Social Development

1. Social Development Chapter 7

2. Chapter Outline • What is social development? • Developing an ability to interact effectively with others • Understanding the norms of society • Moral development • Pro-social and antisocial behaviour in children • Effective management of children’s behaviour • Revision questions

3. What is social development? Social development can be defined as: • The development of an ability to interact effectively with others • The development of an understanding of the norms (ways) of the society in which you live • The development of a sense of right and wrong (moral development)

4. Developing an ability to interact effectively with others - Infancy • From birth babies are predisposed to be social • Babies cry for attention from birth • The reflexive smile – this occurs during the first month after birth, usually during sleep and is caused by some internal stimuli e.g. wind and not by the child’s external environment • The social smile which occurs as early as 4-6 weeks, becoming more frequent as the baby gets older, and is in response to carer’s voice and smiles • After 6 months smiles become accompanied by the Duchenne marker (constricting or crinkling of the eyes)

5. Developing an ability to interact effectively with others - Early Childhood • While infants as young as 6 months take notice and sometimes show an interest in other babies it is not until approximately 18 months to 2 years that toddlers begin interacting with peers • Even so Parallel play still predominates whereby the toddler will play happily alongside peers but not with them • By 2½ toddlers engage in sustained role play and after watching other children at play with interest may join in for a few minutes • By three years the toddler understands what it is to share and joins in make believe play with other children

6. Developing an ability to interact effectively with others - Early Childhood continued • By 4 years the child will understand turn taking as well as sharing and will co-operate with peers • By this year the child seeks out the companionship of others and will alternate between playing and fighting with peers • By four the child understands that arguments e.g. over a toy need to be sorted out verbally and not by physically fighting • By five years children understand the need for rules and fair play and they begin to choose their own friends

7. Sibling relationships • Over 80% of children born in Ireland have one or more siblings • Sibling relationships can be very important in developing social skills such as helping, sharing, teaching and conflict resolution • Judy Dunn (2007) found that sibling relationships showed three main characteristics: • (1) expression of intensive positive and negative emotions • (2) siblings tended to alternate between being highly supportive of each other to teasing and undermining each other • (3) siblings tended to describe each other in either warm and affectionate ways or as being irritating and mean

8. Sibling Relationships continued • When siblings fight parents tend to deal with it in one of three ways: • (1) intervene and help siblings sort out differences • (2) give out and threaten • (3) do nothing and let them sort it out themselves. • In terms of learning social skills the first strategy is considered best as it allows children practice skills needed to effectively resolve conflict situations in a in a calm and respectful manner (Kramer, L., and Radley, C., 1997)

9. Only Children • Contrary to popular belief only children do not turn out self-centred and spoilt • They tend instead to be achievement orientated and display many positive personality traits • When only children first attend pre-school or school they frequently have a lot of ground to make up in terms of social development • Most manage to do so and there is no research to show that only children are less socially able than children with siblings

10. Peer Relationships • Three social skills are particularly important in the forming of successful peer relations: • (1) perspective taking • (2) socio-information processing • (3) emotional regulation • These three factors are seen to be important in determining a child’s peer status

11. Peer Status Groups • Wentzel and Asher (1995) found that children can be divided into 5 different peer status groups: • Popular children • Average children • Neglected children • Rejected children • Controversial children

12. Understanding the Norms of Society • Social norms are descriptions or ‘rules’ about people’s behaviour, beliefs, attitudes and values within a society or social group • Social norms vary • (a) between social groups within society, e.g. the use of bad language in everyday speech is socially acceptable within some groups in society, whereas within others it is frowned upon as being crude and uneducated • (b) in different social situations, e.g. children may curse in the playground but not in the classroom • Social norms are not legal rules, but the penalty for not obeying them may be social exclusion depending on how important the social norm is

13. Learning Social Norms • Children generally learn social norms through experience and there are two broad theories about how they learn from experience: • (1) the behaviourist view • (2) social modeling or social learning theory

14. Moral Development • There four different aspects to moral development • Moral thought: changes tohow the individual thinks about morally demanding questions • Moral behaviour: changes tohow the individual acts in morally demanding situations • Moral feeling: changes tohow the individual feels in morally demanding situations • Moral personality: the role of personality in moral development

15. (1) Development of Moral Thought • Both Jean Piaget (1932) and Lawrence Kohlberg (1958) believed that moral development occurs in a series of stages

16. Piaget’s Two Stages of the Development of Moral Thought • Stage 1: Heteronomous morality (up to age 7) • during this stage children see morality in a very black and white manner • they see rules and regulations as being fixed and unchangeable, handed down from on high e.g. the teacher • Immanent justice is a feature of this stage – they believe that misdeeds are automatically linked to punishments • Transition phase (7-10 years): during this stage children show some features or both stages

17. Piaget’s stages continued • Stage 2: Autonomous morality: • Children during this stage become aware that rules and regulations are created by people and that they are there to be negotiated • When children are judging an action at this stage they are capable of taking the intentions of the ‘wrongdoer’ into account • From approximately age 7 children begin to realise that they can possess information that other people haven’t got, enabling them to be cognitively capable of lying • In the beginning some children lie even when all the evidence is against them e.g. a child lying about eating chocolate cake and it all over their face, but later children can weigh up the evidence to determine if a lie is believable or not • Some children however even if they are cognitively able to lie, choose not to. These children tend to come from households and schools where parents and teachers discuss wrongdoing with the children and involve the children dealing with it

18. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development • Kohlberg believed there were three distinctive levels, each of which had two sub-stages • Kohlberg gathered the data for his stage theory by presenting children of different ages with moral dilemmas followed by a series of questions • Kohlberg then categorised the children’s answers. Here is an example of one of Kohlberg’s dilemmas • For details see page 133 & 134

19. (2) Development of Moral Behaviour • Moral behaviour is how an individual acts in morally challenging situations. As with the learning of social norms children learn their moral behaviour in two main ways • (a) Conditioning • (b) Social modelling

20. Conditioning • At its simplest, when individuals are rewarded for moral behaviour they are encouraged to repeat it • Whereas when they are punished for behaviour that is morally wrong they are encouraged not to repeat it • Punishment is not a very effective tool. Skinner found that for punishment to be effective it had to be severe enough to stop the undesirable behaviour and had to follow the undesirable behaviour straight afterwards • Severe immediate punishments are usually not possible or indeed desirable so encouragement of moral behaviour is much more effective

21. Social Modelling • Bandura’s social modelling theory- children who witness moral behaviour at home, in their communities and at school are much more likely to develop high moral standards themselves • Children need to be taught by example

22. 3. Moral Feeling • Moral feeling is how you react emotionally to moral decisions • Do you feel guilt when you do something morally suspect? • Happy when you do something morally good? • Does whether or not you are going to get found out have any bearing on your feelings?

23. Psychoanalytic Theory of Moral Development • The famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) spent many years exploring this aspect of personality • He believed that the personality was composed of three parts: • Id • Ego • Superego • Each has a bearing on moral decisions and how the individual feels about them

24. Development of Empathy • Empathy is another aspect of moral feeling • Damon (1988) proposes three stages in the development of empathy: • Global empathy is characteristic of babies and toddlers (0-2 years) • During early childhood (2-10) children do emphasise but only if person present • From approximately 10-12 years children become capable of empathising with others even if they are not present with them e.g. people living in poverty

25. 4. Moral personality • There is debate around how much of our moral personality is innate and how much is due to environment • Freud would contend that both are involved – the id being present from birth with the ego and superego strongly influenced by environmental factors • There are individuals however who are reared in morally corrupt environments yet emerge from these environments morally strong. These cases lend weight to the nature argument, that moral personality is largely innate

26. Influences on Moral Development – Parents • Research indicates how much influence parents have largely depends on three factors: • the quality of the adult/child relationship • the form of discipline used (Hoffman, 1970) • whether or not the parent is proactive (see textbook page 137-138 for details) • Both Piaget and Kohlberg emphasise the importance of the peer group in moral development

27. Influences on Moral Development – pre-schools and schools • Within any school or preschool both the explicit and the hidden curriculum exist • In terms of moral development the hidden curriculum can be just as important as the explicit • Schools and their staff need to lead by example • Pre-schools and schools must advocate a care perspective for the promotion of moral development e.g. teaching to always consider the feelings of others

28. Development of Pro-social Behaviour – sharing • Learning to share with others is one of the earliest forms of pro-social behaviour that children demonstrate • Up until about the age of 3 children share because it is something they have been taught they must do and not generally for emphatic reasons (Damon, 1988) • From approximately 4 years children begin to share because they feel empathy for the other child, but generally will only share if they have more than enough for themselves and what they are sharing is not too coveted • The important thing about sharing in terms of social development is that the child understands that sharing is an important part of forming and maintaining social relationships and that it is morally right to share

29. Pro-social Behaviour Developing a Sense of Fairness • Fairness is usually defined in terms of • (1) equality –that everyone is treated equally • (2) merit – extra rewards come to those who work hard for them • (3) benevolence – special consideration should be given to those who need something most. • Up until children are about 8 years of age they think of fairness in terms of equality only • From about 8 years on they can begin to think of it also in terms of merit and benevolence

30. Antisocial Behaviour • While all children demonstrate act out from time to time behaviour is of concern if their behaviour is seriously interfering with: • their peer relationships • their relationships with adults around them • their educational progress

31. Special Needs Affecting behaviour • Opposition Defiant Disorder (ODD): the child shows a recurrent and unusual pattern of negative, defiant, disobedient and hostile behaviour towards adults particularly authority figures • Conduct Disorder is more serious than OD. Behaviours are much more destructive and extreme. A child with conduct disorder will not appear to be able to consider the feelings of others and will frequently hurt or injure others showing no empathy or remorse

32. Effective management of children’s behaviour • Adults should intervene and help peers and siblings sort out differences in a calm and fair manner • If one child hurts another always encourage the offending child to think about how the other one feels • Encourage children to manage their anger e.g. count to ten • Reinforce social norms with praise and encouragement e.g. yes good boy we always wash our hands after going to the toilet • Always seek to encourage good behaviour rather than punish bad behaviour

33. Effective management of children’s behaviour continued • Set clear yet fair rules and boundaries for children to follow • Practice what you preach e.g. if a parent asks a child not to hit others, then they should not slap the child • Use induction as a discipline technique – reason with the child, discuss the consequences of their actions with the child • Advocate a care perspective. Educate about the importance of considering others feelings, being sensitive to the needs of others and helping each other

34. Revision Questions • What is social development? • What is meant by parallel play? • Describe how children’s ability to interact effectively with others develops from birth to six years • According to Judy Dunn (2007) What are the three main characteristics of sibling relationships? • Should parents intervene in sibling fights? • What three skills are necessary for successful peer relations? • How do Wentzel and Asher classify children’s peer status? • What are social norms? • Describe the behaviourist view of how children learn social norms. • What is meant by social modelling? • Name the four different aspects of moral development

35. Revision Questions Continued • Describe Piaget’s theory of moral development • Describe Kohlberg’s theory of moral development • Describe Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of moral development. • What is empathy? • Describe Damon’s three stages in the development of empathy • Describe how parents can influence their child’s moral development • In schools and pre-schools what is the difference between the explicit and hidden curriculum? • How can schools and pre-schools promote moral development? • Define both pro-social and anti-social behaviour • What is oppositional defiant disorder? • What is conduct disorder?