything of momentary interest, wandering |
| Solitary play | Playing alone with toys, independent of others |
| Onlooker behavior | Watching others play and commenting, without joining |
| Parallel play | Playing beside other children with similar toys but without interacting |
| Associative play | Sharing materials and interacting, without a common goal or division of roles |
| Cooperative play | Organized play with shared goals and complementary roles (games, make-believe) |
Later research found that the forms coexist rather than replace one another; solitary play is not necessarily immature.
Piaget's play categories (functional, symbolic or pretend, and games with rules) track cognitive development; pretend play peaks in the preschool years.
Sociometric Status
John Coie, Kenneth Dodge, and Heide Coppotelli (1982) classified children by peer nominations of who is liked most and least:
| Status | Liked Most | Liked Least | Typical Profile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Popular | Many | Few | Socially skilled, cooperative; a subtype is aggressive but socially savvy |
| Rejected | Few | Many | Rejected-aggressive (hostile attribution bias) or rejected-withdrawn (anxious); highest risk for later problems |
| Neglected | Few | Few | Rarely mentioned; generally adjusted, status often changes |
| Controversial | Many | Many | Both helpful and disruptive |
| Average | Some | Some | Typical range |
Kenneth Dodge's social information-processing model explains why rejected-aggressive children are more likely to interpret ambiguous provocations (being bumped in line) as hostile, a hostile attribution bias.
- Group socialization theory: Judith Rich Harris (1995) argued that peer groups, rather than parents, shape much of the personality variance not explained by genes, a provocative claim consistent with the small effect of shared family environment in behavior-genetic studies (Section 1.4).
- Adolescent peer influence: Susceptibility to peer pressure for risky behavior peaks in early-to-middle adolescence. Laurence Steinberg's driving-simulator studies showed that adolescents took more risks when peers were watching, a peer effect that was much smaller in adults.
4. Family Contexts and Ecological Systems
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory (1979)
Urie Bronfenbrenner described development as embedded in nested systems:
| System | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Microsystem | Settings with direct, face-to-face interaction | Family, classroom, peer group |
| Mesosystem | Connections between microsystems | Parent-teacher communication |
| Exosystem | Settings that affect the child without the child's participation | A parent's workplace policies, local school board |
| Macrosystem | Overarching cultural values, laws, and economic conditions | Cultural beliefs about discipline, national family-leave law |
| Chronosystem | Changes over time in the child and environment | A divorce, a historical event such as a pandemic |
His later bioecological model added the person's own characteristics and proximal processes (regular, increasingly complex interactions) as the engines of development.
Divorce, Siblings, and Family Structure
- Divorce: E. Mavis Hetherington's longitudinal work found that most children show distress in the first year or two after divorce, but about 75–80% eventually function within the normal range. Outcomes depend on parental conflict, parenting quality, and economic stability more than on divorce itself.
- Siblings: Siblings provide companionship, conflict-resolution practice, and differential treatment that contributes to the nonshared environment.
- Cultural context: Parenting styles and their effects vary by culture (Ruth Chao's work, Section 10.2), and Barbara Rogoff's concept of guided participation describes how children learn by taking part in culturally valued activities alongside skilled partners.
An 18-month-old notices a rouge mark on her nose in a mirror and immediately touches her own nose. What does this behavior indicate?
Stranger wariness directed at the unfamiliar child in the mirror
Visual self-recognition, which precedes self-conscious emotions
Gender constancy has been achieved
Social referencing of the caregiver's emotional expression
A 4-year-old boy insists that if he wore a dress he would become a girl, yet he already labels himself a boy and prefers trucks. According to Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental theory, which understanding has he not yet reached?
Gender constancy
Gender identity
Gender segregation
Gender stability across the lifespan
In Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, a mother's employer introduces mandatory overtime, which reduces the time she spends with her child. Which system does the workplace represent for the child?
Macrosystem
Microsystem
Exosystem
Mesosystem
Peer nominations show that a child is named by many classmates as 'liked least' and by very few as 'liked most.' The child often interprets accidental bumps as deliberate attacks. What best describes this child?
A controversial child showing strong effortful control
A popular child showing cooperative play
A rejected child with a hostile attribution bias
A neglected child who mostly engages in parallel play
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