Peter K. Smith, Craig H. Hart

Blackwell Handbook of
Childhood Social
Development
Peter K. Smith
Craig H. Hart
BLACKWELL PUBLISHERS
List of Contributors i
Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development

Blackwell Handbooks of Developmental Psychology
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Blackwell Handbook of Infant Development

Edited by Gavin Bremner and Alan Fogel
Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development

Edited by Usha Goswami
Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development

Edited by Peter K. Smith and Craig H. Hart
Blackwell Handbook of Adolescence

Edited by Gerald Adams and Michael Berzonsky
Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social
Development
Edited by
Peter K. Smith and Craig H. Hart
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The Blackwell handbook of childhood social development / edited by Peter

K. Smith and Craig H. Hart.
p. cm. — (Blackwell handbooks of developmental psychology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–631–21752–5 (alk. paper)
1. Developmental psychology—Social aspects. 2. Child psychology—
Social aspects. I. Smith, Peter K. II. Hart, Craig H., 1957– III. Series.
BF13.B565 2002
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Contents
List of Contributors viii

Introduction by the Editors xiv
Part I: Historical Overview 1

1 Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Research in Social Development 3
W. Andrew Collins
Part II: Influences on Development: Disciplinary Views 25

2 Behavioral Genetics, Shared and Nonshared Environment 27
Alison Pike
3 Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Development 44
David F. Bjorklund and Anthony D. Pellegrini
4 Culture and Social Development: Explanations and Evidence 60
Sara Harkness
5 A Sociological Approach to Childhood Development 78
Chris Jenks
Part III: Influences on Development: Causal Factors 95

6 Temperament and Social Development 97
Ann Sanson, Sheryl A. Hemphill, and Diana Smart
7 Sex Differences in Social Behavior 117
Susan Golombok and Melissa Hines
vi Contents
List of Contributors
8 Children’s Social Development within the Socialization Context of

Childcare and Early Childhood Education 137
Carollee Howes and Jolena James
9 Relative Contributions of Families and Peers to Children’s Social
Development 156
Ross D. Parke, Sandra D. Simpkins, David J. McDowell, Mina Kim,
Colleen Killian, Jessica Dennis, Mary L. Flyr, Margaret Wild, and
Yumee Rah
Part IV: The Family Context 179

10 Attachment in Childhood 182
Joan Stevenson-Hinde and Karine Verschueren
11 Parent–Child Relationships 205
Alan Russell, Jacqueline Mize, and Kerry Bissaker
12 Sibling Relationships 223
Judy Dunn
13 Social Development in Different Family Arrangements 238
Dale F. Hay and Alison Nash
Part V: The Peer Group 263

14 Peer Acceptance and Rejection in Childhood 265
Shelley Hymel, Tracy Vaillancourt, Patricia McDougall, and Peter D. Renshaw
15 Friends and Enemies 285
Willard W. Hartup and Maurissa Abecassis
16 Emotional and Social Development in Childhood 307
Susanne Denham, Maria von Salisch, Tjeert Olthof, Anita Kochanoff, and
Sarah Caverly
17 Social Withdrawal and Shyness 329
Kenneth H. Rubin, Kim B. Burgess, and Robert J. Coplan
Part VI: Social Skills and Social Cognition 353

18 Social Skills and Interpersonal Perception in Early and Middle Childhood 355
Antonius H. N. Cillessen and Amy D. Bellmore
19 Social Cognition 375
Charlie Lewis and Jeremy Carpendale
20 Children’s Interpersonal Skills and Relationships in School Settings:
Adaptive Significance and Implications for School-Based Prevention
and Intervention Programs 394
Gary W. Ladd, Eric S. Buhs, and Wendy Troop
Contents vii
Part VII: Play 417

21 Understanding Young Children’s Pretend Play in Context 418
Artin Göncü, Michelle B. Patt, and Emily Kouba
22 Rough-and-Tumble Play from Childhood through Adolescence:
Development and Possible Functions 438
Anthony D. Pellegrini
Part VIII: Helping and Moral Reasoning 455

23 Prosocial and Helping Behavior 457
Joan E. Grusec, Maayan Davidov, and Leah Lundell
24 Children’s Social and Moral Reasoning 475
Charles C. Helwig and Elliot Turiel
25 Children’s Understanding of Society 491
Martyn Barrett and Eithne Buchanan-Barrow
Part IX: Cooperation, Competition, Aggression, and Bullying 513

26 Cooperation and Competition 515
Jacques F. Richard, Ada Fonzi, Franca Tani, Fulvio Tassi, Giovanna
Tomada, and Barry H. Schneider
27 Sticks and Stones and Social Exclusion: Aggression among Girls and Boys 533
Marion K. Underwood
28 Bullying in Childhood 549
Ken Rigby
Part X: Children with Special Needs 569

29 The Development of Social Competence in Children with Disabilities 571
Karen E. Diamond
30 Social Development in Children with Specific Language Impairment
and Profound Hearing Loss 588
Bonnie Brinton and Martin Fujiki
Index 604
viii List of Contributors
Maurissa Abecassis
Colby-Sawyer College, New Hampshire
Martyn Barrett
University of Surrey
Amy D. Bellmore
University of Connecticut
Kerry Bissaker
The Flinders University of South Australia
David F. Bjorklund
Florida Atlantic University
Bonnie Brinton
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
Eithne Buchanan-Barrow
University of Surrey
Eric S. Buhs
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Kim B. Burgess
University of Maryland
List of Contributors ix
Jeremy Carpendale
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver
Sarah Caverly
George Manson University, Virginia
Antonius H. N. Cillessen
W. Andrew Collins
University of Minnesota
Robert J. Coplan
Carleton University, Ottawa
Maayan Davidov
University of Toronto
Susanne Denham
Jessica Dennis
University of California at Riverside
Karen E. Diamond
Purdue University, W. Lafayette, Indiana
Judy Dunn
Institute of Psychiatry, University of London
Ada Fonzi
University of Florence
Mary L. Flyr
Martin Fujiki
Susan Golombok
City University
Artin Goncu
University of Illinois at Chicago
x List of Contributors
Joan E. Grusec
Sara Harkness
Craig H. Hart
Willard W. Hartup
Dale F. Hay
Cardiff University
Charles C. Helwig
Sheryl A. Hemphill
University of Melbourne
Melissa Hines
City University, London
Carollee Howes
University of California at Los Angeles
Shelley Hymel
University of British Columbia
Jolena James
University of California at Los Angeles
Chris Jenks
Goldsmiths College, University of London
Colleen Killian
Mina Kim
Anita Kochanoff
List of Contributors xi
Emily Kouba
Gary W. Ladd
Arizona State University
Charlie Lewis
University of Lancaster
Leah Lundell
Patricia McDougall
St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan
David J. McDowell
Jacqueline Mize
Alison Nash
State University of New York at New Platz
Tjeert Olthof
Utrecht University
Ross D. Parke
Michelle B. Patt
Alison Pike
University of Sussex
Yumee Rah
Peter D. Renshaw
University of Queensland
xii List of Contributors
Jacques F. Richard
University of Ottawa
Ken Rigby
University of South Australia
Kenneth H. Rubin
University of Maryland
Alan Russell
Ann Sanson
Australia Institute of Family Studies
Barry H. Schneider
University of Ottawa
Sandra D. Simpkins
Diana Smart
University of Melbourne
Peter K. Smith
Goldsmiths College, London
Joan Stevenson-Hinde
University of Cambridge
Franca Tani
Fulvio Tassi
Giovanna Tomada
Wendy Troop
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Elliot Turiel
University of California at Berkeley
List of Contributors xiii
Marion K. Underwood
The University of Texas at Dallas
Tracy Vaillancourt
Mid-Sweden University and University of British Columbia
Karine Verschueren
Center for Developmental Psychology, Leuven, Belgium
Maria von Salisch

Freie Universität Berlin
Margaret Wild
xiv List of Contributors
Introduction by the Editors
In this Handbook – one of the Blackwell’s Handbook series, with companion volumes in
other areas such as infant development, cognitive development, adolescent development –
we have endeavored to bring together the scope and excitement of recent research in chil-
dren’s social development, with an accessibility and precision which will make the book
not only a library resource, but also a real “handbook” – a volume for the individual stu-
dent and researcher to have, consult, and be inspired by.
As editors, we feel very fortunate in the authors we were able to obtain. Of course, it is
customary for editors to say this; but we feel we can say it “hand on heart.” We really do
have a collection of authors who are actively researching in their content areas and who
have brought a truly high level of knowledge and expertise to their chapters.
When we, as editors, started planning this book, we had several specific aims in mind.
First, we wished the book to have a wide scope within broad parameters consistent with
the Blackwell series. This determined the relevant age range: We asked authors to concen-
trate on the post-infancy period, from about 3 years, through preadolescence; not material
on infancy and adolescence, except in so far as it might be necessary for understanding or
contextualizing the theories, methods, and findings of the research in childhood. Of course,
a wide age range remains: the preschool (3 to 4 or 5 years), early school (5 to 7 years), and
later elementary or middle school (8 to 11 years) periods.
Second, we asked for chapters at a certain level. This Handbook is not meant for begin-
ners. Those persons who have not studied psychology or child development previously,
will probably be better first reading a more introductory text (of which there are many,
e.g., from Blackwell Publishers alone there are R. Schaffer, Social Development, 1996; K.
Durkin, Developmental Social Psychology, 1995; or P. K. Smith, H. Cowie, & M. Blades,
Understanding Children’s Development, 3rd ed. 1998). The brief we gave authors was to
give a clear and succinct account of work in their area, which would be suitable for anyone
wishing to go beyond basic textbook coverage. This would include advanced undergradu-
Introduction
List ofbyContributors
the Editors xv
ates in psychology and behavioral sciences, postgraduates taking taught master’s degrees or
pursuing independent research, and teaching staff and researchers wishing for an authori-
tative update outside their immediate teaching/research area. The book should also be
useful for those professionals now outside academic life – for example, educators, social
workers, counselors, probation officers – who have had training in the behavioral sciences
and retain an active interest in the implications of research for their professional practice.
Another aim we had was to get a geographical coverage of contributors. Much of the
work in our domain comes from North America, especially the United States, but there are
also very important contributions from the European countries, Australasia, Japan, and
increasingly other countries in Asia, Africa, and South America. The child development
field is truly developing into an international community. For example, both of us have
been associated with the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development
(ISSBD) for many years, and have seen how it has grown and helped create an interna-
tional research community. Part of the planning for this book took place at the meeting of
the ISSBD in Beijing, China, in summer 2000, where many Chinese colleagues were able
to participate. With one editor based in Europe and one in the United States, some spread
of contributors was natural. Although the majority of our contributors do come from the
United States, we also have authors from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Italy,
Belgium, and (at least for initial education) the Netherlands and Turkey. We would guess
that in another decade, an equivalent Handbook could well have an even wider distribution
of authorship.
Above all, we wanted chapters to be clear, succinct, but also interesting and challenging.
In our letters of invitation we asked authors to “provide authoritative reviews of focused
areas in social development, which both summarize existing knowledge, and highlight
areas of debate and growing points in the discipline.” We worked with authors, sometimes
through several drafts, to try and ensure this was achieved. The reader will surely find these
in the chapters that follow, and we highlight particular areas of debate and growing points
in our short introductions to each section of the book.
The Handbook has 30 chapters, and 10 sections. The first section (one chapter) is an
historical overview of psychological research in social development. This is followed by a
section (four chapters) on major other disciplinary views – from genetics, evolution, an-
thropology, and sociology. The third section (four chapters) focuses on specific causal
influences important for social development – temperament, sex, childcare, families, and
peers. The next two sections are on major contexts for social development; first a section
on the family (four chapters) and then a section on the peer group (four chapters). Four
sections follow which cover particular areas of social development: social skills and social
cognition (three chapters); play (two chapters); helping and moral reasoning (three chap-
ters); and cooperation, competition, aggression, and bullying (three chapters). The final
section is on children with special needs (two chapters).
We have enjoyed working with the authors, and Blackwell Publishers, in producing this
Handbook. We hope that you will also enjoy reading it, and find it a useful and challenging
resource whether for study, teaching, research, or professional practice.
Peter K. Smith, Craig H. Hart

June 2001
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Historical Perspectives 1
Part I
Historical Overview
This section has only one chapter, but it is a chapter which sets the scene for all that is to
follow. W. Andrew Collins is in an excellent position to do this. He has worked for many
years at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, which was one
of the pioneering sites of study of young children in North America. Much valuable work
was done there from the 1920s onwards, including Mildred Parten’s famous work on
social participation in preschool children, which was based on her doctoral thesis at the
Institute.
While all historical starting points and divisions are arbitrary, Collins justifiably takes a
span of just over a century in his account, and follows Cairns (1998) in considering three
periods: the emergent period (1890–1919); the middle period (1920–1946); and the modern
period (1947–present). The emergent period really marks the beginning of any systematic
interest in child (social) development, with baby diaries and some early empirical studies.
The middle period saw both an injection of theory (for example from behaviorism and
psychoanalysis), and a great increase in research, with the founding of child study centers
and institutes, normative descriptions such as those of Gesell, and the development of
methodologies such as experiments, observations, and questionnaires. The modern period
has seen the decline of behaviorism but the rise of other theoretical views such as those of
Piaget and Kohlberg, social learning theory and attachment theory, the testing of compet-
ing theories, the development of associated methodologies, and more sophisticated views
of developmental processes and their contexts, and ways of envisaging and measuring causal
influences in development.
The “modern period” that Collins describes is now a long one, over half a century. It
may be that recent years have seen the beginnings of what future historians of science
might see as a new period of research, as researchers take a step forward in theories, analytic
procedures, and methodologies. Moving away from what (with the benefit of hindsight)
seem rather sterile debates about “nature or nurture,” or simple causal influences, develop-
mental researchers now almost universally acknowledge the complex interaction of genetic
2 W.
Historical
AndrewOverview
Collins
and environmental influences, the multiply determined nature of developmental proc-

esses, and the need to develop stronger analytical procedures (such as multilevel analyses
and structural equation modeling) to do justice to these complexities.
When caught up in current streams of research, it is easy to ignore the past of the disci-
pline and how we have got to where we are. But in fact, the past may exert a strong influ-
ence on the parameters of our present thinking; also, we may learn something from the
successes and failures of our predecessors. This chapter frames much of the content of this
Handbook.
References
Cairns, R. B. (1998). The making of developmental psychology. In W. Damon (Series Ed.) & R.
M. Lerner (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology. Vol. 1: History and systems of developmental
psychology (pp. 25–105). New York: Wiley.
Historical Perspectives on Contemporary

Research in Social Development
W. Andrew Collins
Research in social development began more than a century ago. Its roots are much older,
springing from enduring philosophical traditions in Western thought, as well as from theory
and research in other sciences such as biology and pedagogical studies (Cairns, 1998; Dewey,
1899; Hall, 1904). Only in the most general way, however, can these distal influences be
discerned in the directions and concerns of social development research today. Much more
visible are the intellectual currents within the social sciences themselves and themes arising
from pressing social problems. The goal of this chapter is to detect those currents in this
vital and increasingly diverse research enterprise.
The traditional purview of research in social development is “changes over time in the
child’s understanding of, attitudes toward, and actions with others” (Hartup, 1991, p.
253). Although the distinctness of social development as a subfield was not apparent in the
early days of developmental psychology, questions of social behavior, attitudes, values, and
personality have been central from the very earliest studies of psychological development.
For example, Alfred Binet collaborated on early studies of physiological correlates of emo-
tional changes, in addition to his work on perception, memory, and intellectual perform-
ance (Cairns, 1998); and G. Stanley Hall, often called the father of American psychology,
studied “. . . the small child’s activities and feelings, control of emotions and will . . .,” as
well as the development of the higher faculties, individual differences, and school processes
and practices (White, 1992, p. 29).
Preparation of the chapter was supported partly by the Rodney S. Wallace Professorship for the Advance-
ment of Teaching and Learning, University of Minnesota and a grant from the National Institute of
Mental Health to Byron Egeland. The author gratefully acknowledges helpful information and com-
ments from Willard W. Hartup, Brett Laursen, Ross D. Parke, Richard A. Weinberg, and Sheldon H.
White.
4 W. Andrew Collins
The vitality of the field today is evident from this handbook and from the breadth and
vigor of research described in its chapters. Yet no history of social development as a coher-
ent field of inquiry has previously appeared. A number of useful historical accounts of
particular research topics in the field exist (e.g., Eisenberg, in press; Hartup & Laursen,
1999; Maccoby, 1992a, b; Modell & Elder, in press), as do analyses of the contributions of
influential researchers (e.g., Cairns, 1992; Emde, 1992; Grusec, 1992; Horowitz, 1992;
White, 1992). One can discern much of the history of the field from these fragmentary
accounts, especially when combined with historical accounts of the field of developmental
psychology (Cairns, 1998) or social psychology (e.g., Jones, 1998). In addition, historical
accounts that focus on institutions and organizations (e.g., Hartup, Johnson, & Weinberg,
in press; Sears, 1975; Senn, 1975) illuminate historical changes in research topics and focal
variables.
This chapter aims to distill from these disparate efforts an historical perspective on con-
temporary research on social development. The chapter is divided into three sections. The
first section is a brief overview of historical trends in the study of social development,
identifying significant shifts and transitions in the history of social development. The sec-
ond part deals with major historical transformations in the field during the past century.
These transformations further specify the contemporary significance of the trends outlined
in the first section. The third and final section is an attempt to show how methodological
issues are interwoven with the substantive concerns of social development researchers.
The Historical Flow
Few scholarly fields yield easily to simple chronological accounts. Social development is no
exception. To establish some markers, however, I adopt Cairns’ (1998) division of the first
100 years of developmental psychology into three periods, with slight adjustments for
social development: emergence (roughly 1890 to 1919); the middle period of institution-
alization and expansion (1920–1946), and the modern era (from 1947 to the present).
The first part of this section characterizes advances in social development research during
each of these periods. The second part deals with the impact of social and historical forces
on successive eras of social development research.
Three periods of social development research
Emergence. Interest in the phenomena of social development suffuses early accounts of

childhood, from the writings of philosophers to the writings of diarists and social histori-
ans. So-called “baby diaries” are frequently mentioned examples (Darwin, 1877; Shinn,
1893–1899). Systematic scientific study began only in the final decade of the nineteenth
century (Hartup, 1992; White, 1992). Among the early efforts were G. Stanley Hall’s
questionnaire studies focusing on “. . . (a) simple automatisms, instincts, and attitudes, (b)
the small child’s activities and feelings, (c) control of emotions and will, . . .” and the like
(White, 1992, p. 29). In the same decade studies of peer collaboration (Triplett, 1897) and
similarity between friends’ attitudes and values (Barnes, 1896–1897, 1902–1903; Monroe,
1899) appeared. The interests of researchers in the early period, if not their methods and
interpretations, are strikingly like the topics that preoccupy researchers at the beginning of
the twenty-first century.
Middle period. In its first three decades, the theoretical impetus in social development
research was slight, at best. Researchers generally shared the view that “nascent social
competences were . . . among the child’s endowments, and the work of the scientist was to
chart their unfolding” (Hartup, 1992, p. 107). This situation changed as views of psycho-
logical research shifted and as strong formal theories from other fields penetrated the study
of social development. Virtually all of these impinging forces asserted that experience, not
merely the unfolding of natural endowments, was an essential element in development.
The most commanding figure in American psychology, John B. Watson, declared in “Psy-
chology as the Behaviorist Views It” (1913) that learning alone accounted for develop-
ment. Not only did this view challenge the suppositions underlying most work in the field
up to that point, but Watson’s insistence that psychologists must create an “objective ex-
perimental branch of natural science,” characterized by “objectively collected, independ-
ently verifiable data” (Horowitz, 1992, pp. 361–362) implied considerable change in the
conduct of social development research. Although much research continued in a norma-
tive-descriptive vein (e.g., Rheingold & Cook, 1975), theoretical issues were more explicit
in the choice of variables and in writing in the field.
The shift from a maturationist orientation to an environmentalist one intensified as
psychoanalytic propositions permeated the literature. Although of greatest interest to clini-
cal and personality psychologists, Freud’s ideas further pressed social developmentalists to
consider socialization, or “… the processes through which the child is assimilated into
society” (Hartup, 1992, p. 107; Maccoby, 1992a, b). Similar pressures emanated from
sociological theories, such as symbolic interactionism (Cooley, 1909; Mead, 1934), that
were concerned with how developmentally advanced individuals contribute to child growth
and development. (Only much later did Vygotsky’s ideas about the role of expert tutors in
collaborative learning infiltrate Western developmental theory (Wertsch & Tulviste, 1992).)
Learning theorists eventually assimilated these ideas, particularly those of Freud, into the
first of a group of theories of socialization known as social learning theories (Miller &
Dollard, 1941). The interest in socialization born in this period dominated social develop-
ment research from the 1930s until the 1960s. Among its ramifications were an emphasis
on parental influences and a relative neglect of interactions with peers, who were thought
to lack the experience and authority to serve as socializing agents (Hartup, 1992).
The modern era. The most recent sea change occurred with the renascence of structuralist
ideas in the 1960s. Piaget’s theory emphasized the significance of social processes and the
role of the child as an active agent (Flavell, 1963). Without denying the role of authority
figures in early development, Piaget (1932/1965) took the view that children most readily
experienced the cognitive conflict necessary for developmental change when interacting
with peers. Kohlberg’s (1969) germinal chapter on stage and sequence further developed
the notion of cognitive conflict as a necessary ingredient of movement from one stage to
another and peers as ideal social resources for this process. Kohlberg’s essay remains the
6 W. Andrew Collins
major marker of a shift to theory encompassing both social environments and a child
actively operating on those elements.
Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s writings gave rise to a new interest among social
developmentalists in a normative-descriptive account of social-cognitive functioning (e.g.,
Barenboim, 1981; Selman, 1980). For many researchers, however, issues of socialization
and the prediction of social behavior remained salient (e.g., Dunn, 1992; Harris, 1992). A
further issue thus was to be joined: the possibility that the child’s activity was central to the
development of other aspects of social growth. Three current directions in the field have
resulted from this impetus: (a) increasing interest in the ways in which children regulate
their own behavior and emotions; (b) attention to biological processes in control and regu-
lation; and (c) a conviction that the dyad is an essential unit of analysis in social develop-
ment.
What is social development the development of? Historical determinants
As explanatory accounts fluctuated over the first century of social development research,
the answer to the question “What is social development the development of?” changed
with views of optimal outcomes. Early studies of children focused on qualities of inde-
pendence, intelligence, honesty, and sociability largely because “wise commentators in
America were certain” that these qualities represented the ideal culmination of develop-
ment (Kagan, 1992, p. 992). In an era with little theoretical commitment, social values
determined the typical set of outcome variables of interest in psychological research. One
latter-day example of similarly value-driven preoccupations in the field are Western con-
cerns with the self, which is of much less popular or scientific interest in countries with a
more strongly collectivistic public value system (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1994).
As theoretical commitments to psychoanalytic theory and its offshoots became more
common, other variables joined the group of initially dominant outcomes. The classic
longitudinal studies of the 1920s and 1930s, for example, focused on social and mastery
variables. Among these were dependence, independence, aggression to peers and parents,
achievement, anxiety, and sociability. All have demonstrable connections to Freudian theory
and the related shift to primary interest in parental socialization and children’s social dis-
positions and control of emotions (Emde, 1992; Kagan, 1992). An interesting corollary is
the implication of these assumptions for the parenting variables of interest. Kagan (1992)
notes that, before World War II when most mothers stayed at home, concerns about
childrearing problems tended toward fears about over-protectiveness, encouragement of
dependency, and discouragement of age-appropriate independence. The psychodynami-
cally influenced concerns with independence and emotional control accorded with typical
rearing circumstances for middle-class American children in this case.
By the 1960s, a driving vision of the active child brought a further change in variables of
common interest. Interest grew in children’s concepts of self, others, and the interrelation
of the two (Kohlberg, 1969; Selman, 1980) and in constructs such as intentions and causal
attributions (e.g., Dodge, 1986; Eisenberg, in press). Increasing attention to biological
processes and related constructs such as temperament led to greater focus on regulatory
processes, including coping, inhibition, and attention (Eisenberg, in press; Kagan, 1992;
Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Research on social behavior gradually shifted attention to dyadic
interactions as regulatory contexts, and constructs of relationship became more central.
Instead of a primary focus on issues of dependence and anxiety, researchers also attended
to sensitive responding by parents, signs of emotional security, measures of relationship
quality, and the like (Hartup & Laursen, 1999; Thompson, 1998).
Parallel to these theoretical shifts were changes in economic and social patterns with
extensive implications for children and child rearing. The preoccupation with parenting
that assured independence and emotional control no longer seemed as relevant when half
of the mothers in the United States were in the labor force. Public concerns shifted toward
the prospect that children might not experience “quality care,” that is, might experience
insufficient parental affection and sensitivity to the child. Moreover, the concern extended
to the possible ramifications of less supervision and monitoring of children; for example,
problems of poor regulation and psychopathology became more salient among the public
and researchers alike. The convergence of these changes in American family life and the re-
orientation to attachment theory and behavioral regulation gave issues of attachment, the
quality of out-of-home care, and the emotional life of the child considerable currency in
social development research, as well as the public arena (Kagan, 1992).
Transformations in Social Development Research
The breadth of social development research today cannot be subsumed easily by a few
common themes. Yet most of the activity in the field reflects four intellectual and empiri-
cal transformations during its first century. These encompass increasing interest in specify-
ing developmental processes and intra-individual processes, understanding the nature and
significance of the interpersonal context of development, understanding the dynamics of
interpersonal experience, and recognizing the significance of variations in social contexts
beyond the family for the development of social functioning.
Specifying developmental processes
The maturationist assumptions of researchers stemmed both from a naïve psychology of

natural endowments and from an interest in the practical ramifications of “child study.”
Hall, though a committed scientist, believed a major value of the study of children was to
gain insights that might eventually enhance their development, especially with respect to
inculcating appropriate moral values (Cairns, 1998; White, 1992). Careful description
was a useful first step. Despite Hall’s training in experimental psychology in Germany,
neither he nor any of the other early proponents of social development research investi-
gated mechanisms of behavioral change.
Even in the middle period, researchers focused largely on description, although of a
more rigorous kind than in the early period. This later work was motivated largely by
substantial investment in research by funding agencies like the Laura Spelman Rockefeller
Memorial and the Payne Fund, with the goal of improving the lives of children. Strong
8 W. Andrew Collins
research contributions came from diverse sources during this period. Charlotte Bühler
(1927, 1930) conducted compelling observational studies demonstrating the truly social
nature of infants’ behavior; Florence Goodenough (1929, 1931) studied children’s emo-
tional upset during testing and fears by children of different ages; and Mary Shirley (1931,
1933) published a three-volume report of the findings from one of the first short-term
longitudinal studies of motor, intellectual, and personality development in the first two
years of life.
In perhaps the most striking empirical advance of the period, two scholars of religion,
Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May, working under the auspices of the Payne Fund, under-
took a study of moral and ethical behavior by children. Quickly mastering the necessary
methodological techniques, the two produced a mammoth series of experimental–obser-
vational studies showing that moral behavior was highly situation-specific (Hartshorne &
May, 1928–1930). To the dismay of their funders, they also concluded that religious training
and moral instruction made little difference in the actual behavior of children under con-
ditions of temptation (Cairns, 1998).
These pioneering studies began to fill the need for a natural history phase of research on
social behavior that the methodologically weaker studies of the early period had not pro-
vided. The newer research, however, offered few clues to developmental processes. The
essential work of developing sound research methods pre-empted the energies needed for
developing and testing theories (Cairns, 1998; White, in press). Bühler’s (1931) survey of
studies of social behavior in children, barely 35 years after the first published efforts, car-
ried her judgment that these early studies failed because of “the lack of a systematic point
of view” (1931, p. 392).
The search for developmental processes. In neglecting theoretical development, social de-
velopment researchers were falling behind other developmental psychologists.
Developmentalists interested in intellectual growth had extended principles of condition-
ing to mental functioning (e.g., Mateer, 1918), but not until the 1920s and 1930s did the
emergence of behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory move social development researchers
past the level of description. With naïve maturationist views challenged by Watson’s ver-
sion of behaviorism and later other learning theories and by psychoanalytic concepts, the
focus became rigorous testing of hypotheses about how changes occur in social behaviors,
attitudes, and values.
The most theoretically innovative researchers in this period were Watson and Arnold
Gesell. Watson’s conviction that conditioning accounted for the acquisition of all behaviors
from infancy onwards had aroused many social developmentalists to grapple with mecha-
nisms of growth and change. Watson’s own conditioning studies (e.g., Watson & Rayner,
1920) “were only demonstrational and would hardly deserve publication on their meth-
odological merit” (Cairns, 1998, p. 67). Other able psychologists tested key implications
of his ideas for infant behavior (e.g., Jones’ (1931) rigorous demonstration of the counter-
conditioning of learned fear).
Gesell is best known for normative-descriptive studies of physical and mental growth
(Cairns, 1998; Thelen & Adolph, 1992). Nevertheless, he wrote that human infants were
endowed with a “pre-eminent sociality,” or impulse to seek connection with others. Moreo-
ver, he regarded development as a transaction process: “Growth … is a historical complex
which reflects at every stage the past which it incorporates … a continuous self-condition-
ing process, rather than a drama controlled . …” (Gesell, 1928, p. 357). Although he never
offered a full-fledged theory of development, his speculative interpretations of his findings
implied a developmental theory much like that of James Mark Baldwin (1897) before him
and many more recent theorists. Neither Gesell nor subsequent scholars, however, have
tested these ideas systematically (Cairns, 1998; Thelen & Adolph, 1992).
Not until the 1930s and 1940s did compelling theory-testing research appear in the
literature. Up to that point the developmental predictions of psychoanalysis, although
much discussed, had stimulated relatively few empirical efforts, and those few were largely
unsuccessful (Sears, 1944). Just before World War II, however, a group of young psy-
chologists at Yale synthesized these predictions with Hullian theory learning mechanisms.
Soon organized as the Institute of Human Relations, they first tackled Freud’s views on
frustration and aggression, reconstruing aggression as a learned response to being thwarted
in efforts to reach a goal (frustration) (Dollard, Miller, Doob, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939).
Two members of the group then re-explained identification as imitation reinforced by the
experience of similarity to a valued other (secondary reinforcement) (Miller & Dollard,
1941). The best known among the few longitudinal studies of the middle period incorpo-
rated similar constructs to these pioneering process-oriented efforts (Baldwin, 1949; Kagan
& Moss, 1962), as did other large-scale studies (e.g., Sears, Maccoby, & Levin, 1957;
Sears, Rau, & Alpert, 1965; Sears, Whiting, Nowlis, & Sears, 1953) and laboratory experi-
ments (e.g., Hartup, 1958; Hartup & Coates, 1967). The empirical fallout lasted for more
than two decades.
The theoretical hybridizing of the Yale group proceeded in parallel to tests of predic-
tions from other learning-theory formulations, such as operant learning (e.g., Gewirtz &
Baer, 1958). An extensive body of findings accumulated around these behaviorist concep-
tions of social processes, evident in Stevenson’s (1965) influential review of social rein-
forcement. By testing the theories that then occupied others in psychology, social
development finally moved into the mainstream of the discipline (Cairns, 1998; White, in
press).
The mechanistic core processes of social-learning theory, however, eventually quailed
under accumulating evidence from infant studies, showing very early manifestations of
abilities that had been assumed to result from conditioning, and from repeated findings
that all children did not react to the same stimulus or the same reinforcers in the same way
(Kagan, 1992; Maccoby, 1992a). Adaptations to these empirical findings by theorists like
Bandura and Walter Mischel, among others, stimulated a search for processes that impli-
cated intra-individual factors in behavioral and conceptual change. Following Bandura
and Walters’ (1963) classic volume on social learning and personality development, Mischel
(1973) and Bandura (1986) each proposed a cognitive social-learning theory, in which
such basic processes as reinforcement were reinterpreted as having informational, as well as
emotional, significance (Grusec, 1992). In addition, Bandura (1977) advanced the idea
that self-efficacy, or subjective beliefs about one’s abilities in a domain, affect behavior and
behavior change in that domain. These efforts were buttressed by the “cognitive revolu-
tion” in psychology, with its focus on such processes as memory, attention, and inferential
thought, and in particular by the influx of Piagetian theory (Flavell, 1963; Maccoby, 1992a).
10 W. Andrew Collins
Mediational processes in social development. In search of processes, then, social develop-

ment researchers moved toward change processes based on notions of structural re-organi-
zation of thought and action. Such ideas, though far from new in developmental psychology,
were long forgotten, for the most part. James Mark Baldwin (1897) had proposed similar
dynamic structural processes in his writing at the turn of the century, echoed in the thought
of Dewey and Gesell, among others. Piaget’s formulation fell on more fertile ground than
the previous ones had.
Advanced primarily to account for intellectual development, Piaget’s theory depicted
the child as trying to reconcile an expectation, or cognitive schema, and incompatible
information from the environment. The resulting intrapsychic conflict motivates the child
to adapt the schema to the new experience, thus enlarging his or her capacity to grasp new
instances. Development occurred as the child inevitably confronted and adapted to a wide
range of experiences.
A social dimension was implicit in this formulation, because many of these conflict-
inducing instances inevitably involved other persons. In contrast to the emphasis of learn-
ing theorists on parental socialization, Piaget gave special credence to interactions with
peers. He reasoned that children encountering a discrepancy between their own schemas
and the views of a parent would simply adopt the parent’s view without undergoing cogni-
tive change. With persons of equal power, children would be more likely to engage fully in
the grappling with novelty that fostered cognitive growth. Piaget’s explicit description of
how and why children’s action was essential to growth and especially the linking of this
process to peer social interactions concretized the notion for researchers accustomed to the
mechanistic accounts of social learning theorists. Kohlberg’s (1969) classic essay elabo-
rated the social ramifications, identifying equilibration following cognitive conflict as a
fundamental process of social development.
The Piagetian–Kohlbergian account received most direct research attention in connec-
tion with stage-related hypotheses. But researchers working on a wide range of develop-
mental problems today, some of them drawn from alternative theoretical models (e.g.,
information processing), invoke transactional accounts to explain the phenomena of social
development. An example is formulations that invoke cognitive biases, such as the ten-
dency to misattribute the causes of behavior in instances of provocation or failure, to ac-
count for behavior such as aggression (e.g., Dodge, 1986) or lack of persistence in difficult
tasks (e.g., Dweck, 1986). Such cognitive biases result when children form schemas of
events from repeated experiences that appear to confirm existing social scripts. In addition,
homeostatic notions such as equilibration following conflict and transactional accounts of
behavioral development suffuse the literature in fields such as parent–child relations, peer
relations, stress and coping, and the development of prosocial behavior (e.g., Collins, 1995;
Furman & Wehner, 1994; Gunnar, 1994). Regulatory mechanisms, whether intra-indi-
vidual or contextual, occupy much of the intellectual energy in social development re-
search at the beginning of a new century (Eisenberg, in press).
Expanded views of regulatory processes
Socialization, the dominant concern of social development research throughout the mid-
dle period, implies that individuals are “induced in some measure to conform to the ways
of (their) society or of the particular groups to which (they) belong” (Clausen, 1968, p. 4).
In social-learning formulations, regulation processes almost uniformly implied “other” regu-
lation, whereas theories like Piaget’s implied that children were collaborators in socialization.
Moreover, research on language development and attachment implied that many develop-
mental outcomes could not be explained by top-down influences; and studies of reinforce-
ment and observational learning pointed to the likely variability in children’s cognitive
processing of, and inferences about, events, learning history, and other subjective intru-
sions into supposedly fixed, externally controlled processes (e.g., Grusec, 1992; Kagan,
1992; Maccoby, 1992a).
In the era of the active child, efforts to understand self-regulation focused on children’s
capacities for balancing internal and external demands to minimize disruptions of optimal
functioning. Studies of regulation subsume diverse contexts, processes, and aspects of
behavior and emotion. Among the salient topics have been attentional control and cogni-
tive structuring of control tasks in delay of gratification (Mischel, 1984), coping strategies
in stressful or anxiety-arousing conditions (Compas, 1987), and the relation between
behavioral strategies and physiological “dampening” processes in response to stressors
(Gunnar, 1994).
Closely related to the study of stressful circumstances is the burgeoning interest in chil-
dren’s regulation of their emotions. Able researchers in the middle period had conducted
normative-descriptive research on emotional expressions, but had addressed questions of
self-regulation only minimally. Yet evidence of self-regulation is abundant: children “man-
age” their emotional displays in accord with societal expectations and the demands of their
parents (Saarni, 1990); and hormonal reactivity spikes under conditions of fear or novelty
for some children, but typically returns to ambient levels following self-soothing activities
of various kinds (Gunnar, 1994). Moreover, children vary in their typical emotion regula-
tion, partly as a function of the socialization of emotion in families (Dunn, 1992; Eisenberg,
in press).
Issues of self-regulation buttressed a growing renascence in the concept of temperament.
The construct of temperament languished for three decades, partly because of political and
popular resistance to implications of fixed qualities in individuals (Kagan, 1992) and partly
because of inadequate measures of temperamental differences (Rothbart & Bates, 1998).
With advanced instrumentation and sophisticated biological indicators, combined with
behavioral profiles (Kagan, 1992), it is now more feasible to examine the regulatory pat-
terns of infants and children who differ along common dimensions of temperament. Moreo-
ver, evidence is growing of interactions between temperament and socialization (Kochanska,
1993).
Interest in self-regulatory processes contributed, as well, to the resurgence of work on
personality development after a long period of quiescence. Personality development had
quavered under attacks from behaviorists (e.g., Mischel, 1968), but recent evidence from
longitudinal studies and new techniques of combining research results across studies have
provided stronger evidence of long-term continuity and change than previously was avail-
able (for reviews, see Caspi, 1998; Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000; Shiner, 1998).
Expanded units of social experience
The concept of an active child also fed a growing conviction that many of the most signifi-
cant socializing experiences took place in interactions with others in which the child was
an active partner. Sears (1951), in his presidential address to the American Psychological
Association, had contended that “A diadic unit is essential if there is to be any
conceptualization of the relationships between people . . .” (p. 479). Two decades later,
Bell’s (1968) article, “A Reinterpretation of the Direction of Effects in Studies of
Socialization,” and Rheingold’s (1969) elegant essay, “The Social and Socializing Infant,”
again set forth the argument for child as well as parental effects. Another decade passed,
however, before proposals for a science of relationships began to take hold in developmen-
tal and social psychology (Hinde, 1979; Kelley et al., 1983). New lines of research both
bolstered the earlier argument for dyadic formulations and expanded the research direc-
tions in the area.
The dominant line of research stems from Bowlby’s (1958) theory of attachment. Writ-
ing in reaction to earlier secondary-drive formulations (e.g., Freud, 1910/1957; Sears et
al., 1957), Bowlby argued that initial bonds between infants and their caregivers result
from evolved tendencies to maintain proximity to assure the infant’s safety and survival.
Such themes converged nicely with the interest in security as a social motive suggested by
the discovery that young Rhesus monkeys deprived of social interaction sought contact
comfort, rather than gravitating toward a source of food (Harlow & Zimmerman, 1959).
Bowlby’s (1969, 1973, 1980) theoretical works spurred systematic empirical studies of
childhood attachment and numerous theoretical elaborations and refinements that con-
tinue unabated today.
Among the historically most important empirical sequelae of these activities are the
following. First, the emergence of a bond between child and caregiver in the second half of
the first year of life appears to be normative and universal (Ainsworth, 1967; Schaffer &
Emerson, 1964). Second, both members of caregiver–child dyads contribute to these at-
tachments (for recent reviews, see Marvin & Britner, 1999; Thompson, 1998). Third, the
functional significance of attachment is underscored by evidence from non-human species
that even minor deprivation of contact with responsive others results in abnormal neuro-
anatomical structures and impaired endocrinological sensitivity related to stress and cop-
ing (e.g., Ginsberg, Hof, McKinney, & Morris, 1993). Studies of human children adopted
from orphanages, some having impoverished opportunities for human interaction, also
reveal neuro-hormonal sequelae of restricted social contact (Chisholm, 1998; Gunnar,
2001; Rutter et al., 1998). Fourth, research on the long-term significance of early attach-
ments has yielded some compelling findings of continuity with relationships in childhood,
adolescence, and adulthood, but many instances of null findings as well (for a review, see
Thompson, 1999). Fifth, the process by which relationships are linked to behavior pat-
terns at a much later time is thought to be one instance of the more general process of
expectancies being applied to new situations. Few researchers now espouse a simple “early
determinism” model, embracing instead multivariate accounts that acknowledge the some-
times overlapping contributions of multiple kinds of dyads and that also attempt to ex-
plain discontinuities (e.g., Belsky, Campbell, Cohn, & Moore, 1996; Weinfield, Sroufe,
Egeland, & Carlson, 1999).
Studies of peer relations also rest heavily on assumptions of bidirectional influence and
the dyad as a unit of analysis (Hartup & Laursen, 1999). A compelling example comes
from findings that, when two toddlers or school-age children interact, the qualities of their
interactions are a joint function of their respective early relationships (Pastor, 1981). Thus,
“. . .it is not simply that children behave differently depending on the relationship histories
of their partners, but that relationships with different partners themselves vary in quality”
(Sroufe & Fleeson, 1986, p. 59).
Developmentalists face several unique challenges in research with dyadic units of analy-
sis. One is that both developmental and power differentials contribute to the unique func-
tioning of a dyad composed of individuals of different ages. Moreover, different rates of
change in two partners of different ages make it difficult to determine which partner is
contributing more to the ongoing adaptations between the two persons (Hartup & Laursen,
1991). A second challenge is that a bilateral perspective on change processes encourages a
shift from viewing developmental outcomes only in terms of individual traits or habit
patterns toward thinking of outcomes as competences for participating in social life (e.g.,
security, effective conflict resolution, commitment, involvement, hostility; see Furman,
Brown, & Feiring, 1999; Maccoby, 1992a). Although contemporary researchers have
achieved more compelling ways of specifying and analyzing relationships than had been
true before 1980, scholars continue to grapple with questions of methods and statistical
strategies appropriate for research with dyads (Reis, Collins, & Berscheid, 2001).
Incorporating contextual variations into social processes
The fourth and final transformation in social developmental concerns the significance of
aspects of the contexts in which relationships and interactions occur. Until the 1970s, the
term environment implied a range of sources of stimulation, from the proximal social mod-
els or social reinforcers encountered by a child to unspecified sources of influence beyond
a particular dyad. Psychological researchers were bent toward demonstrating generality in
the effects of certain environmental influences, not appreciating the distinctions among
them (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Modell & Elder, in press).
An early challenge to this environment-neutral stance came from Kurt Lewin, who ar-
gued that the individual’s psychological environment, as opposed to the physical or objec-
tively determined environment, was composed of both intra-individual forces and external
ones (Lewin, 1931). Children’s perceptions of the stimuli specified by the researcher had
to be assessed and included in both design and statistical analysis. Both Lewin’s conceptual
prediction and his empirical findings (e.g., Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1938) have influ-
enced generations of research on effects of parenting behavior (Baldwin, 1949; Baumrind,
1973; Maccoby, 1992b), teachers’ classroom behavior (e.g., Arnold, McWilliams, & Arnold,
1998), and the dynamics of peer groups (Hartup, 1992).
Lewin’s emphasis on context has re-appeared in a variety of formulations in the ensuing
decades. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) germinal volume, The ecology of human development,

provided an organizing framework for diverse potential environmental influence, includ-
ing those of historical period and cohort. In his now famous diagram of concentric levels,
aspects of the environment of which the child did not have direct experience were pictured
as distal, but possibilities for indirect influences were clearly apparent. Research examples
of these indirect influences are increasingly familiar to developmentalists (see Elder, 1974;
McLoyd, 1998). Another post-Lewinian manifestation came from developmental anthro-
pologists’ reminders of the centrality of the experienced, not the presumed, environment
(e.g., Super & Harkness, 1986).
The impact of context is felt today not only in social development, but also in other
subfields of developmental psychology and psychology generally. Many psychologists now
believe that constructs should be labeled to specify the contexts to which they apply (Kagan,
1992). An example in social development is peer gender segregation (Maccoby, 1990),
which refers specifically to the tendency for children to affiliate with same-gender peers in
mixed-gender settings. Nevertheless, social developmentalists, like other psychologists, face
continuing challenge in fully incorporating contexts into studies of development and de-
velopmental process (for recent critiques, see Elder, Modell, & Parke, 1993; Modell &
Elder, in press).
The Search for Method
The earliest methods in social development research were observation and survey ques-
tionnaires. G. Stanley Hall’s questionnaire method was purely descriptive research, similar
in kind, though not in sophistication, to today’s survey research. Only sporadically did the
studies reported between 1890 and 1920 go beyond frequency counts of behaviors, atti-
tudes, or values. Although description is an essential phase of any natural science, the early
samples were too restricted and the administration too haphazard and error-ridden to serve
this purpose for the emerging field of social development (Cairns, 1998; White, 1992).
Early studies of children’s social judgments (Schallenberger, 1894) and peer relations (Barnes,
1896–1897, 1902–1903; Monroe, 1899) were similarly descriptive and drawn from ques-
tionnaire responses. Observational and experimental methods were rare. One instance,
however, was Triplett’s (1897) report that children wound fishing reels faster when work-
ing with other children than when working alone. Not until the quest of 1930s’ research-
ers for more rigorous descriptive studies did compelling observational work appear in the
literature. Arrington’s (1943) critical review of time-sampling methods revealed both the
currency of observational strategies and the considerable progress toward a methodological
canon (Smith & Connolly, 1972).
Charlotte Bühler (1927) led the way on controlled experimental observations of infants.
She observed the babies of poor families at a milk station and concluded that interests in
other babies were apparent by 6 months. Using clever methods such as the “baby party”
she documented that 6-month-old infants incorporate simple coordinations into their so-
cial exchanges. Her advance in the study of infant social development was not matched for
another 30 years.
Careful observational studies of nursery-school children in the United States, though,

showed age-related patterns during early childhood. For example, coordinated interac-
tions of many different kinds increased with age (e.g., Parten, 1932–1933); physical ag-
gression increased and subsequently declined across ages (Goodenough, 1931); and verbal
aggression initially increase with age, but then stabilized (Jersild & Markey, 1935). Similar
methods also revealed that conflict instigation and management were moderated by chil-
dren’s relationships with one another (Green, 1933).
The social behavior of older children demanded still more innovative techniques. Group
behavior, both normative and antisocial, was studied through participant observation (e.g.,
Thrasher, 1927). Field experiments, such as Lewin et al.’s (1938) classic work on group
atmospheres, anticipated later equally classic studies of groups like the Robber’s Cave ex-
periment (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961). Later, ethnographic studies ex-
panded the study of individuals and groups in context (e.g., Bryant, 1985; Thorne, 1993).
The most influential strategy to date has been comparing the behavior of children who
vary in peer-group status. Sociometric methods, derived from Moreno’s (1934) strategy
for studying institutionalized adults, has undergone important refinements and has yielded
significant clues to meaningful variations in social skills and behavior (e.g., Coie, Dodge,
& Coppotelli, 1982).
Cairns (1998) has observed that, despite the relatively greater rigor of later studies, stud-
ies of peers relations in the middle period were scarcely more theoretically motivated. Only
after 1960 were theoretically driven studies conducted extensively. Contemporary studies
draw from a range of theoretical formulations, such as those of exchange theory, Sullivan’s
(1953) theory of interpersonal relations, attachment, and an array of newer formulations
(Hartup & Laursen, 1999).
Work on parenting generally has trailed these efforts in sophistication, despite the longer
history of sustained interest in, and the larger number of, studies of parental effects and
child outcomes. Questionnaire studies and self-report inventories dominate research on
parenting behavior even today. Observational studies (e.g., Forgatch & DeGarmo, 1999;
Patterson, 1982) and laboratory analogs (e.g., Kuczynski, 1984; Parpal & Maccoby, 1985)
are relatively rare. Reliance on self-report studies and correlational statistics has weakened
the contributions of these studies. Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, and Bornstein
(2000) recently identified several more rigorous types of designs that have recently been
used to specify parental contributions to social development. Among these are behavior-
genetics designs augmented by specific measures of environment; studies distinguishing
among children varying in genetically influenced predispositions in terms of their responses
to different environmental conditions; experimental and quasi-experimental studies of
change in children’s behavior as a result of their exposure to parents’ behavior, after con-
trolling for children’s initial characteristics; and research on interactions between parenting
and nonfamilial environmental influences and contexts.
Technological changes underlie many methodological innovations of the modern era.
Video recorders greatly facilitated progress in early studies of infant affect and mother–
infant interaction (e.g., Cohn & Tronick, 1987). Digital and computer technologies, com-
bined with video, have increased possibilities in observational and laboratory studies of
social interaction in families and peers. Techniques to measure brain electrical activity,
heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, cortisol, and blood chemistry have contributed
to studies of temperament and are likely to be even more widely applied in the decade
ahead (Eisenberg, in press; Kagan, 1992; Rothbart & Bates, 1998).
Many questions central to social development demand longitudinal research designs.
Though more numerous in social development than in other subfields of developmental
psychology, longitudinal studies were understandably rare in the first six decades of the
history of social development. The exceptions were noteworthy for their scope and impact.
The Berkeley and Oakland surveys (e.g., Clausen, 1993), Alfred Baldwin’s study of parenting
styles (e.g., Baldwin, 1949), and the Fels study (e.g., Kagan & Moss, 1962) all provided
significant descriptive data on key constructs. The same can be said of pioneering short-
term follow-ups of infants (e.g., Shirley, 1933). Today, the relatively numerous longitudi-
nal efforts in the United States and Europe are all the more remarkable because of their size
and scope. These efforts permit researchers to address heretofore intractable issues, such as
the duration of the impact of significant social experiences, trajectories of change, the
significance of timing of social experiences, and so forth (e.g., Sroufe, Carlson, & Shulman,
1993; also, see Magnusson, Bergman, Rudinger, & Torestad, 1991).
Conclusion
The development of social development research in its first century is a story of evolution,
rather than revolution. Shifts of strategy and method are more apparent than shifts of
interest or focal questions. The interests underlying the canonical work in the field are
present today in more theoretically and methodologically sophisticated forms. The best
work on parental influences today takes account of the nature of the child and the possibil-
ity of bidirectionality, as well as the strong likelihood of other socializing influences such as
peers, schools, and the mass media (Collins et al., 2000). Research on peer relations ac-
knowledges contextual effects and qualitative variations among peer companions, as well
as child temperament, familial relationship history, and quantitative differences in the
nature of the relationship. Studies of individual differences in behaviors (e.g., aggression)
and behavioral orientations (e.g., gender) draw broadly on knowledge of social,
biobehavioral, cognitive, and emotional processes to formulate hypotheses and interpret
research results. The first century has been a promising start on the next one.
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Behavioral Genetics 25
Part II
Influences on Development: Disciplinary

Views
Psychology forms a recognized discipline; and most of the contributors to the Handbook
are developmental psychologists. However, child development is an interdisciplinary area.
The Society for Research in Child Development, in the United States, has an explicitly
interdisciplinary membership base. There are important traditions of child development
research in other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology. In addition, disciplines
such as genetics and evolutionary theory have important insights to provide. This section
overviews these contributions to our understanding of childhood social development.
Alison Pike reviews the relevance of behavioral genetics for our understanding of social
development. This area has grown radically over the last 10–15 years. The traditional
methods of twin and adoption studies, refined and accumulating, indicate that there is a
complex balance between genetic influences on particular characteristics, and shared and
nonshared environmental influences. Some heritability influences are substantial. Also, in
many areas the importance of nonshared environment appears to outweigh that of shared
environment – a finding with an important impact on the balance of parental and peer
influences, since parental influence has often been considered as largely shared environ-
ment so far as siblings are concerned (see also Chapter 9). These findings are often age-
related. Pike looks critically at the methods and assumptions behind this work, highlighting
the implications for developmental theories.
Another development that has featured strongly in the last 10–15 years has been the
advent of “evolutionary psychology,” and a realization that our evolutionary history may
have important consequences for how individual psychological nature develops. Ideas of
the importance of evolution for psychology do date back over a century (e.g., Stanley
Hall), but only recently has a coherent research program been formulated. Evolutionary
psychology emphasizes domain-specific aspects of human cognition and behavior, with
these domain-specific mechanisms or modules having been selected during some hundreds
of thousands of years, broadly described as the “environment of evolutionary adaptedness”
and corresponding to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. David Bjorklund and Anthony D. Pellegrini
26 Influences
Alison Pikeon Development
review the growing subfield of evolutionary developmental psychology, laying out its cen-
tral tenets and giving examples of its application. Evolutionary developmental psychology
places more emphasis on how domain-specific mechanisms, or modules, develop, and also
allows for less specificity in some areas, in line with much thinking in cognitive develop-
ment (e.g., Karmiloff-Smith, 1992).
Anthropology has a long tradition of studying children, though usually from the per-
spective of “socialization.” Evolutionary perspectives have tended to be downplayed in
cultural anthropology since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the influence of
Boas, Benedict, and Mead (herself trained also as a child psychologist). Sara Harkness gives
a clear historical account of trends in anthropological research on child rearing, from the
early socialization work, through the “culture and personality” school, to multisite studies
and cross-cultural comparisons such as Whiting’s Six Culture Study. The more recent
cultural–ecological models of Super and Harkness, and Weisner, are then described, and
the theme of the “developmental niche” or “ecocultural niche” is explored. Harkness also
critically reviews the area of cultural psychology, and especially the construct of “individu-
alism and collectivism” which has been widely used but which may be much too simple to
take us any further in understanding cultural differences.
Largely independent of both anthropological and psychological approaches, there has
been a substantial current of research on child development from a sociological tradition.
Over the last decade this has come together with some coherent viewpoints (e.g., James &
Prout, 1990; Jenks, 1992) that challenge the conventional thinking of many psychologists.
Chris Jenks sets out this “manifesto” at the start of his chapter. Seeing childhood as a
“social construction” seems to take us a long way from the genetic and evolutionary per-
spectives of the chapters by Pike, and Bjorklund and Pellegrini. Nevertheless there may be
some common ground. Both Jenks, and Bjorklund and Pellegrini, point out the concep-
tual limitations of an “adult-centered” view of child development. For the evolutionary
theorist, some aspects of childhood are advantageous for childhood, not a preparation for
adult life. For the sociologist, the world of children has its own intrinsic validity and the
concept of “development” is subjected to a thoroughgoing critique; indeed the concept of
“development” is itself socially constructed. While many psychologists may disagree with
parts of the “manifesto” in this chapter, and may feel that some of the psychological exam-
ples given have already been surpassed, nevertheless there are profound issues raised here
about the ways in which we perceive our domain and operate within it.
References
James, A., & Prout, A. (1990). Constructing and reconstructing childhood. Basingstoke, England:
Falmer.
Jenks, C. (1992). The sociology of childhood. Aldershot, England: Gregg.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond modularity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Behavioral Genetics, Shared and Nonshared

Environment
Alison Pike
Many of the chapters in this handbook consider the varied contexts that affect young
children’s lives (e.g., family environment, the school, peers, and the wider historical and
cultural context). This chapter focuses on an individual-level factor that has pervasive ef-
fects for all children’s development – genetics. Equally important, this chapter contains
convincing evidence from behavioral genetic studies that children’s environmental experi-
ences do matter, but in somewhat unexpected ways. To appreciate the significance of find-
ings and recent developments concerning nature and nurture, however, an understanding
of behavioral genetic theory and methods is required. Therefore, the chapter begins with a
brief explanation of these. Next, behavioral genetic results from selected areas of social
development are considered; problem behaviors, self-concept, and parenting. The relative
impact of shared versus nonshared environmental influences is then reviewed, followed by
recent work considering parenting-adjustment associations within a behavioral genetic
framework. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to the lively debate in recent years
concerning the degree to which parents influence their children’s social development.
Behavioral Genetic Theory
Behavioral genetics is the study of nature and nurture. The theory postulates that behavioral
differences among individuals in a population are due both to genetic differences between
people, and to differences in their environmental experiences. Specifically, behavioral
geneticists explore the origins of individual differences (i.e., differences between people)
in complex behaviors, such as social competence. It is as important to point out what
behavioral genetics does not address, as well as what it does. For example, researchers may
28 Alison Pike
be interested in how, generally, children develop interpersonal skills. This is a question

concerning normative development, and is not addressed by behavioral genetics. Similarly,
many researchers are concerned with group differences (e.g., differences between children
growing up in rural versus urban areas), and again traditional behavioral genetic methods
cannot answer such questions. Instead, the focus is on individual differences. Continuing
the example, behavioral geneticists would argue that an important question is why some
children have difficulty getting along with peers, while others have no trouble. It is worth
noting that individual differences, though often ignored in psychological research, or merely
thought of as “error,” are often of far greater magnitude than group differences.
Behavioral Genetic Methods
Due to space limitations, the following section is necessarily brief. For detailed treatments
of the methods that are briefly described below, see Neale and Cardon (1992) and Plomin,
DeFries, McClearn, and Rutter (1997).
Using behavioral genetic methods, variability for any given trait may be divided into
three sources, heritability, shared environment, and nonshared environment. Heritability
is defined as the amount of total variation in scores of a given trait that can be explained by
genetic differences between people. For example, the heritability of social competence re-
fers to the proportion of variation in scores of social competence originating from differ-
ences in people’s genetic make-up. Shared environment refers to those environmental
influences that are shared by siblings reared in the same family, and lead to sibling similar-
ity (e.g., neighborhood, parental attitudes). On the other hand, nonshared environment
refers to those aspects of the environment that are not shared by siblings, and lead to
differences between siblings (e.g., siblings’ different peer groups, birth order).
Although behavioral geneticists are beginning to identify specific genes that are associ-
ated with behavior, the classic methods are indirect quasi-experimental methods, such as
twin and adoption studies. These methods estimate the relative contributions of genetic,
shared, and nonshared environmental influence for a given trait or behavior. Studies in
which family members (e.g., parents or siblings) are assessed provide indications of familial
resemblance, but cannot disentangle this resemblance into its genetic and shared environ-
mental sources.
Twin and adoption studies compare the similarity of family members of varying genetic
relatedness, and estimate genetic and environmental contributions to specific traits. The
twin method involves the comparison of resemblance between monozygotic (MZ) twin
pairs and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. MZ twins are 100% genetically similar (they are
“identical” genetically like clones), whereas DZ twins, like regular siblings, share only 50%
(on average) of their segregating genes. Therefore, if genetic influence is important for a
trait, MZ twins will be more similar than DZ twins. To the extent that twin similarity
cannot be attributed to genetic factors, the shared environment is implicated. Finally, the
extent to which MZ twins differ within pairs is accounted for by nonshared environmental
factors.
Because identical twins are identical genetically and fraternal twins are 50% similar
genetically, the difference in their correlations reflects half of the genetic effect and is dou-
bled to estimate heritability. For example, MZ twins correlate about 0.90 for height, and
DZ twins about 0.45. Here, the reference is to correlations, r, rather than r 2 (the measure
of “variance explained”). The reason for this is that the covariance between relatives is of
interest, rather than the degree to which, for example, the variance in Twin1 scores can be
“explained” by Twin2 scores. Doubling the difference between these correlations yields a
heritability estimate of 0.90 (2(0.90 – 0.45) = 0.90), suggesting substantial heritability for
height. Shared environmental influence can be indirectly estimated from twin correlations
by subtracting the heritability estimate from the MZ twin correlation. In this case the
estimate is 0.0 (0.90 – 0.90 = 0.0). Nonshared environmental influence is estimated by
subtracting the MZ twin correlation from 1.0 – yielding 0.10 in this case (1.0 – 0.90 =
0.10).
The other classic quantitative genetic design is the adoption design. Because adoptive
siblings are unrelated genetically to other siblings in their adoptive family, the degree of
similarity between these siblings is a direct index of shared environmental influences. That
is, adoptive siblings do not share genes any more than pairs of randomly selected individu-
als, and so they only resemble one another more than random individuals would because
of shared environmental reasons. Heritability can also be estimated using the adoption
design. In this case, nonadoptive (biological) siblings share 50% of their genes, while adoptive
siblings share 0% of their genes. The difference in correlations between biological siblings
and adoptive siblings reflects half of the genetic effect and is doubled to estimate heritabil-
ity. Biological siblings correlate about 0.45 for height, and adoptive siblings are uncorrelated,
0.00. Doubling the difference between these correlations yields a heritability estimate of
0.90 (2(0.45 – 0.00) = 0.90), again suggesting substantial heritability for height. Finally, in
adoption studies, nonshared environment is estimated to be that which is “left over” after
heritability and shared environment have been accounted for, that is, 1.0 – 0.90 (heritabil-
ity) – 0.00 (shared environment) = 0.10. Each design has its strengths and weaknesses;
therefore it is the overall picture of results emerging from different studies that is impor-
tant.
Behavioral Genetic Findings in Social Development
Due to space limitations, three selected areas of social development will be reviewed. The
first area, behavior problems, is a relatively well-researched area that has been of interest to
behavioral geneticists for some time. Behavior problems fit under the umbrella of “psycho-
pathology,” which, along with intelligence and personality, is one of the three major areas
that have been of interest to behavioral geneticists. This is due to the fact that these are
areas for which individual differences (rather than normative development) have been the
focus, and these are often conceptualized as “outcomes” of genetic and environmental
processes. The second area, self-concept, counter-balances the first by addressing a positive
aspect of development. Far less work has been completed for positive as opposed to nega-
tive outcomes, thus the review of this topic represents a new avenue of research. Finally,
the “nature of nurture” is explored through a review of parenting. This literature is at the
30 Alison Pike
heart of the gene–environment interface, and demonstrates how genetic influences may
help explain children’s roles in their own socialization.
Behavior problems
After intelligence, behavioral problems have probably been studied more extensively by
behavioral geneticists than any other domain during childhood. This is due to the obvious
societal importance in understanding their causes, and the present review will include a
discussion of how these findings can illuminate and extend nongenetic studies and theo-
ries. This review will revolve around three issues: age trends, aggressive versus nonaggressive
problem behaviors, and differences found between informants.
Results found for externalizing problems in preschool-aged children can be compared to
those found during the middle-childhood period. Two studies have utilized parent reports
of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991, 1992) to assess externalizing
problems in twins approximately 3 years of age. Schmitz, Fulker, and Mrazek (1995) re-
port moderate heritability (.34) and moderate shared environmental influence (.32), whilst
van den Oord, Verhulst, and Boomsma (1996) report a much higher heritability estimate
of .60, and a slightly lower shared environmental estimate of .20. The only ready explana-
tion for this discrepancy (other than random fluctuations in sampling) is that the van den
Oord study utilized average ratings from both parents, whereas Schmitz and colleagues
utilized a single report from one parent. As will be elaborated in the discussion of inform-
ants, more reliable, composite measures of child behavior have the effect (as displayed
here) of increasing the variance accounted for by genetic factors, and decreasing that ac-
counted for by nonshared environmental factors, which includes measurement error. Sup-
port for the higher estimate of heritability is given via replication with a different
parent-report instrument. This final study also involved 3-year-old twins, and again, re-
ports of problematic behaviors were combined when completed by both parents (Deater-
Deckard, 2000). Deater-Deckard reports a heritability of .59 and no shared environmental
influence for the total problems score from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
(SDQ; Goodman, 1997).
Genetically sensitive parent-report studies during the middle-childhood period have all
utilized the CBCL. At this age, the subscales of aggression and delinquency together index
externalizing problems. The study best poised to directly address the issue of whether the
heritability of these problems increases or decreases over time is that of Schmitz and col-
leagues (1995), described above. This was a longitudinal study in which the twins were
again assessed at seven and a half years of age. Over this five-year period, the heritability
estimate for externalizing problems increased from .34 to .57, while the shared environ-
mental effect decreased in magnitude from .32 to .22. In addition, the stability seen across
the age span was due almost entirely to common genetic influences at both ages. No other
longitudinal data has been used to address this issue, however, other extant results during
middle childhood report higher estimates for genetic influence (e.g., Edelbrock, Rende,
Plomin, & Thompson, 1995; Leve, Winebarger, Fagot, Reid, & Goldsmith, 1998). This
increase in heritability remains speculative, however, given that the other studies of the
preschool period indicated higher heritability estimates that are in line with estimates dur-
ing middle childhood. Furthermore, cross-sectional analyses covering the age span from 5
through to 15 years uncovered no differences by age (Gjone, Stevenson, Sundet, & Eilertsen,
1996).
To summarize thus far; even during the early preschool period, it appears that genetic
differences among children are partly responsible for the large individual differences seen
in this domain. It should be emphasized, however, that heritability describes what is in a
particular population at a particular time, rather than what could be. Therefore, if environ-
mental factors within a population change (e.g., changes in discipline policy within the
education system) then the relative impact of genes and environment will change. Beyond
genetic influence, the moderate influence of siblings’ shared environment underlines the
utility of family-level intervention strategies (Gurman & Kniskern, 1980), and mirrors
Patterson’s reports of siblings’ involvement in “coercive family processes” (Patterson, 1986).
Studies addressing the second issue, aggressive versus nonaggressive externalizing prob-
lems, have yielded quite consistent findings. Heritability is greater for aggressive problems,
and nonaggressive problems yield higher shared environment estimates. A couple of recent
replications will be reviewed. In a study of almost 200 twin pairs aged 7 to 11 years old, the
parent-report aggressive behavior and delinquent behavior subscales from the CBCL were
analyzed separately. Individual differences in aggressive behavior were substantially geneti-
cally influenced (.60), and shared environmental influences were modest (.15) and nonsig-
nificant. The corresponding figures for delinquent behavior on the other hand were similar
and moderate (.35 and .37, respectively). A report by Eley, Lichtenstein, and Stevenson
(1999) is a particularly persuasive replication because it includes data from twin studies
conducted in two countries (Britain and Sweden) yielding remarkably similar results. The
heritability for aggressive behavior was estimated at .69 for the British sample and .70 for
the Swedish sample, and shared environmental influences were negligible in both cases. In
contrast, for non-aggressive antisocial behavior, shared environmental effects were signifi-
cant and of moderate to substantial magnitude, and heritability estimates more moderate.
Finding moderate and significant shared environmental effects is unusual (see “Shared
versus Nonshared Environmental Influences,” below), and was first discussed for
nonaggressive delinquent behavior by Rowe (1983). In this and subsequent work (Rowe,
1986), adolescent twins reported being “partners in crime” in terms of their delinquent
acts. Thus, in addition to shared rearing experiences or parental attitudes being responsible
for sibling similarity in this area, it appears that the twins are influencing one another. This
is further supported by an adoption study for which the shared environmental component
was more modest in magnitude, though significant (Deater-Deckard & Plomin, 1999).
This etiological distinction between aggressive and nonaggressive antisocial behavior is
an excellent illustration of the contribution that behavioral genetic studies can make to
theoretical issues in development. The distinction between adolescence-limited and life-
course-persistent antisocial behavior put forward by Moffitt (1993) is supported by the
differing origins of these behaviors. Aggressive behavior, mapping on to life-course-persist-
ent antisocial behavior, is highly heritable and thus quite stable. Nonaggressive antisocial
behavior, on the other hand, may be analogous to the adolescence-limited type, elicited by
contextual cues particularly salient during the adolescent period, and bolstered by the find-
ings of lower heritability and higher environmental contributions.
The final issue that will be considered is potential differences according to informant.
32 Alison Pike
The studies reviewed above have relied on parental reports. A handful of studies have also
utilized observational measures of child behavior, or parental interviews. In Deater-Deckard’s
study of 3-year-old twins, the children’s difficult behavior was coded from videotaped
observations of two 10-minute dyadic interactions with the primary caregiver, as well as
via parental reports (Deater-Deckard, 2000). Heritability estimates were substantial for
parent reports (.59), but nonexistent for the observational measure. Conversely, the shared
environmental estimates were .00 and .25, respectively. There are several possible interpre-
tations for this pattern of findings. First, the content of behaviors in the two measures was
not identical. Deater-Deckard notes that, “observers were rating behaviors that were less
severe in their consequences but parents were rating behaviors that were more extreme
indicators of conduct problems” (p. 477). Second, the amount of time sampled (20 min-
utes) for the observational measure was a tiny fraction of the extensive experience that
parents can call upon to answer questions about their child’s behavior. Finally, observa-
tional interactions are “strong” situations. Perhaps questionnaire measures tap into more
heritable, trait-like behavioral patterns of children, whereas the context of a specific par-
ent–child interaction elicits consistency within families.
This finding is not restricted to the preschool period. A study conducted with 154 twin
pairs between the ages of 6 to 11 years also compared observations of children’s maladap-
tive behavior with parent reports (Leve et al., 1998). Two different coding systems were
utilized for the observations, a global rating made by coders after watching the episode in
total, and time-based sampling of discrete behaviors. The two systems yielded remarkably
consistent results. Heritability estimates of .29 and .24, and shared environment estimates
of .27 and .28 for the global and time-based coding, respectively. In contrast, parent re-
ports of externalizing problems as indexed by the CBCL yielded a heritability estimate of
.44, and a shared environment estimate of .41.
Finally, a systematic exploration of interview versus questionnaire data was conducted
with a population-based sample of 8 to 16-years-old twins (Simonoff et al., 1995). The
questionnaire measures indicated moderate heritability (.23–.34) and moderate shared
environment (.25–.58). The interview measures yielded higher heritability results (.40–
.73), and negligible shared environmental influences. Particularly striking were the differ-
ences between parental reports via questionnaire versus interview. The substantial shared
environmental influence found for the questionnaire measures disappeared, suggesting that
the questionnaire measures are subject to rater bias. That is, without the aid of an objective
“filter,” reporting biases (e.g., an optimistic outlook) may artificially inflate sibling similar-
ity thereby inflating estimates of shared environmental influence.
This behavioral genetic evidence adds fuel to the debate regarding differences between
informants. Lack of agreement between raters is often treated as error, and the argument is
that composite measures (or latent variables) of behavior should be used because of their
greater reliability and predictive power (e.g., Epstein, 1983). The counter-argument is that
each reporter of a child’s behavior has a unique, important perspective that should be
examined in its own right. Children themselves, for example, may be in the best position
to inform about their own internalizing problems, whereas parent and teacher reports may
highlight potentially different frequencies of externalizing problems in contrasting con-
texts. Behavioral genetic evidence suggests that composite measures, and particularly la-
tent variables of behavior, show higher heritability than do single informant measures (e.g.,
Simonoff et al., 1995; van den Oord et al., 1996). Is it thus fair to say that the more
accurate the measurement, the more heritable will be the behavior in question? Instead, I
would argue that assessments which index trait-like behavioral consistency across context
are more genetically determined than more specific indices of behavior.
Self-Concept
Behavioral genetic research is in its infancy in the area of self-concept, with only two stud-
ies thus far concerning young children’s understanding of their own personalities, strengths,
and weaknesses. Participants in the first study (Pike, 1999) were 3.5-year-old twins. The
challenge of assessing the self-conceptions of such young children was met by using a
forced-choice puppet task (Eder, 1990). Factor analysis yielded two distinct, meaningful,
and internally consistent dimensions, representing aggression/assertiveness (e.g., “Some-
times I like to tease people, and say mean things to them,”,“I think it would be fun to go
down a slide head-first”) and well-being (e.g., “I really like myself,” “I have a best friend”).
Both MZ and DZ twin correlations were similar and moderate across the board, apart
from the MZ correlation for aggression/assertiveness that was modest in magnitude. This
pattern of results indicated that genetic influence is not an important factor, that shared
environment plays a moderate role, and that nonshared environmental factors are also
important determinants of young children’s self-conceptions at this age.
The second study involved adopted and nonadopted children at 9 and 10 years of age
(Neiderhiser & McGuire, 1994). The Self-Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1982)
was utilized to assess behavior conduct, athletic competence, scholastic competence, physi-
cal appearance, social acceptance, and general self-worth. At age 9, over 80% of the vari-
ance for children’s conceptions of their physical appearance was due to genetic factors, and
approximately half of the variability for scholastic competence and general self-worth was
also due to hereditary factors. The remaining domains were overwhelmingly influenced by
nonshared environmental factors. These results were not, however, consistent at age 10. At
this second time point only athletic competence and scholastic competence demonstrated
considerable genetic influence, although nonshared environmental influence continued to
prevail.
To summarize, the dominance of shared environmental factors in the preschool years
suggests that parents or the family atmosphere plays a role in the early formation of chil-
dren’s understanding of their own personalities. This influence appears to decline by mid-
dle childhood, by which time those experiences unique to each child in a family (and
perhaps emanating from outside the family) become paramount. Extreme caution is war-
ranted, however, as both studies were based on relatively small sample sizes and await
replication. These two studies also seem to be in line with an emerging trend that positive
child outcomes demonstrate far less heritability than do negative outcomes. For example,
in the Edelbrock and colleagues (1995) study described above, the competence scales from
the CBCL indicated modest and nonsignificant genetic effects.
34 Alison Pike
Parenting
During the past 15 years there has been a new wave of research that has subjected so-called
“environmental” measures to behavioral genetic scrutiny. The majority of these studies have
involved adolescents (see Plomin, 1994, for a review), and only the handful of studies con-
cerning younger children will be reviewed here. In addition, this review is limited to child-
based genetic designs (i.e., when the twins (or adoptees) are the children rather than the
parents). Thus, any genetic influence found reflects heredity factors of the children, rather
than the parents. Therefore, when genetic influence is detected on parenting, this indicates
that parental behavior is in part shaped by genetically influenced characteristics of the child.
Braungart (1994) explored the parenting practices and more general home environment
of preschool-aged children utilizing the adoption design, and avoiding subjective ques-
tionnaire measurement by employing home observations. Genetic analysis of a measure
derived from the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME;
Caldwell & Bradley, 1978) was conducted. In contrast to studies of the HOME during
infancy (Braungart, Fulker, Plomin, & DeFries, 1992), negligible heritability was demon-
strated. This may be explained by inadequate psychometric properties of the scale at this
age, an interpretation which is supported given that a more recent, systematic assessment
of the family environment of young twins by Deater-Deckard (2000) yielded quite differ-
ent results. The twin sample (n = 120 pairs) incorporated parent reports, information
gained via interview, and observers’ ratings of parent–child interactions. Parental reports
of both positive and negative affect demonstrated genetic influence (.46 and .55, respec-
tively), however, no heritability was shown for these domains as indexed by observers’
ratings. Harsh discipline and control were also not heritable as assessed by interview and
observation, respectively, however, observational ratings of parental responsiveness were
substantially heritable (.49).
In a study of parenting during middle childhood, mother–child interactions were exam-
ined within the Colorado Adoption Study (CAP; DeFries, Plomin, & Fulker, 1994). The
older and younger siblings were aged 7 and 4, respectively (Rende, Slomkowski, Stocker,
Fulker, & Plomin, 1992). Four aspects of maternal behavior, control-intrusiveness, affec-
tion, attention, and responsiveness were coded from the videotaped interactions. Although
maternal affection and responsiveness were not influenced by genetic factors, maternal
control and attention were moderately and substantially genetically influenced, respec-
tively. Utilizing the same CAP sample, a comparison of parental reports of warmth, con-
trol, and inconsistency of parenting were assessed when the children were 7 and 9 years
old. Across both time points, heritability for warmth was quite substantial (.56 at age 7 and
.40 at age 9). Control was consistent in showing no heritability across middle childhood,
while inconsistency in parenting demonstrated no heritability at age 7, but was largely
heritable by age 9 (.46). Finally, Deater-Deckard, Fulker, and Plomin (1999) compared
child and parent reports of parenting during late childhood, again within the CAP sample.
Parent reports of negativity and warmth were moderately heritable, whereas inconsistency
demonstrated negligible genetic influence. According to the children, achievement orien-
tation within the family was substantially influenced by genetic factors whereas family
positivity was not significantly heritable.
From the extant evidence, it is difficult to draw overarching conclusions. Certainly

parenting during both the preschool and middle childhood years shows some genetic in-
fluence, and this has been demonstrated via multiple informants. The presence of genetic
influence on measures of the family environment is consistent with the idea that socialization
is bidirectional. That is, when parents interact with their children, this interaction is af-
fected by the child’s behavior as well the parent’s (Bell, 1968). There is, however, no clear
pattern as to which dimensions are most heritable. This inconsistency may be due to differ-
ences in the degree to which measures index those parenting behaviors elicited by the child
versus those that are more purely parent driven. Evidence for this distinction is provided
by a small observational twin study by Lytton (1977, 1980). Future research following the
Lytton tradition of detailed, time-sequenced coding of parent–child interactions with larger,
representative samples would shed light on the exact nature of genetically influenced as-
pects of parent–child interaction.
Shared versus Nonshared Environmental Influences
Looking at behavioral genetic studies that have examined the traditional domains of per-
sonality, cognitive abilities, and psychopathology, it has been purported that genetic fac-
tors are important throughout psychology, and equally, that environmental factors are at
least as important (Plomin & McClearn, 1993). Heritability rarely exceeds 50% and thus
“environmentality” is rarely less than 50%. Somewhat surprisingly, summarizing across
the lifespan, these same studies indicate that the environmental influence of primary im-
portance is of the nonshared variety (Plomin & Daniels, 1987). That is, environmental
factors that have the strongest effect are those which make siblings in the same family
different from one another (Dunn & Plomin, 1990). This finding of the importance of
nonshared environment has broad implications. Many global family factors such as the
marital relationship, parental personality, neighborhood context, and socioeconomic sta-
tus may not operate in the same way for all family members as has often been implied. For
example, divorce is usually considered an event that is obviously shared by children in a
family. However, the key issue might be each child’s unique perception of, and reaction to,
the divorce.
The balance of shared versus nonshared environmental influences does, however, change
over the course of development. For the most widely studied area, cognitive abilities, ex-
tant findings converge on the conclusion that shared environmental factors are important
during early childhood, and that these influences diminish across childhood and adoles-
cence, becoming negligible by late adolescence (McCartney, Harris, & Bernieri, 1990).
During this same period, heritability increases, and nonshared environmental influences
remain quite constant (and are small in magnitude). This pattern of results mirrors the
changing interaction patterns with family versus “external” influences (such as peers) across
this period (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984). For the present purpose it is important to
emphasize that differences between families do affect young children’s cognitive abilities, a
point that is sometimes neglected when emphasis is placed on findings for the adolescent
period and beyond.
36 Alison Pike
Behavioral genetic studies of the major areas of personality (e.g., extraversion and neu-
roticism) that have used twins find that genetics accounts for approximately 50% of the
phenotypic variance, and nonshared environmental factors explain the remainder of the
variation between individuals (e.g., Eaves, Eysenck, & Martin, 1989; Loehlin & Nichols,
1976). Estimates of nonshared environmental influence from adoption studies are some-
what higher, with estimates of genetic influence being correspondingly lower (e.g., Loehlin,
Willerman, & Horn, 1987). The vast majority of this work, however, has involved the use
of self-report questionnaires administered to adolescents or adults. For children, parental
reports have been used, yielding odd results. Parents of fraternal twins tend to artificially
contrast their twins’ behavior such that DZ twin correlations are often “too low,” or even
negative (Plomin, Chipuer, & Loehlin, 1990). Support for this contrast effect comes from
more objective measures of temperament/personality. For example, Saudino and Eaton
(1991) demonstrated the usual “too low” DZ correlation for parental reports of activity
level, whereas ratings from motion recorders yielded no such bias. The important point
here is that throughout development, it is nonshared rather than shared environmental
influences that dominate.
Psychopathology is a more diverse area of behavior for which broad statements cannot
be applied. Still, for many disorders, including schizophrenia, autism, hyperactivity, and
anorexia nervosa, nonshared environmental influence is substantial while shared environ-
mental influence is negligible (Plomin, Chipuer, & Neiderhiser, 1994). Alcoholism may
be an exception. As reviewed by McGue (1993), a number of adoption studies have found
that being reared in an alcoholic family does increase a person’s risk of becoming alcoholic.
A recent review of behavioral genetic studies of depression concludes that MZ concord-
ance for major depression is about .50, indicating that nonshared environmental influ-
ences make a major contribution (Tsuang & Faraone, 1990). Genetic influence appears to
account for the remaining variation, again indicating that the environmental variation is of
the nonshared variety.
Relating Specific Aspects of the Environment to Children’s Outcomes
Traditional behavioral genetic studies do not pinpoint which aspects of the environment
are important, but do indicate that each child in a family should be considered separately,
rather than assessing families as a unitary whole. Thus far, much of the work in trying to
detect specific sources of nonshared environment has focused on differential parental treat-
ment. That is, researchers have examined parents’ distinct or differing behavior towards
each of their children. Most of this work has used siblings rather than twins to detect
differential treatment. For example, Dunn, Stocker, and Plomin (1990) found that older
siblings receiving less affection from their mothers than their younger siblings also dis-
played more internalizing problems (e.g., depression, social withdrawal) than did their
younger siblings. In addition, older siblings who were the recipients of more maternal
control demonstrated more internalizing and externalizing problems (e.g., aggressiveness,
delinquency) than their younger siblings.
Sibling studies such as this cannot, however, address the direction of effects. It is often
assumed that it is the parental behavior causing the differences in sibling behavior, but it
could be that the children’s behavior is in fact influencing parental behavior. In the exam-
ple outlined above, it might be more plausible that it is the children’s problem behaviors
driving the maternal differential treatment, rather than the maternal differential treatment
driving the children’s problem behavior. One specific mechanism whereby children may
be affecting their parents’ behavior is via their genetically influenced traits.
Thus, as links between parental differential treatment and children’s outcome have been
found, it has become necessary to disentangle possible genetic sources of these associations.
Because siblings differ genetically, relations between their environment and behavioral
outcomes may be due to their genetic differences rather than to the parental differential
treatment. Continuing the example above, it may be that genetic differences between sib-
lings in families were the root of both the maternal differential treatment and the differ-
ences observed in the siblings’ behavior problems. In order to study such a possibility,
family environment measures (such as parental treatment), as well as children’s outcome
measures, must both be included within a genetically sensitive design.
For the purposes of this review, the single study of younger children that has utilized
this approach will be presented (Deater-Deckard, 2000). Basic genetic analyses are univariate;
they decompose observed variance of a single measure into genetic and environmental
components. Bivariate genetic analysis focuses on the correlation between traits, decom-
posing this into its genetic and environmental components (see Figure 2.1), and can, for
example, tell us whether a link between parental treatment and children’s behavior is due
to the nonshared environmental processes that Dunn and colleagues (1990) indicated,
that is, differential parental treatment, or whether it is a common genetic component
linking parental treatment and adolescent adjustment.
In the preschool twin study described above (Deater-Deckard, 2000), several moderate
correlations emerged between parental behaviors and the children’s behavior problems.
For example, both parent report and observations of parental affect were associated with
parent report and observations of the children’s behavioral problems. Bivariate genetic
analyses were then conducted for these associations to determine the degree of genetic
versus environmental mediation. The pattern of results was clear. For parent-rated con-
duct problems, the lion’s share of associations was due to genetic mediation. This finding
suggests that genetically influenced traits of these children were being reflected not only in
their behavioral difficulties, but also in the treatment elicited from their parents. This was
in marked contrast to the results involving observations of child difficult behavior which
were primarily due to shared environmental processes, whereby similarity in parental treat-
ment was associated with similarity in sibling outcome.
Finally, a modest degree of nonshared environmental mediation was detected, in line
with a previous utilization of this methodology with an adolescent sample (Pike, McGuire,
Hetherington, Reiss, & Plomin, 1996). This modest amount of nonshared environmental
mediation in no way discounts the wider importance of the nonshared environment. Any
single bivariate association is a test for a single specific environmental process effective in
the development of children’s behavioral difficulties. It is sensible to believe that just as the
specification of genetic influence involves multiple genes each with a small effect (Plomin
& Rutter, 1998), the specification of environmental components of variance will be equally
complex, involving a multitude of different factors, each of small effect.
38 Alison Pike
Univariate genetic analysis Bivariate genetic analysis
Ga Es
Ga Es
En
En
Trait A Trait A Trait B
Figure 2.1 Univariate genetic analysis decomposes the variance of one trait into its genetic (Ga),
shared environmental (Es), and nonshared environmental (En) components. Bivariate genetic
analysis decomposes the covariance between two traits into its genetic (Ga), shared environmental
(Es), and nonshared environmental (En) components.
It should be noted that finding evidence of genetic mediation suggests that nongenetic
studies be interpreted with caution. Much of the developmental research relating parenting
to children’s adjustment is interpreted to mean that the parent’s behavior is causing the
child’s behavior. The genetic findings suggest that this is not always the case. Instead, it is
the children’s genes that are reflected in both the parent’s behavior and in the child’s
adjustment. In terms of process, it is quite plausible that a child’s genetic propensities that
lead to adjustment difficulties would also lead to displays of negativity from parents.
Socialization from a Behavioral Genetic Perspective
The seeming lack of communication between developmental psychologists (especially

socialization researchers) and developmental behavioral geneticists is troubling (Goldsmith,
1993; Wachs, 1993). This can, in some measure, be attributed to the necessarily different
methodologies employed by the two “camps.” Behavioral genetic designs require the re-
cruitment of quite large numbers of special families, often at the expense of more detailed
assessments. This also does not (readily) allow some forms of data collection such as the
assessment of peer relationships within the classroom context.
How can behavioral genetic findings such as those reviewed here inform socialization
research? Estimates of genetic and environmental effects provide a useful roadmap in terms
of where (and when) effective environmental factors are likely to occur. Finding differing
etiologies across time highlights the likely location of potent socializing agents at different
times during the life course. For example, as explained above, for intelligence shared envi-
ronmental factors play a role in early and middle childhood, however, by the time of
adolescence this effect has disappeared. I would argue, then, that familial factors should
have an impact in the early years. If, however, familial factors (e.g., SES) are associated
with IQ scores in late adolescence, behavioral genetic evidence suggests that this is likely to
be a genetically mediated association.
Recently, behavioral genetic findings have been incorporated into two rather far-reach-
ing theories concerning children’s socialization. The first was put forward by Scarr in her
presidential address to the Society for Research in Child Development in 1991 (Scarr,
1992). Scarr utilized behavioral genetic evidence to make the case that children’s experi-
ences are driven by their genetic propensities. That is, children are seen as active agents in
their own socialization, and this active selection and creation of environmental experiences
is genetically determined. Perhaps most controversially, Scarr made the claim that “aver-
age” parents are “good enough.” Due to the lack of shared environmental influence found
for most psychological traits, Scarr argued that within the species-normal range of environ-
ments, parents do not have a differential impact on their children’s development. This idea
runs counter to the traditional socialization theorists’ claim that parents are the key
socialization agents for young children, and Scarr’s theory created lively debate and criti-
cism (Baumrind, 1993, Jackson, 1993).
Scarr’s theory received much attention; however, she is not the only behavioral geneti-
cist to interpret lack of shared environmental influence as a lack of parental influence. For
example, in his book The Limits of Family Influence, Rowe (1994) argues along the same
lines, that a random allocation of children into families would not impact their develop-
mental trajectories. These two authors emphasize the genetic link between parents and
their children, but do not consider the impact of the nonshared environment. Firstly, a
lack of shared environment does not necessitate that families are unimportant for chil-
dren’s development; parents may have a profound impact on their children, impacting
each of their children in a unique, nonshared fashion. Secondly, although emphasizing the
role of genetics on behavior, the nonshared environment is also of substantial magnitude
for many domains, and these authors do not propose an alternative socialization agent for
this role.
In her recent, well-publicized book, The Nurture Assumption, Judith Harris (1998) pro-
poses that the peer group is this alternate socialization agent. Using behavioral genetic
evidence, parents are deemed to be unimportant in determining individual differences in
children’s personality. Instead, it is children’s genes that are responsible both for the way
that parents respond to their children, and for children’s personality characteristics. Ge-
netic factors explain only half of the variance of personality development. The other half is
due to environmental factors. As an alternative to parental environmental influence, Harris
proposes that children’s peers are the main source of these nonshared environmental influ-
ences. She argues that personality development is shaped through a process of peer imita-
tion and pressure that encourages the child to conform to group rules. It is this environmental
process that ultimately determines adult personality beyond hereditary influences.
What is not considered in Harris’ thesis is that peer group characteristics, like parenting,
might also be genetically influenced. That is, children are not randomly allocated to peer
groups. Genetic factors might also influence the peer context experienced by children. An
empirical test of this hypothesis measured adolescents’ peer-group preferences for college
40 Alison Pike
orientation, delinquency, and popularity (Iervolino et al., 2000). Substantial genetic influ-
ence emerged for adolescents’ self-reports of peer preference for college orientation and
delinquency, with the remaining variance accounted for by nonshared environmental in-
fluences. For peer preference for popularity, genetic influence was not important and nearly
all of the variance was due to nonshared environment. These results suggest that peers, at
least peer preferences, may also show genetic mediation, as is the case for parenting. It
remains to be seen, however, if these findings will also be true for younger children, or
whether peer-group characteristics, like intelligence, show shared environmental influence
at younger ages, this disappearing across development into adolescence.
Conclusion
Behavioral genetics has already made a sizeable contribution to many aspects of the social
development literature. Such studies indicate that genetic factors are not only important
for children’s “outcomes,” but also for “environmental” aspects such as parent–child inter-
actions. Recent work at the heart of nature and nurture is combining the best of traditional
socialization research with genetically sensitive designs. Emerging from such work are ex-
citing, if controversial, new theoretical approaches to children’s socialization.
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44 David F. Bjorklund & Anthony D. Pellegrini
Evolutionary Perspectives on Social

Development
David F. Bjorklund and Anthony D. Pellegrini
Evolutionary psychology is a relatively new discipline within psychology, growing out of

the sociobiology movement of the 1970s and coming into its own in the 1990s (Buss,
1995; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). However, developmental psychology had its origins in
evolutionary thinking at the turn of the twentieth century (see Charlesworth, 1992), and
many developmentalists, particularly those concerned with social development, have im-
plicitly or explicitly incorporated the concepts of evolution into their theories (e.g., Bowlby,
1969; Hinde, 1980). Thus, the examination of social development from the perspective of
the “new” discipline of evolutionary psychology should not involve a theoretical paradigm
shift, as it seems to have required in “adult” psychology.
In the sections below, we first describe briefly the conditions under which humans evolved,
and then introduce the basic concepts of evolutionary developmental psychology, taking
our examples from the arena of social development. We then examine the concept of
fitness, specifically as it relates to the development of social behavior. We next examine
several aspects of social development from an evolutionary perspective. In the final section,
we discuss briefly the benefits of an evolutionary perspective for social development.
Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness
Evolutionary psychologists propose that Homo sapiens’ unique intelligence (social and oth-
erwise) evolved to solve adaptive problems faced by our hominid ancestors in the environ-
ment of evolutionary adaptedness. (Hominids refers to the class of bipedal (upright walking)
animals that includes humans and our ancient ancestors.) During this time, which is usu-
ally conceived as spanning the Pleistocene period (from about 1.8 million years ago until
Evolutionary Perspectives 45
about 10,000 years before present), our ancestors lived as nomadic hunters and gatherers.
But our heritage and our cognitive and behavioral abilities extend further in the past.
Modern humans last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) about
5 to 7 million years ago. The earliest members of the hominid line were small-brained,
bipedal animals (Ardipithecus ramidus, and Australopithecus anamensis) who lived in Africa.
One group of australopithecines led to the Homo line, including Homo habilis, which gave
way to Homo ergaster (or Homo erectus). Although members of Homo erectus spread through-
out Europe and Asia about 1.7 million years ago, modern humans apparently evolved in
Africa, leaving about 100,000 years ago.
According to most paleoanthropologists, this new species replaced the aboriginal Homo
species they encountered (e.g., Neanderthals in Europe, Homo erectus in Asia), either by
killing or by out-competing them (Johanson & Edgar, 1996).
Based on analysis of the fossil and archeological records and examination of modern
hunter–gatherer societies (see Johanson & Edgar, 1996; Mithen, 1996), our ancestors over
the past 2 million years were surely a social species, likely living in groups of between 30
and 60 individuals. They made their living on the savannas of Africa gathering fruits, nuts,
vegetables, and tubers (most likely the work of women), scavenging food left over from the
kills of large predators, and hunting (most likely the work of men). For the first 4 or 5 years
of life, children were most likely cared for almost exclusively by their mothers (as is the case
in most mammals), although fathers likely provided protection and support in the form of
food and other tangible resources for their children and their children’s mothers. It is likely
that some males had multiple “wives,” whereas others had little or no access to females. In
other words, ancient humans (as modern humans) were likely a marginally polygynous
species, with males competing with one another for access to females, and females selecting
males who could provide resources for themselves and their offspring. Females probably
reached puberty in their late teens, with pregnancy following the cessation of nursing a
previous child (likely every 3 to 5 years). Infant and childhood mortality were surely high,
and, even for those who did make it to adulthood, life was relatively brief by contemporary
standards, with few people living past 40 years. It was under these conditions that the
modern human mind evolved.
Evolutionary Developmental Psychology
Evolutionary psychology takes the basic ideas developed by Charles Darwin (1859) and
updated through the twentieth century and applies them to human behavior. It proposes
that there is a true “human nature” – universal aspects of psychological functioning that
have evolved to solve relatively specific problems our ancestors faced in the environment
of evolutionary adaptedness. The central concept of Darwin’s theory is natural selection.
Darwin proposed that, in any generation, more offspring are born than will survive. Indi-
viduals vary in a host of features, and these features are heritable. Some of these features
afford a better fit with the local environment than others, and individuals possessing
these characteristics are more apt to survive, reproduce, and pass on these same features to
their offspring than individuals not possessing these features. In other words, heritable
variations in physical or psychological features of an individual interact with the environ-

ment, and, over many generations, change in frequency, resulting, eventually, in species-
wide traits in the population. Thus, through the process of natural selection, adaptive
changes in individuals, and eventually species, are brought about.
Evolutionary psychologists use natural selection to explain complex psychological func-
tioning (Buss, 1995; Daly & Wilson, 1988; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). However, evolu-
tionary psychologists have focused mainly on adults. This is reasonable, because it is adults
who do the reproducing, the sine qua non of Darwinian success. Yet, individuals must first
survive infancy and childhood before they can reproduce, and we believe that psychologi-
cal characteristics favorable to survival during the juvenile period are as, or more, impor-
tant to the organism as are characteristics of the adult. Along these lines, several researchers
have applied an explicitly developmental perspective to evolutionary thinking and formu-
lated the subfield of evolutionary developmental psychology (Bjorklund, 1997a; Bjorklund &
Pellegrini, 2000, 2002; Geary & Bjorklund, 2000), which is defined as “the study of the
genetic and ecological mechanisms that govern the development of social and cognitive
competencies common to all human beings and the epigenetic (gene–environment inter-
actions) processes that adapt these competencies to local conditions” (Geary & Bjorklund,
2000, p. 57). Evolutionary developmental psychology assumes that, not only are behaviors
and cognitions that characterize adults the product of selection pressures operating over
the course of evolution, but so are characteristics of children’s behaviors and minds. Evolu-
tionary developmental psychology is concerned not only with universals – patterns that
characterize all members of a species – but also with how individuals adapt their behavior
to their particular life circumstances. Below we will articulate what we see as some of the
concepts central to evolutionary developmental psychology, particularly as they are ap-
plied to social development.
Basic principles of evolutionary developmental psychology
1. Evolutionary developmental psychology involves the expression of evolved, epigenetic pro-

grams, as described by the developmental systems approach. Taking an evolutionary psycho-
logical approach requires that one make explicit one’s stance on the nature/nurture issue.
(In fact, we believe that taking a developmental perspective, of any type, also requires this.)
Most developmentalists, we believe, would concur that the issue is not “how much” of any
trait is due to nature and “how much” is due to nurture, but rather “how do nature and
nurture interact to produce a particular pattern of development.” But stating that biology
and environment, broadly defined, interact, in and of itself, advances the argument very
little. We must specify how biological and environmental factors interact. We believe that
the developmental systems approach (e.g., Gottlieb, 1991, 1998) provides the most appro-
priate model for describing the nature of this interaction.
Central to the developmental systems approach is the concept of epigenesis, which Gottlieb
(1991) defines as “the emergence of new structures and functions during the course of
development” (p. 7). New structures do not arise fully formed, but are the result of the
bidirectional relationship between all levels of biological and experiential factors, from the
genetic through the cultural. “Experience,” from this perspective, involves not only events
exogenous to the individual but also self-produced activity, such as the firing of a nerve
cell. Functioning at one level influences functioning at adjacent levels, with constant feed-
back between levels. This relationship can be expressed as follows:
genetic activity (DNA ⇔ RNA ⇔ proteins) ⇔ structural maturation ⇔ function,

activity.
From this viewpoint, there are no simple genetic or experiential causes of behavior; all
development is the product of epigenesis, with complex interactions occurring among
multiple levels.
Evolved psychological mechanisms can be thought of as genetically coded “messages”
that, following epigenetic rules, interact with the environment over time to produce behavior.
Because the experiences of each individual are unique, this suggests that there should be
substantial plasticity in development. Yet, there is much that is universal about the form
and function of members of a species, despite this plasticity. The reason for this is that
individuals inherit not only a species-typical genome, but also a species-typical environ-
ment, beginning with the prenatal environment. To the extent that individuals grow up in
environments similar to those of their ancestors, development should follow a species-
typical pattern.
Infants are not born as blank slates; evolution has prepared them to “expect” certain
types of environments and to process some information more readily than others. Yet, it is
the constant and bidirectional interaction between various levels of organization, which
changes over the course of development, that produces behavior.
2. There is need for an extended childhood to learn the complexities of human social commu-
nities. Central to the application of evolutionary thinking to human development is the
recognition that members of Homo sapiens have a life history in which they spend a dispro-
portionate amount of time as pre-reproductives. Clearly there are costs to postponing re-
production. Until relatively recently, many children died before ever reaching puberty.
From an evolutionary perspective, the benefits associated with an extended period of im-
maturity must have outweighed the costs. Those benefits can be seen in mastering the
complexities of a human social community. A number of theorists have proposed that the
single most potent pressure on human intellectual evolution was the need to cooperate and
compete with conspecifics (e.g., Humphrey, 1976). As hominid social groups became more
complex, individuals who could better understand their social world gained more of the
benefits in terms of available mates and resources and passed those characteristics along to
their offspring. The greater social complexity of hominid groups required a greater aware-
ness of ourselves and the needs and motivations of others so that we could better under-
stand, and perhaps manipulate, others. But there is much variability in human social life,
necessitating a flexible intelligence to master the vagaries of group living. This requires not
only a large brain, but also a long time to accomplish. It was the confluence of a large brain,
social complexity, and an extended juvenile period that set the stage for the modern hu-
man mind.
3. Many aspects of childhood serve to prepare the way for adulthood and were selected
over the course of evolution. Many sex differences in social and cognitive abilities are good
examples. Evolutionary psychologists have, like social psychologists, been interested in sex
differences. The reproductive goals of men and women are similar (i.e., to get their genes
into the next generation), but they are approached in different ways. This is because males
and females invest differently in their offspring, with females of most species, including
humans, investing more in their offspring than males. This differential investment in re-
productive and parenting effort is captured by Triver’s (1972) parental investment theory.
The potential consequences of any copulation are substantially greater for women than for
men. For women, conception can result in 9 months of pregnancy, and, until the recent
advent of baby formula, 3 to 4 years of nursing. Men, unlike the vast majority of males of
other mammalian species, do spend significant time caring for and interacting with their
offspring, but still, in all cultures observed, spend significantly less time in such endeavors
than women (see Geary, 2000). These basic differences in reproductive and parenting
effort should have served as selective pressures for the evolution of different mating and
childrearing strategies in men and women (Bjorklund & Shackelford, 1999). Although
one’s culture, a proximal mechanism, surely has a profound impact on such sex differ-
ences, evolved “strategies” are the distal mechanisms that interact with these differences in
all societies. But importantly, these differences do not arise fully formed at adolescence,
but develop gradually over childhood, with children adapting their gender-specific behavior
to the local norm, based on evolved predispositions.
Sex differences in children’s play provide good examples of precursors to (and thus
preparations for) adult sex differences (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2000). (See chapters by
Pellegrini and by Göncü, Patt, & Kouba, this volume, for more detailed discussions of
children’s play.) Boys and girls in all cultures, and indeed in many nonhuman mammalian
species (e.g., Smith, 1982), segregate themselves by sex when there are enough children in
the peer group to do so (Maccoby, 1998). One reason for this sex segregation is the way in
which boys and girls play. For example, as early as age 3, boys engage in more rigorous
rough-and-tumble play than girls (see Pellegrini & Smith, 1998), a pattern that is found in
many nonhuman primates (Smith, 1982). One function proposed for rough-and-tumble
play is preparation for adult fighting and hunting in males (Biben, 1998), based on the
similarity between such play and adult behaviors. Girls, on the other hand, engage in more
play parenting (i.e., doll play) than boys, a sex difference that is even found in some pri-
mates (Pryce, 1995). Girls’ play is less often centered around physically based dominance
relationships, a difference that has been viewed as an evolved tendency that relates to the
fact that females are the primary caretakers for their offspring (e.g., Biben, 1998; Geary,
2000).
Another robust sex difference is in physical aggression (Maccoby, 1988). Males engage
in more physical aggression than females in all cultures and at all ages, but the greatest
consequence of this sex difference is seen in adolescence and young adulthood (Daly &
Wilson, 1988). According to parental investment theory, the sex that invests more in off-
spring (females) is more selective in choosing a mate, and the sex that invests less in off-
spring (males) competes for access to the higher-investing sex. In humans, as in other
mammalian species, there is substantial fitness variance between the sexes. Most mamma-
lian females will find a mate, even if not a highly desirable one; in contrast, the fitness
variance is larger for mammalian males, with many males being totally excluded from
mating (Trivers, 1972). As a result, selection favored a male psychology that emphasized
competitive risk (Daly & Wilson, 1988). Such risk taking, and the violence that can ac-
company it, peaks in adolescence and young adulthood, when males are entering the re-
productive market. This is seen in deaths and injuries from automobile accidents as well as
being victims and perpetrators of homicide (National Center for Health Statistics, 1999).
The proposal that sex differences in children’s social behaviors serve as preparations for
adulthood and are based upon evolved epigenetic rules, does not minimize the role of
culture. These evolved “strategies” develop in interaction with children’s physical and so-
cial environment and can be viewed as biases that will lead children in the “right” direction
(i.e., a form of adult behavior that has, over many generations, been associated with repro-
ductive success). The strategies for complicated social behaviors that humans have evolved
possess a substantial degree of plasticity. But the universality of these behaviors and the fact
that many are also observed in nonhuman primates, suggest that they share a common
evolved mechanism that requires a prolonged developmental period for their eventual ex-
pression.
4. There have been different selection pressures on organisms at different times in ontogeny,
and some characteristics of infants and children were selected in evolution to serve an adaptive
function at that time in development and not to prepare them for later adulthood. Develop-
ment is understandably thought of as being progressive, with earlier, immature forms of
acting and thinking being replaced with later, more mature forms. Coupled with this rea-
sonable idea is the notion that childhood is a preparation for adulthood. Early experience
serves to organize the personality or the mind, setting the stage for later functioning. This,
too, is a wholly reasonable argument, one we advocated for aspects of children’s play above.
However, we believe that many features of infancy and childhood have been selected in
evolution to serve an adaptive function at that time in development only and not to pre-
pare the child for later life (Bjorklund, 1997b).
One area of social-cognitive development that may be a candidate for the adaptive value
of immaturity concerns young children’s abilities to estimate their competence on a wide
range of tasks. Young children are notorious overestimators of their own abilities. Pre-
school and early school-age children think they are smarter, stronger, and generally more
skilled than they really are (e.g., Bjorklund, Gaultney, & Green, 1993; Stipek, 1984).
More specific to the social domain, preschoolers overestimate their own toughness, or
dominance, in relation to the estimates of their peers (Sluckin & Smith, 1977). Bandura
(1989) has postulated that the confidence people have in their competence in a particular
domain affects which tasks they choose to perform and how long they persist at those tasks.
Thus, children who think they are skilled in a domain are likely to attempt more challeng-
ing tasks and stick at them longer than less optimistic children, and this, in turn, will
influence how much they learn.
One area of particular importance for social development is that of imitation. Observa-
tional learning is central to Bandura’s (1989) theory of social cognitive development, and
imitation is the best demonstration that observational learning has occurred. In research
with preschoolers, Bjorklund and his colleagues (1993) reported that children overesti-
mated their imitative attempts 56.9% of the time, believing that they were more compe-
tent in their imitative attempts than the actually were; in contrast, underestimation was
rare (5.1% of all occurrences). In a follow-up study, verbal ability was significantly related
to 3- and 4-year-old children’s meta-imitation (knowledge of their own imitation abili-
ties), with children who overestimated more having higher verbal abilities than children
who were more accurate at predicting their imitative attempts. The relation was reversed
but nonsignificant for 5 year olds. Bjorklund et al. suggested that young children’s imma-
ture metacognition permits them to imitate a broad range of behaviors without the knowl-
edge that their attempts are inadequate. Thus, bright young children will continue to try a
variety of different behaviors, unperturbed by the negative feedback that a more accurate
perception of their abilities would provide. The central message we wish to make here is
that many aspects of youth are adaptive for their own sake; they provide immediate rather
than deferred advantages, and they should be evaluated not for their future benefits but for
the function they serve children in the here-and-now.
5. Most, but not all, evolved psychological mechanisms are domain-specific in nature. Evolu-
tionary psychologists propose that what has evolved are domain-specific information-process-
ing programs, selected to deal with relatively specific types of problems that our ancestors
would have faced in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Rather than seeing the
human mind as consisting of a general-purpose processing mechanism that can be applied
to a wide range of problems, evolutionary psychologists see the mind as consisting of a set
of modules, each specialized to deal with a certain type of problem and relatively inde-
pendent from other modules (Buss, 1995; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). Within social psy-
chology, domain-specific abilities have been hypothesized for attachment, hierarchical power,
coalition groups, reciprocity, and mating (Bugental, 2000), as well as for theory of mind
and other forms of social cognition (Geary, 2001), which we will discuss below.
6. Evolved mechanisms are not always adaptive for contemporary people. Just because some
social, behavioral, or cognitive tendency was adaptive for our ancient ancestors does not
mean that it continues to be adaptive for modern humans. Our penchant for sweet and
fatty foods, highly adaptive in an environment when one could not be certain where the
next meal was coming from, may be maladaptive today in our world of plenty. With
respect to children, formal schooling represents a situation in which many of their evolved
tendencies do not fit well with the demands of modern society. From the perspective of
evolutionary psychology, much of what we teach children in school is “unnatural” in that
teaching involves tasks never encountered by our ancestors (e.g., Pellegrini & Bjorklund,
1997).
Reading and higher mathematics may be the best examples of skills our ancestors never
acquired, but the “unnaturalness” of school also extends to the social and behavioral realms.
For example, most modern schools’ emphasis on seat work and focusing attention for an
extended period of time, may conflict with children’s natural tendencies toward high ac-
tivity and exploration, particularly in boys. This can be seen in the high incidence of atten-
tion-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among school children in some countries today
(Jensen et al., 1997). Several researchers have suggested that many children diagnosed with
ADHD may simply be highly active and playful youngsters who have a difficult time
adjusting to the demands of school (Panksepp, 1998). Jensen et al. (1997) have suggested
that the high levels of motor activity and constant switching of attentional focus in chil-
dren diagnosed with ADHD may have been adaptive to our ancestors (and may still be in
some environments today). Unfortunately, such behavior is in conflict with “proper” school
conduct and is often treated with psychostimulant drugs that reduce hyperactivity, but
may also reduce the desire and opportunity to play, which may, in turn, reduce neural and
behavioral plasticity.
Fitness and the Development of Social Behavior
Although social developmentalists are concerned with a wide range of behaviors, most can
be divided into two broad categories: prosocial and antagonistic, the latter including ag-
gression and overt competition. Evolutionary psychologists have similarly been concerned
with these two broad classes of social behavior, attempting to determine how these behaviors
serve to benefit the reproductive success of those who engaged in them.
Any behavior has both costs and benefits to an individual, and if a behavior is associated
with greater benefits relative to costs within a population, over many generations, it will be
favored by natural selection. From this perspective, it is easy to see why aggression would
be adaptive, especially when it is associated with low risks. When aggression “works” to
secure mates or other resources more often than it fails, natural selection will favor those
individuals who use it effectively. This does not make aggression inevitable; natural selec-
tion would not favor cases where costs associated with aggression outweighed benefits, for
example, incurring a debilitating injury for the sake of securing a mate. But it does help us
understand why aggression is so difficult to eliminate, especially in environments where
resources go to the bold rather than the meek.
Although it is relatively easy to explain why aggression, in some contexts, should have
benefits and be favored by natural selection, it is more difficult to explain the prevalence of
prosocial behavior, particularly altruism, from an evolutionary perspective. Individuals who
help others are incurring an immediate cost and no obvious immediate benefit. Given that
modern evolutionary theory sees the individual, and not the group or the species, as the
unit of selection, why should altruism flourish?
An initial explanation for altruism was provided by Hamilton’s (1964) theory of inclu-
sive fitness. Following Darwin, reproductive success is determined by how many children
and grandchildren one produces. Inclusive fitness takes a gene’s-eye view of evolution,
however, and proposes that fitness is defined by how many copies of one’s genes make it
into future generations. For instance, a person enhances his or her inclusive fitness by
fostering the success of genetic relatives such as siblings, children, grandchildren, nieces,
and nephews.
But children (and adults) also behave prosocially with nonkin. Our ancestors likely lived
in small groups that consisted of a high proportion of kin, but also many nonkin (Bowlby,
1969). As a result, groups comprised individuals with whom they shared not only genes,
but also a social history as well as a social future, making cooperative relations between
both kin and nonkin adaptive.
That social behavior tends to be cooperative among social actors who are familiar with
each other and meet repeatedly, has been expressed in the theory of reciprocal altruism
(Trivers, 1971). Costs associated with prosocial behaviors will be minimized, quid pro quo,
by others reciprocating the good turn. Similarly, aggressive acts will be reciprocated. In
this way, costs associated with cheating outweigh benefits when dealing with individuals in
a stable social group. When actors are not related or familiar with each other, and when
there is little chance of future interactions, individuals act in their own immediate self-
interest. Such circumstances would reward deception and discount cooperation and altru-
ism. In short, cooperating with kin and familiar conspecifics is favored by natural selection,
because benefits outweigh costs. By extension, the ability to detect “deception” and “cheat-
ing” are important cognitive skills that probably evolved in response to such pressures
(Humphrey, 1976).
Topics in Social Development from an Evolutionary Perspective
Evolutionary psychologists believe that all aspects of human functioning can be (perhaps
should be) explained from the perspective of natural selection. There are some domains
within social development, however, that have been analyzed extensively in terms of evolu-
tionary theory, and we will describe briefly research for several of these topics.
Theory of mind
Perhaps the single most basic ability underlying human social interaction is the under-
standing that other people have knowledge and desires that may be different from one’s
own. Theory of mind has been used to reflect this knowledge. Most children develop an
adult-like understanding of mind by 4 years of age (Perner, Leekam, & Wimmer, 1987;
Wellman, 1990) as reflected by performance on false-belief tasks. In one version of the task,
children are shown a box of candy. They are then asked what is inside the box, and they say
“candy.” The box is then opened and, instead of candy, they see that the box contains
pencils. The pencils are then returned to the box and they are asked what their friend, who
has not seen the pencils, will think is in the box. Most children 3.5 years of age and younger
say “pencils,” believing that their friend will know what they know. Interestingly, when
asked what they originally thought was in the box, they say “pencils,” seemingly forgetting
their response from just seconds before. By age 4, most children answer these questions the
way adults do.
Consistent with the domain-specificity perspective of evolutionary psychology, several
researchers have proposed that theory of mind consists of a series of highly specialized
modules that develop over the preschool years (Baron-Cohen, 1995; Leslie, 1994). For
example, Baron-Cohen (1995) has proposed four separate interacting modules involved in
theory of mind. For instance, the intentionality detector (ID) module permits one to infer
that a moving object may have some intent toward him or her (e.g., it may bite me or
groom me). The eye-direction detector (EDD) module serves to interpret eye gazes (if an
organism’s eyes are looking at something, that organism then sees that thing). These mod-
ules develop in infancy (by 9 months of age). The shared-attention mechanisms (SAM)
module involves three-way interactions between the child, another person, and an object,
so that if person A and person B are both looking at object C, they both see the same thing.
This develops by about 18 months. The theory of mind module (TOMM) reflects “adult”
understanding, and develops around 4 years of age.
The last two modules may be unique to humans. Although field research with chimpan-
zees indicate that they engage in some acts of social deception and cooperation, they may
accomplish these feats without having a theory of mind, but relying instead on a well-
developed learning ability that permits them to adjust their behavior as a consequence of
previous interactions with other troop members (e.g., Povinelli & Eddy, 1996). In fact,
some well-controlled laboratory research indicates that chimpanzees may not even possess
the EDD module, for they frequently fail to recognize that an individual who is looking at
an object possesses information that a blindfolded individual does not (Povinelli & Eddy,
1996). (But see research using a more natural competitive-food situation with conspecifics,
Hare, Call, Agentta, & Tomasello, 2000; Hare, Call, & Tomasello 2001). Moreover, there
is evidence that the principal deficit in high-functioning autistic people is related to theory
of mind. Numerous studies have shown that high-functioning autistic children and adults
are able to solve nonsocial problems relatively easily (comparable to an IQ-matched
nonautistic sample), but more frequently fail similar problems presented in a social context
(such as false-belief tasks) (see Baron-Cohen, 1995 for a review). What these individuals
lack, presumably, are the SAM and TOMM modules, making the social lives of these
people very different from those of others.
Although theory of mind develops at about the same time in most children around the
world (e.g., Avis & Harris, 1991), the rate of its development is related to aspects of chil-
dren’s social environment. For example, both the number of adults and the number of
older peers that a preschool child interacts with daily are positively related to their scores
on false-belief tasks (Lewis et al., 1996). Similarly, children from larger families tend to
pass false-belief tasks earlier than children from smaller families (Perner, Ruffman, &
Leekam, 1994), although more recent research suggests that it is not family size, per se,
that is so important but that the critical factor is having older siblings (Ruffman, Perner,
Naito, Parkin, & Clements, 1998). There may be many reasons for the importance of
interacting with older siblings, peers, and adults for theory-of-mind development. Among
some that have been suggested are greater opportunities for discussions of mental states,
managing social conflict, pretend play, and reasoning about social issues (e.g., Lewis et al.,
1996; Ruffman et al., 1998; Smith, 1998). For example, Ruffman et al. argued that having
older siblings stimulates fantasy play, which helps children represent “counterfactual states
of affairs,” a skill necessary for solving false-belief tasks. Cummins (1998) suggested an
explanation based on dominance theory. Siblings are always competing for resources, with
older sibs typically having the advantage because of their greater size and mental abilities.
Younger children would be motivated to develop whatever latent talents they have to aid
them in their social competition with their older sibs, and developing an understanding of
the mind of your chief competitor sooner rather than later would certainly be to the younger
sib’s advantage. A similar argument can be made for interacting with older peers.
Although human children are clearly prepared to develop a theory of mind, something
that seems not to be the case for any other species, they require a supportive social environ-
ment for these abilities to develop. Smith (1998) proposed a “theory-of-mind-acquisition-
support system” analogous to what Bruner (1983) proposed for language acquisition. At
this point in our evolutionary history, it seems that any “normal” human social environ-
ment will suffice. However, individual differences in children’s social experiences, particu-
larly over the infancy and early childhood years, may lead not only to differential rates of
theory-of-mind development, but perhaps to different types of theory of mind, conducive
to the type of environment (e.g., supportive, nonsupportive) in which children develop.
Alternative mating strategies in response to different life circumstances
One misconception many people have of evolutionary accounts of social behavior is that if
some behavior “has evolved,” it must be rigidly organized and not susceptible to modifica-
tion. In actuality, evolutionary accounts propose that infants come into the world with
predispositions to process certain classes of information in certain ways, but that different
patterns of behaviors and thought will develop depending on a child’s developmental his-
tory. Different patterns, however, should be generally predictable, based on what types of
behaviors should produce (or should have produced in our environment of evolutionary
adaptedness) adaptive outcomes.
Such differential patterns have been predicted and observed for adolescent behavior as a
function of the nature or degree of parental support over childhood. For example, al-
though secure attachment, with attentive parents who are responsive to infants’ and young
children’s signals of physical and social needs, is viewed as optimal, it may not be the best-
suited style of attachment in all environments. Different attachment styles may reflect
different adaptive solutions to different environments, and insecure attachments, for ex-
ample, should not automatically be viewed as less optimal than secure attachments. For
instance, in comparison to children from low-stress, father-present homes, children from
homes characterized by high stress, marital discord/father absence, inadequate resources,
and harsh and inconsistent childcare, attain puberty earlier, form short-term and unstable
pair bonds, invest relatively little in their own offspring, and tend to be noncompliant and
aggressive (especially boys) (e.g., Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991; Kim, Smith, &
Palermiti, 1997). Given the unpredictability of resources, this pattern of early maturation
and adolescent promiscuity may lead to the greatest inclusive fitness and be the more
prudent strategy than delaying reproduction and investing more in fewer offspring. The
latter strategy may be most adaptive for children growing up in low-stress and stable envi-
ronments. Thus, depending on the availability of resources, which is related to parental
investment and spousal harmony, different patterns of socialization occur that result in
differential investment in the next generation.
The effects of home environment on reproductive maturity tend to be greater in females
(e.g., Kim et al., 1997), which would be expected given the greater investment in any
offspring for females than for males. (Recall our earlier discussion of parental investment
theory.) Other research, however, indicates that fast-developing girls from high-stress homes
also had mothers who reached puberty early, indicating a possible genetic cause (Moffitt,
Caspi, Belsky, & Silva, 1992). One interpretation of these findings is that, over many
generations, maturation rates may be selected so that they are compatible (and confounded)
with general aspects of the environment. For example, the mothers of fast-maturing daugh-
ters, too, grew up in unstable environments, making it difficult to untangle genetic from
the environmental causation. Thus, we do not see evidence for the inheritance of matura-
tion rate to be necessarily contradictory to an evolutionary psychological explanation for
the phenomenon under study. Future research is needed, however, to determine how these
factors interact.
Interacting with peers
Much research in social development has focused on peer interactions, and rightfully so,
given the significant role that peers play in children’s lives and in shaping their develop-
ment. Harris (1995) has proposed that humans, and other primates, have inherited four
evolutionary adaptations that underlie much of our social interactions with peers: (1) group
affiliation and in-group favoritism; (2) fear of, and/or hostility toward, strangers; (3) within-
group status seeking; and (4) the seeking and establishment of close dyadic relationships.
Although these adaptations are found early in life, they nonetheless develop over child-
hood. Harris (1995), in her group socialization theory, further proposes that the peer group
plays the critical role in socialization, with the effects of parents and teachers being filtered
through the peer group. Although we do not mean to minimize the role that parents play in
children’s development (see Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein, 2000),
research has consistently documented the waning influence of the home environment on
personality and intellectual development over the course of childhood (e.g., McCartney,
Harris, & Bernieri, 1990). This makes good evolutionary sense, in that Harris proposes
that, as they grow older, children will operate outside the home and compete and cooperate
with agemates of their group. Becoming too well adapted to the home and too agreeable to
the demands of one’s parents is not (usually) conducive to one’s inclusive fitness.
A thorough examination of peer relations from an evolutionary perspective is beyond
the scope of this chapter. We will discuss briefly, however, the role of social dominance in
children’s groups.
Dominant individuals within a group have greater access to limited resources (be it
food, mates, or toys in the case of children) and will use a variety of techniques to attain
and maintain their preferred status (see Hawley, 1999). Dominance is usually expressed in
terms of a hierarchy with transitive relations among individuals (e.g., if A is dominant
relative to B and B is dominant relative to C, then A is dominant relative to C). Domi-
nance in children’s groups is often expressed in terms of aggressive behaviors, with more
aggressive children being dominant relative to less aggressive ones (e.g., Vaughn & Waters,
1981). However, cooperative and other prosocial behaviors may also characterize high-
status (i.e., dominant) children, depending on the context. In both children (e.g., Pellegrini
& Bartini, 2001) and chimpanzees (e.g., de Waal, 1982), cooperative and reconciliatory
strategies are used in situations where the dominant individual needs his or her subordi-
nates and the subordinates are free to leave the group. That dominance includes both
affiliation and agonistic behaviors is consistent with findings from both the period of early
childhood and early adolescence, where dominance is positively and significantly corre-
lated with popularity (Pellegrini & Bartini, 2001).
Dominance hierarchies serve to reduce antagonism within the group, distribute scarce
resources, and focus division of labor. They are found at all ages in which children interact
in groups, beginning during the toddler years (see Hawley, 1999). In the initial stages of
group formation, children (particularly boys) attempt to establish leadership and gain ac-
cess to resources via aggression (Strayer & Noel, 1986). Once dominance hierarchies are
established, rates of aggression decrease and leaders use prosocial and cooperative strategies
more frequently. This suggests that dominant children have a varied behavioral repertoire,
which includes both cooperative and prosocial strategies as well as aggressive strategies.
The data for both childhood and early adolescence suggests that in the initial phases of
group formation dominant youngsters initially use aggression in effective and Machiavel-
lian ways (e.g., to help friends) rather than indiscriminately and reactively. After this sort
of dominance exhibition, the “winners” may use more cooperative and reconciliatory strat-
egies. In this way “defeated” individuals” can be integrated into the alpha individual’s
group of possible allies (deWaal, 1982).
Cummins (1998) has argued that social reasoning grew out of the need to negotiate
dominance hierarchies. The realities of life in a complex social group make dominance
hierarchies necessary (at least in the absence of codified laws and police enforcement). The
tendency to affiliate is strong and emerges early in childhood, and patterns of social domi-
nance seem to be a necessary dimension of such affiliations. Children are well prepared for
social relations, based both on inherited evolutionary adaptations and their species-typical
experiences as infants. They require no formal instruction from adults to form groups and
seem intuitively to understand and to learn quickly the reality of dominance hierarchies
and how to live within them.
Evolution and Social Development
One cannot consider “human nature” independent of the social world in which people live
and develop. Evolutionary psychology assumes that the human mind has been prepared by
natural selection, operating over geological time, for life in a human group. But social
complexity is not limited to adult interactions, it also characterizes the interactions of
children. Moreover, because of the diversity of environments in which humans live, the
complicated and often shifting nature of social alliances, and the need to both compete
and cooperate with kin, familiar nonkin, and strangers, humans need a long apprentice-
ship to master the ways of their social world. Children, as well as adults, have been pre-
pared by evolution to navigate these often stormy social waters. An evolutionary
developmental perspective provides a broader framework (a “metatheory”) for understanding
children’s social behaviors and permits us to ask new questions and to see development
from a different vantage point. It also may provide insights to some contemporary social
issues such as teenage pregnancy, bullying in schools, sibling rivalry, child abuse, and par-
ent–child conflict, among others. Adopting evolutionary theory does not “reduce” hu-
mans to being “mere animals,” but rather allows us to view our kind from a broader
perspective and to gain a better appreciation for what it means to be human.
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60 Sara Harkness
Culture and Social Development:

Explanations and Evidence
Sara Harkness
For the human species, adaptability has been the key to success in a wide variety of differ-
ent ecologies. From the icy coasts and plains of the arctic to the jungles and savannahs of
the equator, we encounter families and communities of people living recognizably human,
yet strikingly different, lifestyles. Nowhere is this plasticity more evident than in social
development, as children grow and learn to be members of a myriad of different culturally
organized milieux. How to explain the ways that culture shapes children’s social develop-
ment has been a central task of social anthropology, and more recently social and develop-
mental psychology. This chapter will review selected frameworks for understanding how
culture affects children’s social development from early through middle childhood. Begin-
ning with anthropological formulations of the early twentieth century, we will trace the
historical progression of explanatory frameworks, including those that have emerged more
recently within psychology. Since the measure of a theory’s adequacy is its usefulness for
understanding the reality it addresses, we will also consider the kinds of evidence associ-
ated with each model.
“Patterns of Culture”: The Role of Childhood Socialization
Although anthropological studies of other, “primitive” cultures traditionally included chap-

ters on family life including ceremonies related to birth and various developmental transi-
tions, recognition of children’s social development as adaptation to the culturally structured
environment is first evident in the writings of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, begin-
ning in the 1920s. As Benedict wrote in her seminal work Patterns of Culture, first pub-
lished in 1934:
Culture and Social Development 61
The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and
standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the
customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour. By the time he can talk, he
is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its
activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.
Every child that is born into his group will share them with him, and no child born into one
on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandth part. There is no social
problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand than this of the role of custom. Until
we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must
remain unintelligible (Benedict, 1934/1959, pp. 2–3).
By “custom,” Benedict and Mead meant the practices of childcare that were part of the
everyday fabric of life, not just the ceremonial events that had heretofore been the primary
focus of anthropological research. In describing daily routines of 3 year olds in the Pacific
society of Manus, Mead evokes the image of a morning outing in heavy dugout canoes:
Early in the morning the village is alive with canoes in which the elders sit sedately on the
centre platforms while small children of three punt the canoes which are three or four times as
long as the children are tall. At first glance this procession looks like either the crudest sort of
display of adult prestige or a particularly conspicuous form of child labour. The father sits in
casual state, a man of five feet nine or ten, weighing a hundred and fifty pounds. The canoe is
long and heavy, dug out of a solid log; the unwieldy outrigger makes it difficult to steer. At
the end of the long craft, perched precariously on the thin gunwales, his tiny brown feet
curved tensely to keep his hold, stands a small brown baby, manfully straining at the six foot
punt in his hands. He is so small that he looks more like an unobtrusive stern ornament than
like the pilot of the lumbering craft. Slowly, with a great display of energy but not too much
actual progress, the canoe moves through the village, among other canoes similarly manned
by the merest tots. But this is neither child labour nor idle prestige hunting on the part of the
parents. It is part of the whole system by which a child is encouraged to do his physical best
(Mead, 1930/1966, p. 29).
Activities such as a daily outing with father in the family canoe, sleeping arrangements for
the young child, and the organization of dinner were all customs that, in Mead and Ben-
edict’s thinking, were the bearers of cultural “messages” which the child would learn over
and over in multiple contexts, distilling from these experiences the essence of what it meant
to be a good member of his or her society. As Benedict pointed out in her analysis of
Japanese culture and personality, written for the US government during World War II,
these customs need not necessarily seem consistent over the lifespan. For example, she
noted that although Japanese adults were expected to subordinate their own wishes for the
good of the group, Japanese infants were highly indulged (Benedict, 1946). In this regard,
the work of Mead and Benedict foreshadowed more recent recognition that what appear to
be the “same” parenting practices may have different meanings and therefore different
developmental consequences in varying cultural contexts. Mead and Benedict also pres-
aged current research on culture and temperament in their recognition that the particular
kinds of personal qualities encouraged by a given culture might not fit equally comfortably
for all individuals. Mead proposed that “an individual whose temperament was incompat-
ible with the type (or types) emphasized in the culture in which he was born and reared
62 Sara Harkness
would be at a disadvantage – a disadvantage that was systematic and predictable for that
culture” (Mead, 1972, p. 219); and Benedict (1934) went so far as to suggest that mental
illness itself might be an extreme example of misfit between the individual and the de-
mands of the cultural milieu.
In retrospect, the work of Mead and Benedict seems surprisingly modern, although
some aspects of their theoretical approach were not fully developed. The “customs” they
described constituted the informal education through which the lessons of the culture
were implicitly taught and equally implicitly learned. Both parents and children were seen
as active participants in this process, and individual differences among children and their
families were documented along with description of the larger cultural patterns. The “pat-
terns of culture” they proposed, in which certain themes were seen as general organizing
principles of whole societies, resonate with the observation of “thematicity” in cultural
models across a wide range of domains, as noted by today’s cognitive anthropologists (Quinn
& Holland, 1987). In contrast, explanations of culture and children’s social development
that dominated anthropology during the “culture and personality” era of the 1940s, 1950s,
and 1960s, based largely on either Freudian psychology or social learning theory, now
seem outdated. Nevertheless, this work led to some important advances in understanding
of the relationships between culture and individual development.
“Culture and Personality”: Monocultural and Cross-cultural Studies
Whereas Benedict introduced the idea of “patterns of culture” and Mead showed how
children’s life and development varied with the larger ethos of the parent society, anthro-
pologists of the “culture and personality” school that followed (although there was some
historical overlap) were concerned with finding psychological explanations for cultural
variability. We should note that this work was focused not on understanding why child-
hood socialization practices vary across cultures, but rather how such practices might lead
to culturally shared differences in adult personality and beliefs. Following traditional an-
thropological methods, much of this work was based on field research in a single society.
Thus, Spiro (1953) suggested that beliefs in ghosts among the people of Ifaluk, a Pacific
atoll, could be explained as the result of certain childhood experiences such as a daily cold-
water bath and the abrupt transition from indulged infancy to relatively neglected
toddlerhood, following the birth of the next child. Such experiences, Spiro hypothesized,
might lead the child to “develop the hypothesis that their world is threatening and, there-
fore, predispose them to believe in these threatening ghosts” (p. 245). Although intrigu-
ing, such explanations tended to lose their persuasiveness when the relationship between
particular childhood socialization practices and cultural belief systems was examined in
other contexts, where exceptions often proved the rule. For example, many traditional
societies, including those of sub-Saharan Africa, are characterized by an abrupt transition
from infancy to toddlerhood, yet they do not have similar beliefs in the pervasive presence
of ghosts as described for the Ifaluk (Harkness & Super, 1991).
The logical solution to this methodological problem was to seek wider samples of cul-
tures with which to test relationships between childhood socialization practices and other
aspects of the adult culture. Since individual anthropologists could not carry out fieldwork
in more than a handful of cultures at best, it became necessary to rely on the pooled knowl-
edge acquired over years of research by many investigators. The Human Relations Area
Files (HRAF) provided such a resource by making available a vast archive of ethnographic
information on over 200 societies, coded paragraph by paragraph into some 700 categories
so that investigators interested in any particular topic could find the relevant information
without having to search through the entire original document. There were complications,
of course. Ethnographies were individual works whose content was dictated by the inter-
ests of the investigators and although there was a standard template of ethnographic topics,
information on any given one might be scanty or altogether absent. Samples of cultures
could not be drawn completely randomly around the world because relationships that held
in one cultural area (for example, the Pacific islands) might not work the same way in other
areas. Nevertheless, cross-cultural studies of childhood socialization using the HRAF pro-
vided some valuable new insights into the ways that culture and children’s social develop-
ment are linked (Whiting, 1976).
Notable in this literature is Barry, Child, and Bacon’s (1959) analysis of the relation-
ships between subsistence type and childhood socialization practices. Ethnographic studies
of simple agricultural or peasant societies had repeatedly found that children were social-
ized for obedience and conformity to the rules of their society as mandated by elders. This
observation seemed to support a general social evolutionary perspective in which egalitari-
anism and democracy gradually supercede more ancient authoritarian regimes. Research
among technologically simpler and evolutionarily older cultures of hunter-gatherers such
as the Kung San of the Kalahari, however, presented a rather different picture, in which
parents were not particularly authoritarian and children were not especially industrious or
obedient.
Barry, Child, and Bacon hypothesized that there is a functional relationship between
particular kinds of societies as characterized by their mode of subsistence and the ways that
children are socialized. Specifically, they suggested that in farming societies where “food
accumulation” is necessary to tide the family over from one growing season to the next,
children would be socialized to be responsible and obedient, to defer to the better judg-
ment of their elders. In contrast, hunting and gathering societies in which food must be
found on a daily basis would need individuals who could exercise initiative and imagina-
tion in the hunt or the search for wild vegetables; in such societies, the investigators sug-
gested, children would be socialized toward achievement, self-reliance, and independence.
The hypothesized relationships were found to be so reliable across a worldwide sample of
cultures that the authors concluded that knowledge of the economy alone would be suffi-
cient for predicting any given society’s relative emphasis on socialization for compliance or
assertiveness.
Much has been written about the inadequacies of both the “culture and personality”
school and cross-cultural studies of that era (see Harkness, 1992), but this research left a
vitally important legacy in the form of three principles. First, it established the fact that
different parts of a culture are systematically linked, even though the mechanisms of that
linkage may not be reducible to any single explanation. Second and more specifically, this
research showed that there are consistent relationships between childhood socialization
and the socioeconomic organization of the wider culture. Finally, research across a wide
64 Sara Harkness
variety of cultures in different parts of the world also established the fact that features of
childrearing, like linguistic features, can be essentially mapped onto different culture areas.
Thus, armed with knowledge of both the way of life of the larger community and its place
on a map of world cultures, today’s researchers of culture and child development can
approach any given new group with certain well-founded expectations about how children
are likely to be brought up and how these patterns both support and recreate the parental
culture.
Culture as a “Provider of Settings” for Children’s Social

Development: Multi-Site Ethnographic Studies
As Barry, Child, and Bacon’s study illustrates, cross-cultural studies of culture and child-
hood socialization shed light on both the ways that culture shapes child development and
how such development forms the basis for adult functioning. Further research, especially
the work of John and Beatrice Whiting and their associates, produced a veritable harvest of
new knowledge about children’s social development in cultures around the world, includ-
ing the home culture of the researchers. The explanatory framework for this research,
known simply as the “Whiting model” after its originator John W. M. Whiting, posited
that children’s environments of learning and development are determined largely by the
“maintenance systems” of their cultures such as social and political organization and prin-
cipal means of subsistence. Mediating between the larger society and the child’s own envi-
ronment are parents’ daily routines including women’s workload (Whiting, 1977). Children,
according to this view, are assigned to settings of socialization that stem naturally and
inevitably from the necessities of their parents’ daily lives as well as the cultural beliefs and
values that permeate them.
This explanatory framework, first set out in the Six Culture Study (Whiting & Whiting,
1975) and further elaborated in B. Whiting and Carolyn Edwards’ analysis of “children of
different worlds” (Whiting & Edwards, 1988), guided analysis of ethnographic and psy-
chosocial data collected using similar sampling and methods. Ultimately, the material on
socialization and behavior of children in the first decade of life included a worldwide sam-
pling of societies including five different ethnic groups in Kenya as well as one from Libe-
ria, two communities in India, and sites in Mexico, the Philippines, Okinawa, and the
United States. With indepth observations of children’s social behavior with their parents,
siblings, and others in these varied cultural settings, the researchers were able to analyze not
only cultural differences among samples but also behavioral typologies related to culture,
age, and gender.
Whiting and Edwards’ analysis of mother and father involvement illustrates these fea-
tures. Observations made at many different times of day show that in all cultures, children
were with their mothers two to four times more frequently than with their fathers, and that
children aged 6 to 10 were less frequently in the company of their mothers than younger
children. In contrast, boys’ time with their fathers increased with age in those cultures
(particularly the Kenyan and Indian communities) where sons were expected to help out
with male tasks such as cattle herding. Fathers’ time with children seems to be mediated by
several factors, among which the spousal relationship is particularly important. As Whiting
and Edwards explain:
The norms and rules pertaining to intimacy between husband and wife and their division of
labor influence young children’s contact with parents. In all our samples mothers have the
primary responsibility for infant care, but the amount of paternal involvement varies widely.
For example, in the Six Culture communities, participation of fathers in childcare is lowest in
Khalapur (India) and Nyansongo (Kenya); many of these fathers actually sleep in different
buildings from their wives and young children. Fathers are most involved with lap children
[infants] and knee children [toddlers] in Tarong (Philippines) and Juxtlahuaca (Mexico),
societies where fathers share a bed with their wives and children, and in Taira (Okinawa),
where all the members of the household sleep side by side wrapped in their quilts (Whiting &
Edwards, 1988, p. 62).
Sleeping arrangements such as those described above are important not only in terms of
the actual opportunities for father–child contact they provide, but also because they index
social relationships among various family members. The Kenyan samples, in which father
involvement in care of young children was judged lowest, are typical of polygynous sub-
Saharan societies in which marriages are arranged and the husband takes turns attending to
each of his wives. In these societies, there is a strong division of social roles between men
and women, and men are excluded from childbirth (except in emergencies) and prohibited
from seeing their newborns for up to a month (Harkness & Super, 1991). The Rajputs of
Khalapur, as described by Minturn (1993) in a later monograph, also construct very differ-
ent worlds for men and women, in which husbands and wives have few opportunities for
intimacy in the multigenerational extended family households. In contrast, fathers in more
egalitarian societies with nuclear family households and greater sharing and intimacy be-
tween spouses are more involved in the care of young children. Father presence, as opposed
to father involvement, however, is influenced by others factors such as the nature and
location of fathers’ work. U.S. fathers in the cross-cultural samples were generally em-
ployed outside the home, in contrast to the Kenyan fathers whose work was tied to their
homesteads. In a comparison of these two groups of fathers, Harkness and Super (1992)
found that fathers in these two widely differing settings were actually present in the lives of
their young children about the same amount of time.
Mothers’ behavior with their children, in Whiting and Edwards’ analysis, was also shown
to reflect the culturally organized reality of their own lives, which the authors defined in both
pragmatic and symbolic terms. On the pragmatic side, women’s workload, including such
aspects as average family size and help with childcare in addition to the nature and amount of
women’s work, was found to be a powerful predictor of maternal behavior across cultures.
On the symbolic side were mothers’ cultural beliefs about the nature of the child and the
roles of parents, or “parental ethnotheories” as Harkness and Super (1996) have called them.
For example, Whiting and Edwards contrasted the fatalistic view of Indian parents that a
child’s destiny is “written on his brow” with the belief of the Orchard Town mothers that
“their infant was a bundle of potentialities and that it was the task of the mother to assess
these potentialities and to direct the training of the child so as to maximize them” (p. 91).
Whiting and Edwards predicted that cultural variability in mothers’ social behavior with
their children would reflect the differences in both the pragmatic and symbolic domains.
66 Sara Harkness
Systematic observations of mothers and children across the Six Culture samples showed
that maternal social behavior could be described in terms of the relative proportions of
four basic types of behavior: nurturance (including actual caretaking as well as giving at-
tention and emotional support); training (including teaching and assigning chores); con-
trolling behavior (dominance intended to correct undesirable behavior); and sociability
(including friendly conversation and physical affection). Three distinct maternal styles
were evident.
The first, the “training mother,” was found in all the sub-Saharan groups. These moth-
ers, who labored hard on their farms and homesteads in addition to raising large families,
taught their children early to be helpful and responsible. The second profile, the “control-
ling mother,” was found in the two Indian samples as well as Mexico, Okinawa, and the
Philippines. In these societies, men were the farmers whereas mothers provided support in
the form of food preparation and housekeeping. Children were less needed to help out
with basic economic activities although they were expected to be helpful when asked. On
the other hand, children could also be a nuisance by virtue of their constant demands for
attention and care, especially in the north Indian samples in which women were confined
to their courtyards by the custom of purdah. Finally, the “sociable mother” profile was
found only in the Orchard Town sample. Although controlling behavior was also high
among these mothers, the addition of frequent social behavior with children made them
distinctive. This behavioral profile is explained in terms of cultural beliefs – the desire to
support children’s individual development by teaching them from an early age – but also
the social isolation of the mothers themselves. As Whiting and Edwards noted, these mothers
were by far the most residentially isolated of all the samples. Lacking the company of other
adults, the Orchard Town mothers turned to their children for companionship.
Children’s behavior toward their mothers is shown by Whiting and Edwards to be the
reciprocal of mothers’ behavior toward them. Corresponding to the four most frequent
maternal behaviors were a predictable set of child behaviors: maternal nurturance elicited
children’s dependent behavior; obedience or cooperation was the reciprocal of mothers’
training behavior; dominance and aggression appeared (although not frequently) in re-
sponse to mothers’ controlling behavior; and mothers’ sociability was matched by child
sociability. Although all these behaviors were present across the samples and showed age-
related changes, there were interesting differences in the ways and extent that they were
expressed. For example, children’s dependent behavior in the north Indian samples was
characterized as “active, insistent, almost aggressive” (p. 142), a style attributed to their
mothers’ delayed and inconsistent responses to children’s bids for care and attention, and
related to both cultural values of interdependency and the immediate social ecology of
these crowded Indian households. Children in the African samples were generally more
compliant, corresponding to their mothers’ training behavior. Finally, children in north
India and Orchard Town, where mothers were most frequently controlling, showed the
highest rates of dominance and aggression to their mothers.
The reciprocity between maternal and child behavior in the different cultural samples
illustrates Whiting and Edwards’ central focus on the “eliciting power of one’s social part-
ner” (p. 133). Children’s social development, in their view, is the product of the social
settings they inhabit and the people with whom they interact, including other children as
well as their parents. Thus, children who were assigned to take care of younger siblings, as
in the Kenyan samples, had more opportunity to learn nurturant behavior, whereas chil-
dren who spent more time with peers, such as the children of Orchard Town once they
reached school age, learned competitive and attention-seeking behaviors. Because the
behaviors themselves were only observed in context, it is not possible to conclude that they
became internalized as personality traits; but this research shows that at the very least they
were well practiced.
In summary, the work of the Whitings and their associates, which altogether spanned
over five decades, contributed both new ideas and new methods for the study of culture
and children’s social development. The Whitings’ initial theoretical framework, in which
children’s learning environments are the product of a series of contextual factors from the
most general to the most immediate, has often been mischaracterized as purely functional-
ist, lacking in recognition of cultural belief systems (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett,
1998). On the contrary, the Whitings recognized the importance of meaning systems and,
in a 1960 chapter for Mussen’s Handbook of Research Methods in Social Psychology (Whit-
ing & Whiting, 1960) stated that anthropologists’ “unique contribution” to the study of
human behavior was “in the formulation of the shared symbolic determinants of behavior,
which, in our view, is the essential feature of the concept of culture” (Chasdi, 1994, p. 48).
In B. Whiting’s later work, as we have seen, the role of belief systems in parenting behavior
becomes even more evident.
Cultural-Ecological Frameworks
Although Children of Different Worlds was published in 1988, it was the culmination of
field research initiated in the 1950s. In the meantime, a new generation of theories was
emerging, informed by the work of the Whitings but also shaped by the “cognitive revolu-
tion” and other developments across a broad spectrum of disciplines including linguistics,
psychology, and ecology. Of particular relevance to children’s social development are the
cultural-ecological models developed by Charles Super and Sara Harkness, and by Thomas
Weisner and his associates. Both of these models build upon the Whitings’ idea of “set-
tings” as a primary focus for the study of cultural effects on child development, in combi-
nation with other theoretical perspectives.
Culture and the child’s developmental niche
The developmental niche as proposed by Super and Harkness “is a theoretical framework
generated specifically to foster integration of concepts and findings from multiple disci-
plines concerned with the development of children in cultural context. . . Two overarching
principles reflect its origins in social anthropology and developmental psychology: First,
that a child’s environment is organized in a nonarbitrary manner as part of a cultural
system, including contingencies and variable flexibility, thematic repetitions, and systems
of meaning; and second, that the child has an inborn disposition, including a particular
constellation of temperament and skill potentials as well as species-specific potentials for
68 Sara Harkness
growth, transformation, and the organization of experience into meaning. Both the envi-
ronment and the individual are seen as open systems in the formal sense, that is, ones that
participate in structured interchanges with external systems” (Super & Harkness, 1997, p.
26).
The developmental niche, thus, conceptualizes both the child and the environment as
active and interactive systems. Taking the perspective of the child’s place in this system,
the niche is seen as consisting of three major components or subsystems: 1) The physical
and social settings of the child’s daily life; 2) Culturally regulated customs of childcare and
rearing; and 3) The psychology of the caretakers, especially their cultural belief systems or
“ethnotheories.”
The developmental niche is further defined in terms of three corollaries. First, the three
subsystems of the niche operate together as a system, with homeostatic mechanisms that
promote consonance among them. This feature is the joint result of individual needs for
reducing cognitive dissonance (as in a poor match between ideas and practice) and of the
characteristic redundancy in cultural themes across domains. Second, each of the three
subsystems of the niche is functionally embedded in other aspects of the larger ecology,
making them open channels through which the niche can be altered from without. Thus,
for example, the physical and social settings of children’s lives are routinely altered by such
things as seasonal changes and school vacation schedules; and they may be more pro-
foundly altered by changes in the economy necessitating different patterns of parental
employment. Third, as mentioned above, the child is conceptualized as an active contribu-
tor to his or her own developmental niche by virtue of temperament and other individual
characteristics which modify parental decision making about daily routines as well as influ-
encing social interaction directly.
From a methodological perspective, it is important that each of these subsystems repre-
sents a different kind of data, which can then be used to achieve convergent validity. For
example, observational data on siblings’ social interaction (physical and social settings) can
form the basis for understanding customs regarding sibling care (customs and practices);
interviews with parents about the meaning of everyday routines and practices can inform
the investigator’s interpretation of how parents think about children’s roles in the family
(psychology of the caretakers).
An example of coordination among the three subsystems of the developmental niche
comes from a study of sleep and arousal in infants and young children in the Netherlands
and the United States (Super et al., 1996). The samples in each cultural site were parents of
children in several age groups from 6 months to 4.5 years (total n = 54 families). Parental
interviews covering a wide range of topics related to child and family revealed that Dutch
parents in the community of “Bloemenheim” (a fictitious name) were very concerned
about the importance of a restful and regular schedule to support children’s healthy devel-
opment in infancy and childhood. This cultural belief also had the endorsement of the
national well-child care system as communicated to parents through their local clinics, and
had been formalized in the “three Rs” of good childcare: rust (rest), regelmaat (regularity),
and reinheid (cleanliness). As the Dutch parents explained to their American interviewers,
rest is important for children’s growth, and an adequately restful and regular schedule is
the foundation of the child’s daytime behavior, promoting a calm yet cheerful and active
disposition. In fact, the most frequent reason given for children’s difficult behavior was
disruption of this schedule by a late evening out or too much excitement.

A tabulation of themes in the Dutch parents’ talk about this topic showed that by far the
greatest emphasis was given to explaining the importance and consequences of rest and
regularity; however, the parents did not experience establishing a regular schedule for sleep
and eating as problematic. In contrast, American parents of same-age children from the
Boston area emphasized different themes concerning the development of sleep. For these
parents, biological maturation and individual differences were the prime determinants of
children’s sleep behavior. Many of these parents struggled with getting their children to
sleep through the night, and (unlike the Dutch parents) had developed a repertoire of
strategies to deal with night waking.
Data on daily routines of the children, based on parental diaries, showed that the Dutch
children were actually sleeping more than the American children (at least as far as their
parents could tell). The differences were quite dramatic, with a 2-hour average difference
in total sleep per 24 hours at 6 months, diminishing to a still-noticeable 20-minute differ-
ence for children at 4.5 years of age. Furthermore, the Dutch children were consistently
put to bed earlier and on a more regular schedule. Systematic behavior observations of the
Dutch and American mothers and infants revealed a correspondence between ideas and
action: the American mothers were more actively stimulating to their infants, talking to
them and touching them more than the Dutch mothers. Finally, the infants themselves
also showed differences in state of arousal during these observations, with the Dutch babies
in a quiet alert state two thirds of the time and active alert one third, a pattern that was
reversed for the American sample.
As this example illustrates, the developmental niche framework lends itself to systematic
consideration of the ways in which the child’s culturally structured environment of daily
life can affect a wide range of issues in behavior and development. The social development
of children is centrally involved in many of these, as it is through the child’s experience in
the social world that pathways of influence are established.
The ecocultural niche of children and families
The “ecocultural niche” construct, developed by Thomas Weisner and his associates
(Weisner, 1984, 1996; Weisner, Gallimore, & Jordan, 1988), is closely related to the
developmental niche – not surprisingly since both draw in part from the work of the
Whitings. This model highlights the role of settings and routines of daily life as both the
nexus of cultural transmission for children and families, and the measure of family adapta-
tion to a variety of challenges. Settings are conceptualized as including the personnel present
and their motivations, cultural scripts for conduct in the setting, the nature of tasks and
activities in the settings, and the cultural goals and beliefs of the participants. In its empha-
sis on regularly occurring activities that are imbued with cultural meaning, the ecocultural
niche framework draws also on sociocultural and activity theory in the tradition of Vygotsky
(Cole, 1985; Rogoff, 1982; Wertsch, 1985).
The ecocultural niche framework has been used not only to study the effects of indi-
vidual children’s participation in cultural structured activity settings, but also the
sustainability of daily routines for families. As Weisner, Matheson, and Bernheimer (1996)
70 Sara Harkness
explain its application to a study of American families of developmentally delayed children:

“Ecocultural theory proposes that the adaptive problem faced by families with children with
delays is the same as that faced by all families: constructing and sustaining a daily routine of life
that has meaning for culture members, and that fits with the competencies of available members
of the family and community [original italics] (p. 504). The families in this study were broadly
middle-class, and although there was variability in the age at which the child’s delay was
recognized, all families had recognized their child as delayed or possibly delayed by the time
the child was three or four years of age. In answer to the question, “Is earlier recognition (and
therefore intervention) better?” the authors provided evidence that within these first years of
life, there was no developmental effect of earlier recognition. The reason, they suggest, is that
all families in this sample already offered a protective environment to their children through
their ongoing efforts to shape a sustainable and meaningful daily routine. For these middle-
class American families, such routines already included parent–child play and book reading,
activities that would be part of an early intervention program in any case.
A cultural mediational model of childcare
A third social-ecological framework is the “cultural mediational model” developed by Robert

A. LeVine and used in a study of parenting and child development in a Gusii community
of Kenya (LeVine et al., 1994). LeVine and his coauthors contrast their perspective to
three other explanatory models that have been widely used in social science. The first
model, the “biopsychological model,” claims that childcare is overwhelmingly determined
by species-specific characteristics. The second model, which they term “economic utility,”
has been typically used by demographers and economists to explain variations in childcare
as they relate to socioeconomic conditions and birth and death rates. In the third type, the
“semiotic models,” it is assumed that cultural meaning systems guide and direct parental
behavior. In contrast to all three of these often exclusionary models, the mediational model
that informs these investigators’ research is based on the premise that:
. . . parent–child interaction begins with the universal hardware of child care, that is, innate
capacities for communicating and responding, but the child is born in a social environment
into which the local conventions of interpersonal communication and kin relationship have
been preinstalled as scripts for interactive performance. In attempting to understand parental
behavior, then, our first task is to find out what script is being followed and what each action
means in terms of that script; later we can learn how performance based on this script repre-
sents a choice among organic and economic possibilities (pp. 20–21).
In this approach, the “cultural script” is defined with metaphorical reference to computer
programming as a “highly directive software program, prescribing the content and se-
quence of interaction as well as the code for interpreting performance” (p. 21). As LeVine
et al. point out, however, cultural scripts do not fully determine parental behavior; rather,
they create central tendencies within populations. Parental behavior in any given instance
is thus the joint product of cultural scripts that parents carry some version of in their heads,
and the demands of their own situation. In their Gusii research, LeVine et al. concluded
that the “cultural scripts” of parent–infant interaction are organized around the principle
of ensuring the infant’s survival in a traditionally high-risk situation; developmentally, this
is superseded by a mandate to train the toddler and young child to be obedient and re-
spectful. These cultural scripts, they suggest, were well adapted to bringing up children to
take their place in the extended household economies of Gusii society, but they are not so
well suited to prepare children for school. Nevertheless, a return visit to the community
when the study children were 13 years old revealed that all who were not burdened with
health or family problems were attending the local primary school. The authors suggest
that their apparent success in adapting to school is an indication of developmental resil-
iency. We could also note that the school attended by these children was organized and
taught by people who came from exactly the same background as the children themselves.
Research using social-ecological frameworks such as those reviewed here has produced a
wealth of new knowledge about how children’s development is shaped by their cultural
environment. Although the primary focus of these studies varies widely, they include eth-
nographic as well as individual-level information on the social interface between child and
culture. The researchers who have carried out this work have been trained in social anthro-
pology or have worked closely with anthropologists; typically, they have had extensive
experience of living and working in other cultures. These researchers have been interested
in understanding the role of culture in human development, as well as the ways in which
cultures are recreated and changed through the course of individual lives. In addition, they
have been concerned with the adaptive significance of different styles of culturally organ-
ized parenting and related aspects of children’s development.
In contrast to this research tradition which is rooted primarily in anthropology, the
remaining two explanatory frameworks to be reviewed here come primarily from the disci-
plines of developmental and social psychology. Researchers from these backgrounds have
been concerned with somewhat different theoretical challenges derived from the param-
eters of their own disciplines.
The Permeability of Culture and Psyche: Cultural Psychology
Beginning with William Kessen’s (1979) conceptualization of the child-in-context as the

proper unit of analysis for research in child development, an increasing number of devel-
opmental psychologists have argued against the premise that the child can be studied with-
out regard for the circumstances of development. At the same time, Vygotsky’s idea of the
“zone of proximal development” (the difference between the child’s performance on any
given task alone and with help) has become influential as a way to conceptualize the role of
the social context in children’s learning (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1985). The newly con-
stituted discipline of cultural psychology takes a qualitative giant step further to assert that
the person and the context cannot be considered as separate, distinct entities. As Rogoff,
Baker-Sennett, Lacasa, and Goldsmith (1995) state:
Our perspective discards the idea that the social world is external to the individual and that
development consists of acquiring knowledge and skills. Rather, a person develops through
72 Sara Harkness
participation in an activity, changing to be involved in the situation at hand in ways that

contribute both to the ongoing event and to the person’s preparation for other involvement
in other, similar events (p. 54).
In a similar vein, Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, and Nisbett (1998) argue that “psychological
processes are culturally contingent,” and that therefore scientific attention should be di-
rected to “the dynamic mutual constitution of culture and psyche” (p. 915). As they ex-
plain:
A premise underlying this work is that in order to participate in any social world, people must
incorporate cultural models, meanings, and practices into their basic psychological processes.
These psychological processes in turn constrain, reproduce, and transform the cultural sys-
tem. So while each culture is constructed by the coordinated interaction of many psyches,
these psyches are themselves oriented, structured, and motivated by the particular cultures in
which they operate (pp. 915–916).
To date, studies of children using this approach have focused primarily on cognitive devel-
opment, but this research entails observation of culturally structured practices and social
interactions as they relate to learning school-related skills. The research methodology in
these studies bears very close resemblance to traditional fine-grained ethnographic obser-
vation. For example, Rogoff et al. (1995) have analyzed an American Girl Scout cookie
fund-raising project in relation to cognitive development, and Cole and his associates have
studied children’s activities in an after-school program as they reflect cognitive processes
(Cole, 1996). In studies such as these, a major challenge has been to establish a way to
cross-validate the observations of children’s learning in particular contexts. In the most
extreme version of this approach, this is an impossibility since the person and the context
can never be separated. From this perspective, as argued by Shweder (1991), the only
solution is for the research community to redefine its concept of “science.” As he notes:
A cultural psychology studies precisely those causal processes that go on because of our under-
standing of and involvement with them. It would seem to follow that the truths to be formu-
lated in cultural psychology are typically going to be restricted in scope, because the causal
processes they describe are likely to be imbedded or localized in particular intentional worlds
(p. 106).
Many developmentalists, however, seek further evidence that what has been inferred from
naturalistic observation can also be seen in other contexts, whether naturally occurring or
constructed by the investigator. This challenge remains to be met, in part because it ap-
pears that some skills evident in particular contexts are not assimilated in such a way as to
be available for use in other situations; and in part because the exercise of individual skills
in a social context is often distributed among the participants in a seamless fashion (Super
& Harkness, 1997).
Individual and Collectivism: A Transcultural Explanatory Framework
The premises of cultural psychology would seem to imply commitment to contextualism

as a general explanatory framework: that is, human behavior, including children’s social
behavior, can only be understood in the context of its own unique historical moment. It is
thus somewhat surprising that some proponents of cultural psychology have also suggested
that a single duality, that of individualism (or independence) versus collectivism (or inter-
dependence) can be used to capture the most important contrasts between different
populations (Fiske et al., 1998; Triandis, 1988). In a recent review, Kagitçibasi (1997) has
explored the question of why the Individualism–Collectivism (I–C) construct has become
so popular among researchers. She suggests that its simplicity as a single dimension, and its
close relationship to economic development at the national level, may make it attractive to
social science researchers. This writer would add that the I–C construct also fits nicely into
preexisting psychological or sociological research strategies in which a “social address” such
as socioeconomic status is used as an independent variable without involving investigation
of the construct itself in the particular research context.
The I–C construct has been put to good use by researchers such as Greenfield, Raeff,
and others in their studies of differences between Latino (mainly Mexican) and Anglo
children, parents, and teachers living in the United States (Greenfield, Quiroz, & Raeff,
2000; Raeff, Greenfield, & Quiroz, 2000). Even as this research has accumulated, how-
ever, its theoretical limitations are becoming increasingly evident. Several issues are of
concern. First, the I–C construct can be used to build post-hoc explanations of a variety of
behaviors, some of which may be inconsistent. For example, late weaning can be related
either to a collectivistic orientation, as described for Korean mothers by Kim and Choi
(1994), or to an individualistic orientation, in the context of American middle-class moth-
ers’ practice of letting the child decide when he/she is ready.
Second, the I-C dimension has been used to characterize both cultural groups and indi-
viduals. Although this might seem like a reasonable approach, it is necessary to distinguish
between shared cultural values on the one hand and individual motivations on the other.
Assuming that these two are the same leads to general statements such as the following
contrast between North America or Europe and the rest of the world:
This orientation [individualism] seems natural and obvious to investigators and subjects – in
North America and Europe. These people share a set of implicit and unexamined cultural
values and practices that emphasize individual rights, independence, self-determination, and
freedom. But many other cultures – indeed, most – place a higher value on interdependence
and fostering empathic connections with others . . . In these cultures, people gladly emulate
their associates and are responsive to others’ wishes in order to sustain smooth social relation-
ships (Fiske et al., 1998, p. 919).
Although differences in cultural values can certainly be observed across different social
groups, it is a mistake to assume that all individual members of any given society “gladly”
follow its behavioral prescriptions. Indeed, one element that has not received adequate
attention is how the position of an individual in relation to the group may influence that
person’s feelings about societal norms.
74 Sara Harkness
A third issue not yet sufficiently addressed within the I–C paradigm is the relationships
among cultural values, socialization practices, and actual social development in children.
For example, Fiske et al. (1998) argue that the European American custom of offering
frequent praise and compliments to children promotes high self-esteem and independence
from the group. Indeed, this hypothesized relationship is at the center of an American
cultural model of good parenting. The actual data on rates of independent and dependent
behavior from Whiting and Edwards’ study (Whiting & Edwards, 1988), however, tell a
different story: the American children had higher rates of dependent behavior than did
children from all the other (mostly non-Western) cultural samples. Furthermore, current
research by this writer comparing American parents with parents of six different Western
societies has found that the American parents are most concerned about their children’s
self-esteem, suggesting that this is a problematic area of development for them.
A final weakness of the I–C framework is that it attempts to reduce all cultural variabil-
ity to just two categories. It is significant in this regard that the framework was originally
developed, and in fact still mainly rests, on comparative Asian–U.S. studies. Although
earlier cross-cultural work has generated some transcultural themes, the I–C characteriza-
tions go much further in specifying multiple ways that the two kinds of cultures (or indi-
viduals) vary; and these do not all “travel well” across major culture areas. “Collectivism”
in Asian societies does not really resemble “collectivism” in Africa or Latin America, and
neither is “individualism” the same in the United States and in Europe (Harkness, Super,
& van Tijen, 2000).
From the perspective of the research traditions reviewed earlier in this chapter, it seems
that the rediscovery of culture within the discipline of psychology has led to some of the
same formulations, and the same problems, that were experienced earlier in anthropology.
The application of post-hoc explanations within the context of one or two societies is not
unlike the problem of ethnographers’ monocultural analyses that could not be generalized
to other cultures. The application of a single framework at both the cultural and individual
levels replicates the problems that led to the demise of the “culture and personality” school.
The assumption of developmental consequences of certain value systems as instantiated in
parenting behaviors reflects a continuing ethnocentrism that has always challenged cross-
cultural research. Finally, the creation of two global categories for cultures and individuals
is reminiscent of Ruth Benedict’s “patterns of culture” which were soon shown to be overly
simplistic even for the societies they were supposed to describe.
Conclusions: Explanations and Evidence
This chapter has reviewed a historical sequence of explanations of how culture and chil-
dren’s social development relate to each other. Along the way, we have seen evidence for
the utility of these explanations for helping make sense of cross-cultural variability in chil-
dren’s social behavior and development. The evidence suggests several lessons for future
researchers. First, explanations based on only one or two cultural samples are unlikely to
hold up over a wider array of world cultures. Second, cultural differences are easy to recog-
nize but difficult to categorize: most generalizations about beliefs or behavior in any given
society turn out not to cover important facets of that society. Third, the prediction of
future developmental outcomes based on the cultural structuring of child development at
any given stage is perilous: until we understand more about the internal logic of specific
cultural systems, we are likely to miss the mark. Finally, we should never assume that we
have in hand all the relevant information about the cultural environment of children’s
development for any society, including our own. Even – and perhaps especially – for our
own society, there are bound to be interesting surprises in store when we collect data on
the environment of children’s development that is as detailed and precise as what we col-
lect on children themselves.
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78 Chris Jenks
A Sociological Approach to Childhood

Development
Chris Jenks
There are significant ways in which the positions taken by sociologists and developmental
psychologists on the issue of child development diverge. Sociologists problematize the very
idea of the child rather than treat it as a practical and prestated being with a relatively
determined trajectory and certainly do not seek to offer advice concerning its appropriate
mode of maturation. As I shall attempt here, sociology endeavors to realize the child as
constituted socially, as a status of person which is comprised through a series of, often
heterogeneous, images, representations, codes, and constructs. This is an increasingly popular
perspective within contemporary childhood studies (James & Prout, 1990; Jenks, 1982/
1992, 1989; Qvortrup, 1993; Stainton-Rogers, 1991).
Sociology is burgeoning in its innovative work in relation to children and in finding its
way toward a concerted sociology of childhood and it still has a degree of exciting work to
do. A major contribution consolidating such research was provided by James and Prout
(1990) in a work that attempted to establish a new paradigm in our thinking. It is worthy
of consideration here and I shall quote it in full, it can act as a manifesto in our subsequent
considerations of the significance and relevance of sociological theory in our approach to
development:
. . . the key features of the paradigm:

1. Childhood is understood as a social construction. As such it provides an interpretive
frame for contextualising the early years of human life. Childhood, as distinct from biological
immaturity, is neither a natural nor a universal feature of human groups but appears as a
specific structural and cultural component of many societies.
2. Childhood is a variable of social analysis. It can never be entirely divorced from other
variables such as class, gender and ethnicity. Comparative and cross-cultural analysis reveals a
variety of childhoods rather than a single or universal phenomenon.
A Sociological Approach to Childhood Development 79
3. Children’s social relationships and cultures are worthy of study in their own right, inde-
pendent of the perspective and concern of adults.
4. Children are and must be seen as active in the construction and determination of their
own social lives, the lives of those around them and of the societies in which they live. Chil-
dren are not just passive subjects of social structures and processes.
5. Ethnography is a particularly useful methodology for the study of childhood. It allows
children a more direct voice and participation in the production of sociological data than is
possible through experimental or survey styles of research.
6. Childhood is a phenomenon in relation to which the double hermeneutic of the social
sciences is acutely present. That is to say, to proclaim a new paradigm of childhood sociology
is also to engage in and respond to the process of reconstructing childhood. (James & Prout,
1990: pp. 8–9).
Such an approach, in this context, displays a variety of purposes. First, an attempt to

displace the overwhelming claim made on childhood by the realm of commonsense rea-
soning – not that such reasoning is inferior or unsystematic but that it is conventional
rather than disciplined (Garfinkel, 1967; Schutz, 1964). Commonsense reasoning serves
to “naturalize” the child in each and any epoch, that is it treats children as both natural and
universal and it thus disenables our understanding of the child’s particularity and cultural
difference within a particular historical context. Children, quite simply, are not always and
everywhere the same thing, they are socially constructed and understood contextually –
sociologists attend to this process of construction and also to this contextualization. Sec-
ond, the approach indicates that the child, like other forms of being within our culture, is
presenced through a variety of forms of discourse. These discourses are not necessarily
competitive but neither is their complementarity inherent and a holistic view of the child
does not arise from a liberal sense of varieties of interpretation or multiple realities. Rather,
the identity of children or of a particular child varies within the political contexts of those
forms of discourse – hence, the different kinds of “knowledge” of mother, teacher,
pediatrician, social worker, educational psychologist, and juvenile magistrate, for example,
do not live suspended in an egalitarian harmony. Hendrick (1990) has produced an in-
structive account of childhood constructions in Britain since 1800 through the analysis of
a series of dominant forms of discourse, in which he includes the “romantic,” “evangeli-
cal,” “factory,” “delinquent,” “schooled,” “psycho-medical,” “welfare,” “psychological,”
and the “family” as opposed to the “public” child – these languages have all provided for
different modern lives of children.
Third, the approach intends to work out the parameters within which sociology, and
thus its relation to understanding childhood, must originate – therefore I shall attempt to
show sociology’s conceptual limitations, and also its possibilities, as one form of discourse
about childhood and the world. However, before I address sociology’s conceptual base and
therefore its different approach to the child let me firmly establish its difference from
developmental psychology.
80 Chris Jenks
The Developmental Psychology Paradigm
In the everyday world the category of childhood is a totalizing concept, it concretely de-
scribes a community that at some time has everybody as its member. This is a community
which is therefore relatively stable and wholly predictable in its structure but by definition
only fleeting in its particular membership. Beyond this the category signifies a primary
experience in the existential biography of each individual and thus inescapably derives its
commonsense meanings, relevance, and relation not only from what it might currently be
as a social status but also from how each and every individual, at some time, must have
been. It is the only truly common experience of being human, infant mortality is no dis-
qualification. Perhaps because of this seemingly all-encompassing character of the phe-
nomenon as a social status and because of the essentially personal character of its particular
articulation, commonsense thinking and everyday language in contemporary society are
rife with notions concerning childhood. Being a child, having been a child, having chil-
dren, and having continuously to relate to children are all experiences which contrive to
render the category as “normal” and readily transform our attribution of it to the realm of
the “natural” (as used to be the case with sex and race). Such understandings, within the
collective awareness, are organized around the single most compelling metaphor of con-
temporary culture, that of “growth.” Stemming from this, the physical signs of anatomical
change that accompany childhood are taken to be indicators of a social transition, so that
the conflation of the realms of the “natural” and the “social” is perpetually reinforced.
Developmental psychology is wholly predicated on the notion of childhood’s “natural-
ness” and on the necessity, normality, and desirability of development and constructive
change through “growth.” Children are thus routinely constructed as partially rational,
that is, in the process of becoming rational.
Perhaps the irony of the exclusion of the child through partial formulations of rational-
ity is nowhere more fundamentally encountered than in the formative body of work gen-
erated by Piaget. It was Piaget who defined developmental psychology as follows:
Developmental psychology can be described as the study of the development of mental func-
tions, in as much as this development can provide an explanation, or at least a complete
description, of their mechanisms in the finished state. In other words, developmental psy-
chology consists of making use of child psychology in order to find the solution to general
psychological problems (Piaget, 1972, p. 32).
However, as Burman has pointed out:
Nowadays the status of developmental psychology is not clear. Some say that it is a perspec-
tive or an approach to investigating general psychological problems, rather than a particular
domain or sub-discipline. According to this view we can address all major areas of psychol-
ogy, such as memory, cognition, etc., from this perspective. The unit of development under
investigation is also variable. We could be concerned with the development of a process, or a
mechanism, rather than an individual. This is in marked contrast with the popular represen-
tations of developmental psychology which equate it with the practicalities of child develop-
ment or, more recently, human development (Burman, 1994, p. 9).
Piaget’s work on intelligence and child development has had a global impact on pediatric
care and practice. Piaget’s “genetic epistemology” seeks to provide a description of the
structuring of thought and finally the rational principle of nature itself, all through a theory
of learning. As such Piaget’s overall project represents a significant contribution to phi-
losophy as well. Following within the neo-Kantian tradition his ideas endeavor to concili-
ate the divergent epistemologies of empiricism and rationalism; the former conceiving of
reality as being available in the form of synthetic truths discoverable through direct experi-
ence, and the latter viewing reality analytically through the action of pure reason alone.
Kant, in his time, had transcended this dichotomy through the invocation of “synthetic a
priori truths” that are the immanent conditions of understanding, not simply amenable to
logical analysis. Piaget’s categories of understanding in his scheme of conceptual develop-
ment may be treated as being of the same order. His work meticulously constitutes a
particular system of scientific rationality and presents it as being both natural and univer-
sal. However, as Archard (1993) stated:
Piaget suggested that all children acquire cognitive competencies according to a universal
sequence. Nevertheless, he has been criticised on two grounds. . . First, his ideal of adult
cognitive competence is a peculiarly Western philosophical one. The goal of cognitive devel-
opment is an ability to think about the world with the concepts and principles of Western
logic. In particular Piaget was concerned to understand how the adult human comes to ac-
quire the Kantian categories of space, time and causality. If adult cognitive competence is
conceived in this way then there is no reason to think it conforms to the everyday abilities of
even Western adults. Second, children arguably possess some crucial competencies long be-
fore Piaget says they do (Archard, 1993, pp. 65–66).
Within Piaget’s system each stage of intellectual growth is characterized by a specific

“schema” or well-defined pattern and sequence of physical and mental actions governing
the child’s orientation to the world. Thus the system has a rhythm and a calendar too. The
development and transition from figurative to operative thought, through a sequence of
stages contains an achievement ethic. That is to say that the sequencing depends upon the
child’s mastery and transcendence of the schemata at each stage. This implies a change in
the child’s relation to the world. This transition, the compulsive passage through sche-
mata, is what Piaget refers to as a “decentering.” The decentering of the child demonstrates
a cumulative series of transformations: a change from solipsistic subjectivism to a realistic
objectivity; a change from affective response to cognitive evaluation; and a movement
from the disparate realm of value to the absolute realm of fact. The successful outcome of
this developmental process is latterly typified and celebrated as “scientific rationality.” This
is the stage at which the child, now adult, becomes at one with the logical structure of the
cosmos. At this point, where the child’s matured thought provides membership of the
“circle of science” the project of “genetic epistemology” has reached its fruition, it is com-
plete.
Concretely, scientific rationality for Piaget is displayed through abstraction, generaliza-
tion, logico-deductive process, mathematization, and cognitive operations. At the analytic
level, however, this rationality reveals the intentional character of Piaget’s theorizing and
grounds his system in the same manner as did Parsons’ transcendent “cultural values.”
Within Piaget’s genetic epistemology, the process of socialization can be exposed as the
82 Chris Jenks
analytic device by and through which the child is wrenched from the possibility of differ-
ence within the realm of value and integrated into the consensus that comprises the tyran-
nical realm of fact. Scientific rationality or adult intelligence is thus the recognition of
difference grounded in unquestioned collectivity – we are returned to the irony contained
within the original ontological question. The child is, once more, abandoned in theory.
Real historically located children are subjected to the violence of a contemporary mode of
scientific rationality, which reproduces itself, at the expense of their difference, beyond the
context of situated social life. The “fact” of natural process overcomes the “value” of real
social worlds. And the normality of actual children becomes scrutinized in terms of the
norms predicted by developmental psychology. Rose (1990), commenting on the histori-
cal context of this oppressive tendency stated:
Developmental psychology was made possible by the clinic and the nursery school. Such
institutions had a vital role, for they enabled the observation of numbers of children of the
same age, and of children of a number of different ages, by skilled psychological experts under
controlled experimental, almost laboratory, conditions. Thus they simultaneously allowed
for standardization and normalization – the collection of comparable information on a large
number of subjects and its analysis in such a way as to construct norms. A developmental
norm was a standard based upon the average abilities or performances of children of a certain
age in a particular task or a specified activity. It thus not only presented a picture of what was
normal for children of such an age, but also enabled the normality of any child to be assessed
by comparison with this norm (Rose, 1990, p. 142).
Within Piaget’s demonstrations of adult scientific rationality, the child is deemed to

have appropriately adapted to the environment when she has achieved a balance between
accommodation and assimilation. It would seem that the juggling with homeostasis is
forever the child’s burden! However, although from a critical analytic stance accommoda-
tion might be regarded as the source of the child’s integration into the consensus reality,
within the parameters of the original theory the process is treated as the locus of creativity
and innovation – it is that aspect of the structuring of thought and being which is to be
most highly valued. In contradistinction Piaget regards children’s play as nonserious, trivial
activity in as much as it displays an emphasis on assimilation over accommodation. Play is
merely diverting fun or fantasy, it deflects the child from his true destiny and logical pur-
pose within the scheme of rationality. The problem is that the criteria for what constitutes
play need not equate with the rigorous, factual, demands of reality. Treating play in this
manner, that is from the perspective of the rational and “serious” adult, Piaget is specifi-
cally undervaluing what might represent an important aspect of the expressive practices of
the child and her world. Following Denzin (1982) and Stone (1965) I would argue that
play is indeed an important component of the child’s work as a social member. And I
would argue further that play is instrumental in what Speier (1970) has designated the
child’s “acquisition of interactional competencies.” Genetic epistemology willfully disre-
gards, or perhaps just pays insufficient attention to, play in its urge to mathematize and
thus render formal the “rational” cognitive practices of adult individuals in their collective
lives.
By treating the growth process of the child’s cognition as if it were impelled toward a
prestated structure of adult rationality, Piaget is driven to concur with Levi-Bruhl’s con-
cept of the “primitive mentality” of the savage but in this instance in relation to the
“prelogical” thought of the child. A further consequence of Piaget’s conceptualization of
the rational development of the child’s “embryonic” mind as if it were a natural process, is
that the critical part played by language in the articulation of mind and self is very much
understated. Language is treated as a symbolic vehicle, which carries thought and assists in
the growth of concepts and a semiotic system but it is not regarded as having a life in excess
of these referential functions. Thus language, for Piaget, is insufficient in itself to bring
about the mental operations that make concept formation possible. Language, then, helps
in the selection, storage, and retrieval of information but it does not bring about the coor-
dination of mental operations. This level of organization is conceptualized as taking place
above language and in the domain of action. This is slightly confusing until we realize that
action, for Piaget, is not action regarded as the performative conduct that generates social
contexts, but rather a sense of action as that which is rationally governed within the a priori
strictures of an idealist metaphysics. Language, for Piaget, itemizes the world and acts as a
purely cognitive function. This is a position demonstrably confounded by Merleau-Ponty
(1967) in his work on the existential and experiential generation and use of language by
children – the classic example being the child’s generation of a past tense in order to ex-
press the loss of uniqueness and total parental regard following the birth of a sibling; lan-
guage here is not naming a state of affairs but expressing the emotion of jealousy.
Merleau-Ponty’s work serves to reunite the cognitive and the affective aspects of being
which are so successfully sundered by Piaget; he stated:
I pass to the fact that appeared to me to be worthy of mention . . . the relation that can be
established between the development of intelligence (in particular, the acquisition of lan-
guage) and the configuration of the individual’s affective environment (Merleau-Ponty, 1964,
p. 108).
I have attempted to explicate certain of the normative assumptions at the heart of devel-
opmental psychology which has held as the orthodoxy up until recent years and I might
optimistically suggest that such conventional explanations have been successfully supplanted
by feminist theories in relation to the family and what have come to be grouped as “social
constructionists’ views” of the child, possibly instigated by this author but subsequently
titled and joined by significant company. We do not have a consensus view of the child in
social theory: however, a spurious consensus is not necessarily a desirable goal. It is my
intention to show that it is the different manners in which theoretical commitments are
grounded that give rise to the diversity of views of childhood. At this point let us return to
the conceptual bases of sociology.
The Conceptual Grounds of Sociological Thought
Although, in its various guises, sociology emerged as a critical response to the state of
its culture and traditionally adopted a radical position in relation to the material con-
straints wrought through the progress of modernity, it was also, in origin, epistemologically
84 Chris Jenks
imperialistic. Durkheim (1938) delineated sociology’s peculiar realm of phenomena. He

marked out their identifiable characteristics and the conceptual space that they occupied
and he sought to devalue all other attempts to explain “social” reality (Hirst, 1975). Thus
we arrive at a kernel idea for sociology, that of the “social structure”; it is from this concept
that the discipline proceeds. Social structures appear to societal members as “facts” and as
such have real and describable characteristics: they are typical, that is, they are a series of
normal or taken for granted manifestations; further, they are constraining upon the actions
of members either implicitly or explicitly; and finally they are, to some greater or lesser
degree, independent of their individual will. As Durkheim put it:
The proposition which states that social facts must be treated as things – the proposition
which is at the very basis of our method – is among those which have stirred up the most
opposition. It was deemed paradoxical and scandalous for us to assimilate to the realities of
the external world the realities of the social world. This was singularly to misunderstand the
meaning and effect of this assimilation, the object of which was not to reduce the higher
forms of being to the level of lower ones but, on the contrary, to claim for the former a degree
of reality at least equal to that which everyone accords the latter. Indeed, we do not say that
social facts are material things, but that they are things just as are material things, although in
a different way (Durkheim, 1982, p. 35).
The “social structure” then becomes the supra-individual source of causality in socio-
logical explanations, whether it is experienced by members as a cognitive, moral, political,
or economic orientation (Parsons, 1968). All sociological worlds seek to build in and analyze
a series of constraints that work upon the individual and (however the particular perspec-
tive places itself, within the debate over freewill versus determinism) there tends to be a
primary commitment to treat the self as an epiphenomenon of the society (Cicourel, 1964;
Dawe, 1970; Hollis, 1977; Wrong, 1961) and thus prey to apprehension in terms of epis-
temological binaries. As O’Neill (1994) put it:
The tabula rasa or clean-slate individual of liberal contract theory is as much a fiction as is its
counterpart fiction of the many-headed monster state, or Leviathan. Each device serves to
stampede thought into those forced alternatives of the under- or over-socialized individual
(O’Neill, 1994, p. 54).
Sociology’s tradition then makes little claim to provide a strong theory of the individual
and this holds implications for our understanding of the child. Ironically the most con-
temporary sociology of the late- or post-modern scene is even less secure in its explanations
of self (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991). Thus despite the apparent cult of the individual and
celebration of the ego in the latter part of the twentieth century, sociological analysis ap-
pears increasingly unprepared to formulate the social identity of people, let alone the emer-
gent identity of children.
The problems of structural causality, in relation to a study of the child, are further
compounded by the fact that sociological systems of explanation are constructed in rela-
tion to the conduct of typical rational “adult” members – children are largely theorized as
states of pathology or inadequacy in relation to the prestated model of the actor. All soci-
ologies, in their variety of forms, relate to the childhood experience through theories of
socialization whether in relation to the institutional contexts of the family, the peer group,
or the school. These three sites are regarded as the serious arenas wherein the child is most
systematically exposed to concerted induction procedures. It is here that the child, within
the social system, relates as a subordinate to the formalized strategies of constraint, control,
inculcation, and patterning which will serve to transform his or her status into the tangible
and intelligible form of an adult competent being.
In sociological writings characterized as normative, the term socialization glosses the phe-
nomenon of change from the birth of a child to maturity or old age. To observe that changes
take place after birth is trivial, but the quasi-scientific use of the term socialization masks this
triviality. In fact, the study of these changes as socialization is an expression of the sociolo-
gists” common sense position in the world – that is, as adults. The notion of socialization
leads to the theoretical formulations mirroring the adult view that children are incomplete
adults (MacKay, 1973, p. 27).
A child’s social, and ontological, purpose is therefore, it would seem, not to stay a child.
Within this inexorable trajectory any signs of entrenchment or backtracking, like play for
example, may be interpreted as indicators of a failure to “develop” (Piaget, 1977).
It is a further irony that were one to confront sociologists with the issue of “develop-
ment” then their immediate frame of reference would be to consider the modes of transi-
tion occurring between the structures of simple and complex societies (Frank, 1971). The
concept of development, with relation to persons, is no part of a sociologist’s vocabulary.
Structures are sociologists’ primary realities and the only organism that they might con-
sider in a state of development is that, by analogy, of the society as a whole.
The Concept of Development
“Development,” an essentially temporal notion, is the primary metaphor through which

childhood is made intelligible, both in the everyday world and also within the specialist
vocabularies of the sciences and agencies which lay claim to an understanding and servic-
ing of that state of being. Thus, stemming from this root metaphor all empirical study,
social policy, or remedial treatment in relation to the child tends to be longitudinal in
character – the idea of time being left inviolable. Given “time” the child will change. More
than this, development as the all-pervading source of the location of the child-as-other, has
come to be realized as a wholly “natural” process in a manner that more than echoes the
determinism of sociology’s structural bias. Individuals are largely understood to be realiza-
tions of what was biogenetically inherent, with perhaps a surface structure of personality,
thought-style, or cognitive breadth being attributable to “nurture” – though even these
finite provinces have been invaded by certain theories which sought to explain criminality,
racial deficit, or insanity (writers such as Lombrosso; Jensen & Esyenck; Kraepelin). Fi-
nally, development has certain resonances within the culture of modernity that enable the
idea to be conflated with other axial contemporary social metaphors like “growth” and
“progress.” Within a post-Darwinian framework we are led to relate to development as
necessary, inevitable and, essentially, for the good.
86 Chris Jenks
Let us now address these central elements in the concept of development. First, in rela-
tion to the issue of development as time, philosophers from Plato to the present day have
grappled with the indeterminacy or experiential character of this dimension, yet most modern
thinking appears locked within a Kantian sense of time as both external and quantitative
(Hendricks & Hendricks, 1975). This in itself is a sociologically interesting phenomenon
bound up with the scientism and mathematizing urge of contemporary society. However,
what such mechanical diachronicity constrains and disfigures is the actual experience of
time in social relations; as Durkheim asserted “A calendar expresses the rhythm of the
collective activities, while at the same time its function is to assure their regularity”
(Durkheim, 1968, p. 206). In everyday social life we are quite accustomed to the variabil-
ity of the “time” experience; time spent with a lover is not comparable to time spent queu-
ing in the supermarket. In similar fashion the existential experience of being a child seems
to go on forever, the gap between Christmases seems unimaginable, bedtime is all too
suddenly here, and “boring” time, doing usually what parents want to do, is interminable.
Parallel with such interior sensation for the child, parents are unified in their sense that
children “grow up so quickly” and are no sooner walking than they are asking to borrow
the car!
Second, the “naturalizing” of development can be seen to obscure or mystify a set of
criteria for change that might be implicit or grounded within a specific network of inter-
ests. Thus as examples, to have one’s child designated as “advanced” in relation to Piagetian
criteria may be a source of pride to a parent as it signifies rapid or special “natural” devel-
opment; the criteria for such “development” remain, however, normative and unexplicated
– the same parent might experience acute displeasure if their child were defined as “re-
tarded” and thus relegated to an educational identity of a lesser status; the same covert
criteria apply. It is often argued that natal induction, viewed as a critical stage of “develop-
ment,” is necessary for the benefit of the child but it would seem, in many cases, to relate
wholly to the politics of hospital timetables. These examples are cited to demonstrate the
“social” and embedded character of the “natural” experience of childhood.
Third, the conflation of development with ideas of growth and progress builds a com-
petitive ethic into the process of development itself that supports the ideology of possessive
individualism at the root of industrialized capitalist cultural formations. The dominant
materialist reduction functions such that not only are mental and manual skills evaluated
hierarchically and therefore stratified which, in turn, enables social stratification within the
culture, but also manual/physical development is itself realized as internally competitive to
generate further modes of stratification and ranking. There would appear to be a justified
merit that stems from development. Such processes extend from the comparative parental
talk at antenatal clinics, for example, “Is he crawling yet?’; “When did she start to walk?’;
“Mine could talk at that age’; to the pinnacles of nationalistic projections in the form of the
Olympic Games with collective physical prowess being measured by medal counts (and
backward countries sometimes surprising advanced nations with their physical precocity).
After all, success should accompany development – naturally!
What I am suggesting is that the concept of development does not signify a “natural”
process – it does, however, make reference to a socially constructed sense of change per-
taining to the young individual which is encoded within a series of benchmarks relevant to
the topical or predominant form of discourse: which can relate to political engagement,
moral and criminal responsibility, sexual consent, and patterns of consumption. Thus dif-
ferent codes move in and out of focus according to which aspect of the person we are
attending to – in many senses there is a heterogeneity to these codes that resists the at-
tempts to reduce them to the homogeneity of “naturalness’.
The positive side of this deconstruction of the child experience into an assembly of
signifying discourses is to explore certain possibilities within the social character of that
encoding. While regarding childhood phenomenologically, in terms of the intentional
constitutive practices that facilitate its recognizable form, it is not necessary to pursue such
a tradition to the point of the child being wholly disembodied – as Merleau-Ponty (1967)
and O’Neill (1973) have both, separately, argued – to do so deprives the child of an ontol-
ogy.
A crucial aspect of childhood, and a sociological sense of “development,” can be realized
in terms of its “contingency.” That is to say that childhood always speaks of a relationship,
for example, adult–child, parent–child, teacher–child, etc. (Hambrook, 1987). As Ambert
put it:
The discussion is informed by a critical perspective viewing both childhood and parenting as
social constructs that evolve with socio-historical changes. . . . discussion of parenting cannot
be divorced from perspectives on the nature of childhood. . . . the nature of childhood is
fluid, anchored as it is in the prevailing world views supporting societies and created by soci-
eties. In most societies, children and early adolescents are viewed within the context of the
family. Consequently, as one cohort or one culture defines what childhood is, parenting is
constructed, whether implicitly or explicitly (Ambert, 1994, pp. 530–531).
Also, whatever the general condition of childhood in society (treated violently, exploited,
pornographized) it may be regarded as an index of the state of the wider social relation, the
moral bond in society (Jenks, 1995; Hendrick, 1990).
The concept of development, then, might imply that the child’s “becoming” is depend-
ent upon the reference points or normative structures made conventional within the adults’
world, but we need to pursue this idea further. In the obvious, cultural sense of the attribu-
tion, ascription, and assumption of meaning, all people “need” others in order to generate
a meaningful environment for change, stasis, or whatever; quite simply, we cannot make
sense alone. Any knowledge of self derives from an experience of collective constraint; and
being and action, as opposed to being and behavior, is contingent upon the presence of
and communication with “other.” Adults, however, are assumed within social theory to
operate with a degree of basic reciprocity of perspectives and interchangeability of stand-
points in terms of the processes of meaning giving and meaning receiving (Parsons, 1964;
Schutz, 1964). On top of this, adult relationships are subsequently stratified in terms of an
unequal distribution of power.
The difference that is childhood may well be understood in terms of power (Holt, 1971;
Illich, 1971; Postman & Weingarten, 1971), though this would be to treat the grounds of
power as purely age-based (in the same way that Marxist feminism attempted to reduce the
question of power to an issue of gender), neither argument is adequate nor sufficient.
However, childhood might be more instructively theorized in terms of dependency. Chil-
dren do practically have “need” of their parents and adult companions, a need that is a
combination of the material, physical, emotional, and so on, but one that is always realized
88 Chris Jenks
within particular sociohistorical, and cultural, settings. This understanding enables us to

look toward the contexts of provision, instruction, and care in relation to a fundamental
sociological analytic concept, that of “altruism.” Thus the child–adult relation is, in one
sense, expressive of “altruism,” a dimension of sociality that is at odds with the dominant
image of self and success within modernity, namely the ascendance of egoism (Durkheim,
1933). Perhaps, therefore, we should express the child–adult relation in multidimensional
terms. As Gilligan et al. (1988) stated:
The different parameters of the parent–child relationship – its inequality and its interdepend-
ence or attachment – may ground different feelings which differentiate the dimension of
inequality/equality and attachment/detachment that characterize all forms of human connec-
tion. In contrast to a unitary moral vision and to the assumption that the opposite of the one
is the many, these two dimensions of relationship provide coordinates for reimagining the self
and remapping development. The two conceptions of responsibility, reflecting different im-
ages of the self in relationship, correct an individualism that has been centered within a single
interpretative framework (Gilligan et al., 1988, p. 5).
But I am not arguing that the altruism or care that the adult feels toward the child is
itself a unitary or a “natural” feeling – no, rather I would suggest that it is a social construct.
In one sense this construct might be viewed as the embodiment of the affective myth of
romanticism that has given rise to the modern nuclear family, and perhaps we should add
the “mother,” as the center of all loving sensations – the instrumental accompaniment to
the exaggeration and elevation of the autonomous cognitive ego that has followed in the
wake of the enlightenment and assisted in the growth of science and capitalism (Williams,
1958). In fact, a feature of its time, no more and no less. Ambert (1994) was instructive in
this context when she stated that:
This linkage between what we conceive to be the nature of childhood and that of parenting is
based less on the natural unavoidability of parents for children’s survival and well-being as on
society’s structure and socioeconomic requisites, which not only place children in the context
of family, but “parentalise” and, I will add, “maternalise” them. Thus, when one sees chil-
dren, one “sees” parents. When one sees children who have problems, one looks for parents,
especially mothers (Ambert, 1994, p. 530).
The sociological tradition would, however, attest to altruism as the very core of sociality.
All sociologies spring from the Hobbesian problem of order and even if they attend to the
conflictual character of social relations their basic commitment is to explain how societies
hold together. In this latter sense altruism may be read as ideological, an appearance of care
that disguises the true purpose of control. Here the social sense of dependency that accom-
panies development takes on a sinister form, we have to shake ourselves free of the warm
sense of sociality that holds together through spontaneous loving bonds. We are then con-
fronted with a more cynical version of the idea, in fact the mechanisms of dependence that
serve to sustain particular versions of the status quo. In this sense the development of the
child may now instructively be viewed alongside the development of the Afro American in
the United States or the Black South African, or indeed, the development of women’s
consciousness in Western Europe. Care, in this sense, itself becomes hegemonic (Gramsci,
1970). Dependence now becomes that feature of social structures which seeks to individu-
alize guilt, pathologize the individual and which further militates to disguise the failures or
shortcomings implicit within those very social structures. To this extent all societies dem-
onstrate “dependence” through their members’ adherence to drink, drugs, belief systems,
or desires. Development through dependency then becomes an instrument in the proc-
esses of social and cultural reproduction (Bourdieu, 1977; Jenks, 1993).
Let us now look at certain aspects of the critical mode of social theorizing within sociol-
ogy that would most systematically espouse this view. Althusser (1971) divides the mecha-
nisms of control in modern societies into two forms, the repressive and the ideological state
apparatuses. The latter contains all aspects of superstructure, the cognitive and transmissional
aspects of culture, which serve to reproduce the existing oppressive structures of power and
advantage without exposing naked aggression. Thus family life, patterns of socialization,
schooling – all complementary contexts of a child’s development, are realized as part of the
deep structurally unconscious apparatuses whereby the going order is recharged, reaffirmed,
and reconstituted. The education system, Althusser told us:
. . . takes children from every class at infant school and then for years . . . it drums into them
. . . a certain amount of know how wrapped up in the ruling ideology or simply the ruling
ideology in its pure state. Each mass ejected en route is practically provided with the ideology
which suits the role it has to fulfil in class society: the role of exploited, of the agent of repres-
sion or of the professional ideologist (Althusser, 1971, p. 147).
Marcuse (1965) has attended to the contemporary liberal laissez-faire adjustment to,
and understanding of, the behavior of others; which we can clearly relate to the socialization
process; that he regards as a “repressive tolerance.” It might be likened to a cultural man-
nerism of acceptance that defuses critique, reaction, or change through its all-pervading
quasi-approval. In an efficient, “caring” society childrearing and education liberates the
individual into compliance. Marcuse stated that:
A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial

civilization, a token of technical progress (Marcuse, 1972, p. 16).
and sadly concluded that:
To liberate the imagination so that it can be given all its means of expression presupposes the
repression of much that is now free and that perpetuates a repressive society. And such re-
versal is not a matter of psychology or ethics but of politics . . . (that is) the practice in which
the basic societal institutions are developed, defined, sustained, and changed. It is the practice
of individuals no matter how organized they may be. Thus the question once again must be
faced; how can the administered individuals – who have made their mutilation into their own
liberties and satisfactions, and thus reproduced it on an enlarged scale – liberate themselves
from themselves as well as from their masters? (Marcuse, 1972, p. 195).
An utterance redolent with critique of the contemporary adult–child relationship.

Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), whose work specifically addresses the process of social
reproduction, demonstrated that there are intellectual fields of appraisal which surround
90 Chris Jenks
any creative endeavor or unique form of expression and both render it meaningful and
evaluate it in relation to existing patterns of social stratification. This can apply to the work
of art but equally well to the performance of the developing child in significant social
contexts like schools. Children, they argue, are differentially endowed with a “cultural
capital” according to their original social milieu, their “habitus.”
It may be assumed that every individual owes to the type of schooling he has received a set of
basic, deeply interiorised master-patterns on the basis of which he subsequently acquires other
patterns, so that the system of patterns by which his thought is organised owes its specific
character not only to the nature of the patterns constituting it but also to the frequency with
which these are used and to the level of consciousness at which they operate, these properties
being probably connected with the circumstances in which the most fundamental intellectual
patterns were acquired (Bourdieu, 1967, pp. 192–193).
They are equipped with thought styles, manners, sensitivities, and patterns of relevance
and relation that ensure a reproduction of their class position and the ideological frame-
work that supports such a locus. Societies, it would seem, almost inevitably reproduce their
structures of hierarchy and power through the processes of the development of self . . .
“education serves to transform the cultural heritage into a common individual uncon-
scious” (Bourdieu, 1967).
Finally, the work of Foucault (1977) offers us, at one level, a series of archaeologies of
the strategies of control and oppression that have been exercised within modern Western
culture. Thus when he informs us of the change and development in penology in Western
Europe we find an historical transition from the excessive, explicit symbolic punishment of
the seventeenth century to a gradually more subtle, implicit, and intrusive mode of disci-
pline embodied in its finest modern form in Bentham’s “panopticon” – the dream build-
ing, the rational correction machine. In this form, which we may parallel with the
development of modern techniques of childrearing, absolute surveillance is the key. The
developing individual, either within the context of criminal punishment or that of educa-
tion, is to be watched, monitored, timetabled, regimented, and exposed. The private be-
comes more and more available to the public. Bodies and minds claim an allegiance to the
social through dependency, guilt, and visibility.
Emerging from a different sociological perspective to the above the work of Bernstein
(1971–73) has, for over two decades, provided a major source of inspiration for theory and
research concerning childrearing, child development, and educational disadvantage. While
apparently leaving the grounds of moral consensus within society intact he addresses the
causes of differential educational achievement within the population of developing chil-
dren. He was among the first to sophisticate the “educability” thesis beyond an explana-
tion of child performance in relation to their particular constellations of positively or
negatively oriented structural variables. Bernstein does not ignore the effect of social fac-
tors on a child’s development but he shows how they become realized as world views and
thus courses of action – in this sense he reveals his true concern being not with the issue of
educability but rather with the complex relation between the social structure and the sym-
bolic order. His central question is “how does our outside environment become trans-
formed into modes of consciousness?” and this clearly provides a potentially dialectical
view of development. Bernstein’s analysis moves from the level of different types of com-
munity structure, through parental control variants, on to the linguistic realization of unique
intent. Social stratification, however, remains the dominant implicit dimension.
What this brief summary of sociological theory relevant to child development aims at is
not a summation of their central insights, all of which have been injured by the brevity of my
exposition, but rather to show that even that large section of the discipline which is clearly
critical of any existing form of social relations and thus dedicated to its change, even this body
of work seems unable to mobilize the potentiality of the child as an agent of such change. The
development of the child seems variously articulated as a process of entrapment. The newness
and difference of childhood faces standardization and normalization. Thus all social influ-
ences on the developing child are presented and understood as structural constraints.
Sociological Models
During the 1960s in the United Kingdom, which was a time of full employment, economic
expansion, growth in public provision, and a liberalizing of previously entrenched attitudes
toward human behavior, education became viewed by government and populace alike as a
crucial investment in the future collective good. The dominant ideology contained a strong
sense of “human capital” that eventually blossomed into the “vocationalism” of the late
1980s and the 1990s. Schooling and university education expanded considerably and efforts
were made to improve its quality also. This general attitude of the collective consciousness
was reflected within sociology where the sociology of education became a burgeoning
specialism. However, even within such a climate of progressive optimism the primary thesis
was that, if ability is randomly distributed, how is it that educational achievement is socially
distributed? Sociologists produced a plethora of studies which offered explanation in terms
of such variables as family size, parental occupation, parental income, achievement motiva-
tion, immediate versus deferred gratification, peer group orientation, cultural deprivation,
language use, and complexes of these (Banks, 1968; Halsey, Floud, & Anderson, 1961).
Again, all of these variables were reducible to indices of social class, but more significantly at
an analytic level, all are intelligible as contexts of non-willfulness. Even social theory that is
critical seems to depotentiate the young through an intrinsically pessimistic vision. The be-
coming social actors, who are the developing child, are rendered passive receivers and
perpetuators of the accidents of their historical moment. This is perhaps best epitomized in
the irony of a study by Willis (1977) when he states that the reason that working-class
children succumb to the social and cultural reproduction is because they are complicit in the
processes, they are effectively active agents in their own lack of mobility.
The difficult thing to explain about how middle class kids get middle class jobs is why the
others let them. The difficult thing to explain about how working class kids get working class
jobs is why they let themselves. It is much too facile simply to say that they have no choice . . .
There is no obvious physical coercion and a degree of self direction (Willis, 1977, p. 1).
It would seem then that the social factors affecting development are such that they
become internalized and expressed as matters of choice!
92 Chris Jenks
Development conceived of in these terms speaks not of an unfolding, a project of crea-

tivity and inspiration, in fact hardly of the individual child’s biography at all. The child
continues to be realized as an instance of a category and the concept of development only
ever seems to depict the concerted and ultimately omnipotent violence of the social struc-
ture to which the individual inevitably succumbs. This is not to argue for the mobilization
of the concrete child as a political force in response to these actual constraints as part of a
“Children’s Rights” movement, but rather to argue analytically for a more radical concep-
tion of the child as a vision and as a potential.
Development, though a dominant image in understanding the child, is only one way.
Further it is that kind of concept which encourages the stance of looking backwards from
within the sociological tradition. But sociology and its address of the child can occupy
different spaces; let us take three possible examples. First, the child might be regarded
historically, not as a series of evolutionary steps, but rather as a patterning of images that
relate to different temporal contexts. In this way Aries (1973), the leading figure in a
school of neo-enlightenment historians, looks at visual representations and fashion and
shows the emergence of childhood within a particular group and within a particular epoch.
History then, is not regarded as a description of a succession of events, rather it is seen as
providing the moral grounds of current speech about the child. Second, the child can be
approached comparatively, employing anthropological material. Here we might treat dif-
ferent childrearing practices as aspects of culture. Mead’s (1954, 1971) work is instructive
here in showing us how in different, yet contemporary, societies children assume far more
autonomy and responsibility than is familiar within our own world.
It may be said that where we are concerned with character formation – the process by which
children learn to discipline impulses and structure their expectations of the behavior of others
– this cross-cultural approach is very valuable. It provides insights into such subjects as con-
science formation, the relative importance of different sanctioning systems, sin, shame and
pride, and guilt, and into the relationship between independence training and achievement
motivation (Mead, 1971, p. 219).
If nothing else, such an approach may serve to deflate much of the ethnocentrism that is
inherent in a Western sense of maturation.
Finally a phenomenological perspective could enable us to gain insight into an
existential and generative sense of sociality that emerges from within the consciousness
of the child. Merleau-Ponty (1967), for example, has demonstrated the acquisition of
new linguistic forms by the child, due not so much to teaching as to personal, and inten-
tional, affective experience. And Rafky, developing a phenomenology of the child stated
that:
. . . the life-world the newborn enters contains more than objects and social institutions. It is
also characterized by a complex of legitimations which explain and integrate the various ac-
tion patterns of a group, a “matrix of all socially objectivated and subjectively real meanings;
the entire historic society and the entire biography of the individual are seen as events taking
place within this universe” [Berger & Luckmann]. In short, the individual has acquired a set
or mode for interpreting the world meaningfully; he perceives it in an ordered and subjec-
tively understandable frame of reference (Rafky, 1973, p. 43).
These three examples: the historical, the comparative, and the phenomenological, are sug-
gestions for alternative and instructive approaches to the study of childhood; they do not
in themselves constitute an exhaustive typology of programs for research into childhood.
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Part III
Influences on Development: Causal Factors
Important causal influences in development cut across many or all particular areas (such as
attachment, friendship, social cognition, play, helping, and aggression, all reviewed later).
These include temperament and sex differences.
Temperament is an important dimension of individual difference in children that has
origins in genetic factors and is evidenced from birth onwards, but continues to impact on
development through the childhood years. Ann Sanson, Sheryl Hemphill, and Diana Smart
review conceptualizations of temperament, its measurement and stability, and the
interactional processes involved in its development. They then consider the role of tem-
perament in important domains of social behavior: peer relationships, social competence,
prosocial behavior, and aggression and oppositional behaviors. Although temperament is
often seen as a biologically deterministic trait, the authors bring out the interactional con-
text, and the importance of the “fit” between temperament and context in influencing
developmental outcome.
Sex differences pervade social development. Their explanation provides a well-known
battleground for genetic and environmental explanations, and several theories have been
advanced for the explanation of the forms which sex differences take and how they de-
velop. Susan Golombok and Melissa Hines first describe the development of sex differ-
ences, in areas such as gender identity, playmate preferences, and play styles. They then
consider the theories, starting with biological explanations. The influences of hormonal
factors are reviewed in expert and detailed fashion. Moving on to more psychological ex-
planations, they consider social learning theory, cognitive theory, social cognitive theory,
and the role of gender segregation. These different views are not necessarily in opposition,
as clearly there are many influences at work. Both biological and psychological theories
may also be consistent with an evolutionary perspective (see Chapter 3).
Families, and peers, provide important social contexts for development throughout child-
hood. Carollee Howes and Jolena James consider the development of social competence
and socially interactive styles in terms of the influence of early caregivers – not only
96 Influences
Ann Sanson,on Sheryl
Development:
A. Hemphill,
Causal&Factors
Diana Smart
parents, but also childcare personnel. Race or ethnicity, and gender, are important mediat-
ing factors here. The authors review work on the influence of childcare settings and their
quality on developmental, a theme that has been, and continues to be controversial, with
important resonances in social policy regarding early childcare.
Howes and James highlight the role of adults on early social development, but do not
neglect peer influences. Both adults, and peers in the sense of same or similar age children,
can have powerful influences (and also siblings, see Chapter 13). The relative contribution
of adults (particularly parents), and peers, has become particularly topical in the last dec-
ade. Following the work of behavior geneticists, who found that nonshared environmental
factors often greatly exceeded shared environmental factors as contributors to develop-
ment (see Chapter 2), Harris (1995) has advocated a “group socialization theory.” This
proposes that the main source of nonshared environment is the peer group, and that by
middle childhood, peer influences greatly outweigh parent or family influences. Ross Parke,
Sandra Simpkins, David McDowell, Mina Kim, Colleen Killian, Jessica Dennis, Mary L.
Flyr, Margaret Wild, and Yumee Rah critically review this debate. While acknowledging
the importance of genetics and of the peer group, they describe the very considerable range
of ways in which parents may influence a child’s development: not only through direct
interaction, but via the managing or supervising of aspects such as playmate choice and
opportunities, and the socioeconomic and cultural context of the family. Marital conflict
may, unfortunately, also be an influence on children’s development. The relative impor-
tance of parents and peers will continue to be debated, but this chapter illustrates the
strong defense which the “family” side of the argument can mount (see also Hart, Newell,
& Olsen, in press).
Many issues broached in this section are controversial, as already mentioned. Another
relates to the definition of social competence and what is “adaptive” or “maladaptive”
behavior. Both Sanson et al. (Chapter 6) and Howes and James (Chapter 8) label aggres-
sive behavior as maladaptive, and/or socially incompetent. Not everyone would agree in
labeling aggressive behaviors as maladaptive, since such behaviors may have individual
advantage for the child exhibiting it; see, for example, Chapter 3, and also Sutton, Smith,
and Swettenham (1999). However, they may be labeled maladaptive so far as the wider
social network or society is concerned. In part this difference is just a matter of labeling,
but in part it reflects a continuing, if recent, debate on the way we conceptualize child
development (see also Chapter 5).
References
ment. Psychological Review, 102, 458–489.
Hart, C. H., Newell, L. D., & Olsen, S. F. (in press). Parenting skills and social/communicative
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response to Crick and Dodge. Social Development, 8, 132–134.
Temperament and Social Development 97
Temperament and Social Development
Ann Sanson, Sheryl A. Hemphill, and Diana Smart
This chapter reviews the ways in which child temperament impacts upon aspects of social
development. We start by providing some background on temperament as a construct,
and theoretical propositions about the processes involved in temperament-development
associations. We then review the research literature on the connections between tempera-
ment and peer relations, social competence and prosocial behavior, and problematic social
behaviors. In concluding comments, we highlight areas in need of further research.
What is Temperament?
Historical background
Temperament refers to constitutionally based individual differences in behavioral style

that are visible from early childhood. Ideas about temperament go back to ancient Greco-
Roman times. However, interest in child temperament in modern times dates particularly
to the pioneering work of Thomas and Chess in the New York Longitudinal Study
(Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig, & Korn, 1963). Responding to the prevailing environ-
mentalism of the time, and drawing from clinical insights, they identified nine dimensions
Authors Sheryl Hemphill and Diana Smart have made equivalent contributions to this chapter; they are
listed above in alphabetical order. Preparation of this chapter was partially supported by Australian Re-
search Council Grant A79930720 to Ann Sanson and Ken Rubin, and National Health and Medical
Research Council Grants 980627 and 9937433 to Ann Sanson and John Toumbourou. Direct inquiries
to: Ann Sanson, Australian Institute of Family Studies, 300 Queen Street, Melbourne, Vic. 3000, Aus-
tralia.
98 Ann Sanson, Sheryl A. Hemphill, & Diana Smart
of temperament on which infants and young children could be seen to differ, and which
impacted upon their subsequent psychosocial development. These were approach-
withdrawal, adaptability, quality of mood, intensity of reaction, distractibility, persistence,
rhythmicity or regularity, threshold of responsiveness, and activity.
Current conceptualizations of temperament
Following Thomas and Chess’ groundbreaking work, their nine-dimensional structure of

temperament became widely accepted, especially in clinical settings. However, a consensus
is emerging that a smaller number of dimensions best represents the structure of tempera-
ment. These show considerable commonality across research studies (Rothbart & Bates,
1998). Three broad aspects of temperament are gaining wide acceptance. Reactivity or
negative emotionality refers particularly to irritability, negative mood, inflexibility, and high-
intensity negative reactions; it is sometimes differentiated into distress to limitations (irri-
tability, anger) and distress to novelty (fearfulness). Self-regulation refers to the effortful
control of attentional and emotional processes, and includes persistence, nondistractibility
and emotional control. Approach/withdrawal, inhibition or sociability describes the ten-
dency to approach novel situations and people, or conversely to withdraw and be wary. In
this chapter, we focus on these broad aspects of temperament but where appropriate, also
describe research on narrower band factors.
A number of researchers have used the categorization system, developed by Thomas and
Chess, of “easy” and “difficult” clusters of children. “Difficult” children tended to be negative
in mood, withdrawing, unadaptable, highly intense, and arhythmic, and Thomas et al. (1963)
documented more troubled development for them. In later research these dimensions have
not clustered together, and different researchers have tended to create their own definitions of
“difficultness,” resulting in problems in comparing studies. The “difficult” construct carries
value-laden overtones, and ignores the fact that any temperament characteristic can be easy or
difficult, depending on the demands of the situation. Use of these global categories also im-
pedes progress in understanding the specific roles of particular temperament dimensions for
specific aspects of development (Sanson & Rothbart, 1995). The “difficult” construct is thus
relatively unhelpful in a research context. However, in the research to be reviewed, a multi-
plicity of temperament constructs have been used, ranging from “micro” aspects such as
soothability or anger, to global conceptualizations such as “difficult” or “easy.”
It is generally accepted that temperament is biologically based (see Rothbart & Bates,
1998 for review). There is some evidence of heritability, more for some aspects of tempera-
ment than others. Models from neuroscience and some specific psychobiological variables
are being explored for their applicability to temperament research. However, more re-
search is needed to fully specify the biological underpinnings of temperament.
Stability and change
If there was little or no stability of temperament over time, it would be hard to argue for its
importance as a contributor to children’s social development. Modest to moderate stabil-
ity across age is typically found, with correlations ranging from .2 to .4 (see Slabach, Mor-
row, & Wachs, 1991). There are at least three explanations for the lack of higher stability
estimates. First, even genetic underpinnings do not imply immutability, and some aspects
of temperament appear to show considerable development with age. Secondly, tempera-
ment can only be assessed from its behavioral manifestations, which vary with age, making
it difficult to ensure that the same underlying temperament constructs are assessed at each
age. Thirdly and most significantly, correlational estimates of stability do not take into
account measurement error. Using structural equation modeling (which corrects for at-
tenuation of correlations due to measurement error) on data from the Australian Tempera-
ment Project (ATP) sample from infancy to 7–8 years, Pedlow, Sanson, Prior, and Oberklaid
(1993) found considerably higher stability estimates, in the range of .7 to .8. Nevertheless,
even at these levels of stability, there is still considerable room for change in children’s
temperament characteristics. Understanding the processes underlying these changes is an
important current research question (see Sanson & Rothbart, 1995).
Measurement
There has been considerable debate about the measurement of temperament. Because tem-
perament refers to the overall behavioral style of a child, rather than moment-by-moment
behavior, primary caregivers who can observe the child across time and contexts have been
considered appropriate informants, usually via parent-rated questionnaires. Findings of ef-
fects of such variables as maternal depression and stress on temperament ratings (e.g., Mednick,
Hocevar, Schulsinger, & Baker, 1996) suggest a subjective element to maternal reports.
However, there is also evidence of reasonable validity for parental ratings (Bates, Bayles,
Bennett, Ridge, & Brown, 1991), and reports of convergence between parental ratings and
observational measures (Allen & Prior, 1995; Kochanska, Murray, & Coy, 1997). More
studies are now adopting observational measures, although these also have their limitations,
being restricted in the time period and contexts in which observations can be made. While
the controversies regarding measurement deserve more space than can be afforded here, it is
generally agreed that the optimal solution at present is to use multiple measures of tempera-
ment (Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Few studies currently achieve this goal.
Theoretical Understandings of the Role of Temperament in

Development
It is one thing to document associations between temperament and social development,

and another to model and explain the developmental processes by which temperament has
its effects. Here we briefly outline some processes by which temperament is likely to im-
pact on social development.
Several broad categories of processes can be identified (see Rothbart & Bates, 1998
and Sanson & Prior, 1999 for fuller discussions). Firstly, temperament may have direct
linear effects on social development. For example, an extreme ranking on a temperament
dimension may be synonymous with a particular outcome (thus very high inhibition may
be synonymous with social withdrawal). Another direct effect is when an extreme tempera-
ment characteristic leads to or directly affects an outcome (e.g., very high reactivity may
predispose a child to aggressive responses to frustration).
Indirect linear effects, or mediated effects, include those where a child’s temperament
affects the environment, which then impacts upon their adjustment. In general, children
with different temperaments elicit different responses from people with whom they come
in contact – a cheerful sociable child is likely to experience more positive responses from
others than a moody withdrawing one; and a highly negative and reactive child might elicit
punitive discipline practices from a parent, which in turn increase the child’s risk for ag-
gressive behavior. This history of differential reactions is then likely to impact on develop-
mental outcome.
A third set of effects is interactional ones. Thomas and Chess (1977) proposed that
“goodness of fit” explains the impact of temperament; that is, that particular temperament
characteristics “fit” well with particular environments, and others “fit” poorly. Thus an
active child in a cramped environment might do less well than the same child in a spacious
environment where their activity could be channeled in safe and productive ways. In a
related fashion, Rothbart and Bates (1998) note that temperament-by-temperament inter-
actions are also plausible – for example, self-regulatory aspects of temperament might change
the expression of other potentially problematic aspects of temperament (such as high activ-
ity level), promoting competent outcomes. Although it has been difficult to operationalize
goodness of fit (Paterson & Sanson, 1999), and findings of interactional effects are still
relatively scant, it remains a popular theoretical model.
A more elaborated model is a transactional model (e.g., Cicchetti & Cohen, 1995)
which posits that development is the outcome of a continuous interaction among intrinsic
child characteristics and aspects of the environment. A child’s health status, cognitive ca-
pacities, and temperament, along with parent and family circumstances and the prevailing
sociocultural context, all need to be taken into account in explaining and predicting devel-
opmental pathways. In this model, temperament is often seen as a risk or protective factor.
There is widespread acceptance among researchers that interactional or transactional
models best explain the developmental process. However, as Rothbart and Bates (1998)
note, interactions have been easier to talk about than find, and there is currently most
empirical support for linear additive effects. Limitations in methods and analysis strategies
have undoubtedly restricted our capacity to uncover interactional effects, and recent ad-
vances such as latent variable and trajectory analysis techniques may help establish their
existence.
Conceptualization of Social Development
The term social development is broad, and we will not attempt a definition here. Rather,
we will restrict our discussion to aspects of social development for which temperamental
contributions have been most investigated. The measures of social behaviors considered
here range widely, including peer nominations, observed behaviors, and ratings via check-
lists. We adopt an inclusive approach, to accommodate this heterogeneity. We will discuss

research on both positive and problematic social developmental outcomes. As an organiza-
tional device, we make distinctions between different facets of social development, but
acknowledge that the lines between these are often blurred.
The first area to be discussed is children’s peer relations, with a particular emphasis on
temperamental influences on the development of social withdrawal. We then turn to the
development of positive social capacities, specifically the development of social skills, so-
cial competence, and prosocial behavior and cognitions. Finally, we address temperamen-
tal contributions to problematic social behaviors, such as aggression and oppositional
behavior. Throughout the review we draw attention to age trends, as well as the influence
of gender, social class, and culture, although as will be seen the research base in many cases
is extremely sparse.
A note about methods: In this area of research, a recurring issue is the difficulty of clearly
separating, both conceptually and methodologically, the predictive temperament factors
from the social development outcomes. For example, wary behaviors and fearful affect in
the face of novelty are commonly incorporated in measures of temperamental inhibition;
however, they are also often part of the definition of social withdrawal. Further, if the same
person (e.g., a parent or teacher) reports on both the presumed temperamental precursor
and the social developmental outcome, it is likely that shared method variance accounts
for some portion of any association found. These difficulties mean that findings of associa-
tions between temperament and social development do not necessarily reflect causal rela-
tionships, and may in some instances be inflated due to contamination of measures or
shared method variance. While across-time associations derived from longitudinal meth-
odology do not in themselves establish causal linkages, they do allow more confidence to
be placed in interpretations.
We therefore focus our review on studies that meet at least one of two requirements: a
longitudinal design, and the use of different informants or methods of data collection for
the temperament and social development variables of interest.
The Role of Temperament in Peer Relations
Here we review research on the role of temperament in children’s peer relations, including
children’s tendencies to withdraw from peers, to exhibit shyness or sociability in the com-
pany of peers, and their status within the peer group. Gender and cultural differences and
research suggesting the importance of temperament-by-parenting interactions are reviewed.
We do not comment on social class differences, as most studies have used middle-class
samples, and we have not located any specifically addressing socioeconomic status (SES).
Most research in this area has focused on the role of temperamental inhibition in the
development of social withdrawal. Inhibition is the disposition to be wary when encoun-
tering novel or challenging situations, whereas social withdrawal (or reticence) refers to
consistent displays of solitary, onlooking, and unoccupied behaviors when with familiar or
unfamiliar peers (Burgess, Rubin, Cheah, & Nelson, 2001). As noted above, some of the
common indicators of inhibition overlap with those often ascribed to social withdrawal.
Preschoolers (3- to 4-year-olds)
Cross-sectional studies (e.g., Billman & McDevitt, 1980; Hinde, Tamplin, & Barrett,
1993), and longitudinal studies from infancy to preschool age, indicate that early inhibi-
tion is associated with social withdrawal or lack of peer interaction in preschool children
(Kagan, Reznick, Clarke, Snidman, & Garcia-Coll, 1984; Sanson, 2000). Parker-Cohen
and Bell (1988) found that children low on inhibition and high in activity showed, con-
currently, higher levels of teacher-reported peer responsiveness. Task orientation (attentional
self-regulation) and flexibility (positive mood, adaptability, and approach) have also been
associated with more peer interaction (Keogh & Burstein, 1988), and highly persistent
and active boys were found to be more socially interactive with peers, with boys low in
persistence and activity having more negative interactions (Guralnick & Groom, 1990).
Early school age (5- to 7-year-olds)
Links have been found between toddler inhibition and observed social withdrawal at 5–7
years, especially when comparing groups of extremely inhibited or uninhibited toddlers
(e.g., Kagan, 1988; Reznick et al., 1986). Gersten (1988) found that children identified as
inhibited at 21 months spent less time interacting with peers and more time alone at
kindergarten than uninhibited toddlers. Kochanska and Radke-Yarrow (1992) reported
that “social inhibition” (inhibition to an unfamiliar adult) in toddlerhood predicted shy,
socially withdrawn behavior with a peer at 5 years, while “nonsocial inhibition” (to an
unfamiliar environment) was associated with less engagement in group play at 5 years,
suggesting that different types of inhibition are associated with somewhat different peer
relationship outcomes.
Concurrent relationships at this age have also been documented. For example, Skarpness
and Carson (1986) found that 5–6-year-old children who showed less inhibition (by mother
report) had more positive peer relations (by teacher report). Similarly, Stocker and Dunn
(1990) reported that temperamentally sociable 5- to 10-year-olds were more popular with
peers and had more positive relations with friends than less sociable children.
Later elementary school age (8- to 11-year-olds)
As with younger children, being inhibited as a toddler or preschooler has been associated
with withdrawal from peers at 8–11 years (e.g., Eisenberg, Shepard, Fabes, Murphy, &
Guthrie, 1998; Kagan, 1988). Temperamental dimensions other than inhibition have re-
ceived little research attention, but some relationships have been found. For example, Kurdek
and Lillie (1985) found that rejected children in grades 3 to 7 showed lower rhythmicity
and poorer attention (both aspects of self-regulation).
Sex differences
Sex differences in this area have been somewhat neglected (Hinde et al., 1993). In one of
few investigations, Skarpness and Carson (1986) found no sex differences in the links
between mother-rated inhibition and teacher-rated withdrawal. However, Hinde et al.
(1993) found that inhibited 4-year-old girls tended not to interact with peers, whereas for
boys there was no relationship between inhibition and peer interaction. Sanson, Smart,
Prior, and Oberklaid (1996) investigated the earlier temperament characteristics that dif-
ferentiated children classified (on the basis of parent, teacher, and self-report) as having
problematic, competent, or average peer relationships at 11–12 years. For boys but not
girls, impersistence and poor task orientation (low self-regulation), assessed from 1–3 years
on, differentiated the problem group from the other two groups. Higher irritability and
inflexibility (reactivity), assessed between 1–3 and 9–10 years, more clearly discriminated
the problem group of boys from the other groups than they did for girls.
In summary, there is suggestive evidence that temperament may have different implica-
tions for boys’ and girls’ peer relationships, although no clear-cut picture has yet emerged.
Cultural differences
Direct investigations of cultural differences in the links between temperament and peer
relations are scant, generally focus on older children, and have almost exclusively consid-
ered Chinese and North American children. For example, Chen, Rubin, and Li (1995)
found that peer-nominated inhibited 8–10-year-old Chinese children were more accepted
by peers and scored higher on peer and teacher ratings of “honorship” and leadership than
children identified as aggressive or average. Chen and colleagues argued that in China,
unlike North America, inhibition is thought to reflect social maturity and understanding
and is therefore viewed positively. Their findings clearly require replication and are some-
what inconsistent with recent findings regarding social withdrawal in younger Chinese
children (Hart et al., 2000). However, they do suggest that temperament in itself is neither
positive nor negative but that its effects can be mediated through cultural norms and belief
systems.
The mediating role of culturally based parenting beliefs and behaviors was further dem-
onstrated by Chen et al. (1998), where the pattern of correlations between observed tod-
dler inhibition and self-reported parenting differed for Chinese and Canadian mothers.
For example, for the Chinese sample, inhibition was positively correlated with maternal
acceptance and encouragement of achievement, but in the Canadian sample the correla-
tions were negative. These results again suggest that inhibition is desirable in China, and
undesirable and problematic in Canada. Such cross-cultural comparisons, when extended
across a wider age range and a broader range of cultures, promise to increase our under-
standing of how temperament works within a cultural context, through culture-specific
parenting attitudes, expectations, and practices, to impact on social developmental out-
comes.
Developmental models concerning links between temperament and peer

relations
One of the most comprehensive models of the development of social withdrawal is Rubin
and colleagues’ “temple of doom” model (e.g., Rubin, LeMare, & Lollis, 1990; Rubin &
Stewart, 1996). In this model, infant inhibition is considered a potential stressor to which,
in the context of other family stressors, parents may react negatively (i.e., with insensitiv-
ity, overprotection and/or overcontrol), resulting in insecure parent–child attachment.
Insecure children may then withdraw from the social environment, and eventually be re-
jected by peers. Here temperament is seen as a risk factor whose effect is mediated by the
parental behavior elicited by it. Other aspects of temperament (e.g., reactivity, self-regula-
tion) are not specifically addressed in this model.
Fox and Calkins (1993) have described a model that emphasizes the interaction be-
tween infant reactivity and regulation of affect, along with parental influences and parent–
child interactions. Different child outcomes are postulated for particular combinations of
reactivity and regulation; for example, infants who are high in both negative reactivity and
fearfulness may become isolated and withdrawn from peers as early as 14 months of age
(e.g., Kagan, Snidman, & Arcus, 1998). However, Fox and Calkins argue that parental
support may alter the behavioral outcome. Strengths of this model are that it describes the
role of two broad dimensions of temperament (reactivity and self-regulation) and recog-
nizes the potential mediating influence of parents on children’s outcomes.
Consistent with a transactional model of development, a growing body of literature
investigates the influence of temperament-by-parenting interactions on children’s peer re-
lations. Some studies suggest that the association of inhibition with peer relationship diffi-
culties occurs particularly in the context of an overprotective and controlling parent (e.g.,
Burgess et al., 2001).
Summary
To summarize, although most studies rely on concurrent data and there are many research
gaps, there is increasing evidence of associations between early temperament and later peer
relations (particularly social withdrawal). There is also evidence of differentiated paths
from specific types of inhibition to particular types of peer relations. While few studies
have investigated temperament dimensions other than inhibition, attentional self-regula-
tion and reactivity also appear to be important contributors. To date, there is only sugges-
tive evidence of sex differences in links between temperament and peer relations, but cultural
differences in the role of inhibition suggest that temperament effects are likely to be medi-
ated by parental and cultural expectations. Few studies have examined potential moderat-
ing and mediating variables, but promising developmental models attempt to explain the
causal processes underlying the links between temperament and peer relations. Future de-
velopment of these models will need to elaborate the influence of temperament-by-parenting
interactions on children’s peer relations.
Temperamental Contributions to Social Competence and Prosocial

Behavior
Children’s temperament characteristics have been shown to be related to skilled social

behavior and to prosocial behavior and cognitions. Included here are reviews of studies
assessing children’s general levels of social competence and social skills, typically via check-
lists; studies investigating specific behaviors observed during peer interactions; and research
on prosocial outcomes including empathic capacities, conscience, sympathy, response to
distress, and helping behaviors. Sex differences are discussed, but no studies addressing
social class or cultural differences in the relationships of temperament to social competence
and prosocial behavior have been located, other than those by Chen and colleagues previ-
ously discussed.
Dunn and Cutting (1999) investigated concurrent linkages between 4-year-old children’s
temperament and the quality of their interactions with a friend. Negative emotionality was
related to one aspect of peer interaction, “coordinated play” (e.g., agreeing with the other
child’s suggestion) which, while appearing socially competent, may reflect a more depend-
ent interaction style. While the majority of studies have involved white, middle-class sam-
ples, Youngblade and Mulvihill (1998) used naturalistic observations of preschoolers from
homeless families. Children who were active, soothable, or persistent more frequently dis-
played positive behaviors than emotional or shy children. In a concurrent observational
study, Farver and Bransletter (1994) found children with an “easy” temperament profile
gave more prosocial responses to peer distress than children who were “slow to warm up”
or “difficult.”
Some of the most illuminating work comes from Eisenberg and colleagues, focusing on
the roles of reactivity/emotionality, self-regulation and their interaction. Eisenberg et al.
(1993) found that a composite measure of social skills (parent, teacher, and observer re-
port) was strongly predicted by low emotionality and high self-regulation capacities, with
self-regulation being the more salient. Children who were both highly emotional and poorly
regulated had lower social skills and sociometric status. Using naturalistic observation,
Fabes et al. (1999) found that socially competent responding was associated with an aspect
of self-regulation, “effortful control,” only in high-intensity peer interaction contexts (e.g.,
energetic, stressful, wild or loud interactions). Hence, temperament seemed particularly
relevant to social functioning in stressful social situations.
Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, and Reiser (2000) propose that a moderate to high level of
self-regulation is optimal for successful social functioning; thus negative emotionality, in
the presence of optimum regulation, does not lead to low social competence. Extremely
high regulation is argued to lead to overcontrolled and less socially skilled behavior. Low
regulation is seen as a risk for externalizing behavior problems and low social competence,
particularly when high negative emotionality is also present. Hence their model empha-
sizes the importance of temperament-by-temperament interactions, and points to the critical
importance of regulation capacities. These specific and testable predictions provide a valu-
able direction for future research, although analysis strategies will need to take account of
the hypothesized nonlinear relationships.
Early school age (5- to 7-year-olds)
The findings of Rothbart, Ahadi, and Hershey (1994) suggest complex and distinct rela-
tionships between components of negative emotionality and aspects of social behavior.
Temperamental fear (unease, worry), sadness (lowered mood or energy), and effortful con-
trol were related to empathy, guilt, and shame. Aspects of negative affectivity reflecting
irritability, such as anger or discomfort, were related to antisocial, but not prosocial,
behaviors. These concurrent questionnaire-based data were corroborated by longitudinal
data from infancy which were available for a subsample of the children. Attention regula-
tion (persistence, akin to effortful control) was also a powerful predictor of parent- and
teacher-rated social skills among a sample of 5-6-year-old Australian children, accounting
for 24% of variance (Paterson & Sanson, 1999).
Kochanska and colleagues have investigated the role of temperament in conscience for-
mation. Her model posits that experience of affect, guilt, and anxiety in response to trans-
gression, and behavioral control (which enables the child to inhibit or suppress undesirable
actions) contribute to conscience development (Kochanska, 1993). Thus the model em-
phasizes affective and self-regulatory aspects of temperament, as well as cognitive capaci-
ties, and argues that conscience emerges through a subtle, evolving interaction between the
child’s temperament and the parent’s childrearing style.
Several studies provide support for the model. Connections between early school-age
moral cognitions and behavior and toddler, preschool and concurrent inhibitory control
were reported by Kochanska et al. (1997), leading to the conclusion that inhibitory control
plays a critical role in conscience formation. Temperament-by-parenting interactions in
the development of conscience have also been found (Kochanska 1997). For fearful chil-
dren, a gentle style of maternal discipline in toddlerhood facilitated conscience develop-
ment at preschool age. For fearless children, higher attachment security and higher maternal
responsiveness in toddlerhood predicted later conscience. Additionally, fearful and fearless
children differed in rate of conscience development, with fearful children apparently on a
faster trajectory than fearless children. It seems that there are several pathways to con-
science formation which relate differentially to child temperament and parenting style
characteristics.
The contribution of concurrent and earlier temperament to social skills (combined parent,
teacher, and child report) at 11–12 years was investigated by Prior, Sanson, Smart, and
Oberklaid (2000). Concurrent parent and teacher reports of temperament explained 48%
of the variance in social skills, with attentional self-regulation the most powerful predictor,
and sociability and reactivity also contributing. Temperament data from 7–8 years of age
explained 20%, and from 5–6 years 16%, of the variance in social competence at 11–12
years, with task orientation and flexibility (attentional and emotional self-regulation) be-
ing the most important predictors each time. Reports of temperament at 1–3 and 3–4
years also predicted significant, but modest, amounts of variance.
Temperament contributions to children’s sympathetic capacities were explored by
Murphy, Shepard, Eisenberg, Fabes, and Guthrie (1999). Negative correlations were found
between teacher-reported sympathetic tendencies at 10–12 years and negative emotional-
ity assessed concurrently and 2 and 4 years previously; and between negative emotionality
and concurrent parent-reported sympathy. Positive correlations between regulation ca-
pacities and teacher- and parent-reported sympathy were found contemporaneously and 2
years earlier. Self-regulation capacities explained unique variance after controlling for the
effects of negative emotionality, but the reverse was not true. Here again, the critical role of
self-regulation capacities is evident.
Sex differences
Sex differences emerge in a number of studies. Among preschool-aged boys, high negative
emotionality was related to poor social skills, and low emotionality to good skills. Among
girls, high emotionality was again related to low social skills, but girls with moderate and
low emotionality did not differ in social skills (Eisenberg et al., 1993). This suggests that
high negative emotionality constitutes a risk for both boys and girls, whereas low negative
emotionality is protective only for boys.
In a study of third through sixth graders, Eisenberg et al. (1996) found that girls re-
ceived more prosocial nominations from peers and were more accepted, socially compe-
tent, and popular than boys. Analyses assessing direct relationships between individual
temperament dimensions and prosocial peer nominations showed that high emotionality
was negatively related to prosocial nominations for both sexes, although by parent report
for girls and teacher report for boys. Attentional regulation was correlated with prosocial
nominations, but only for boys. However, when the interactive effects of emotionality and
attentional regulation on prosocial peer nominations were investigated, the effect of high
emotionality was found to be moderated by levels of attention regulation, with sex differ-
ences again evident. Poorly regulated boys received lower prosocial nominations and highly
regulated girls received higher nominations, regardless of level of emotionality. In contrast,
higher emotionality was associated with lower prosocial nominations for boys with better
self-regulation and for girls with poorer self-regulation. Overall, these results suggest the
existence of complex sex differences in the relationships between aspects of temperament
and social competence from the preschool age onwards, that may also be context-depend-
ent.
Sex differences also feature in research on prosocial outcomes. Kochanska, DeVet,
Goldman, Murray, and Putnam (1994), using a sample of children from 21 to 70 months,
identified two higher order components of conscience, named Affective Discomfort and
Moral Regulation/Vigilance. Girls had higher levels of Affective Discomfort, which was
predicted by higher reactivity and focus/effortful control, but no temperament dimensions
were predictive for boys. For both sexes, high focus/effortful control was associated with
higher Moral Regulation/Vigilance. Reactivity among girls and impulsivity and sensation
seeking among boys were related to lower levels of Moral Regulation/Vigilance.
Girls are consistently found to have higher levels of empathy, sympathy, and con-
science than boys, and numerous sex differences are apparent in the connections between
temperament and these aspects of functioning. Bryant (1987) found that emotional in-
tensity and low soothability were related to higher empathy for girls, but not boys. The
teacher-reported relationships found between negative emotionality, regulation, and sym-
pathy described above (Murphy et al., 1999) were carried by significant results for girls
but not boys, while connections between parent-reported regulation and sympathy were
carried by significant results for boys and not girls. Clearly this is an area deserving more
systematic investigation, from which the need for gender-specific models of pathways
may emerge.
Summary
A small set of temperament dimensions are consistently associated with children’s levels of
social skills. Of particular relevance are negative emotionality or reactivity (particularly
intensity, irritability, and mood), both emotional regulation (the ability to control emo-
tional arousal) and attentional regulation (maintaining attention and following tasks through
to completion) and approach/sociability.
For prosocial capacities, the temperament dimensions of importance include inhibition
or shyness, emotionality, and self-regulation. Unlike the findings described in previous
sections, here aspects of negative emotionality appear to contribute positively to a prosocial
outcome. This alerts us to the fact that negative emotionality comprises two aspects: dis-
tress and fear reactions; and irritability and anger – the former appear implicated in the
development of prosocial behavior, whereas the latter are associated with poor peer rela-
tions and, as will be seen later, in aggressive and acting-out behavior.
While the majority of findings suggest direct linear relationships between temperament
and these outcomes, evidence is accumulating that temperament-by-parenting and tem-
perament-by-temperament interactions are important contributors to the developmental
processes involved.
Temperamental Influences on Maladaptive Social Behaviors
One of the most extensively researched issues in the temperament literature is the contri-
bution of temperament to the development of socially maladaptive behaviors, particularly
externalizing behavior problems (EBPs) such as aggression and oppositional behaviors.
Given several recent reviews (e.g., Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Sanson & Prior, 1999), only
highlights of this research will be presented, focusing particularly on longitudinal studies
which allow stronger conclusions to be drawn about temporal and causal pathways. We
also include findings from studies investigating temperament contributions to problem-
atic social interactions, such as peer conflict and communication difficulties. Once again,
there is an absence of studies on social class or cultural differences in the links between
temperament and behavior problems.
In a playground observational study, Billman and McDevitt (1980) found associations

between parent- and teacher-reported temperament dimensions of activity level, intensity,
distractibility, threshold, and rhythmicity and aspects of social behavior such as hitting,
taking an object, and having an object taken away. Associations between a “difficult” tem-
perament profile and EBPs have been consistently reported. ATP children with stable
patterns of aggressive behavior from 3–4 to 7–8 years were consistently distinguished from
transiently aggressive and nonaggressive groups on an easy–difficult temperament factor
(Kingston & Prior, 1995). They also had poorer mother–child relationships, higher levels
of sibling hostility, and harsher parenting practices. Similarly, the Bloomington Longitu-
dinal Study revealed modest associations between temperamental “difficultness” (a combi-
nation of infant and toddler negative affectivity and attention-demanding characteristics)
and EBPs at the preschool and middle childhood stages (Bates et al., 1991). Resistance to
control and low manageability at 2 years were associated with conflicts with parents and
parental management difficulties at the same age, and predictive of long-term EBPs for
boys.
Individual temperament dimensions have also been linked to EBPs. Hagekull (1994)
found that toddler impulsivity, activity, and negative emotionality were predictive of EBPs
at 4 years. Oppositional behavior problems showed concurrent positive correlations with
high emotionality, high activity, low persistence, and high sociability in a study by Webster-
Stratton and Eyberg (1982). In this study, mothers of more difficult children were ob-
served to be more negative and non-accepting when responding to their children, suggesting
the presence of interactive processes.
Concurrent and longitudinal relationships between emotional regulation (observed ex-
pressiveness of negative emotions), and EBPs (combined parent and teacher report) were
reported by Cole, Zahn-Waxler, Fox, Usher, and Welsh (1996). Children who were either
inexpressive or highly expressive had more EBP symptoms at preschool age and two years
later than did children with “modulated” expressiveness. Rubin, Coplan, Fox, and Calkins
(1995) found emotional regulation capacities and social interaction styles combined to
predict distinct patterns of externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. Poorly regu-
lated children with high levels of social interaction (low regulation–high sociability) had
more EBPs than high regulation–high sociability and average groups, while the low regu-
lation–low sociability group had more internalizing problems than high regulation–low
sociability and average groups. Thus emotional dysregulation may be a generalized risk
factor for adjustment difficulties, the expression of which is affected by the presence of
other more specific risk factors, such as social interaction skills.
Early school age (5-to 7-year-olds)
Several studies report longitudinal associations between a “difficult” temperament profile

in toddlerhood or early childhood and school-age EBPs (e.g., Guerin, Gottfried, & Tho-
mas, 1997; Maziade et al., 1990). More specific associations between temperament di-
mensions and EBPs are also evident. Parent-reported negative emotionality at 5 years was
a substantial predictor of teacher-reported EBPs at 8 years, and a significant but relatively
weak predictor of social behavior (Nelson, Martin, Hodge, Havill, & Kanphaus, 1999). In
an ATP study investigating longitudinal predictors of early school-age hyperactive and/or
aggressive problems, Sanson, Smart, Prior, and Oberklaid (1993) showed that the pure
aggressive and comorbid hyperactive-aggressive groups had been less cooperative/manage-
able, more active/reactive and more irritable in infancy and toddlerhood, and more inflex-
ible and impersistent in early childhood than those with only hyperactivity or neither
problem. Other risk factors, including more negative parental perceptions of the child,
larger family size, and more family stresses, also differentiated the groups.
Regulation capacities, particularly emotional regulation, and emotionality/reactivity are of

importance for EBPs at this age. Wertleib, Weigel, Springer, and Feldstein (1987) found
that negative mood, nonadaptability, activity, intensity, nonpersistence, and irregularity,
were related to concurrent EBPs. Powerful prediction to concurrent EBPs was found by
McClowry et al. (1993), particularly from negative reactivity but also from low persistence
and maternal hassles. Children with oppositional or conduct disorder diagnoses were more
likely to have “difficult” temperament characteristics such as low adaptability, distractibility
and approach, and high intensity and negative mood (Maziade, 1989). In the ATP sample,
boys with EBPs at 11–12 years had been consistently more irritable and inflexible in earlier
years, while EBP girls had shown a similar but weaker pattern of differences on these
factors (Sanson, Oberklaid, Prior, Amos, & Smart, 1996). Earlier low persistence was re-
lated to EBP outcomes for both boys and girls.
Sex differences
Given the large body of research on temperament-EBP connections, surprisingly few studies
have explicitly investigated sex differences. As Sanson and Prior (1999) note, such research is
impeded by the lower rates of EBPs among girls, the differential expression of EBPs across
the sexes (e.g., physical vs. relational aggression), and the questionable applicability of the
current methods of assessing EBPs for females. Nevertheless, some sex differences are appar-
ent. Fabes, Shepard, Gurthrie, and Martin (1997) found that same-sex peer play escalated
problem behavior among boys who had high arousal levels, whereas it decreased problem
behavior for high-arousal girls. Sanson et al. (1996) found that inflexibility and irritability
were stronger longitudinal predictors of EBPs for boys than girls, while low approach and
high anxiety (often found to be precursors of internalizing problems) sometimes featured as

predictors of EBPs for girls, but never for boys. In a study of sex differences in the longitudi-
nal precursors of behavior problems at 7–8 years (combined internalizing and externalizing
problems) and using temperament and other child and family variables as predictors, Prior,
Smart, Sanson and Oberklaid (1993) found that temperamental inflexibility (principally
tapping reactivity) was the most powerful predictor for both sexes. However, substantial sex
differences were also noted. For boys, persistence at the earlier timepoints was important,
whereas for girls, persistence was less salient, and parental use of punishment, low child
centredness, and poorer maternal psychological functioning were powerful precursors.
Summary
In summary, the temperament dimensions which have been particularly implicated in the
development of aggressive and oppositional behavior problems include: negative emotion-
ality; aspects of reactivity such as inflexibility; low attention regulation capacities; and a
“difficult” temperament profile. A notable trend from studies including both prosocial and
maladaptive outcomes (e.g., Billman & McDevitt, 1980; Nelson et al., 1999) is the con-
sistently stronger association of temperament characteristics to problematic, as compared
with prosocial, outcomes. Again research has concentrated on investigating direct linear
relationships, but mediated processes and temperament interactions are beginning to emerge.
Conclusion
This review has documented substantial relationships between temperament and social
development. These include concurrent and across-time relationships, from very early to
late childhood. It thus appears incontestable that these intrinsic differences between chil-
dren are of consequence to their social development and should be incorporated into theo-
retical model building about the processes of social development.
Further, it is clear that there are differential relationships between specific aspects of
temperament and particular social developmental outcomes. Inhibition appears to be cen-
tral to peer relations, along with reactivity and attentional self-regulation. Attentional and
emotional self-regulation emerged as important to social competence and prosocial capaci-
ties. Reactivity and attentional and emotional self-regulation appear the most salient tem-
peramental contributors to externalizing behaviors.
In general, temperament traits regarded as problematic are associated with poorer social
developmental outcomes, but interestingly, aspects of negative reactivity appear to en-
hance development of conscience, and the cross-cultural studies of Chen and colleagues
indicate that the role of inhibition is moderated by culturally based beliefs about desirable
child outcomes. These findings take us back to Thomas and Chess’ notion of “goodness of
fit” between a temperament attribute and the expectations of the particular social context,
direct us away from simplistic ascriptions of temperament traits as “difficult,” and indicate
the inadequacy of global constructs like “difficult temperament.”
One implication of the differential relationships between temperamental attributes and

outcomes is that careful measurement of temperament is needed. Greater consensus and
uniformity in the conceptualizations and operationalizations of temperament would facili-
tate interpretation of findings; given current understanding, the broadband dimensions of
reactivity, self-regulation, and approach/withdrawal tendencies appear good candidates for
an agreed framework. However, the data reviewed show that these constructs may also
need to be decomposed; in the case of self-regulation, into attentional and emotional com-
ponents; and in the case of negative reactivity, into fearful, anxious and angry, irritable
affects. In each case, different implications for social development are apparent.
The difficulty of separating temperament measures from measures of developmental
outcomes, especially but not solely in relation to internalizing problems like social with-
drawal, suggests that the reliable and valid measurement of temperament remains a con-
cern. Ad hoc approaches, such as relabeling measures originally designed to tap behavior as
measures of temperament, is a problematic recent trend. Continued attention to measure-
ment issues is needed.
Much research to date has relied on correlational analyses, often with concurrent data,
with relatively little attention to the developmental processes involved. However, there are
encouraging recent exceptions, such as the models of the development of social withdrawal,
social competence, and conscience development described here. These models provide
hypotheses which can be tested in future research, and are clear direction setters for future
theorizing.
A feature of these models is that they posit interactive processes, either between tem-
perament and parenting, or between different aspects of temperament. It is these interac-
tive models which offer most hope for increased understanding of development, and also
provide guidance for effective interventions which take the child, their parents, their social
context and their interrelationships into account. Testing of these interactive models needs
the application of sophisticated statistical modeling to elucidate potentially nonlinear in-
teractive relationships between variables.
Gender differences in aspects of social development such as prosocial behavior and EBPs
are pervasive, and the research reviewed suggests that different processes may link tempera-
ment and development in boys and girls. As yet, no clear picture of systematic differences
in patterns of associations has emerged. The examination of gender differences in the role
of temperament in paths to social development is a clear need for future research. Simi-
larly, virtually no research has examined social class and culture as moderators of relation-
ships between temperament and social development, but the little that does exist suggests
that this will be a very fruitful area for future research.
Findings of temperamental contributions to development can sometimes be interpreted
as a form of “biological determinism.” However, the impact of temperament depends
largely on its “fit” with the context, and findings of moderate stability over time indicate
that it is not immutable. In taking temperament into account in attempts to optimize each
child’s social development, therefore, the tasks are to arrange the environment so as to
maximize the “fit” between the child and the environment, to match parenting and educa-
tional practices to the characteristics of the child, and to help the child develop strategies to
best manage their temperamental proclivities.
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Sex Differences in Social Behavior 117
Sex Differences in Social Behavior
Susan Golombok and Melissa Hines
From an early age, boys and girls can be easily distinguished according to their sex. While
this is partly due to their appearance and the way in which their parents dress them and cut
their hair, it is also because of the things that children do. Boys and girls like to play with
different toys, prefer different games, and engage in different activities. Long before they
reach school age it is possible to tell with a reasonable degree of accuracy whether a child is
a boy or a girl simply on the basis of his or her behavior. This does not mean that all boys
engage in male activities, or that all girls engage in female activities, all of the time. There
is a great deal of overlap between the sexes with some girls being more “boyish” than the
average boy and some boys behaving in a way that is more typical of a “girlish” girl. Al-
though there is considerable variation in the behavior of children within each sex, it is
generally more acceptable for girls to behave like boys than it is for boys to behave like girls.
This may explain why the term “tomboy” used to describe masculine girls is often used
endearingly whereas “sissy” is a much more derogatory term when applied to feminine
boys.
What exactly are the differences in behavior shown by boys and girls? And how do these
differences develop? These are the questions that will be addressed in this chapter. Firstly,
sex differences in social behavior will be described from the preschool to the elementary
school years. This will be followed by a consideration of the various theories that have been
put forward to explain this phenomenon. The sections on biological theories draw from
Collaer and Hines (1995) and Hines (2000) while those on psychological theories draw
from Golombok and Fivush (1994). As we shall see, some theories have greater empirical
support than others. Following Maccoby (1988), the terms “sex” and “gender” will be
used interchangeably throughout the chapter without any assumption that “sex” implies
biological causes or that “gender” results from socialization.
118 Susan Golombok & Melissa Hines
Preschool (3–4 Years)
Gender identity
By the time of their third birthday, children have generally developed a rudimentary sense
of gender identity (Slaby & Frey, 1975). When asked “Are you a boy or a girl?” they will
give the right answer. They can also correctly identify other people as male or female. But
children of this age use physical appearance to make their judgments. A person with long
hair who is wearing a skirt will be deemed female, and a short-haired person with a necktie
will be seen as male, purely because of their external appearance. If these same people
change their clothes and hairstyle to look like the other sex, children will report that their
gender has changed as well.
At around 3 to 4 years of age, children develop gender stability, that is, they begin to
recognize that gender does not change over time (Slaby & Frey, 1975). They realize that if
they are a girl or a boy now then they used to be a girl baby or a boy baby, and that they will
grow up to be a woman or a man. However, they still believe that children can change
gender by changing their behavior; if a boy wears a dress, he can become a girl, and if a girl
plays with guns, she can become a boy.
Toy preference
One of the most striking differences between boys and girls is their preference for different
types of toys. This can be detected in 1 year olds (Snow, Jacklin, & Maccoby, 1983), and
by 3 years of age, girls are much more likely than boys to play with dolls, dolls’ houses, tea
sets and other domestic toys whereas boys are most often to be found with toy guns,
swords, cars, trains, and trucks (De Lucia, 1963; O’Brien & Huston, 1985; Sutton-Smith
& Rosenberg, 1971).
Playmate preference
From as early as 3 years old, girls prefer other girls as playmates and boys prefer to play with
boys (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). This phenomenon, known as “gender segregation,” is
not specific to particular nationalities or cultures. It can be seen in children’s playgrounds
around the world. Children’s preference for same-sex playmates is a universal aspect of
growing up (Whiting & Edwards, 1988). Gender segregation is most likely to occur when
children are left to their own devices, especially when they are with others of a similar age,
which suggests that it is children, not adults, who are driving this process. In an observa-
tional study of children in a daycare setting, LaFreniere, Strayor, and Gauthier (1984)
found that the tendency for girls to play together became apparent at age 2. For boys, the
preference for male playmates occurred slightly later but was clearly established at 3 years
of age. Howes (1988) reported similar findings. Like LaFreniere et al. (1984), she observed
children in daycare, and showed that 3 year olds were more likely to form new friendships
with children of the same sex.
Play style
Differences in the play styles of boys and girls can also be seen from 3 years of age (Maccoby,
1998; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987; Pitcher & Shultz, 1983). Boys tend to play in a more
active, rough-and-tumble, and sometimes physically aggressive fashion than girls who tend
to talk more to each other and be more nurturant than boys. When girls are aggressive this
is more likely to take the form of behaviors intended to damage relationships such as
exclusion from a circle of friends (Crick, Casas, & Mosher, 1997; McNeilly-Choque, Hart,
Robinson, Nelson, & Olsen, 1996). Boys also like to play outdoors in large groups while
girls are more often to be found in twos or threes indoors. Differences in the way in which
boys and girls resolve conflict are also apparent from age 3. Whereas girls incline toward
reaching a compromise, it is more common for boys to use physical force (Sheldon, 1990).
In addition, pretend play differentiates the sexes with boys acting out heroic roles involv-
ing fighting and adventure, and girls preferring to be family characters or dressing up in
feminine clothes.
Early School (5–7 Years)
Gender identity
It is not until the early school years that children attain gender constancy, the final stage of
gender identity development (Slaby & Frey, 1975), and understand that gender is a funda-
mental aspect of a person’s identity. They now realize that gender is constant across time
and across all situations, and that however much someone wants to be the other sex, be-
haves like the other sex, and wears other-sex clothes, this simply cannot happen. The at-
tainment of gender constancy is closely related to the conservation stage of cognitive
development (Piaget, 1968). When Marcus and Overton (1978) administered both a con-
servation task and a gender constancy task to early school age children they found that
children who could successfully complete the conservation task were more likely to pass
the gender constancy task as well. There has been some controversy over the age at which
children reach gender constancy, with different studies producing different findings de-
pending on the assessment methods used (Emmerich, Goldman, Kirsh & Sharabany, 1977;
Martin & Halverson, 1981; Zucker et al., 1999). Many children, it seems, do not reach
the stage of gender constancy until the end of the early school years. It used to be thought
that it was necessary for children to develop a full understanding of the gender concept
before they would consistently engage in sex-typed behavior (Kohlberg, 1966) but the
differences in toy, playmate, and activity preference shown by children as young as 3 years
old clearly demonstrate that this is not the case.
Toy preference
The sex difference in toy preference that is apparent among preschool children continues
to characterize the early school years. In a study of 3–5 year olds, Martin, Wood, and Little
(1990) demonstrated a greater preference among boys for a car, an airplane, and a tool set
and a greater preference among girls for a tea set, a doll, and a haircare set. Children in this
study were also more likely to report that they preferred unfamiliar neutral items such as a
pizza cutter and a hole puncher if presented to them as something that children of their sex
really like. Similarly, when parents were asked to rate how often their children played with
a selection of toys, differences between boys and girls were reported for guns, jewelry, tool
sets, dolls, dolls’ carriages, trains, cars, swords, and tea sets (Golombok & Rust, 1993).
Playmate preference
Gender segregation is an important feature of the early school years. Eleanor Maccoby and
Carol Jacklin examined the playmate preferences of 100 children at 4.5 years old and again
at 6.5 years (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). When first observed, the children were spending
nearly three times as much time playing with same-sex peers than other-sex peers. By the
second observation, only 2 years later, the amount of time spent playing with same-sex
peers was more than 10 times greater than that spent with peers of the other sex. A similar
increase in the preference for same-sex peers was demonstrated by Serbin, Powlishta, and
Gulko (1993) when they compared children in kindergarten with children in the early
school years. The process of gender segregation involves not only the preference for same-
sex playmates but also the avoidance of playmates of the other sex as well.
Play style
As children move from preschool to the early school years, the play styles of boys and girls
continue to diverge. Achieving dominance appears to be of particular importance to boys.
In order to have status, boys need to be seen as “tough” (Maccoby, 1998). The way in
which girls and boys communicate is also different. Girls talk to each other to form and
strengthen relationships. Boys use language to give information, assert themselves, and
command attention (Lever, 1976; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). Boys of this age like to play
in large groups of other boys whereas girls prefer the company of one or two female friends.
The nature of these relationships also differs between the sexes. Whereas girls’ friendships
are characterized by emotional and physical closeness, the friendships of boys are founded
on shared activities and interests (Maccoby, 1998).
Elementary School (8–11 Years)
Toy preference
A study of letters to Santa Claus by elementary school children revealed a marked differ-
ence in the toys requested by boys and girls (Robinson & Morris, 1986). More than one
quarter of the girls wanted a doll compared with less than 1% of the boys whereas almost
half of the boys but less than 10% of the girls asked for some kind of vehicle. It seems that
right until the end of elementary school boys and girls have a strong preference for sex-
typed toys.
Playmate preference
The preference for same-sex peers is strongest among elementary school children. In re-
viewing the literature on relationships within the school environment, Maccoby (1998)
reported that children’s best friends are almost always the same sex as themselves. Further-
more, when observed during free time – in the playground, at lunch, or in the corridors –
boys and girls are most likely to be found interacting with others of their own sex. Maccoby
(1998) illustrates this with a description of behavior in the lunchroom: “In school
lunchrooms, the children usually have a shared understanding that certain tables are ‘girls’
tables’ and other tables are for boys. Very few instances are seen in which a child sits down
next to a child of the other sex after emerging from the cafeteria line.” A recent study of 8–
11 year olds was particularly revealing. When Gray and Feldman (1997) investigated peer-
group interaction at an ungraded school where boys and girls of all ages had the opportunity
to mix, more than half of the children spent no time at all with children of the other sex.
And from their examination of the peer preferences of children of different ages, Serbin et
al. (1993) reported that 95% of elementary school children preferred same-sex peers. This
is not just a Western phenomenon. The research of Whiting and Edwards (1988) shows
that in India, Africa, South East Asia, and Central America, children of this age spend
three quarters of their play time with peers of their own sex.
Play styles
In the elementary school years, much of boys’ free time is spent in large groups of other
boys playing competitive games. When Crombie and Desjardins (1993) observed boys
and girls at play, they found that boys in large groups were involved in competition with
other boys 50% of the time whereas this was true for girls in their smaller groups only1%
of the time. Girls spend most of their free time conversing with a female best friend, often
sharing secrets or talking about mutual interests (Lever, 1976). Tannen (1990) examined
the content of girls’ and boys’ conversations in a laboratory setting. The girls had long,
intimate conversations. Boys, in contrast, found little to say and resorted to talking about
finding something to do.
Theories attempting to explain the development of sex differences in toy preferences, play-
mate preferences, gender identity, and play styles have been classified as biological or psy-
chological. This distinction is somewhat misleading, because psychological processes have
a biological basis and because biology and psychology influence one another. In addition,
the theories discussed under these headings are not mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, to
date, so-called biological and psychological research has proceeded largely separately, and
so each will be discussed in turn.
Biological Explanations
Biological mechanisms underlying sexual development have been studied extensively in

nonhuman mammals, and have been found to be similar for the genitalia, the brain, and
behavior. These processes are summarized below, and discussed more fully in Collaer and
Hines (1995), Goy and McEwen (1980), and Wilson, George, and Griffin (1981).
The primary and immediate biological determinants of sex differences are gonadal hor-
mones. At conception, both genetically male (XY) and female (XX) mammals have the
capacity to differentiate phenotypically as either males or females. In XY individuals, a
region on the Y chromosome typically directs the primordial gonads (originally identical
in males and females) to become testes. If this direction is not given, the gonads differenti-
ate as ovaries.
The human testes differentiate at about week 6 of gestation and begin to produce hor-
mones by about week 8. Testicular hormones then direct sexual differentiation of the
internal and external genitalia, where receptors for these hormones are located. Testoster-
one causes the Wolffian ducts to develop into vas deferens, prostate, and seminal vesicles,
while another testicular hormone causes Mullerian tissues, destined to become the uterus,
fallopian tubes, and upper vagina, to regress. Testicular hormones also stimulate the exter-
nal genitalia to become penis and scrotum. In the absence of these hormones, these tissues
become the clitoris, labia, and lower vagina, the Wolffian ducts regress and the Mullerian
organs develop.
Within the brain, similar processes occur, certainly in nonhuman mammals, and per-
haps in humans as well. Like the genitalia, portions of the brain have receptors for testicu-
lar hormones. The same brain regions that contain hormone receptors typically show
structural sex differences and regulate reproductive behaviors or other behaviors that show
sex differences (i.e., differ for males and females of the species). Perhaps the best-known
example is the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the pre-optic area (SDN-POA), a region that
is larger in male than female rats (and some other species as well). Administering testoster-
one to genetic females during critical developmental periods increases the size of the nu-
cleus. Similar hormonal effects on brain structure have been noted in other brain regions.
In general, administering testosterone or its metabolites sculpts a more masculine-typical
brain, while reducing these hormones sculpts a more feminine-typical brain.
Gonadal hormones also influence behavior. Genetic female rats treated with testoster-
one on the day of birth show increased male-typical sexual behavior, and decreased
female-typical sexual behavior, as adults. Similarly, removing testosterone from develop-
ing males (by neonatal castration or treatment with anti-androgens) reduces male-typical
behavior and increases female-typical behavior in adulthood. Hormones influence not
only reproductive behaviors, but also other characteristics that show sex differences. In
the rat, these include rough-and-tumble play, activity levels, and aggression. Hormonal
influences are not limited to rats, but are seen in many species, including nonhuman
primates. In the rhesus macaque, for instance, treating pregnant animals with testoster-
one produces female offspring who show increased rough-and-tumble (masculine-
typical) play, increased masculine-typical sexual behavior, and decreased feminine-
typical sexual behavior.
Two additional points regarding hormonal influences on brain development and behavior
are relevant. First, hormones do not affect all aspects of sex-typical development in a uni-
form manner. For instance, hormones influence masculine-typical sexual behavior earlier
than feminine-typical sexual behavior. The times of maximal effect are called critical peri-
ods, and they differ from one behavior to another. Thus, a brief hormonal perturbation
can influence one sex-typical behavior without influencing others. In general, there is an
overall critical period when hormones are influential and this corresponds to the time
when testicular hormones are higher in developing males than females. In humans this is
probably from about week 8 to 24 of gestation and from about the first to the sixth month
postnatally. Second, the impact of hormones is graded. A developing organism does not
become masculine when testicular hormones exceed a certain threshold and remain femi-
nine otherwise. Instead, the amount of hormone corresponds to the amount of masculine-
typical development. Therefore, small or moderate changes in hormones during development
can move the organism along a male–female continuum, without causing it to become
completely male or completely female. Thus, gradations in hormone levels during devel-
opment could contribute to individual differences in sex-typical behavior within each sex
as well as between the sexes.
Human development
Knowledge of mechanisms underlying sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain

and behavior has come from experimental studies in species where hormones can be
manipulated. Similar experiments are impossible in humans, because of ethical consid-
erations. Therefore, information on the applicability of these animal models to human
development has come from other sources. These include endocrine disorders of prena-
tal onset, and situations where women have been prescribed hormones during pregnancy.
As might be expected, these sources are limited, and it is not possible to discuss the
evidence in the age frames specified at the beginning of this chapter. However, where
possible, data will be described in terms of the age groups for which they were gathered.
In addition, because many studies have involved small numbers of subjects, sample sizes
will be specified.
Toy preferences
Girls exposed prenatally to high levels of androgens (the major hormonal products of the
testes) show increased preferences for masculine-typical toys. This conclusion is based largely
on studies of girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a genetic disorder involving
deficiency in an enzyme (usually 21 hydroxylase) needed to produce cortisol. Because of
the deficiency, feedback systems in the brain direct the adrenal glands to produce precur-
sors to cortisol, including androgens. Genetic females with CAH almost always are born
with ambiguous genitalia caused by elevated androgen prenatally. The clitoris is enlarged
and the labia are partially fused to resemble a scrotum. The degree of virilization varies,
ranging from essentially female-appearing genitalia, to genitalia that resemble those of a
normal male. In the great majority of cases, diagnosis is made within the first few days or
weeks of life, hormones are prescribed to regulate the postnatal hormonal environment,
the genitalia are surgically feminized and the child is reared as a girl.
Despite these procedures, girls with CAH show alterations in their toy preferences
(Berenbaum & Hines, 1992; Dittman et al., 1990; Ehrhardt & Baker, 1974; Ehrhardt,
Epstein, & Money, 1968; Slijper, 1984). Studies have obtained information from ques-
tionnaires and interviews with the girls and their mothers, and from direct observation of
toy choices in a playroom. Questionnaire and interview studies often combine informa-
tion on toy choices with other behaviors, such as playmate and activity preferences. When
toy choices are considered separately, conclusions are based on a few, or even a single,
questionnaire or interview item. However, the observational study indicates that toy choices
are altered when considered alone. In this study, 26 girls with CAH (ages 3 to 8 years)
spent more time with toys typically preferred by boys (e.g., cars and trucks) and less time
with toys typically preferred by girls (e.g., dolls) than did unaffected female relatives
(Berenbaum & Hines, 1992).
The interpretability of data from CAH girls has been questioned because of their virili-
zation at birth, and because their parents might treat them differently based on the knowl-
edge that they were exposed to “masculinizing” hormones (Fausto-Sterling, 1992). However,
the degree of genital virilization in individual girls does not correlate with the degree of
alteration in their toy choices (Berenbaum & Hines, 1992), and interview and question-
naire data suggest that parents treat their CAH daughters as they would other girls
(Berenbaum & Hines, 1992; Ehrhardt & Baker, 1974). Indeed, parents are advised by
healthcare professionals to encourage feminine development in girls with CAH, and it
would seem likely that they would do so.
The observational study of toy choices found no differences between 11 boys with CAH
and unaffected boys. This finding, like that of increased masculine-typical toy preferences
in CAH girls, is generally consistent with other studies of CAH children (Ehrhardt &
Baker, 1974), and with data from studies of other species where adding testosterone to
developing males does not typically enhance masculine-typical behavior.
Evidence regarding hormonal influences on toy choices has also come from situations
where pregnant women were given hormones for medical reasons. One study involved 10
girls (ages 3 to 14 years) whose mothers were prescribed androgenic progestins during
pregnancy (Money & Ehrhardt, 1972). Like girls with CAH, these girls were typically
born with virilized genitalia, and surgically feminized during infancy. Sex assignment and
rearing were female. Nevertheless, the hormone-exposed girls showed increased mascu-
line-typical toy preferences.
Another study reported on 15 girls (ages 8 to 12 years) whose mothers were prescribed
medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) during pregnancy. Because MPA counteracts the ac-
tion of androgen, exposed girls might be expected to show enhanced feminine-typical
behavior. The MPA-exposed girls did not differ from matched controls in interest in mas-
culine-typical toys, but there was some evidence of reduced masculine-typical behavior on
a composite variable called “tomboyism” (p = .06) and of increased interest in feminine-
typical clothing (Ehrhardt, Grisanti, & Meyer-Bahlburg, 1977). MPA-exposed boys might
be expected to be less masculine than other boys. Compared to matched controls, 13
MPA-exposed boys (ages 9 to 13 years) showed some reduction in masculine-typical play,
but not specifically in toy choices (Meyer-Bahlberg, Feldman, Cohen, & Ehrhardt, 1988).
These studies of administered hormones assessed toy preferences using interviews and
questionnaires. Typically, assessments were based on a small number of items in a ques-
tionnaire or interview assessing a range of sex-typical behaviors. In addition, exogenous
hormone treatments differ from individual to individual and can be as brief as a few days
or as long as several months. Thus, some children may not have been exposed to enough
hormones to produce behavioral changes. Finally, regarding the studies of MPA, the au-
thors note that effects might be hard to see in girls, because there is little scope for them to
become more feminine, while for boys the testes might compensate for the small reduction
in hormone levels likely to be produced by MPA. Thus, the studies of MPA-exposed chil-
dren may have lacked the experimental power to detect hormonal influences on behavior.
Gender identity
Girls with CAH appear to show reduced feminine-typical gender identity or reduced satis-
faction with the female gender role. This has been noted in four studies of girls with CAH
ranging in age from 4 to 20 years. A total of 63 girls with CAH from three different regions
of the United States and from the Netherlands participated in the studies and were com-
pared to their unaffected sisters, as well as to matched controls and girls with other medical
disorders. Data were collected using various methods, including interviews, paper and
pencil questionnaires, and projective tests (Ehrhardt et al., 1968; Ehrhardt & Baker, 1974;
Hurtig & Rosenthal, 1987; Slijper, 1984). A fifth study found that 2 of 18 girls with CAH
met the criteria for a clinical diagnosis of gender identity disorder of childhood, as did 5 of
29 additional girls who had been exposed to high levels of androgen prenatally because of
other endocrine disorders (Slijper, Drop, Molenaar, & de Muinck Keizer-Schrama, 1998).
Two other studies (McGuire, Ryan & Omenn, 1975; Perlman, 1973), including 9 and 15
CAH girls respectively, found no significant alterations in gender identity. Given the small
samples of CAH girls typically available for study, what might be more remarkable than
one or two failures to find differences in gender identity is the relatively consistent evi-
dence of an alteration in this fundamental aspect of a person’s sense of self.
Studies of children exposed prenatally to progestins have generally not reported altera-
tions in gender identity (Ehrhardt et al., 1977; Ehrhardt & Money, 1967; Meyer-Bahlburg
et al., 1988). As was the case for toy choices, it is not possible to say whether this reflects a
lack of an effect or a lack of power to detect effects. Boys with CAH also have not been
found to show alterations in gender identity or satisfaction in the male gender role (Ehrhardt
& Baker, 1974), a finding that is again consistent with predictions from animal models.
Playmate preferences
Playmate preferences also are altered in girls exposed to androgens prenatally. Three stud-
ies have reported that girls with CAH show reduced preferences for female playmates
(Ehrhardt et al., 1968; Ehrhardt & Baker, 1974; Hines & Kaufman, 1994). The studies
included a total of 58 CAH girls (ages 3 to 20 years) from three different regions of the
United States who were compared to matched or sibling controls. The first two studies
used interviews to assess playmate preferences along with other sex-typical behaviors. The
third asked children to name their three favorite playmates and calculated the percentage
of males. The 10 girls exposed to androgenic progestins who showed increased preferences
for male-typical toys also reported increased preferences for male playmates (Money &
Ehrhardt, 1972). Studies of MPA-exposed children have not found alterations in playmate
preferences (Meyer-Bahlburg et al., 1988). It is again unclear whether this reflects a lack of
an effect or a lack of experimental power. Boys with CAH do not show alterations in
preferences for male playmates (Ehrhardt & Baker, 1974; Hines & Kaufman, 1994), again
consistent with research in other species.
Play styles
Studies of hormone-exposed children have not looked at play styles in a manner compara-
ble to that used in studies of other children. However, there is some information concern-
ing aggression and rough-and-tumble play.
Reports on aggression following prenatal exposure to androgenic hormones do not present
a clear picture. One study found that 22 women with CAH scored higher than matched
controls on a questionnaire measure of “indirect aggression” (Helleday, Edman, Ritzen, &
Siwers, 1993). A second study, also using questionnaires, presented a more complicated
picture (Berenbaum & Resnick, 1997). Six groups of CAH individuals (3 female and 3
male) were compared to siblings of the same sex. One group of 18 female adolescents and
adults with CAH reported more aggression than controls, but two other female samples
(one including 11 adolescents and adults and the other 20 girls with CAH) did not. The
different outcomes across the groups could relate to the age of participants, the specific
questionnaire used to measure aggression, or sample size. There were no significant differ-
ences between males with and without CAH. Studies using interviews to assess fighting in
girls with CAH have found no differences for a total of 32 girls (ages 4 to 20 years) from
either siblings or matched controls (Ehrhardt et al., 1968; Ehrhardt & Baker, 1974). Fi-
nally, a questionnaire study found that 17 girls and 8 boys (ages 6 to 18 years) exposed to
androgenic progestins prenatally showed increased tendencies to physical aggression in
comparison to their unexposed siblings (Reinisch, 1981). Thus, some studies suggest an
increase in aggression, as measured by questionnaires, following prenatal exposure to an-

drogenic hormones, but this is not always the case. In addition, it is not clear whether
hormone-related changes in questionnaire responses would translate into increased aggres-
sive behavior, or if they would apply to children as well as adults. Therefore, it is not
possible to say if the early hormone environment contributes to individual differences in
aggressive play styles in children.
CAH girls have been reported to show high energy expenditure, and preferences for
rough, active play, particularly in the context of “tomboyish” behavior (Ehrhardt et al.,
1968; Ehrhardt & Baker, 1974). These studies included a total of 32 CAH girls (ages 4 to
20 years) compared to matched or sibling controls. Similar findings were reported for the
10 girls exposed to androgenic progestins prenatally (Ehrhardt & Money, 1967). A third
study of 34 CAH girls (ages 11 to 41 years) found no differences from unaffected sisters in
energy expenditure based on interview responses (Dittman et al., 1990). This study also
found no differences in dominance or assertiveness in CAH versus control girls. Differ-
ences in assessment strategies could explain the different conclusions that might be drawn
from these studies.
One study observed rough-and-tumble behavior in 20 girls with CAH (ages 3 to 8 years)
and their unaffected relatives. Children played with a partner in a room containing toys
selected to elicit rough-and-tumble play (e.g., a “Bobo” punching doll). Boys showed more
rough-and-tumble play (e.g. hitting the “Bobo” doll, playfully hitting one another, wres-
tling), as found in prior studies using similar procedures (DiPietro, 1981; Maccoby, 1988).
However, girls with CAH did not differ from control girls (Hines & Kaufman, 1994). These
results contrast with data from female rats and rhesus macaques, where androgen exposure
during development increases rough-and-tumble behavior (e.g., Goy & McEwen, 1980).
Perhaps similar processes do not occur in humans. Alternatively, the testing situation might
not have been adequate to detect effects. Most girls do not like rough-and-tumble play and
most boys will not play rough with girls. Consequently, girls with CAH may have found that
neither male nor female partners were interested in joining them in rough-and-tumble inter-
actions (see Hines & Kaufman, 1994 for additional discussion).
Summary
Studies of girls exposed to high levels of androgen prenatally, because of the genetic disor-
der, CAH, suggest that they show more masculine-typical toy choices, gender identity,
and playmate preferences. Some convergent evidence of hormonal influences on these
behaviors has come from girls exposed to androgenic progestins. Alterations in play styles,
including rough-and-tumble play and aggressive play, are less well established. The early
hormone environment has generally not been found to influence gender development in
boys. However, the most telling information, which would come from boys who were
exposed to lower than normal levels of testicular hormones during development, is largely
unavailable. Clearly, although findings from girls with CAH suggests that hormones can
influence the development of children’s gender-related behavior, further research is needed
to fully understand the role of hormonal factors, particularly as they apply to normal devel-
opment in both boys and girls.
Psychological Explanations
The psychological explanations discussed below have been organized according to theo-
retical approach as each theory has been applied to more than one aspect of gender devel-
opment of interest in this chapter (gender identity, toy preference, playmate preference,
and play style). The particular focus of each theoretical perspective will be highlighted
where appropriate.
Social learning theory
The idea, founded in psychoanalytic theory, that children’s gender development results
from identification with the same-sex parent is a cornerstone of social learning theory.
According to classic social learning theory, two mechanisms are at play: (i) the differential
reinforcement of boys and girls and (ii) children’s modeling of individuals of the same sex
as themselves (Bandura, 1977; Mischel, 1966, 1970). Classic social learning theory posits
that parents play a key role in the gender development of their children, both by differen-
tially reinforcing their daughters and sons and by acting as models of sex-typed behavior.
However, it is acknowledged that others such as teachers and peers, as well as images
presented by the media, may also be influential.
The role of differential reinforcement in children’s acquisition of sex-typed behavior has
been widely investigated in an attempt to establish whether parents really treat their sons
and daughters differently. In an influential review of the early studies, Maccoby and Jacklin
(1974) concluded that there was little evidence that they do. In terms of the extent to
which they allowed their sons and daughters to be independent, and the way in which they
responded to their children’s aggressive behavior, there was little evidence for the differen-
tial reinforcement of boys and girls. Nevertheless, there were some differences. Parents
were found to reinforce their children for specifically sex-typed activities and interests such
as doll play for girls and more active play for boys, and to discourage play that was associ-
ated with the other sex. A more recent review (Lytton & Romney, 1991) found a similar
result. The only consistent differences to emerge between the treatment of boys and girls
by parents were once again for sex-typed behaviors relating to toys, games, and activities.
Although Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) thought these differences to be of little signifi-
cance, other researchers believe that the differential reinforcement of children’s toy, game,
and activity preferences does play a part in the acquisition of sex-typed behavior (Block,
1983; Lytton & Romney, 1991). From the moment of birth, parents treat their sons and
daughters differently. They describe their newborn girls as soft and their newborn sons as
strong (Rubin, Provenzano, & Luria, 1974), they give more physical stimulation to their
male infants and talk more to their female infants (Moss, 1967; Parke & Sawin, 1980),
they dress their girls in pink and their boys in blue (Shakin, Shakin, & Sternglanz, 1985),
they give their daughters dolls and their sons cars and trucks (Rheingold & Cook, 1975),
and they decorate their children’s bedrooms according to their sex (Rheingold & Cook,
1975). The way in which parents interact with their infants is also guided by the child’s
gender. From as early as 1 year old, parents encourage their infants to play with sex-typed
toys (Snow et al., 1983), a phenomenon that becomes even more marked during the tod-
dler years (Fagot, 1978; Langlois & Downs, 1980), but seems to wane by the time they
reach 5 years old (Fagot & Hagan, 1991). In addition, mothers are more likely to discuss
emotions with their daughters than with their sons (Dunn, Bretherton, & Munn, 1987;
Fivush, 1989).
It seems, therefore, that parents do treat their sons and daughters differently. But this does
not mean that differential reinforcement by parents is responsible for the behavioral differ-
ences that are apparent between boys and girls. Parents might simply be reacting to the sex-
typed behavior of their children rather than causing it. As already discussed, boys and girls
may have a biologically based predisposition to behave in a sex-typed way. Most likely,
differential reinforcement by parents not only produces sex-typed behavior in children but
also operates by maximizing pre-existing behavioral differences between boys and girls.
Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) also examined the role of modeling in children’s develop-
ment of sex-typed behavior and concluded that the imitation of same-sex parents does not
play a major part in this process. They argued that boys did not closely resemble their
father, nor girls their mother, which would be expected if children imitated their same-sex
parent more than their other-sex parent. Moreover, in observational studies, children did
not necessarily imitate adults of the same sex as themselves. It is no longer thought that
children learn sex-typed behavior simply by imitating individual same-sex models. Instead,
it seems that children learn which behaviors are considered appropriate for boys, and which
for girls, by observing large numbers of males and females and by noticing which behaviors
are performed frequently by each sex. Children then model the behaviors that they con-
sider appropriate for their sex (Perry & Bussey, 1979).
Children observe a wide variety of role models in their daily life, not just their parents.
Friends, in particular, appear to be important role models. As already discussed, school-age
boys and girls show a strong preference for same-sex peers (Maccoby, 1988). But it is
gender stereotypes (widely held beliefs about the characteristics that are typical of males
and females), rather than specific individuals, that seem to be most influential in the acqui-
sition of sex-typed behavior. Gender stereotypes are pervasive in our society and children
are aware of these stereotypes from as early as 2 years of age (Martin, 1991; Signorella,
Bigler, & Liben, 1993; Stern & Karraker, 1989).
Cognitive theory
For cognitive theorists, the role of parents is a minor one. A central tenet of this approach
is that children play an active part in their own development; they seek out for themselves
information about gender and socialize themselves as male or female. Parents are viewed as
simply one source of gender-related information. Early studies of cognitive processes fo-
cused on children’s developing understanding of the concept of gender (see above). More
recently, gender schema theorists have examined the way in which children organize knowl-
edge about gender (Bem, 1981; Martin, 1989, 1991; Martin & Halverson, 1981). Gender
schemas refer to organized bodies of knowledge about gender, and are functionally similar
to gender stereotypes. Gender schemas influence the way in which we perceive and re-
member information about the world around us so that we pay greater attention to, and
are more likely to remember, information that is in line with our gender schemas than
opposing information.
An important step in gender understanding occurs when children can categorize them-
selves as belonging to one gender or the other. From as early as 2 to 3 years, soon after they
begin to consistently label themselves and others as male or female, children organize in-
formation according to gender. If told that a person is male or female, they will make
gender-related inferences about that person’s behavior (Martin, 1989; Martin et al., 1990).
For example, preschool children will say that boys like to play with cars and trains. Older
children have a more complex understanding of gender and become more flexible in their
understanding of gender stereotypes (Martin, 1993; Martin et al., 1990). Although they
may know that boys in general like football, cars, and trains, and that girls in general prefer
dolls and dressing up, they also come to understand there are many exceptions to the rule
(Signorella et al., 1993). Thus it seems that gender stereotypes are more strongly held by
younger than by older children.
There are differences between children in the extent to which they are gender schematized,
that is, in the extent to which they organize, attend to, and remember information accord-
ing to gender (Carter & Levy, 1988; Levy & Carter, 1989). Interestingly, however, chil-
dren who are highly gender schematized are not necessarily more sex-typed in their behavior
(Huston, 1985; Martin, 1991).
Social cognitive theory
Social cognitive theory draws upon both social learning theory and cognitive theories
(Bandura, 1986; Bussey & Bandura, 1984, 1999). While same-sex modeling continues to
be viewed as an important mechanism in the acquisition of sex-typed behavior, the proc-
esses involved are believed to involve complex cognitive skills rather that the direct incor-
poration of a model’s characteristics and behavior. Social cognitive theorists stress the
importance of social factors in influencing which behaviors are acquired. Thus behavior
that is generally viewed as an other-sex activity, such as men’s involvement in cooking, will
be adopted in cultures where it is common for men to cook.
A major difference between social cognitive theory and the cognitive approach is the
emphasis placed by social cognitive theorists on the mechanisms involved in the develop-
ment of sex-typed behavior (Bussey & Bandura, 1999). Whereas cognitive theorists have
focused on children’s acquisition of knowledge about gender, social cognitive theorists are
interested in the translation of gender knowledge into gender-related behavior. According
to social cognitive theorists, a number of cognitive mechanisms are at work. Self-regula-
tory mechanisms in the form of both social sanctions and sanctions that children impose
on themselves are believed to be operating; children do things that are valued and give
them a sense of self-worth. Motivational mechanisms such as self-efficacy beliefs are also
considered to be important. It is thought children are most likely to model behavior that
they believe they can master. Although social cognitive theory provides a framework for
examining the relationship between gender knowledge and gender role behavior, it is im-
portant to remember that existing research has failed to establish a consistent link between
the two.
Gender segregation
Although psychological explanations of gender development have tended to focus on the

individual, greater attention has been paid in recent years to group processes. Gender seg-
regation – children’s tendency to play with others of their own sex – is a striking aspect of
gender development that occurs at the group rather than the individual level. Although
there is evidence that biological, socialization, and cognitive mechanisms each play a part
in this phenomenon, the most parsimonious explanation – that children segregate by gen-
der due to behavioral compatibility with children of the same sex as themselves – incorpo-
rates all three approaches (Maccoby, 1988, 1990, 1998; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). Maccoby
argues that children prefer to play with other children who have similar styles of interac-
tion, and that this both creates and serves to preserve gender segregation. It is believed that
girls begin to avoid boys because of boys’ higher levels of physical activity and aggression,
and boys begin to avoid girls because they find girls too sedentary. The differences in
communication style between the sexes may also play a part. As we have already seen, boys
are more dominant than girls. Girls tend to be more cooperative and may find it difficult
to have their say. Thus girls may not wish to interact with boys because they see boys as too
assertive, and boys may not wish to interact with girls because they find girls too quiet.
Once formed, same-sex groups become even more differentiated in their styles of interac-
tion. In this way, distinctive male and female cultures are established and maintained.
Summary
Gender development begins in the womb. Early in gestation hormones from the gonads
mold the internal and external genitalia. These same hormones also may influence certain
regions of the brain to develop in a more masculine-typical or feminine-typical manner. As
a consequence, it is likely that we are each born with behavioral biases that can be en-
hanced or diminished by postnatal factors. Hormonal influences appear to play a role in
children’s gender development particularly in regard to sex-typical toy choices, playmate
preferences, and gender identity. Hormonal influences on children’s play styles are less
well established.
From birth onwards, children are treated differently according to their sex. Although
parents and others may simply be responding to differences in behavior that already exist
between their daughters and sons, they may also be creating these differences. It seems
likely that both processes are at work. In addition, children model behavior they consider
to be appropriate for their sex. Although it used to be thought that gender constancy was
necessary for modeling to occur, it is now believed that only a basic ability to label gender
is required. The extent to which the various aspects of gender development discussed in
this chapter (gender identity, toy preference, playmate preference, and play style) are inter-
related, or develop independently of each other, remains uncertain. Although cognitive
theorists have tended to argue that the ability to label gender, and knowledge of gender
stereotypes, are essential for children to acquire sex-typed behavior, the sex differences in
toy preference that are apparent from as early as 1 year old suggest that this is not the case.
It does seem, however, that a child’s knowledge of his or her own gender, but not necessar-
ily of gender stereotypes, is associated with a greater preference for sex-typed behaviors. It
is also important to remember that gender development does not occur in isolation from
the child’s social environment. As Eleanor Maccoby has so cogently pointed out, sex dif-
ferences in social behavior are most apparent when children interact with each other.
Theorists operating from different perspectives have approached the analysis of gender
development somewhat differently. To some, it is a unitary construct influenced uniformly
by factors such as hormones or socialization. One contribution of recent research on hor-
monal influences is the realization that each aspect of gender-typical behavior may be
influenced at different times and by different mechanisms. If so, it might be useful to
conceptualize different sex-typical behaviors separately and evaluate the effects of different
types of influences on each behavior considered alone. At present, data on toy choices are
the most likely to provide an opportunity to do this. There is evidence that levels of andro-
genic hormones prenatally influence sex-typical toy choices. In addition, there is evidence
that parents socialize children to show gender-typical toy choices, reinforcing them for
playing with sex-appropriate toys. In fact, this is the one area of gender development where
such differential reinforcement by parents has been established. Children also have been
found to model the behavior of others of the same sex choosing neutral toys, and to express
interest in toys that they have been told are for children of their own sex. Thus, sex-typical
toys choices appear to be multidetermined, promoted by the prenatal hormone environ-
ment, as well as by several postnatal factors, including parental reinforcement, modeling,
and gender labeling. In order to achieve a better understanding of sex differences in social
behavior, it seems that an integration of biological and psychological explanations is re-
quired.
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Children’s Social Development 137
Children’s Social Development within the

Socialization Context of Childcare and Early
Childhood Education
Carollee Howes and Jolena James
Introduction
From our point of view, children’s social development can best be understood as embed-
ded within relationships with significant adults and peers and that these social relation-
ships are embedded within larger contexts of social setting, culture, and societal organizations
(Howes, 2000a). In more particularistic terms, we argue that 3-year-old Jenna’s skillful (or
maladaptive) play with her peer can be interpreted and explained only when we know that
she is playing with Marissa, who has been her best friend since both girls were toddler age,
and that she has a secure attachment relationship with her caregiver, Renna. Jenna’s play
can be even better interpreted when we add the information that both she and Renna are
African American, that Marissa is Latino, and that the girls are playing in the Good Start
Childcare Center, a well-funded full-day program that provides services to teen moms who
are in school. We also believe that to fully understand Jenna’s play competence it helps to
understand that Jenna, an African-American girl from a poor family, is an “other” with
regard to the dominant society that accords highest status to white males from affluent
families. Because of this status as an other, Jenna will need to acquire social interactive
styles within her extended family of grandmother, aunts, and cousins that are distinct from
patterns or styles of interaction within the dominant society, and she will need to under-
stand social cues for when to employ the different sets of patterns (James, 2000).
138 Carollee Howes & Jolena James
Social competence
Despite this emphasis on culture and society we are not arguing for a relativistic definition
of social competence. We start from the premise that children (regardless of race, class, or
home language) will develop social competence, but that the display of social competence
and the processes of becoming socially competent may be different. Our definition of
social competence is drawn from the peer relations literature, but is extended to include
adult–child interactions and relationship (Howes, 1988a). Social competence is defined as
behavior that reflects successful social functioning. To be successful, children must be both
effective in meeting their own social goals with others and be sensitive to social communi-
cations from others so that their partners also are effective in meeting social goals. Both
social interaction skills and positive relationships are included in the definition. Social
incompetence or maladaptive social development is defined by relationships that are mis-
trustful, and by behavior that disregards the reciprocal nature of social interaction and
relationships. One maladaptive category of social behavior is aggression or bullying which
may achieve the actor’s social goals but not the partner’s. Another type of maladaptive
category of social behavior includes avoidance, withdrawal, or passive acquiescence which
does not achieve the child’s social goals and may (or may not) achieve the partner’s.
Social interactive style
In our work we use the term social interactive style to denote patterns of interaction that
are particular to individuals who share a race or ethnic identity or home language. For
example, in certain communities titles are important when children address an adult. Adults
are either addressed as Mr., Mrs., Miss, Auntie, Uncle, etc. followed by their family name
or first name. It is not uncommon to hear a child call a caregiver by her first name, but
preface it with Miss. “Miss Helen, can I play with this?” In other communities, however, it
is quite appropriate for children to address an adult by her first name only. In the African-
American community, tone and eye expression are especially important in understanding
social interactions. Mrs. Pettaway, a favorite among her 4 year olds, is helping the children
needlepoint. Deondre is clearly frustrated and communicates this with his face as he con-
tinues to work on his project. Mrs. Pettaway calls to him, but he continues to fumble with
his artwork. She then says, “Boy, get over here,” in a sassy, but humorous manner. Deondre
immediately breaks out in a smile and approaches her. While we do not want to imply that
this is typical of all African-American caregivers, the tone and language of the interaction
could be misunderstood outside of the African-American community. The caregiver plays
with a harsh statement, but softens it so it becomes an endearment.
Another example lies in the Latino community’s use of terms of endearments. It not
uncommon to hear a caregiver say to a Spanish speaking toddler, “¿Papi qué quieres?”
(Little father, what do you want?) or “Mami, ven acá” (Little mother, come here). The
language used in these social interactions carries with it the feeling of warmth and nurturance.
Social interactive styles can be socially competent or maladaptive. We observed Jesse
taunting his peer Lucia as he attempts to take her truck. In a loud assertive voice, Lucia
says, “No Jesse!” instead of hitting him. Lucia, in a “use-your-words” childcare program, is
exhibiting socially competent behavior. Now, if Jesse were her caregiver and Lucia was
supposed to have put the truck away 5 minutes ago, Lucia’s loud voice would be socially
maladaptive. Or if Jesse was teen parent Lucia’s one-year-old child, Lucia’s loud voice
would be extreme and would be considered inappropriate. The interpretation of all these
interactions depends on the context. As stated above, children must learn when and where
to employ one style over another. The same behavior can be considered socially competent
in one context and socially maladaptive in another. When Deondre rolls his eyes in an
attempt to ignore his playmate’s verbal directive, we rate Deondre as socially competent. If
Deondre were to roll his eyes at Mrs. Pettaway, an adult, in an attempt to disobey her
instructions, we would rate his behavior maladaptive.
Development and social competence
Because we are developmental psychologists we are interested in the development of social

competence across time as well as context. Therefore, we assume that as children develop,
their capacities for communication, cognition, and memory, social interaction patterns
become more complex. Over time, children come to behave as if each participant is a social
actor and that social actions between partners can be coordinated and communicated.
With further development, children incorporate symbols and shared meanings into the
interaction patterns(Howes, 1983, 1985, 1988, 1996; Howes & Tonyan, 1999; Howes,
Unger, & Seidner, 1989).
As much of our work is rooted in attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969), we also assume
that over time children develop internal working models of their significant relationships
with adults and with peers. To reach this understanding, we construe Bowlby’s attachment
theory as applicable to other-than-child-mother attachment relationships (Howes, 1996,
1999). According to this reinterpretation of attachment theory, relationships, whether at-
tachment or playmate relationships, develop through multiple and recursive interactive
experiences. Recursive interactions are well-scripted social exchanges which are repeated
many times with only slight variation (Bretherton, 1985). Examples include child–adult
interaction around naptime or repeated toddler-age peer run-and-chase games. From these
recursive interactions, the infant or young child internalizes a set of fundamental social
expectations about the behavioral dispositions of the partner (Bowlby, 1969). These ex-
pectations form the basis for an internal working model of a particular relationship. There-
fore, through repeated experiences of social and social pretend play with a significant adult
or peer partner, a child forms an internal representation of an attachment or a playmate or
friendship relationship. It is important to note that both the structure and content of
experiences interacting with a partner are part of the child’s representation of the partner.
Children who engage in more complex interactions are more likely to recognize the part-
ner as a social other and construct a relationship. Furthermore, the content and context of
the interaction is likely to influence the quality of the resulting relationship.
Childcare
In this chapter we apply this framework of social development embedded within relation-
ships which are located within social settings, culture, and societal organizations to the
social setting of childcare and early childhood education. Childcare and early childhood
education is an awkward term which we will shorten to childcare. By this term we mean
any regular arrangement of care provided for children by adults other than parent figures.
The functions of these care arrangements always includes keeping children safe from physical
harm and optimally includes providing a context for enhancing social and/or cognitive
development. The adults who provide care in these settings may be grandmothers, neighbors,
nannies, or teachers. Because the parents directly or indirectly communicate to their chil-
dren that these other-than-mother adults are to keep them safe, these adults function (well
or not so well) as attachment figures (Howes, 1999). Most, but not all, of the children in
childcare are cared for in the presence of peers. In some settings, peers tend to be same-age
nonrelatives, in other less formal arrangements, peers may be mixed-age and may be sib-
lings or cousins. Thus, in terms of opportunities for experiences with adults and peers,
childcare can be considered a socialization context for social development.
Childcare settings, according to our framework, are embedded within culture and societal
organizations and, therefore, we begin a review of research examining this embeddedness.
We will address the following questions: How do family markers of race, class, and home
language influence the selection of childcare, the experiences within childcare of children
and the continuity and discontinuities with home? How does the placement of the childcare
setting within race, class, and home language culture and societal organizations influence
process and interactions within childcare? And how does gender organize childcare experi-
ences?
In the subsequent section we will examine the empirical basis for childcare as a socialization
context for social development. We will briefly touch on the debate around childcare as a
risk for the development of social incompetence, or as an opportunity or an intervention to
enhance social competence. We will then move inside and past this debate to examine
structural variations within childcare settings and issues of stability and change in childcare
arrangements as influential to the development of social competence.
The final section of the chapter will focus on understanding the within-childcare
socialization context. We propose a model that incorporates key dimensions for under-
standing processes of socialization within childcare: the peer group; caregiver–child rela-
tionships; children’s dispositions and relationship history; and classroom climate.
Childcare, Culture, and Society
Within this section we will explore relations among childcare, culture, and society. The
first issues to be explored are class (measured by family income), race, and ethnicity of
children. The class, race, and ethnicity of children’s families influence the selection of
childcare settings for children. As a result most, but not all, childcare settings are homoge-
neous in class, race, and ethnicity of children and staff. What does this mean for the
socialization experiences of children within the settings? And are there continuities or
discontinuities between socialization experiences rooted in class, race, and ethnicity at
childcare and at home? We then turn to the issue of gender and explore how children’s
experiences in childcare are organized by gender.
Class, race, and ethnicity
Selection of childcare. Our expanded definition of childcare, care by someone other than
parents, means that in the United States the majority of preschool children are experienc-
ing childcare. In 1995 approximately 43% of 3-year-old and 70% of 4-year old children in
the United States were enrolled in a center-based or formal childcare arrangement (Statis-
tics, 1996). Estimates of the proportion of children enrolled in informal, unregulated
childcare arrangements are more difficult to obtain. Census data from the early 1990s
suggest that at least 20–30% of preschool children were cared for in informal or unregu-
lated childcare – approximately 25% by a nonparent relative in or out of the child’s home;
5% by a nonrelative in the child’s home and 20% by an unrelated provider not in the
child’s home (Lamb, 1998). Two events in the mid-1990s influenced childcare usage. The
passage of new welfare legislation means that more parents are required to transition off
welfare into the workforce. Early reports suggest that most of the children affected by this
legislation are enrolled in informal, unregulated care (National Center for Children in
Poverty, 2000). As well, many states have passed initiatives to offer preschool services to
4-year-old children in the year before they enter kindergarten (Clifford & Early, 1999).
The particular care arrangements of children are influenced by parental employment pat-
terns as well as family income and race and by the availability of care (Fuller, Halloway, &
Liang, 1996; Holloway, Rambaud, Fuller, & Eggers-Pierola, 1995; Lamb, 1998; Phillips,
Voran, Kister, Howes, & Whitebook , 1994; Singer, Fuller, Keiley, & Wolf, 1998). Chil-
dren of higher income parents and children of very low income parents are most likely to be
in formal center-based care. Lower income working parents are more likely to use informal
care because they are less likely to be income eligible for subsidized center-based care and
cannot afford to pay for unsubsidized care and/or they work swing or night shifts so that one
parent is always home. High income families with unemployed mothers have traditionally
used part time center-based care for preschool-age children. Low income families with un-
employed parents before welfare reform typically used Head Start and other income-eligibil-
ity-based center care. As much of this care has been part time, many of income-eligible
children are now either unable to use this care as their parents transition off welfare or they
are enrolled in a patchwork of childcare arrangements to cover the hours of parental work.
Many studies find patterns of childcare usage linked to racial, ethnic, and home lan-
guage characteristics of families. For example, Latino families, especially families in which
Spanish is spoken in the home, are under-enrolled in formal care even when the mother is
working (Fuller et al., 1996). While factors such as family choices or language issues may
explain this pattern, when researchers map organized childcare availability onto family
ethnicity, it appears that some of this variability in ethnicity is due to variability in supply
of formal childcare (Singer et al., 1998).
Class, race, and ethnic socialization within childcare
Between 1988 and the present, four large-scale observational studies have been or are be-
ing conducted on representative samples of childcare in the United States. The Childcare
Staffing Study (Whitebook, Howes, & Phillips, 1990) and the Cost Quality and Outcome
Study (Helburn, 1995) focused on center care.. The Family and Relative Care Study
(Kontos, Howes, Shinn, & Galinsky, 1995) observed in regulated family childcare homes
and unregulated relative and nonrelative home-based childcare. The NICHD Early Child-
hood Research Network (NICHD, 1996) observed in a variety of childcare settings. From
these studies a picture of a race, class, and ethnically segregated childcare system in the
United States emerges. Most (but not all) children attend childcare in settings that are
homogeneous in terms of children’s family income level, race, and ethnic backgrounds.
This means that to the extent that social interaction styles are rooted in class, race, and
ethnicity (Coll et al., 1996; Coll & Magnuson, 1999), children do not experience discon-
tinuity between home and childcare peer group social interaction styles.
It also means that we might expect children’s experiences of interactions with peers
within or between childcare to vary by the class, race, and ethnicity of the enrolled chil-
dren. That is, for example, we might expect children in Head Start programs to have
different patterns of social interactive styles than, for example, children in half-day pre-
school programs in affluent suburbs. Vaughn and colleagues (Bost, Vaughn, Washington,
Cielinski, & Bradbard, 1998; Vaughn et al., 2000) in a series of carefully constructed
studies have been testing this hypothesis. They report that despite differences in interactive
styles, social competency as indexed by sociometric status, socially skilled interactions,
social dominance, and reciprocated friendship are similarly interrelated constructs for chil-
dren enrolled in predominantly African-American Head Start programs and for children
from the dominant culture. This brings us back to the critical distinction between social
interaction style and social competence discussed in the introduction: socially competent
children vary in social interactive style.
What about the race, ethnicity and class of caregivers? Adult caregivers in childcare vary in
their own class and/or race and ethnicity, and therefore in their social interaction style.
Exploration of the four large childcare databases described above suggests that most chil-
dren are similar to their caregivers as well as peers in childcare in terms of race and ethnic-
ity. While childcare caregivers generally are better educated than other women workers,
they are paid far less than similarly educated workers which makes childcare workers’ class
position ambiguous (Whitebook, 1999). One line of research suggests that to the extent
that adult caregivers in childcare settings are exposed to formal education and training in
early childhood education, they may adopt values and/or social interactive styles that are
associated with White middle-class interactive styles (Lubeck, 1985, 1996). If so,
discontinuities between home and school social interactive styles may make it difficult for
children (and their parents) (Baker, Terry, Bridger, & Winsor, 1997; Wang & Gordon,
1994). Instead of feeling safe, children may feel out of place, unwanted, or not sure about
how to behave and whom to trust.
As part of a larger project that explores race, ethnicity, and childcare quality we have
conducted case studies on 12 center-based childcare programs that are respected in their
communities for providing services to families and children who are low income and pre-
dominantly children of color. We were interested in examining the very specific ways that
children spend their time during the day, and the interactions they had with adults and
peers. We wanted to know who the staff was that was working with the children specifi-
cally, what motivated them to become caregivers, and what were their attitudes toward
working with families. We wanted to look at the mission and focus of each center. In line
with the need to capture content inside of context, we incorporated a mixed-method ap-
proach by interviewing staff and observing and participating in the classrooms of these
centers.
Seventy staff members (66 women; 59 teaching staff) participated in this study. 40% of
the program directors were African American, 30% Latino, and 30% White. 55% of the
teaching staff were Latino, 26% African American. The others were White, Asian or bi-
racial. All of the teaching staff was highly educated in child development: 83% of the
directors had MA or Ph.D. degrees; 55% of the head caregivers had BA degrees; and 79%
of the assistants had AA degrees.
From our ethnographic work seven different categories of program philosophy emerged,
ranging from providing a safe environment and positive trusting social relationships, through
helping young children understand and appreciate differences based on race, gender, or
disability, to providing academic preparation for school. We created, based on staff inter-
views, categories of caregivers’ motivation to teach. Caregivers who report being motivated
for the community see themselves as self-consciously involving themselves in their work in
order to transform their own community into a community of which they wish to be a
part. In contrast, caregivers that are motivated for the children gain little for themselves
because their efforts are always for the children, children not necessarily from the caregiver’s
“heritage” community, but children from all communities. Caregivers of every ethnic,
racial, and educational background subscribed to each of the program philosophies and
motivations to teach.
Using our observational data, we examined differences in caregivers’ behaviors with the
children based on caregiver ethnicity, educational background, motivation to teach, and
program mission (Howes & Ritchie, in preparation). We found that while an association
between ethnicity and educational background existed, teaching motivation and program
missions better explained the differences in behaviors.
These findings suggest that while socialization for social development within childcare
is embedded within race and ethnicity, individual variations in motivation to teach and to
provide services for children are equally important to consider. Having said this there were
again subtle stylistic differences particular to race and ethnicity. For example, African-
American caregivers invoked the construct of other-mothers, the notion that women who
are not children’s biological parents are responsible for the well-being of children who are
not otherwise receiving adequate care and attention. While Latino caregivers talked about
creating an extended family that took care of women and the children associated with
them.
Gender
Childcare settings, of course, include both girls and boys at a period in development im-
portant for the acquisition of gendered behavior styles. Adult caregivers in childcare set-
tings vary in their use of gender as an organizing category within the program. In two of
our case study programs children as young as 2 years old must form lines based on gender,
and be careful not to use the bathroom of the opposite sex. In one of these programs, girls
and boys wear different uniforms, and the girls are in skirts or jumpers. And in another the
roles in a preliteracy activity involving acting out fairy tales are carefully assigned to the
appropriate gender children. This is in dramatic contrast to another program that has fully
implemented the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s Anti-Bias
Curriculum (Derman-Sparks, 1989) and actively corrects children and adults who con-
sciously or inadvertently attempt to impose traditional sex role behaviors on children as
well as highlights when children or adults behave outside of predetermined roles. Yet an-
other program delights in its well-equipped dramatic play area and energetically encour-
ages girls to pretend to be plumbers and boys to take care of the babies.
Maccoby (1998) argues that the peer group has a more powerful socializing effect on
gender than adults, either parents or caregivers. She analyzes large bodies of biological,
psychological, anthropological, and sociological evidence to conclude that children, by age
3, separate into gender-segregated peer groups. Within these peer groups children develop
the social behaviors and interaction styles specific to their gender. This suggests that chil-
dren’s experiences in childcare are gender specific, that because children are spending their
childcare daytime hours in childcare they have multiple opportunities for socialization by
same-gender peers in gender-segregated groups.
Gender segregation appears to influence the style rather than the competence of peer
play. There are well-established differences in the content of the play of boys and girls
(Maccoby, 1984). However, consistent with the lack of racial and ethnic differences in the
competence of peer play, there appear to be few gender differences in the competence of
children’s peer play (Howes, 1980, 1988; Howes & Matheson, 1992). Girls and boys of
the same age engage in structurally similar play, although the social interaction style and
content may differ. For example, both a game of mother, sister, and baby among girls, and
a game of the day the tigers ate the village among boys are very likely to be rated as compe-
tent social pretend play.
Gender socialization within segregated peer groups does not entirely negate the role of
the adult values in the organization of experiences in childcare. If the adults in the childcare
setting encourage the girls to use the tool bench, make airplanes, and run frantically around
the yard being women pilots, they are acknowledging that girls are active, powerful, and
able to do anything. If instead, caregivers ignore or covertly encourage the boys to rule the
play yard and block corner, the girls’ group will have a different repertoire of self-images.
Thus caregivers can support or actively disconfirm traditional gender socialization.
In this section of the chapter we have argued that because childcare is embedded within
a larger society which is organized by class, race, ethnicity, and gender, children’s experi-
ences in childcare are as well. Because childcare programs tend to be economically and
racially segregated, children in childcare will acquire social interactive styles specific to
these segregated environments. We have further argued that these differences in social
interactive style are not associated with social competence.
Childcare as a Particularly Efficacious or Detrimental Context for

Social Development
The social institution of childcare as we have defined it is rooted in two somewhat contra-
dictory traditions. Prior to the dramatic increase in workforce participation of middle and
upper income women in the 1970s, preschools and nursery schools were considered edu-
cational experiences. Half-day programs either served as intervention programs for chil-
dren of lower income families or enrichment social experiences for children of affluent
families. Daycare was a social service for the children of women who had to work. Full-day
center-based programs and informal care by relatives and neighbors provided primarily
custodial care. Beginning in the 1970s these two functions began to merge so that childcare
provided both a caregiving and an educational function. Research on the social experiences
of children in childcare and the influence of these experiences on children’s social compe-
tence also began to flourish in the 1970s (Rubenstein & Howes, 1979; Ruopp et al., 1979).
By the end of the decade an important review article concluded that although the full
range of childcare setting had not been studied, preschool-age childcare did not appear to
be detrimental to children’s social development (Belsky & Steinberg, 1978).
This researchers’ consensus began to break down beginning in 1986 with a series of
reports in the popular media and research literature suggesting that childcare might ad-
versely affect infant–parent attachment and related aspects of social development (Belsky,
1988). There were at least two parts to this argument. One part suggested that the experi-
ence of being enrolled in childcare as infants would interfere with the construction of
secure parent–child attachment relationships. The theoretical and methodological expla-
nations necessary for the full discussion of this issue are beyond the scope of this chapter.
For a full review see Lamb (1998). The conclusion of Lamb’s review and the large NICHD
childcare study (NICHD, 1997) is that most infant–mother attachments are not adversely
affected by childcare enrollment.
The second part of Belsky’s argument is that the experience of childcare will negatively
influence the development of significant dimensions of social competence: compliance
with parents and childcare providers; relations with peers; and behavior problems (Bates et
al., 1994). These issues are germane to this chapter and will be reviewed in some detail.
Again there are both theoretical and methodological issues within this argument. Belsky
(1988) grounded his argument within attachment theory. Children with insecure child–
mother attachments are expected to be less socially competent as older children than chil-
dren with secure child–mother attachments. But more recent evidence suggests the strength
of this relation is more modest than previously assumed (Thompson, 1999). Furthermore,
there is increasing evidence that children’s attachment relationships with someone other
than the mother, most notably in children attending childcare their relationship with the
childcare provider, shape children’s social competence (Howes, 1999; Lamb, 1998;
Thompson, 1999).
Some of the methodological issues inherent in this controversy lead us back to issues of
social competence versus social style. For example, how do we understand and measure
compliance? When is compliance autonomy and when is it defiance? What are the most
important outcomes to measure in the area of peer relations – cooperation and friendship
or aggression – and how should they be measured?
However, the most substantive methodological issue concerns the mediating variables
of family environment and childcare quality. When family environment is considered, the
simple main effect of childcare is not influential in understanding the development of
children’s social competence (Lamb, 1998; NICHD, 1998). That is, childcare enrollment
appears to have little or no direct effect on the development of children’s social compe-
tence when the influences of family are taken into consideration. However, when childcare
quality is used as a mediator it does appear to have an effect, although not as large an effect
as that of family influences (McCartney & Rosenthal, 2000).
Defining childcare quality
There is general agreement among researchers that childcare quality can be defined and
reliably measured (Abbott-Shim, Lambert, & McCarty, 2000; Kontos et al., 1995; Lamb,
1998; NICHD, 1996). Whether parents agree with researchers’ definition of childcare
quality is a matter of some debate. See reviews by Lamb (1998) and by Dahlberg et al.
(1999). However, parents and researchers agree that good childcare provides children with
warm and positive relationships with childcare providers, a safe and healthy environment,
and opportunities for children to learn (Hofferth, Shauman, Henke, & West, 1998; Kontos
et al., 1995). As discussed in the introduction, childcare can take many forms. However,
the markers of quality remain stable across these forms, except for informal or unregulated
care which is generally lower in quality than regulated or formal care (Hofferth et al.,
1998; Kontos et al., 1995).
Researchers have identified two dimensions of childcare quality: process and structure.
Process quality captures the day-to-day experiences of children in childcare. The corner-
stone of process quality is the relationship between the provider and children. Children
whose childcare providers give them ample verbal and cognitive stimulation and generous
amounts of individualized attention perform better on a wide range of assessments of so-
cial development (Howes, 1999; Peisner-Feinberg et al., in press). Stable providers are
essential for development of these trusting and positive provider–child relationships. More
stable providers engage in more appropriate, attentive, and engaged interactions with the
children in their care (Raikes, 1993; Whitebook et al., 1990). Children who do not have
stability and consistency in regards to their providers are more aggressive and less skilled
with peers (Howes & Hamilton, 1993).
Structural dimensions of childcare are features that predict warm, sensitive, and stimu-
lating adult–child interactions (Phillipsen, Burchinal, Howes, & Cryer, 1997; NICHD,
1996). Across all of the comprehensive research linking structural dimensions of childcare
to childcare quality and to children’s optimal outcomes, three dimensions emerge as most
predictive: childcare providers’ compensation, education and specialized training, and
adult:child ratio (Abbott-Shim, Lambert, & McCarty, 2000; Helburn,1995; Kontos et al.,
1995; NICHD, 1996; Phillips, Mekos, Scarr, McCartney, & Abbott-Shim, in press; Ruopp
et al., 1979; Whitebook et al., 1990). Childcare adults with higher levels of compensation,
with more advanced education and specialized training in child development, who work
with smaller groups of children are most often found in settings with higher quality rat-
ings, are more effective with children, and are associated with more optimal child develop-
ment outcomes in children.
Influences of childcare quality on social development
The positive effects of childcare quality on virtually every facet of children’s development
are one of the most consistent findings in developmental science. The effects of childcare
quality on children’s development are only about half as large as those associated with
family environments, but emerge repeatedly in study after study and are consistent across
children of every ethnicity and every language group. Some (but not all) research suggests
that high quality care, especially center-based care, is particularly beneficial for low-income
families (Burchinal, Ramey, Reid, & Jaccard, 1995; Caughty, DiPetro, & Strobine, 1994;
Hart et al., 1998). All of the research that we report has controlled for family background
effects. This means that researchers first accounted for family influences and then looked
at the influences of childcare. The findings are consistent across all forms of childcare, but
it is extremely important to understand that the positive influences of childcare on chil-
dren’s development are only found when the childcare is high quality.
Children enrolled in high quality childcare are more likely as toddlers and preschoolers
to cooperate and comply with their mothers and childcare providers (Field, Masi, Holdstein,
Perry, & Park, 1988; Howes & Olenick, 1986; NICHD, 1998; Phillips, McCartney, &
Scarr, 1987). Children enrolled in high quality childcare as infants and toddlers are more
likely as older children to cooperate with caregivers, and in the eyes of caregivers and
parents, to have fewer behavior problems. In the longest-studied children, these findings
persist into adolescence (Andersson, 1989, 1992; Field, 1991; Howes, 1988b, 1990; Howes,
Hamilton, & Phillipsen, 1998).
Children enrolled in high quality childcare as toddlers and preschoolers are more so-
cially competent with peers and less likely to be aggressive or withdrawn from peers as
young children (Deater-Deckard, Pinkerton, & Scarr, 1996; Harper & Huie, 1985;
Holloway & Reichert-Erickson, 1989; Howes, 1990; Howes, Matheson, & Hamilton,
1994; Howes, Phillips, & Whitebook, 1992; Kontos, Hsu, & Dunn, 1994; Lamb et al.,
1988; NICHD Early Childcare Network, in press; Phillips et al., 1987). Children enrolled
in high quality childcare as toddlers and preschoolers are more socially competent with
peers and less likely to be aggressive or withdrawn from peers into adolescence (oldest
children studied) (Andersson, 1989, 1992; Howes, 2000b; Pianta & Nimetz, 1991).
Children’s dispositions and relationship history
Child–caregiver Peer group interactions

relationship quality and relationships
Social and emotional climate
Children’s development
of social competence
Figure 8.1 A model for understanding processes of socialization within childcare.
Process Model for Understanding the Within-Childcare Socialization

Context
In the most comprehensive and recent review of the influences of childcare on children’s
development, Lamb (1998, p. 116) concludes that “ . . . the global indices of quality that
have served a generation of researchers and regulators so well must now yield center stage
to a generation of more refined measures and concepts that allow practitioners to deter-
mine whether and how specific practices have the desired effects on children’s learning and
development.” In the final section of this chapter we contribute to this effort by proposing
a model that incorporates key dimensions for understanding processes of socialization within
childcare: the peer group; caregiver–child relationships; children’s dispositions and rela-
tionship history; and social and emotional climate.) The conceptual pathways between
these dimensions are in Figure 8.1.
Children’s dispositions and relationship history
We make two assumptions in the first section of this model. The first assumption is that
children enter childcare with a relationship history and dispositions that are consistent (or
inconsistent) with positive social interactions and relationships. The second assumption is
that both dispositions and relationship history will contribute to the construction of posi-
tive child–caregiver relationships and to positive peer-group interactions and relationships.
The specific dispositions that we are interested in are dispositions towards regulation of
emotions and impulses. Children who are able to strike a balance between their own de-
sires and interests and those of the other children and caregivers are the children who are
able to regulate and control their emotions and impulses (Eisenberg et al., 1997; Fabes et
al., 1999; Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994). If children have these dispositions or are
helped to develop them within childcare they are more likely to engage in harmonious
interactions with others and to develop positive relationships with others (Howes & Ritchie,
in press).
Attachment theory suggests that children come to childcare with an attachment organi-
zation that functions as a working model of adult–child relationships (Bowlby, 1969).
Children use their working model as a map or blueprint for ways to engage with new
caregivers. Therefore, when children encounter a new caregiver, they tend to act towards
this new adult in ways that are consistent with their prior relationship history, their work-
ing model. This means that children will act towards a new teacher in ways that may have
been adaptive in the past, but will not, particularly in the childcare environment, lead to a
positive relationship (Sroufe, 1983). Children with maladaptive prior attachment histories
may “set the caregiver up” for replicating distrustful, insecure relationships. These models
for relationships may come from home or from prior childcare experiences (Howes &
Ritchie, in press).
Child–caregiver relationship quality
There is now a large body of evidence on the validity of assessing attachment relationships
between children and teachers, identifying and examining antecedents of different quali-
ties of relationships between children and their teachers and examining the concurrent and
long-term correlates of different relationship qualities and children’s social competence. In
brief, the findings of these studies suggest that child–caregiver attachment relationship
quality can be reliably and validly assessed, that similar processes are implicated in the
formation of child–alternative caregiver attachment and child–mother attachment rela-
tionships of different qualities, and that child–alternative caregiver attachment security
predicts social competence in the long and short term (Howes, 1999). Children with more
positive child–caregiver relationships appear more able to make use of the learning oppor-
tunities available in childcare (Howes & Smith, 1995), and construct more positive peer
relationships in childcare and as older children (Howes et al., 1994, 1998; Howes & Tonyan,
2000).
Peer group interactions and relationships
The development of children’s peer relations may be semi-independent of their relation-

ships with adults (Hay, 1985). This argument is based in part on the premise that the
construction of social interaction with a peer is different than with an adult. Peers, unlike
adults, are not particularly more knowledgeable or skillful in social interaction than the
infant or toddler. But, to their advantage, peers share interests in activities that adults
generally do not. Most adults quickly tire of games like run-chase or jumping off a step.
There is evidence that with more time in a particular peer group children do become more
socially skillful at interactions and friendships (Howes, 1988a).
The perspective that peer relations are primarily constructed within peer groups is not
necessarily at odds with an attachment theory perspective. It is possible that early adult–
child attachment relationships serve to orient children towards or away from the peer
group. Children with secure adult–child attachment relationships would perceive peers as
potentially fun and interesting social partners, enter into peer play, and with experience
become socially skilled. Children with insecure adult–child attachments would perceive
peers as hostile or threatening and withdraw from or aggress towards peers. Once a child
has withdrawn from peers or has constructed antagonistic patterns of interaction and rela-
tionships, it may be especially difficult to develop alternative behaviors with peers (Howes
& Phillipsen, 1998). Unlike some sensitive adults who can understand that what appear to
be maladaptive behaviors are instead based on mistrust; peers may perceive the potential
peer partner as unpleasant and to be avoided. A skillful adult can work to disconfirm a
child’s hostile or withdrawing behavior. A peer is more likely to react in ways that maintain
the maladaptive sequences.
Social and emotional climate
The positive or mistrustful nature of child–caregiver relationships and interactions and the
positive or maladaptive nature of peer interactions and relationships contribute to the
social and emotional climate of the childcare setting. Imagine a childcare setting in which
most of the interactions were harmonious and respectful, in which children and adults
worked together on projects, in which a child who was distressed or frustrated was com-
forted and helped, and in which laughter and other expressions of positive affect predomi-
nated. Contrast this with a childcare setting in which children were ridiculed for being
different, talked to and touched in a harsh rejecting manner, competed rather than helped
each other, and the general tone included mistrust and anger. The development of social
competence would be to take different paths in these two extremes. Because childcare is
ultimately an experience of “living” within a group, it is insufficient to understand the
development of a child’s social competence as isolated from the group. One piece of evi-
dence that supports the importance of the social and emotional climate of childcare is an
analysis of the Cost Quality and Outcome database that finds that climate in preschool
childcare centers in addition to child–caregiver relationship quality and children’s disposi-
tions predicted peer relations in second grade (Howes, 2000b).
Closing Thoughts
It remains for future researchers to continue the program of studies that would confirm (or
disconfirm) this or other models of socialization within childcare. In this chapter we have
argued that socialization for the development of social competence (or maladaption) in
childcare occurs within a society organized by class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Therefore
childcare as a setting for socialization cannot be disentangled from these organizers and
children are socialized into social interaction styles that are embedded within class, race,
ethnicity, and gender. We have further argued that childcare per se cannot be considered
an environment that is either detrimental to or enhancing of social development. We pre-
sented evidence that childcare quality does influence social development (although not
independently of the influences of family environments). And finally we proposed that
future research on socialization within childcare attend to multiple dimensions of varia-
tion within childcare.
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156 Ross D. Parke et al.
Relative Contributions of Families and Peers

to Children’s Social Development
Ross D. Parke, Sandra D. Simpkins, David J. McDowell, Mina Kim,

Colleen Killian, Jessica Dennis, Mary L. Flyr, Margaret Wild, and
Yumee Rah
Families have traditionally been viewed as the major socialization agency for the develop-
ment of children’s social behavior. Under the influence of Freudian theory and subse-
quently Bowlby’s fusion of psychoanalytic and ethological approaches, the mother–child
relationship has remained a prominent cornerstone of children’s social development. In
recent decades, our views of the socialization process have changed in a variety of ways.
First, our limited view of the mother–child dyad as central to the socialization process has
been replaced by a recognition of the family as a social system in which fathers, siblings,
and the marital relationship are all viewed as playing important roles in children’s social
development (Parke & Buriel, 1998). Second, it is increasingly recognized that socialization
is a multifaceted process which includes a variety of influential agents beyond the family,
such as extended families, adult mentors, formal and informal support systems, and chil-
dren’s peers and friends. Of particular interest is the role of families and peers in the
socialization matrix. Several views concerning the relative importance of family and peers
as well as the degree of linkage between these two social systems have been suggested over
the last several decades. As Hartup (1979) has noted in his classic formulation, children’s
relationships with peers are viewed as either independent of family relationships or inter-
dependent social systems. Those who take the “independent” view argue that peer and
family systems develop separately and each perform unique functions in the socialization
process (e.g., Harlow, 1958). More recently some writers (e.g., Harris, 1995, 1998, 2000)
have extended the independence argument and proposed that parents have little influence
on children’s behavior beyond a biological or genetic contribution. Alternatively, Harris
argues that the peer group is largely responsible for socialization of children’s social behavior.
Relative Contributions of Families and Peers 157
(See the recent exchange between Vandell (2000) and Harris (2000) for more detail on the
current status of the issue.)
In contrast to the independence view of the nature of family and peer relationships,
others argue that family and peer systems mutually influence each other in the course of
childhood socialization. Conceptualization of the nature of the linkage has varied. Histori-
cally, family and peer systems have been viewed as conflictful, with the framing of the
family–peer linkage issue in terms of “parents versus peers” (Youniss & Smollar, 1985).
Evidence in support of this view has been limited and instead considerable support for
continuity between parental values and attitudes largely discredited this viewpoint (Douvan
& Adelson, 1966). Instead, most recent accounts and the perspective which guides this
chapter suggest that families and peers both play important roles in children’s social devel-
opment and recognize the interdependence between these two social systems. It is further
assumed that the nature of family–peer relationships varies across development periods as
well as across different family types and ecological, historical, and cultural contexts. Fi-
nally, recent advances in this area in uncovering the mechanisms or processes by which
those two systems are linked will be briefly examined. Our goal is to provide a contempo-
rary and balanced perspective on the roles played by both family and peers in children’s
social development.
Genes versus Parents and Peers: The Wrong Question
Several writers have downplayed the influence of parents on children’s social development
(Harris, 1995, 1998, 2000; Rowe, 1994; Scarr, 1992) and instead have argued that hered-
ity accounts for a sizeable amount of the variance in children’s development. Indeed, behavior
geneticists have provided a much-needed corrective to the earlier and simplistic view that
the environment alone, including parents and peers were the major influence on social
development. At the same time, the finding of behavior genetics that “heredity rarely ac-
counts for as much as 50% of the variation among individuals in a particular population”
(Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein, 2000, p. 228) leaves half of the
variance due to environmental effects or gene X environment interactions. Ironically, our
best evidence to date that the environment matters comes from behavior genetic studies.
However, there are major problems with the additive approach which assumes that genetic
and environmental influences operate independently but together account for the variance
in outcomes. As Collins et al. (2000) note, in their critique of research on the role of nature
versus nurture in our studies of socialization, recent models have adopted a variety of more
sophisticated assumptions and designs to reflect the reality that “the expression of heritable
traits depends strongly on experience, including specific parental behaviors, as well as pre-
dispositions and age-related factors in the child” (Collins et al., 2000, p. 228). This con-
temporary look in behavior genetics research is leading to new designs which permit the
estimation of gene X environment effects in which the operation of genetic predispositions
are conditional on the type of environment, including parenting, to which the child is
exposed (Reiss, Neiderhiser, Hetherington, & Plomin, 2000).
Studies of the role of temperament, a genetically determined individual difference, in
children’s development have illustrated the conditional nature of genetically based predis-
positions. While a difficult temperament in infancy is sometimes associated with the devel-
opment of insecure infant–mother attachment, this link is most evident when social support
available to the mothers is limited (Crockenberg, 1981). When maternal social support
was high, there were no differences in the quality of the infant–mother attachment rela-
tionship for difficult and easy infants. Since this early study, evidence has mounted in
support of this interactive view of temperament. For example, several researchers have
found that difficult temperament predicts long-term behavior outcomes, such as external-
izing problems; however, additional parental influences are evident beyond the effects of
temperament (Bates, Pettit, & Dodge, 1995). Other studies have found moderating ef-
fects of parenting on temperament–behavior links (Bates, Pettit, Dodge, & Ridge, 1998;
Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Moreover, as Vandell (2000) has recently argued, difference in
parental treatment is “not driven solely by children’s genetic differences . . . Children in
the same family can have very different experiences as a function of changes in family
circumstances related to parents employment, divorce, relocations, illness, separation, and
death” (p. 702). These arguments are consistent with the conditional view of parenting,
and underscore the importance of environmental factors as moderators of the interplay
between genetic factors and parenting. In sum, parenting remains an important influence
on children’s social development (Parke & Buriel, 1998), although it is increasingly recog-
nized that genetic factors interact with parenting styles to achieve these effects (Hart, 1999;
Vandell, 2000).
Just as parents remain important agents of socialization, ample evidence (see Rubin,
Bukowski, & Parker, 1998) suggests that peers play an important role in social develop-
ment – after controlling for parental effects. A variety of social and academic outcomes are
forecast by the quality of children’s peer relationships in early childhood (Parker & Asher,
1987). Moreover in the study of social relationships distinctions have often been made
among different relationship units of analysis, including dyads and groups. It is assumed
that friendship based on a reciprocal relationship between two individuals makes a distinc-
tive and unique contribution to children’s social adaptation, which is different from meas-
ures of peer-group acceptance or experience in peer-group contexts. Recent efforts to limit
peer influence to group-level effects (Harris, 1995, 2000) are inconsistent with the accu-
mulating body of evidence which demonstrates that friendships have important influences
on children’s social adaptation over time (Hartup & Stevens, 1997; Newcomb & Bagwell,
1995). Moreover, different types of peer relationships, such as companions, friends, and
teammates serve different functions in development (Krappman, 1992; Vandell, 2000) a
view that stands in sharp contrast to Harris (1995, 2000) who argues that peer-group level
experience is the major socialization influence. Just as parenting interacts with genetic/
biological variables, a similar argument can be made in the case of peers (Vandell, 2000).
Recent evidence suggests that the choices of particular peers, and activities and the timing
of entry into these activities are likely to be biologically as well as socially mediated. As
Vandell (2000) recently noted, interpretation of the direction of effects in these studies is
difficult to establish. Indeed much of the research on the peer group as a central socialization
force “suffers from the same challenges of gene–environment correlations that confront
parenting researchers. Children actively select some peer groups and not others on the
basis of their interests and proclivities” (Vandell, 2000, p. 704). Indeed the move toward
longitudinal and experimental studies has been motivated, in part, by attempts to clarify
the nature of these gene–environment correlations.
An example will illustrate this interplay between genetically influenced processes and
social variables in shaping children’s social development and recent attempts to disentan-
gle gene–environment relationships. Just as the parent research has shown, a conditional
model that implicates both environmental and biological/genetic influences emerges as the
best account of the available data. Infants with difficult temperament are more likely to be
rejected by peers (Bates, Bayles, Bennett, Ridge, & Brown, 1991), while inhibited infants
are more likely to be socially withdrawn in early and middle childhood (Calkins & Fox,
1992). In sum, in the case of both parents and peers, the impact of these socializing agents
are best understood by recognizing their interplay with biological/genetic determined child
characteristics.
Parents versus Peers or Parents and Peers
Just as genetic factors do not operate alone, our view is that parents and peers operate
together in the socialization process. In contrast to Harris (1995, 1998, 2000) who argues
that the peer group is the major environmental socializing force in children’s development,
and parents play a minor role in this process, we argue that parents and a variety of types of
peer relationships, including friendships, matter in the socialization process. Second, rather
than peers functioning independently of parents, we argue that parents play a major role in
shaping the timing of entry into peer contexts, the nature and frequency of peer contacts
and the quality of peer activities. Moreover, the links between these two systems is transac-
tional with parents affecting their children’s peer contacts and experiences, which in turn,
modify parent–child relationships, which subsequently further modify peer relationships
(Hart, Olsen, Robinson, & Mandleco, 1997).
Parental Influence on Children’s Peer Relationships: A Tripartite

Model
There are many ways in which parents have been found to influence their children’s rela-
tionships with peers. We propose that there are three different paths that lead to variations
in children’s peer relationships. These three paths include parent–child interaction, par-
ents’ direct advice concerning peer relationships, and parents’ regulation of children’s peer
activities and access to peers.
Parent–child interaction and the parent–child relationship
Parent–child interaction has a long history in the area of developmental psychology. Re-
search in this area is based on the notion that face-to-face interactions between children
and parents may afford children the opportunity to learn social skills that are necessary for
successful peer relationships (see Parke & O’Neil, 1997, for a fuller description). This
research has shown that controlling parent interactional styles are related to negative social
outcomes for children and that warm interactional styles are related to positive social out-
comes. Recent studies found that children of mothers who interact more positively or are
more responsive and engaging with their children were more socially accepted by peers
(Harrist, Pettit, Dodge, & Bates, 1994; Hart, Ladd, & Burleson, 1990; Putallaz, 1987).
Pettit and Harrist (1993) observed positive and negative maternal interactional styles dur-
ing a family meal and found positive peer outcomes for the children whose mothers were
more sensitive and negative peer outcomes whose mothers were more intrusive. Similarly,
parents who exhibit negative affect, who are over-controlling, and who are more distant in
their interactions have children that are less accepted by peers or socially skilled (e.g., Carson
& Parke, 1996; Hart, DeWolf, & Burts, 1992; McDowell & Parke, 2000; Olsen et al., in
press).
Studies of child–parent attachment have provided evidence that the quality of attach-
ment is linked with the quality of children’s peer relationships. When a child is provided
with sensitive and contingently responsive caregiving from his/her primary caregivers in
infancy a secure attachment is formed within a relationship between infant and caregiver
(Sroufe, Carlson, & Shulman, 1993), which leads to the child being more positive and
competent in later peer relationships.
As these studies underscore, the nature of parent–child interactional history and the
parent–child relationship are linked to variations in the quality of peer relationships –
further evidence of the interdependence of these two social systems. Moreover, subsequent
outcomes, which have often been attributed to peer influences, clearly have their origins in
early parenting practices and family-based relationships. In fact, disentangling the inter-
play between these two systems may be a false goal, since in reality the two systems mutu-
ally influence each other across development and operate together in accounting for
socialization outcomes.
Research in this area has moved beyond the description of links between the two do-
mains. In the most recent stage, the focus has been on the processes mediating the relations
between parent–child interactions and/or relationships and peer outcomes. A variety of
processes have been proposed including affect management skills (e.g., emotional encod-
ing/decoding; emotional understanding; emotional regulation), attention regulatory mecha-
nisms, and cognitive representational models.
Children learn more than specific affective expressions, such as anger or sadness or joy,
in the family. They learn a cluster of processes associated with the understanding and
regulation of affective displays, which we term “affect management skills” (Parke, Cassidy,
Burks, Carson, & Boyum, 1992). It is assumed that these skills are acquired during the
course of parent–child interaction, and are available to the child for use in other relation-
ships. Moreover, it is assumed that these skills play a mediating role between family and
peer relationships.
Evidence suggests that children’s emotional encoding and decoding skills (see Hubbard
& Coie, 1994, for review) are related to their social competence with peers. Other evi-
dence suggests that children’s emotional understanding (e.g., causes of emotion; appropri-
ate reaction to emotions) is also related to peer competence (Cassidy, Parke, Butovsky, &
Braungart, 1992; Denham, 1998). It is assumed that these skills are acquired in the course
of parent–child play. Through physically playful interaction with their parents, especially
fathers, children may be learning how to use emotional signals to regulate the social behavior
of others.
Emotional regulation has also been suggested as a potential link between family and
peer contexts. For example, parental comforting of children when they experience negative
emotion has been linked with constructive anger reactions (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1994).
Several studies have suggested that parental willingness to discuss emotions with their chil-
dren is related to children’s awareness and understanding of others’ emotions (Denham,
1998; Dunn & Brown, 1994; Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1997).
In concert with emotion regulation, attentional regulatory processes have come to be
viewed as an additional mechanism through which familial socialization experiences might
influence the development of children’s social competence. These processes include the
ability to attend to relevant cues, to sustain attention, to refocus attention through such
processes as cognitive distraction and cognitive restructuring, and other efforts to reduce
the level of emotional arousal (Denham, 1998). Attentional processes are thought to or-
ganize experience and to play a central role in cognitive and social development beginning
early in infancy (Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Thus, Wilson (1999) aptly considers attention
regulatory processes as a “shuttle” linking emotion regulation and social cognitive proc-
esses because attentional processes organize both cognitive and emotional responses, and
thus, influence the socialization of relationship competence. In support of direct influ-
ences, Eisenberg, Fabes, Bernzweig, Karbon, Poulin, and Hanish (1993) found that chil-
dren who were low in attentional regulation were also low in social competence.
A third mechanism has been championed by both attachment and social processing
theorists namely cognitive representational models of social relationships (see Parke &
O’Neil, 2000 and Sroufe & Fleeson, 1986, for reviews). According to attachment theorists
the early experience with the parent is incorporated into the child’s internal working mod-
els of the self, the parent, and the parent–child relationship, and these models are carried
forward into the individual’s social representations and behavior in subsequent interper-
sonal settings, including peer contexts (Ainsworth, 1989; Sroufe & Fleeson, 1986). In-
deed, attachment is related to interpersonal cognition or representations that are applied to
challenges in peer relationships (e.g., Cassidy, Kirsh, Scolton, & Parke, 1996; Rabiner,
Keane, & MacKinnon-Lewis, 1993; Suess, 1987). Suess (1987) found that insecurely at-
tached children displayed more unrealistic or hostile/negative biases in judging intentions
of children involved in hypothetical mishaps with peers. Cassidy et al. (1996) found that
greater perceived rejection by both mothers and fathers was associated with greater per-
ceived hostile intent by peers. These studies provide evidence that the quality of attach-
ment may have direct or indirect influences on later mental representations with respect to
peers (see also McDowell, Parke, & Spitzer, in press).
Parent as advisor, instructor, and consultant
Parents’ direct advice concerning children’s peer relationships represents a second path of
influence. It is assumed that parents influence children’s peer relationships by providing
direct instruction about the appropriate ways of maintaining social relationships. Work in
this area has indicated that different qualities of parental advice giving are related to varia-
tions in children’s social competence. For example, young children have been found to
play more cooperatively and exhibit more turn taking when an adult is facilitating than
when playing alone (Bhavnagri & Parke, 1991). Similarly, Finnie and Russell (1988) ex-
amined the types of advice mothers gave during their children’s attempts at group entry.
Children of mothers who facilitated preschoolers’ entry into a play situation by use of
more group-oriented advice strategies were more socially competent. When examining
mothers’ advice to hypothetical vignettes, Finnie and Russell (1988) found that more skillful
responses (more rule-oriented and positive) were related to children being more socially
accepted (see also Russell & Finnie, 1990). Mize, Pettit, Laird, and Lindsey (1993) found
that children whose mothers offered more positive solutions to peer dilemmas were rated
as more socially competent by teachers. Furthermore, these researchers found mothers’
explicit advice giving predicted social competence more than simply discussing peer situa-
tions.
While prior work with younger children has generally found positive relations between
both positive style and clear and explicit content of advice giving, several theorists (Ladd,
1992; Parke, Burks, Carson, Neville, & Boyum, 1994) suggest that the impact of advice
giving may change across development. As children develop a future orientation, parents
are likely to try to keep their children from being influenced by peers by talking to them
about the future consequences of their behavior (Mounts, 2000). In the early years of
development, parents may use advice giving as a socializing tactic to help children acquire
the skills necessary for adequate social adaptation to peers. However, both parents and
children may regard explicit parental advice as less necessary and/or less appropriate as
children develop adequate social skills. Instead, by middle childhood, provision of advice
would be expected to be used by parents for remediational goals in which the advice giving
would be highest in the case of poor socially functioning children. Work in our own lab
has supported this notion. Specifically, when parents offered more advice and more spe-
cific advice about peer dilemmas, children were rated as less positive and more negative by
teachers and peers (McDowell, Parke, & Wang, in press).
There is a shift in recent research toward an integrated approach to these topics. As
Grusec and Goodnow (1994) suggest, both style and content need to be considered to-
gether in determining the impact of parental advice giving on children’s peer outcomes.
The combined impact of these two aspects of parental advice giving is beginning to achieve
recognition. In their study of 3–5-year-old children, Mize and Pettit (1997) found that
maternal information giving and guidance (content) predicted over and above mothers’
warmth and responsiveness (style) to children’s peer acceptance (as rated by teachers) dur-
ing a play interaction context. In our own work we have found similar results showing that
the style and content of parental advice play nonoverlapping roles in children’s peer rela-
tionships (McDowell, Parke, & Wang, in press). This second pathway through which
parents influence children’s peer relationships provides further evidence in support of our
argument that family and peer systems are interdependent.
Beyond parent–child interaction and advice giving: Parents as social managers

and social supervisors
Parents influence their children’s social relationships not only through their direct interac-
tions with their children. They also function as managers of their children’s social lives
(Hartup, 1979; Parke, 1978) and serve as regulators of opportunities for social contact
with extra-familial social partners. Although peer influence increases as children develop
(Rubin et al., 1998), parents continue to play an important regulatory role as gatekeeper
and monitor of children’s social choices and social contacts throughout middle childhood
and into adolescence. This view stands in marked contrast to some claims (Harris, 1998)
that parental influence over peer-group activities does not extend beyond preadolescence.
Parental monitoring. One way in which parents can affect their children’s social relation-
ships is through monitoring of their children’s social activities. This form of management
is particularly evident as children move into middle childhood and later is associated with
the relative shift in importance of family and peers as sources of influence on social rela-
tionships. Monitoring refers to a range of activities, including the supervision of children’s
choice of social settings, activities, and friends. Parents of delinquent and antisocial chil-
dren engaged in less monitoring and supervision of their children’s activities, and less con-
trol of their sons’ choice of friends, than parents of nondelinquent children (Patterson &
Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984).
It is unlikely that parental discipline, interaction, and monitoring are independent. In
support of this view, Dishion (1990) found that both inconsistent, negative, and punitive
discipline and low parental supervision and monitoring were related to emergence of anti-
social behavior, which, in turn, was linked with rejection by peers. Similarly, Steinberg
(1986) found that children in grades 6 to 9, especially girls who are on their own after
school, are more susceptible to peer pressure to engage in antisocial activity (e.g., vandal-
ism, cheating, stealing) than are their adult-supervised peers. In addition, children of par-
ents who were high in their use of authoritative parenting practices were less susceptible to
peer pressure in the absence of monitoring, in nonsupervised contexts. Developmental
shifts may be important, because younger children are less likely to be left unsupervised
than older children; moreover, it is likely that direct supervision is more common among
younger children, whereas distal supervision is more evident among older children. Fi-
nally, recent work (O’Neil, Parke, & McDowell, 2001) suggests that monitoring and limi-
tation of children’s activities are, in part, determined by parental perceptions of neighborhood
quality. When parents perceive the neighborhood to be of poor quality, they increase their
level of supervision and limit their children’s activities which, in turn, leads to higher social
competence. This suggests a new direction for future research, namely the determinants of
different levels of parental monitoring and supervision.
Play rules. Rarely have researchers explored the relation between play rules for children
and children’s peer relationships. Simpkins and Parke (in press) explored the relations
between the number of parental play rules and sixth-grade children’s loneliness, depres-
sion, and friendship quality. Boys whose parents had fewer play rules reported lower levels
of depression and more conflict in their best friendship. Boys’ loneliness and positive qualities
in their best friendships was not significantly predicted by paternal play rules, nor were
girls’ outcomes significantly correlated with the number of parental play rules (see also
Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder, & Sameroff, 1999).
Parents as social mediators of social contact. Parents manage children’s peer relationships
by arranging for their children to interact with peers. Children’s contact with peers after
school can occur through informal play contacts with children or formal after-school ac-
tivities (e.g., team sports). Informal contacts occur when parents and/or children arrange
time to play with peers outside of school. During these contacts, children can practice and
learn new social skills and behaviors with peers. This also provides children with a nonschool
context in which to form and develop peer relationships. Parents who initiated at least one
contact had children with a larger range of playmates and more companions with whom
they had frequent contact (Kerns, Cole, & Andrews, 1998; Ladd & Golter, 1988; Ladd &
Hart, 1992). In addition, boys were more liked and less rejected by peers if parents initi-
ated at least one informal play contact (Ladd & Golter, 1988). Furthermore, parents who
initiated a larger number of play contacts had children who had higher prosocial behavior
and spent less time exhibiting nonsocial behavior in school (Ladd & Hart, 1992).
As with informal play contacts, children can spend their time after school with peers
during formal activities. Bryant (1985) found that 10 year olds enrolled in formal activities
were more likely to have better perspective-taking skills, which are helpful in children’s
peer relationships. Similarly, Pettit, Laird, Bates, and Dodge (1997) examined the rela-
tions between adult-supervised activities (e.g., music lessons, church, scouts, and youth
groups) in first and third grade and children’s peer relationships in sixth grade. Girls’
activities in first grade were curvilinearly related to their grade point average (GPA) in sixth
grade. Further, girls’ activities during third grade were related curvilinearly to sixth-grade
externalizing behaviors. These curvilinear patterns for girls indicated that an average number
of activities was related to a higher GPA and fewer externalizing behaviors while a low or
high number of activities was related to poorer outcomes. Boys’ activities in first grade
were not significantly related to sixth-grade outcomes. In third grade, boys with more
activities showed more externalizing behaviors in sixth grade.
Parents’ social networks as a source of potential peer contacts for children. Cochran and Brassard
(1979) have proposed that parents’ social networks can influence children’s cognitive and
social development. Parents’ networks may influence children’s social adjustment by pro-
viding opportunities for social interaction with the children of their parents’ network mem-
bers. Children’s contact with peers would be facilitated by the presence of potential play
partners among the offspring of parents’ network members. Cochran and his colleagues
(Cochran, Larner, Riley, Gunnarson, & Henderson., 1990) have provided support for the
overlap between parent and child social networks. They found that 30% to 44% of 6-year-
old children’s social networks were also included in the parents’ networks.
The overlap between parents’ and children’s networks is also a form of social integration
(Coleman & Hoffer, 1987). With high social integration or social capital (Coleman, 1988),
parents’ goals for their children’s development or management of their behavior can be
carried out through parents’ network members. Thus, parents who have larger networks
have more adults that can help their children’s development through several pathways.
First, parents and children have more social support. Second, parents are better able to
control or regulate problem behavior by having other parents guide their children’s behavior
when they are not present. Third, other parents can encourage prosocial behavior and
parents’ values when they are not present. Another way these two networks may be linked
was proposed by Coleman (1990), who argued that when both parents and their children
are acquainted with other parents and their children, they form network closure. Accord-
ing to Coleman, when network closure exists, there are likely to be more shared values and
more social control over their offspring, which, in turn, would be related to better social
outcomes. Darling, Steinberg, Gringlas, and Dornbusch (1995) found that social integra-
tion (as indexed by network closure) and value consensus were related to adolescent social
and academic outcomes. Specifically, adolescents who reported high degrees of contact
among their parents, friends, and their friends’ parents, as well as high levels of interaction
with nonfamily adults, were less deviant and higher in academic achievement than their
peers who were less socially integrated.
Other studies suggest that the quality of adult social networks relates to children’s social
behavior (e.g., Melson, Ladd, & Hsu, 1993; Uhlendorff, 2000). In an Australian study,
Homel, Burns, and Goodnow (1987) found positive relations between the number of
“dependable” friends that parents report and 11-year-old children’s self-rated happiness,
the number of regular playmates, and maternal ratings of children’s social skills. Recently,
Simpkins, O’Neil, Lee, Parke, and Wang (under review) extended this work by showing a
relation between parents’ enjoyment of friends in their network and peer ratings of social
competence. The more parents enjoyed their friends, the less the child was disliked and
perceived as aggressive by peers. Moreover, the more contact that parents had with rela-
tives, the less disliked children were by their peers. Finally, these investigators found that
maternal and paternal social networks have distinctive links to children’s social relation-
ships. Fathers who rated their networks as less enjoyable had children who were more
aggressive and more disliked by peers, whereas the less contact that mothers had with their
friends, the higher teachers rated their children on avoidance of interaction with other
children.
Finally the quality of the relationship that adults develop with friends in their social
network is an important correlate of their children’s friendship quality, Doyle and
Markiewicz (1996) found that mothers who reported having supportive friends had chil-
dren who experienced more closeness with their best friend. Or, if mothers felt less secure
about their best friendship or rated their friends as interesting, their own children were
more likely to have a best friend. The findings concerning the links between lack of moth-
ers’ security about their friendships is consistent with earlier work on maternal recollec-
tions of their childhood peer experiences. In this work, Putallaz, Costanzo, and Smith
(1991) found that mothers who had anxious peer relations as children had children who
were more socially competent, which supports a compensatory model of parenting. More
recently, Simpkins and Parke (2001) found that the quality of both maternal and pater-
nal friendships was related to children’s friendship quality. However, the quality of the
parents’ best friendship was a better predictor of daughters’ friendships, while both the
quality of the parents’ best friendship and breadth of their social network were predictive
of sons’ friendships. As these studies illustrate, the quality and scope of adult friendships
and social networks are important correlates not just of children’s peer competence but of
their friendship qualities as well. Finally, these findings suggest that the parental correlates
of dyadic friendship qualities may, in fact, be different than the correlates of sociometric
studies or other measures of peer-group experience.
In sum, parents serve as regulators of children’s peer interactions and relationships. Peers
are influential in children’s development but some of the variance in outcomes is clearly
the product of earlier and concurrent parental managerial strategies.
The Interplay Across Pathways
It is critical to remember that these three sets of parental strategies do not operate sepa-
rately (Parke & O’Neil, 2000). The work of Dishion, Poulin, and Skaggs, (2000) illus-
trates the ways in which these separate parental strategies (i.e., parental childrearing practices,
parental management) often operate together. In addition, this work illustrates how family
factors influence children’s behavior, which over development leads to different peer-group
choices. Clearly, the nature of family–peer linkages needs to be considered from a develop-
mental perspective. Children who associate with antisocial peers are more likely to engage
in antisocial behavior; while it is common to blame the peer group for this increased devi-
ant activity, the Patterson et al. (1989) research suggests that earlier family conditions
modify the likelihood of associating with deviant peers. Poor monitoring as well as coer-
cive/authoritarian childrearing practices in early childhood lead to aggressive behavior and
poor school performance in middle childhood. In adolescence when there is more au-
tonomy in the choice of peers, youth from these dysfunctional homes are more likely to
choose antisocial peers, which, in turn, increases the rate of deviant activity. “Even when
selection effects are controlled, much of what appears to be peer influence is actually the
end result of familial influence at an earlier point in the child’s development” (Collins et
al., 2000, p. 228).
Marital Conflict and Children’s Social Relationships
The relationship between the marital relationships and children’s peer competence has a
very recent history in the social development literature. Two perspectives are found: a
direct and indirect effects models of the relations between marital conflict and children’s
peer relationships.
Marital discord can have an indirect influence on children’s adjustment through changes
in the quality of parenting (Fauber & Long, 1991). Affective changes in the quality of the
parent–child relationship, lack of emotional availability, and adoption of less optimal
parenting styles have been implicated as mechanisms through which marital discord dis-
rupts parenting processes. Several studies (Cowan, Cowan, Schulz, & Heming, 1994; Katz
& Kahen, 1993) have found that marital conflict is linked with poor parenting, which, in
turn, is related to poor social adjustment on the children. Other work has focused on the
specific processes by which the marital relationship itself directly influences children’s im-
mediate functioning and long-term adjustment. More frequent interparental conflict and
more intense or violent forms of conflict are not only particularly disturbing to children
but are also associated with externalizing and internalizing problems. Grych, Seid, and
Fincham (1992), for example, found that children who were exposed to an audiotaped
analog of marital interaction responded with distress, shame, and self-blame to intensely
angry adult exchanges. Conflict which was child-related in content was more likely than
conflict involving other content to be associated with behavior problems in children (Grych
& Fincham, 1993). Exposure to unresolved conflict, has been found to be associated with
negative affect and poor coping responses in children (Cummings, Ballard, El-Sheikh, &
Lake, 1991). In addition, Katz and Gottman (1993) found that couples who exhibited a
hostile style of resolving conflict had children who tended to be described by teachers as
exhibiting antisocial characteristics. When husbands were angry and emotionally distant
while resolving marital conflict, children were described by teachers as anxious and socially
withdrawn. Finally, children from divorced and remarried families are more likely to expe-
rience internalizing and externalizing problems and difficulties with peers (Amato & Keith,
1991 Hetherington, Bridges, & Insabella, 1998).
Conflict is inevitable in most parental relationships and is not detrimental to children’s
functioning under all circumstances. Disagreements that are extremely intense and involve
threat to the child are likely to be more disturbing to the child. When conflict is expressed
constructively, is moderate in degree, is expressed in the context of a warm and supportive
family environment, and shows evidence of resolution, children may learn valuable lessons
regarding how to negotiate conflict and resolve disagreements (Davies & Cummings, 1994).
Siblings as a Socialization Context for Peer Relationships
Children’s experiences with siblings provide a context in which interaction patterns and
social understanding skills may generalize to relationships with other children (McCoy,
Brody, & Stoneman, 1994). According to Stocker and Dunn (1990), interactions with
siblings provide a setting in which children “develop social understanding skills which may
enable them to form particularly close relationships with a child of their choice, a close
friend.” Unfortunately, a somewhat inconsistent picture of the connections between chil-
dren’s patterns of interacting with siblings and patterns of interacting with peers is evident
(see Parke & O’Neil, 1997, for a review of this work). There is modest evidence of a
straightforward “carry-over” of interaction styles between children’s relationships with sib-
lings and peers. Hetherington (1988) found that when relationships with their siblings
were described as hostile and alienated as opposed to warm and compassionate, children
had poorer peer relationships and other behavior problems. Others report little evidence of
a carry-over effect between siblings and peers. Abramovitch, Corter, Pepler, and Stanhope
(1986), found little evidence that patterns of sibling interaction were related to the interac-
tion styles of children with a friend. Older siblings are more likely to assume dominant
roles such as managers of activities and teachers during the course of their interactions with
siblings; whereas, the same children were more likely to adopt an equalitarian style during
interactions with friends.

Finally, the sibling relationship may play a role in compensating for other problematic
relationships by providing an alternative context for experiencing satisfying social relation-
ships and protecting children from the development of adjustment difficulties. East and
Rook (1992) found that children who were socially isolated in their peer relationships were
buffered from adjustment problems when they reported positive relationships with a favorite
sibling.
Although our theories have emphasized the carry-over from sibling relationships to peer
relationships, the direction of influence from peers to family is evident as well. Kramer and
Gottman (1992) examined the role that positive relationships with peers plays in chil-
dren’s adaptation to the birth of a new sibling. They found that children who displayed a
more positive interaction style with a best friend and who were better able to manage
conflict and negative affect, behaved more positively toward their new sibling at both 6
months and 14 months.
Factors Altering the Relative Impact of Family and Peer Systems
A variety of moderators of the relative impact of families and peers on children’s social
adaptation have been identified, including social class and culture.
Social class, poverty, and job loss
Families who come from impoverished socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to
experience a number of stressors, which, in turn, could affect their children’s social rela-
tionships with peers. In addition to economic stressors, low-income families are more likely
to experience such stressful events as medical problems, overcrowding in the home or a
large family size, parental psychopathology, parental criminality and/or imprisonment,
marital discord, and divorce (Duncan, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov, 1994; Hetherington,
Bridges, & Insabella, 1998). Some have proposed that having any one of these stressors
may not put a child at great risk for developing adjustment problems, but instead, it is the
accumulation of many of such stressors that increases the likelihood of maladjustment
(Rutter, 1987; Sameroff, Bartko, Baldwin, Baldwin, & Seifer, 1998). Shaw and Emery
(1988) found that the number of family-level stressors a child had experienced was related
negatively to the child’s perceived social competence.
Poverty has its effect on children adjustment through both indirect and direct pathways.
The link between family stressors and child adjustment may be mediated indirectly by
parental behavior. Acute stress has been found to be associated with maternal depression
which is related to increasingly poor discipline, which, in turn, is related to increases in
child deviancy, including poor peer relations (Conger, Patterson, & Ge, 1995). Other
researchers have investigated the direct linkage between social disadvantage and child out-
comes. Patterson, Vaden, Griesler, and Kupersmidt (1991) have found that children from
low-income homes have fewer friendships than children from middle-income homes both
in and out of school. The largest difference between low-income and middle-income chil-
dren was for friendship activities in the home. Children from poor families may have
homes that are not well equipped for children and their playmates and parents may not
encourage their children to bring friends home. Furthermore, these low-income children
were also more likely to experience social isolation. Thus, economic disadvantage may
decrease their opportunities for peer companionship and hamper their opportunities for
learning many of the social skills necessary to maintain positive peer relations.
Poverty is not the only route through which children and families are affected by eco-
nomic factors. Even economically viable families suffer unemployment, and employment
instability, which leads to financial stress. Economic hardship is often associated with sub-
jective feeling of stress on the part of parents, which in turn, has been found to be associ-
ated with increased depression (Brody & Flor, 1997; Conger & Elder, 1994) and decreased
self-esteem (Brody & Flor, 1997). Stressed and depressed parents are more hostile and
tense and less warm and nurturant (Brody & Flor, 1997; Conger & Elder, 1994), and less
likely to follow regular family routines (Brody & Flor, 1997). Disruptions in parenting can
increase children’s adjustment problems including difficulties in peer relations, such as
fewer close friendships and less perceived support from friends (Conger, Patterson, & Ge,
1995).
Cultural differences in family and peer influence
An issue that has generated considerable interest is the variability in children’s develop-
ment across cultures as well as between and within cultural subgroups within the same
country. Two issues are of interest, namely the relative influence of parents and peers in
different cultures and the nature of family–peer linkages across cultures. The relative im-
pact of parents and peers varies across cultures. In a classic study of Russian and American
children, Bronfenbrenner (1970) found that Russian children were more likely to follow
parental rules when with their peers than American children who exhibited a greater ten-
dency to deviate from parental rules when with their peers. More recently, Chen,
Greenberger, Lester, Dong, and Guo (1998) found that peer influences were stronger
correlates of misconduct among European and Chinese Americans than among Chinese
and Taiwanese adolescents.
In spite of overall differences in the relative contribution of peers and families to chil-
dren’s social outcomes, numerous studies report that the nature of the parental and peer
correlates of children’s social competence are similar. In the Chen et al. (1998) study for
example, family relationships (parent–offspring conflict, parental warmth, and parental
monitoring) as well as peer sanctions (peer approval/disapproval of misconduct) were re-
lated to child misconduct in similar ways across European and Chinese American and
Chinese groups.
Others have reported similar relations between parental practices and children’s peer
relationships. In a study based in China, Chen and Rubin (1994) reported that authoritar-
ian parenting and punitive disciplinary practices were linked with childhood aggression
and peer rejection; on the other hand, parental warmth and authoritative parenting pre-
dicted social competence, which, in turn, predicted peer acceptance. However, as Chen,
Rubin, and Li (1994) found, the correlates of peer acceptance among Chinese children
shift across development. While shyness is positively correlated with peer acceptance among
8–10 year olds, this same characteristic is associated with rejection when displayed by
adolescents (Chen, Rubin, Li, & Li, 1999). Other work suggests that the domains in
which behavior is exhibited is also important to understanding cross-cultural differences.
Chinese-Canadian children who were competitive in academic tasks were well liked, but
disliked if the domain was athletics. The reverse was true for non-Asian Canadian children
(Udvari, Schneider, Labovitz, & Tassi, 1995). Studies of Russian parents reveal a similar
pattern. Children of punitive, authoritarian mothers in combination with less responsive
fathers display more reactive overt and relational aggression (Hart et al., 2000).
In terms of parental management, similarities and differences across cultures were evi-
dent as well (Hart et al., 1998). In Russia, China, and the United States, parental initiating
and arranging decreases as children develop. In all three countries, mothers who initiate
more peer contacts had children who were more accepted by peers. However, Chinese
children were given more autonomy in their initiating activities with peers. Mothers in all
cultures were more likely to arrange peer contacts if their children were perceived by teach-
ers as less socially competent. Parental monitoring has similar positive effects on children’s
misconduct in a variety of cultures, including Denmark (Arnett & Balle-Jensen, 1993),
England (Belson, 1975), China (Chen et al., 1998), and Australia (Feldman, Rosenthal,
Mont-Reynaud, & Leung, 1991).
Across a variety of cultures, the relative influence of families and peers on children’s
social behavior may differ but the family processes (e.g., child rearing; advice giving, moni-
toring) or peer processes (e.g., association with deviant peers) by which these socialization
agents achieve their influence are similar.
Conclusions and Remaining Questions
As we have argued in this chapter, both families and peers play significant roles in chil-
dren’s social development. Rather than viewing these two social systems as independent,
they function in an interdependent fashion throughout development. Even though the
relative balance between peer and family influence shifts across development, with peers
playing a larger role as children move from childhood to adolescence, earlier parental
childrearing, advice-giving, and managerial practices as well as through concurrent par-
ental efforts to influence and shape their adolescent’s social choices, families continue to
play an important role.
There are many issues that are still not well understood and these remain challenges for
our field. First, although the general outlines of the links between family and peer systems
are coming into focus, many details of this picture are still blurry. Of particular concern is
the need to increase our understanding of the specific family subsystem experiences and
processes, which are related to different aspects of peer relationships, such as friendships,
peer groups, and social acceptance. While attachment and close intimate family ties may
be more clearly linked to friendships, another form of close relationships than acceptance
by peers (Youngblade & Belsky 1992), group-level aspects of family life such as cohesive-
ness and organization may be more closely tied to children’s ability to function in the peer
group rather than in close dyadic relationships.
Second, the multidirectionality of influence is often included in our models but less
often empirically evaluated (Hart et al., 1997). This concept of multidirectionality can
take several forms. Within the family itself, the interplay among the subsystems needs
more attention. As noted above, the mutual influence among parenting, marriage and
sibling relationships needs more attention, instead of assuming that the direction of influ-
ence is usually singular (e.g., from marital interaction to parenting). Even when these
subsystem links are more clearly understood, the assumption remains that the direction of
influence flows from the family to extra-familial relationships. Although there is consider-
able evidence that extra-familial social friends and social networks have an impact on par-
ent–child relationships (Belsky, 1984), we rarely explore this issue with children. What is
the impact of children’s extra-familial relationships with friends, peers, and relatives on
their family relationships? As has been found in several studies, for example, children’s
relationships with peers/friends can influence their adjustment to a new sibling (Kramer &
Gottman, 1992) and their relationships with their parents (Repetti, 1996).
Third, a developmental analysis of these issues is clearly needed. As other research sug-
gests (Collins & Russell, 1991), the direction of influence between parent and child is
more balanced across development, as issues of autonomy become of more central impor-
tance to the child and adolescent. Even fundamental descriptive data concerning the ways
in which different interactive strategies or managerial processes shift across development
are lacking at this point. More importantly, the ways in which the family strategies (e.g., as
interactive partner, manager, or direct tutor) relate to social relational competence at dif-
ferent points in the child’s development merit investigation.
Finally, our focus in this chapter has been on families and peers but many other
socialization influences such as the mass media, the school, and religious institutions play
important roles in social development of children. By locating family and peer influences
in the larger matrix of socialization forces, we will develop a richer understanding of chil-
dren’s social development. Through a deeper and more textured appreciation of the rela-
tive roles of various socialization agents we will be able to develop more effective guidelines
for prevention and intervention programs on behalf of children with social problems.
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Part IV
The Family Context
Research suggests that a host of variables contribute to the social development of young
children. These include individual biologically based genetic and temperament factors (e.g.,
Chapters 2 and 6) as well as more distal extra-familial influences, including the peer group,
schools, media, and culture. Parenting and family interactions are factors proximal to chil-
dren that combine with individual and extra-familial influences in ways that are linked to
childhood social competencies. Although peers and other extra-familial influences become
increasingly important across early and middle childhood, parents and siblings continue to
constitute a major portion of a child’s social milieu in many parts of the world (see Hart,
Olsen, Robinson, & Mandleco, 1997).
The focus of this section is on mechanisms in the proximal family environment that are
germane to parenting and sibling interactions. How family structures mirror the ebb and
flow of societal change in the extra-familial environment is also covered, particularly with
regard to explicating how family members interact with one another in varying family
contexts.
Parent–child attachment relationships have been the subject of serious inquiry for many
decades. Joan Stevenson-Hinde and Karine Verschueren review the historical develop-
ment of this work, beginning with John Bowlby’s ethological framework. They overview
attachment quality and the conceptual and methodological issues associated with studying
patterns of attachment that are linked to varying parent–child interaction styles. In line
with recent meta-analytic approaches (Schneider, Atkinson, & Tardif, 2001), the authors
link different attachment indices to children’s social competence, behavior disorders, and
peer acceptance. Future directions for this line of research are clearly charted (e.g., con-
necting social cognitive and verbal capacities to attachment indices). This chapter is a must
read for those interested in moving the field forward in this area.
Because parents provide a critical environment for children’s social development, it is
important to consider ways that parent–child relationships are different from other kinds
of close relationships. Alan Russell, Jackie Mize, and Kerry Bissaker take on this challenge
180 Joan
The Family
Stevenson-Hinde
Context & Karine Verschueren
by examining levels of complexity regarding individual characteristics that parents and

children bring to the relationship and then delineating parent–child relationships from
interactions. They show how relationships comprise many interactions that have different
features. A helpful scheme for organizing dimensions of parent–child relationships is expli-
cated, emphasizing vertical and horizontal distinctions that parents can make when adjust-
ing to varying childrearing contexts (e.g., disciplinary vs. power sharing contexts). The
authors also address how parent–child relationships are bi-directional and co-constructed,
with the child assuming an active role in the process. They explicate ways that individual
characteristics, including the sex and personality of parents and children, impact parent–
child relationships across development. Russell and his colleagues conclude by carefully
considering ways that extra-familial neighborhood, social, ethnic, and cultural factors im-
pact on parent–child relationships.
With the exception of countries like mainland China, where the one-child policy is
associated with parents encouraging child contact with cousins as substitute siblings (Hart
et al., 1998), Judy Dunn notes that the majority of children in Europe and the United
States grow up with biological siblings. She reviews systematic research on relationships of
brothers and sisters in family interaction. A wealth of information is provided concerning
why there is so much variation in how siblings get along. Siblings can be sources of stress or
of support to one another, depending on a variety of factors. These factors can include
child temperament, relative age, family size, birth order, and security of attachments to,
and relationships with, parents. Linkages between the worlds of siblings and peers are also
explicated, highlighting evidence for consistency across sibling and peer contexts as well as
compensatory patterns. Finally, the question that has puzzled parents throughout the ages
is addressed: Why are siblings so often different from one another?
Dale Hay and Alison Nash provide an insightful discussion of children’s social develop-
ment in different family arrangements (e.g., single parents, nuclear family structures, com-
munal childrearing, extended family arrangements). How family members interact with
one another and foster social competencies are likely associated with different family struc-
tures; however, Hay and Nash show that there is little solid evidence for this claim. Most
studies comparing child outcomes in different family arrangements are weakened by seri-
ous methodological and theoretical limitations that diminish our ability to reach any firm
conclusions. For example, many studies do not distinguish two-parent families where the
parents are married and those where the parents’ relationship has not been legalized. De-
spite the limited state of scholarship, the authors carefully synthesize existing research on
different family arrangements by utilizing five organizing perspectives: the attachment model,
the parenting model, the nuclear family model, the family systems model, and the social
networks model. Findings from research on different family types such as never-married
mothers, divorced families, nuclear families, same-sex parent families, stepparent families,
cohabiting and married parent families, are presented with an eye towards understanding
how these different family arrangements may affect children. The message is that chil-
dren’s social development in the context of the multitude of family arrangements that exist
in the world today is in dire need of further investigation.
Attachment
The Family
in Childhood
Context 181
References
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sand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hart, C. H., Yang, C., Nelson, D., Jin, S., Bazarskaya, N., Nelson, L., Wu, X., & Wu, P. (1998).
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182 Joan Stevenson-Hinde & Karine Verschueren
10
Attachment in Childhood
Joan Stevenson-Hinde and Karine Verschueren
Ever since Mary Ainsworth’s original work (e.g., Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978),
the bulk of attachment research has concerned behavioral assessments of attachment pat-
terns in infancy. Our focus here is on ways of assessing attachment beyond infancy, from
ages 2.5 to 11 years. Observational and representational procedures will be considered,
with respect to both validation and implications for development and psychopathology.
But first, these procedures must be set within the context of attachment theory.
An Ethological Perspective
In a retrospective paper, John Bowlby described how his early clinical observations pointed
to the adverse effects of separation and loss of a mother figure. This led him to ask, “If the
disruption of a child’s relationship with mother-figure in the early years creates much
distress and anxiety, what is so special about the relationship that has been disrupted?”
(1991a, p. 303). The prevailing answer was that bond formation stemmed from the asso-
ciation of mother with the provision of food, thereby satisfying a primary need. But, in
Bowlby’s view, this “cupboard love theory” (1991a, p. 303) was insufficient. Impressed by
the phenomenon of imprinting in animals, Bowlby looked to ethology to provide a scien-
tific framework.
Within ethology, the occurrence of species-characteristic behavior patterns suggests that
such behavior may have been selected for during the course of evolution. Bowlby applied
this thinking to attachment behavior, which he defined as any form of behavior, which
attains or maintains proximity to a caregiver in times of need or stress. He argued that
individuals who exhibited attachment behavior would have been more apt to survive and
leave offspring, who in turn would reproduce (i.e., would have increased their “inclusive
Attachment in Childhood 183
fitness”), compared with those who did not show attachment behavior. Selection for at-
tachment behavior could not have happened without a similar pressure on its comple-
ment, caregiving behavior. “During the course of time, the biologically given strategy of
attachment in the young has evolved in parallel with the complementary parental strategy
of responsive caregiving – the one presumes the other” (Bowlby, 1991b, p. 293).
Taking an ethological perspective a step further, Bowlby suggested that attachment
behavior reflects the operation of a distinct control system in its own right, not dependent
upon prior association with any other motivational system such as hunger. A behavior
system is “distinguished on the basis of common causation . . . [and is] usually found to
subserve a particular biological function” (Baerends, 1976, pp. 731–733). Bowlby postu-
lated a function of protection from harm, “by keeping him or her in touch with one or
more caregivers” (1991a, p. 306). Activation of a fear behavior system leads to activation of
the attachment behavior system; attachment behavior leads to proximity to caregiver, which
in turn deactivates the fear system, enabling activation of an exploratory or social system
(e.g., Bowlby, 1982; see also Greenberg & Marvin, 1982).
Bowlby realized that an evolutionary argument could provide insight into behavior which
otherwise appeared abnormal, including the “irrational fears of childhood.” The tendency
to fear unfamiliar situations, darkness, or separation is “to be regarded as a natural disposi-
tion of man. . . . that stays with him in some degree from infancy to old age. . . . Thus it is
not the presence of this tendency in childhood or later life that is pathological; pathology is
indicated either when the tendency is apparently absent or when fear is aroused with unu-
sual readiness and intensity” (Bowlby, 1973, p. 84). In one of his final contributions Bowlby
wrote, “Once we postulate the presence within the organism of an attachment behavioural
system regarded as the product of evolution and having protection as its biological func-
tion, many of the puzzles that have perplexed students of human relationships are found to
be soluble. . . . an urge to keep proximity or accessibility to someone seen as stronger or
wiser, and who if responsive is deeply loved, comes to be recognised as an integral part of
human nature and as having a vital role to play in life. Not only does its effective operation
bring with it a strong feeling of security and contentment, but its temporary or long-term
frustration causes acute or chronic anxiety and discontent. When seen in this light, the
urge to keep proximity is to be respected, valued, and nurtured as making for potential
strength, instead of being looked down upon, as so often hitherto, as a sign of inherent
weakness” (Bowlby, 1991b, p. 293).
Development of an Inferred Attachment Bond and Internal Working

Models
As attachment behavior develops, it forms the basis for an inferred attachment bond.
Bowlby described particular phases of its development: pre-attachment (from birth to
about 2 months), involving signaling without discriminating one person from another;
attachment-in-the-making (2–6 months) where signals become directed to particular
persons; clear-cut attachment (0.5–4 years) with locomotion and goal-corrected be-
havior; and finally a goal-corrected partnership (4 years onwards) with perspective taking,
communication skills, and sharing mutual plans. Although additional attachments may
develop throughout life, early attachments endure.
Furthermore, Bowlby (1973) postulated that attachment relationships must become
internalized. Internal working models may be defined as “‘operable’ models of self and
attachment partner, based on their joint relationship history. They serve to regulate, inter-
pret, and predict both the attachment figure’s and the self’s attachment-related behavior,
thoughts, and feelings” (Bretherton & Munholland, 1999, p. 89). This definition reflects
Bowlby’s view of the complementary nature of an internal working model, representing
both sides of the relationship. “A working model of self as valued and competent, accord-
ing to this view, is constructed in the context of a working model of parents as emotionally
available, but also as supportive of exploratory activities. Conversely, a working model of
self as devalued and incompetent is the counterpart of a working model of parents as
rejecting or ignoring of attachment behavior and/or interfering with exploration” (Bretherton
& Munholland, 1999, p. 91).
The Quality of Attachment
So far, we have been presenting concepts that are applicable to all humans. But what is not
common to all individuals is the quality of attachment, first assessed by Mary Ainsworth in
her “strange situation procedure” (Ainsworth et al., 1978). This is a series of short episodes
involving mother and a stranger, in which the child’s attachment behavior system is activated
by the unfamiliarity of the situation and by mother leaving. The return of mother allows one
to see how the child organizes his attachment behavior to her. Ainsworth identified three
patterns: Avoidant, Secure, and Ambivalent. A Secure pattern has been associated with ante-
cedent interactions with a “sensitively responsive” mother, as found in Mary Ainsworth’s
pioneering Baltimore study and subsequently in other studies (see the meta-analysis by DeWolff
& van IJzendoorn, 1997). The insecure patterns have been associated with different maternal
styles, including Avoidance with rejection, Ambivalence with inconsistency, and Disorgani-
zation (described by Main & Solomon, 1990; Solomon & George, 1999) with fear.
As for which pattern of attachment is desirable, Bowlby was concerned with what might
be called “psychological desiderata” (Hinde & Stevenson-Hinde, 1991). Making an anal-
ogy with “physical well-being,” Bowlby argued that “psychological well-being” had an
absolute meaning, involving security of attachment. Research has supported this view,
with security associated with self-reliance and efficacy, as opposed to dependency, anxiety,
or anger. Insecure patterns are not seen as pathological in themselves, but rather as risk
factors for pathology, while security is viewed as a protective factor (reviewed in Weinfield,
Sroufe, Egeland, & Carlson, 1999).
In addition to behavioral assessments of attachment quality, once children reach Bowlby’s
“goal-corrected partnership” stage, their verbal behavior may be used to index representa-
tions of attachment. Here, we shall outline behavioral and representational approaches to
assessing attachment in children aged 2.5 to 11 years. From the above, it follows that
assessment of the quality of the attachment bond requires activation of the attachment
behavior system, and different methods do this to different degrees. The brilliance of the
strange situation procedure is that it actually involves separation from the attachment fig-
ure, with a built-in method of preventing too much stress, through curtailing an episode if
that should happen. Representational methods typically require thinking about separation
issues or other distress-provoking situations, while a Q-sort based on unstructured home
observations typically involves little stress.
The Attachment Q-sort (AQS)
The AQS consists of 90 items, with many reflecting secure-base behavior. Each item is
sorted into one of nine piles, according to how characteristic it is of that particular child.
Sorts by observers are based on several home visits, totaling several hours. The correlation
between an individual’s Q-sort and a criterion Q-sort of a theoretically secure child (Wa-
ters, 1995; Waters & Deane, 1985) provides a security score, ranging from –1 to +1. Such
scoring does not make distinctions among the insecure children. While inter-observer reli-
ability tends to be high, relations with other attachment measures are far from clear (see
Solomon & George, 1999). A lack of congruence between the Q-sort and a strange situa-
tion is not surprising, in view of the very differing contexts. Whereas the home puts little
stress on the child or indeed the mother, the strange situation may activate both the child’s
attachment behavior and mother’s caregiving behavior, thereby providing a window for
observing particularly salient interactions.
Nevertheless, the Q-sort procedure is efficient, with the advantage of avoiding both a
laboratory visit and extensive training of coders. Although additional savings may be achieved
by asking parents to do the Q-sort, there is evidence that attachment figures may not be
well placed to judge their child’s attachment behavior toward them (van IJzendoorn,
Vereijken, & Riksen-Walraven, in press). For example in a sample of 2.5 year olds, moth-
ers of children classed Secure in a strange situation provided security scores which were
significantly lower than observer ratings of security based on behavior in the strange situa-
tion. This could happen with sensitive mothers who reported openly, without being de-
fensive. Within the insecure groups, mothers Q-sorted their children significantly higher,
or more secure, than observers. Furthermore, mothers of Avoidant and Controlling chil-
dren Q-sorted them above the observed security-score mean of the whole sample, while
mothers of Ambivalent children sorted them well below the mean (Stevenson-Hinde &
Shouldice, 1990). “It is likely that these sorting biases reflect the same maternal informa-
tion-processing biases that are believed to be causal factors in the development of the dif-
ferent types of attachment relationships” (Solomon & George, 1999, p. 309).
Strange Situations
Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation procedure for 12–18 month olds (Ainsworth et al.,
1978) has been applied to children beyond infancy, either in its original form or with
modifications. Coding systems for older children are reviewed by Solomon and George
(1999): the Cassidy–Marvin system (1992) for 2.5 to 4.5 year olds, Crittenden’s Preschool
Assessment of Attachment (1994), and the Main–Cassidy system (1988) for 5 to 6 year
olds. The Cassidy–Marvin system falls coherently between the Ainsworth system for in-
fants (12–18 months) and the Main–Cassidy system for 5 to 6 year olds (see George &
Solomon, 1999, Table 14.3). Within these three systems, patterns of attachment and rat-
ing scales (security and avoidance) carry similar meanings, but the precise behaviors in-
volved differ in that they are age-appropriate. Because of their coherence with each other
and with the original Ainsworth system, the Cassidy–Marvin and the Main–Cassidy sys-
tems will be the focus of the following sections.
The Cassidy–Marvin (C–M) System for 2.5 to 4.5 Year Olds
The Cassidy–Marvin (C–M) system reflects a collaborative effort among a number of

laboratories. Hosted by the Seattle node of the MacArthur Network on the Transition
from Infancy to Early Childhood, the group met over several years, with Mark Greenberg
as its leader and guidance from Mary Ainsworth as well as Mary Main. The coding empha-
sis is upon reunion episodes and how a child organizes his or her behavior to mother
following the stress of separation. In brief, a Secure child greets mother’s return with full
gaze and positive affect. Interactions are calm, while also intimate and indicative of a spe-
cial relationship. The two main insecure patterns may be contrasted with this, and indeed,
with each other. Whereas the Avoidant child shows minimal responses and maintains a
polite neutrality, the Ambivalent child emphasizes dependence on mother, with angry/
whiny resistance and/or immature behavior. Within the age range of the C–M system, or
from infancy to the Main–Cassidy system at 6 years, one may see a transition from the
Disorganized pattern, reflecting confusion and apprehension (see Main & Solomon, 1990),
to the Controlling pattern, reflecting a developmentally unnatural effort to reduce uncer-
tainty by taking charge. Such children appear confident, but in a brittle, anxious way
(Cassidy & Marvin, 1992; Main & Cassidy, 1988).
Inter-coder reliability has ranged from 75% to 92% (Solomon & George, 1999). Stabil-
ity was 66% from infancy to preschool (Cassidy, Berlin, & Belsky, 1990), and 72% from
2.5 to 4.5 years for the three main classifications (A, B, & C: Stevenson-Hinde & Shouldice,
1993). Table 10.1 lists publications involving the C–M system, arranged under headings
which may be seen as reflecting various forms of validity.
Attachment-related indices
Relations have been found between results from the C–M system and representational
methods –␣ the Attachment Story Completion Task (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy,
1990) and the Separation Anxiety Test (Shouldice & Stevenson-Hinde, 1992) – as well as
with reported knowledge of self and mother (Pipp, Easterbrooks, & Harmon, 1992).
However, correspondences with the Q-sort did not occur. When mothers completed the
Q-sort, there no significant differences in Q-sort scores according to C–M patterns of
Table 10.1 Publications Using the Cassidy and Marvin (C–M) Coding System for 2.5 to 4.5
Year Olds in Relation to Various Topics
Bretherton, Ridgway, & Cassidy (1990) 3 year olds: C–M & story completion
Pipp, Easterbrooks, & Harmon (1992) 1 to 3 year olds: C–M & knowledge of self and
mother
Shouldice & Stevenson-Hinde (1992) 4.5 year olds: C–M & SAT
Stevenson-Hinde & Shouldice (1990) 2.5 year olds: C–M & Attachment Q-sort by
mothers
Aspects of caregiving
M/C interactions
Achermann, Dinneen, & Stevenson-Hinde 2.5 year olds: C–M & observed maternal style
(1991) while clearing up (in lab)
Barnett, Kidwell, & Ho Leung (1998) 4 year olds: C–M & parenting style
Marvin & Brittner (1995) Preschool: C–M and parental caregiving patterns
in the strange situation
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network Infancy to 3 years: Ainsworth, C–M, and
(2001) maternal sensitivity
Stevenson-Hinde & Shouldice (1995) 4.5 year olds: C–M & maternal interactions (in
home and lab) & maternal self-reports
Maternal psychosocial problems

DeMulder & Radke-Yarrow (1991) Ainsworth for 15–30 months; C–M for >30
months: Affectively ill vs. well mothers
Easterbrooks, Davidson & Chazan (1993) School age: C–M, psychosocial risk, and
behavior problems
Manassis, Bradley, Goldberg, Hood & Ainsworth for ages 18–23 months, n = 5; C–M
Swinson (1994) for ages 24–59 months, n = 15: Anxiety
disordered mothers
Marvin & Pianta (1996) Children with cerebral palsy, 14–54 months old;
Ainsworth coding for 5 locomotor infants; C–M
for 34 locomotor preschoolers; & special system
for 31 non-locomotor infants/preschoolers:
Mothers’ non-resolution of child’s diagnosis
associated with insecure attachment
Maltreatment
Cicchetti & Barnett (1991) Preschoolers: C–M & maltreatment
Adoption
Marcovitch, Goldberg, Gold, Washington, Behavioral problems in Romanian children
Wasson, Krekewich, & Handley-Derry (1997) adopted in Ontario. C–M at 3-5 years: Adoptees
(n=44) differed significantly from normals
(n=38): Controlling/other most common; none
were Avoidant
Aspects of child
Temperament
Stevenson-Hinde (2000) Shyness in the context of close relationships
[overview]
Stevenson-Hinde & Marshall (1999) 4.5 year olds: C–M, behavioral inhibition (BI)
& heart period (sampled selected for low,
medium, high BI)
Stevenson-Hinde & Shouldice (1990) 2.5 year olds: C-M & BI (unselected sample)
Stevenson-Hinde & Shouldice (1993) 2.5 & 4.5 years: C–M & BI (unselected,
longitudinal sample)
Vaughn, Stevenson-Hinde, Waters, Kotsaftis, Infancy & early childhood: C–M, temperament,
Lefever, Shouldice, Trudel, & Belsky (1992) Q-sort
Interactions with others

Booth, Rose-Krasnor, McKinnon, & Rubin C–M at 3 years: Predicting social adjustment in
(1994) middle childhood
Turner (1991) 4.5-year-olds: C–M & peer-peer interactions
Turner (1993) 4.5-year-olds: C–M & interactions with adults
in preschool
Behavior problems
DeKlyen (1996) Preschoolers (normal vs. clinic-referred): C–M
& behavior disorders
DeKlyen, Speltz, & Greenberg (1998) Preschoolers: C–M & positive and negative
parenting
Goldberg (1991) Preschool: C–M and behavior problems in
normal, at risk, and clinic samples
Greenberg (1999) Attachment and psychopathology in childhood
Greenberg, DeKlyen, Speltz, & Endriga Preschool: C–M & externalizing
(1997) psychopathology
Greenberg, Speltz, DeKlyen, & Endriga Preschool: C–M in children with and without
(1991) externalizing behavior problems
Moss, Rousseau, Parent, St.-Laurent, 5–7 year olds: used C–M and Main & Cassidy
& Saintonge (1998) in combination – maternal reported stress,
mother–child interaction, and behavior
problems
Speltz, DeKlyen, & Greenberg (1999) Preschool: C–M in boys with early onset
conduct problems
Speltz, DeKlyen, Greenberg, & Dryden Preschool: C–M & Oppositional Defiant
(1995) Disorder
attachment. However, the discrepancies between the two systems occurred in predictable
ways (see above), which lent support to the C–M system (Stevenson-Hinde & Shouldice,
1990).
Reflecting infancy studies, various indices of maternal sensitivity have been associated with
security. The studies listed under Caregiving (Table 10.1) indicate that within the C–M
system security has been associated with the following parental interactions: mothers’ con-
structive involvement in a free-play situation, and in a clear-up task a high proportion of
positive statements and a low proportion of control statements, but of those a high propor-
tion with positive tone (at 2.5 years: Achermann, Dinneen, & Stevenson-Hinde, 1991);
and in a low-income sample, caregivers as warm and accepting, less controlling and less apt
to use corporal punishment (at 4–5 years: Barnett, Kidwell, & Leung, 1998). Security has
been associated with maternal positive mood, meshing, enjoyment of child, and being
relaxed in home observations; and with monitoring, planning, affirming, and providing a
sensitive framework in a laboratory joint task (3.5 to 4.5 years: Stevenson-Hinde &
Shouldice, 1995). In a particularly large sample (NICHD, 2001; N = 1060) of variables
involving aspects of childcare, family, mother, and child, the strongest predictor of attach-
ment security at 3 years was maternal sensitivity. Furthermore, from 15 months (Ainsworth
coding) to 36 months (C–M coding), a change from secure to insecure, compared with
stably secure, was associated with less sensitive mothering at 24 and 36 months. The least
sensitive mothering at 24 and 36 months was associated with stable insecurity. Thus, vali-
dation for the C–M system is adequate with respect to linking maternal style with security.
However, similar validation for fathers is lacking.
Concerning the further question, of whether the differing patterns of insecurity are
associated with different caregiver styles, a simple answer is unlikely to be forthcoming. A
coherent picture emerges only when both the context and the type of measure are noted.
For example, correspondences with each pattern of attachment did emerge with observa-
tional measures in a stressful setting, when Marvin and Brittner (1995) observed mothers’
behavior upon reunion in the strange situation. However, in a nonstressful home setting,
mothers of Avoidant children did not differ significantly from mothers of Secure children
(although their mean scores did differ by more than a standard deviation in the expected
direction). In a more demanding joint task in the laboratory, mothers of Avoidant children
did tend to withdraw, in terms of monitoring and planning significantly less than all other
groups. Furthermore they showed possible idealization, in terms of reporting themselves
in a significantly better light than all other mothers on three temperament scales and a
depression scale. In contrast, mothers of Ambivalent children rated themselves as signifi-
cantly the most depressed and anxious and the least satisfied with their marriages, and their
interactions at home were the least positive, particularly in ratings of low meshing with
child. Like mothers of Ambivalent children, mothers of Controlling children also had low
positive interactions at home. And like mothers of Avoidant children, mothers of Control-
ling children rated themselves in a good light – least irritable and anxious – while in the
laboratory joint task they affirmed least, enjoyed the task least, and provided the least
sensitive framework (Stevenson-Hinde & Shouldice, 1995). Further observations of ma-
ternal style are needed, particularly regarding the clinically interesting Disorganized/Con-
trolling category, where a lead has been given by infancy research (see Hesse, 1999a, 1999b;
Lyons-Ruth & Jacobvitz, 1999).
Consistent with infancy studies (see meta-analyses by van IJzendoorn, Goldberg,

Kroonenberg, & Frenkel, 1992; van IJzendoorn, Schuengel, & Bakermans-Kranenburg,
1999), the Disorganized/Controlling category in preschoolers has been associated with
maternal problems. Insecurity, particularly Disorganization, has been associated with clinical
diagnoses of maternal depression (DeMulder & Radke-Yarrow, 1991) and anxiety (Manassis,
Bradley, Goldberg, Hood, & Swinson, 1994), as well as psychosocial risk (Easterbrooks,
Davidson, & Chazan, 1993) and maltreatment (Cicchetti & Barnett, 1991).
Turning to adoption, and bearing in mind the caveat that an attachment bond may still
be in the making and not fully formed, the C–M system has been used with Rumanian
adoptees, aged 3–5 years. Controlling/Insecure-other patterns were most common, and
none were Avoidant (Marcovitch et al., 1997).
Aspects of the child
With studies focusing on characteristics of the child, relations have been found between a
child’s behavioral inhibition (BI) and an Ambivalent pattern (reviewed in Stevenson-Hinde,
2000). Furthermore, attachment status informs the relation between BI and autonomic
functioning. That is, only Secure children showed the predicted relation between high BI
and high heart rate (Stevenson-Hinde & Marshall, 1999). For an overview of attachment
and temperament, see Vaughn & Bost (1999).
With peers, security has been associated with social adjustment (Booth, Rose-Krasnor,
McKinnon, & Rubin (1994). With 4.5 year olds, insecurity was associated with depend-
ent behavior in playgroup. However, of more interest was an interaction effect, with inse-
cure girls showing the most positive expressive behavior and compliance, and the least
assertive and controlling behavior; while insecure boys showed the least positive behavior
and compliance but the most attention-getting, assertive, controlling and aggressive behavior,
thereby reflecting sexual stereotypes (Turner, 1991, 1993).
In infancy, attachment has been related to both acting out and withdrawal behavior
with peers, with a suggestion that an Avoidant pattern is associated with the former and an
Ambivalent pattern with the latter. However, when Disorganization has been assessed, this
proved to be the primary predictor of problem behavior with peers (reviewed in Lyons-
Ruth & Jacobvitz, 1999). Similarly with 5–7 year olds, Moss et al. (1998) concluded:
“Controlling/other children were most at risk for both externalizing and internalizing prob-
lems across both age periods” (p. 1390). Furthermore, Greenberg and colleagues found a
high incidence of controlling and insecure-other attachment patterns in clinic samples of
4–6 year olds, including boys with oppositional defiant disorder (see references in Table
10.1). After reviewing results from normal, at-risk, and clinic samples, Goldberg concludes
that “as we move along a continuum of risk to clear diagnosis, the likelihood of secure
attachment decreases and the likelihood of disorganized, controlling, and insecure-other
attachment increases” (1991, p. 190). She goes on to suggest that “further differentiation
within these categories based on clinic samples may prove to be more useful than are the
normatively derived classification schemes” (p. 190).
Table 10.2 Publications Using the Main–Cassidy (M–C) Coding System for 6 Year Olds in
Relation to Various Topics
Cassidy (1988) 6 year olds: M–C & self-perceptions
Jacobsen, Edelstein, & Hofmann (1994) Attachment in childhood and cognitive functioning
in childhood and adolescence
Slough & Greenberg (1990) 5 year olds: Representations of separation from
parents
Solomon, George, & DeJong (1995) 6 year olds: M–C & evidence of disorganized
representational strategies and aggression at home
and at school
George & Solomon (1996) Representational models of relationships: Links
between caregiving and attachment

Cassidy, Kirsh, Scolton, & Parke (1996) 6 year olds: M–C & representations of peer
relationships
Cohn (1990) 6 year olds: M–C & social competence in school
Wartner, Grossmann, Fremmer-Bombik, 6 year olds: M–C predictability from infancy and
& Suess (1994) implications for preschool behavior
The Main–Cassidy (M–C) System for 6 Year Olds
Inter-coder reliability has ranged from 70% to 82% (references in Table 10.2; George &
Solomon, 1999). Stability for the ABC classification was 84% over one month (Cassidy,
1990; Main & Cassidy, 1988). From infancy to 6 years stability was 82% with mothers in
samples from two different countries (Main & Cassidy, 1988; Wartner, Grossmann,
Fremmer-Bombik, & Suess, 1994), and 62% with fathers (Main & Cassidy, 1988).
In a structured doll-play situation designed to arouse the attachment behavior system,

agreement was 79% between resulting classifications and classifications based on the M–C
system (Solomon, George, & DeJong, 1995). Although agreement between the systems
was very high for the Secure, Ambivalent, and Controlling groups, it was lower for the
Avoidant group. Indeed, it is worth noting that Avoidant children may be particularly
difficult to distinguish from Secure children on tasks that rely solely on verbal behavior.
With pictures of attachment-related events, a high level of agreement with the M–C sys-
tem has also been found (Jacobsen, Edelstein, & Hofmann, 1994; Slough & Greenberg,
1990). And with measures of the self, Secure children on the M–C system were more open
about themselves and about their feelings of vulnerability than insecure children (Cassidy,
1988).
Children who had been classed as Disorganized on the M–C system tended to depict
themselves as frightened and the caregiver as frightening (Solomon et al., 1995). As in
infancy, controlling/disorganized behavior has been associated with unresolved loss or trauma
in mothers. Such mothers adopt a helpless stance, failing to provide reassurance to the
child, or fearful of the child or of her own loss of control (George & Solomon, 1996;
Greenberg, Speltz, DeKlyen, & Endriga, 1991).
Finally, links have been found between a Secure M–C classification and social competence
and peer acceptance in school (Cohn, 1990; Wartner et al., 1994). Results for boys were
compatible with those found in playgroup with the C–M system (Turner, 1991, 1993). That
is, insecure boys (but not girls) were less well liked by peers and teachers, perceived as more
aggressive by peers, and by teachers as having more behavior problems and being less compe-
tent (Cohn, 1990). Finally, Cassidy, Kirsh, Scolton, and Parke (1996) found that Secure
children had more positive representations of peers’ feelings than did insecure children.
Representational Procedures
As Mary Ainsworth asserted, “Attachment is organized within the individual, and we must
infer its nature from whatever clues that are available to us, whether these be how the
individual behaves or what he says about what he is thinking, feeling, or intending” (1990,
p 469). In infancy, the clues to attachment quality are necessarily behavioral. However,
from the early preschool years on, children are increasingly capable of using symbols in the
form of actions, images, or words to reveal their internalized experiences with attachment
figures and resulting expectations about these relationships. Thus not surprisingly, in at-
tachment research beyond infancy, observational assessments of attachment were soon
complemented by the so-called “representational” assessments.
Representational attachment measures involve procedures in which attachment security
is assessed in the absence of the actual attachment figure, thereby making use of the child’s
representational or symbolic capacities. A variety of attachment-related tasks can be used –
such as making a family drawing, responding to a photograph of the family, etc. However,
the most widely used representational assessments rely on the child’s verbal communica-
tion about attachment-related issues, commonly referred to as “attachment narratives.”
Two kinds of narrative assessments will be discussed below: attachment doll-play proce-
dures and picture-response procedures. These cover the age range from 3 to about 8 years.
Narrative attachment measures for older children are also being developed (e.g., Wright,
Binney, & Smith, 1995).
Attachment Doll-play procedures: Overview of Measures
In the doll-play procedures, children are asked to use a doll family and some props to
complete a set of standardized attachment-related story beginnings. The children are re-
quested to enact and verbalize what happens, and are systematically probed for further
clarification if needed. On the basis of their enactment of each story and their verbal re-
sponses, both transcribed in detail, the quality of the children’s representations of attach-
ment relationships is inferred. The underlying assumption is that the quality of attachment
is revealed in the pattern of communication about attachment-related issues, that is, in the
content and structure, or the “what” and “how” of the narratives (Bretherton, 1990;
Bretherton et al., 1990).
In the past decade, several doll-play methods have been developed. Table 10.3 gives a
chronological overview of the different published assessments for preschoolers and young
school-age children. As can be seen, the number of attachment-related stories varies from
four to six across procedures. Moreover, the range of scenarios presented is variable. Stories
about fear- or distress-provoking situations (e.g., child being afraid in bed at night) are pre-
sented in all procedures. In addition, most procedures include one or more separation and
reunion situations, for example, the parents depart for a trip and then return (Bretherton et
al., 1990; Oppenheim, 1997; Solomon et al., 1995), or the child is lost while shopping with
the parent (Green, Stanley, Smith, & Goldwyn, 2000). Two assessments include potentially
conflictual and other emotionally charged parent–child interactions, which may be relevant
for children in the phase of the “goal-corrected partnership” (Cassidy, 1988; Verschueren,
Marcoen, & Schoefs, 1996). Some procedures assess the overall representation of attach-
ment to both parents (Bretherton et al., 1990; Solomon et al., 1995). Others focus on the
representations of specific attachment relationships – mother and/or father (Cassidy, 1988;
Green et al., 2000; Verschueren et al., 1996). Oppenheim’s (1997) doll-play task includes
stories dealing with mother alone, as well as stories dealing with both parents together.
In most coding systems (with two exceptions), two criteria for security are – more or less
– explicitly used. The criteria are based on theoretical ideas about the content and struc-
ture of working models of attachment relationships (Bretherton, 1990), on research using
picture-based procedures, and on the inspection of subsamples of transcripts. The two
criteria can be labeled: (1) emotional openness in sharing one’s narratives with others; and
(2) emotional tone (positive or negative) of the interactions presented, including the con-
structiveness of the story resolution. In addition to a secure category with narratives char-
acterized by emotional openness and positive tone, two different insecure categories arise:
(1) stories characterized by avoidance or a lack of emotional openness; and (2) stories
characterized by negative emotional tone, with hostile, violent, bizarre interactions, and a
destructive ending or no resolution at all. This latter insecure category is labeled differently
across systems, but the key characteristics are the same. Oppenheim (1997) uses similar
criteria, but only uses scores and no classifications. Two other coding systems were devel-
Table 10.3 Chronological Overview of Attachment Doll-Play Procedures for 3 to 7 Year Olds
Authors Assessment Age (years) Stories Coding system
Cassidy (1986, 1988) Incomplete stories with doll 6 6 attachment stories (using only 3 categories: secure, avoidant, &
family mother) bizarre/negative (or hostile/
negative)
Bretherton et al. (1990) Attachment story completion 3 5 attachment stories (using mother 3 categories: secure, avoidant, &
(Page & Bretherton, 1994) task & father together) disorganized (also labeled
ambivalent)
Solomon et al. (1995) Separation-reunion story 6 4 attachment stories from 4 categories (based on 2 stories):
completion task Bretherton et al. (using mother & confident, frightened, casual, &
father together) busy
Verschueren et al. (1996) Attachment story completion 4–6 5 attachment stories (adapted from 3 categories: secure, avoidant, &
task Cassidy & Bretherton et al.) bizarre/ambivalent
(using mother or father separately)
Oppenheim (1997) Attachment doll-play interview 3–5 6 attachment stories (some using No categories. Scores for:
only mother; some using both emotional openness,
parents) constructive solution, &
positive emotional tone
Green et al. (2000) Manchester child attachment 5–7 5 attachment stories (using 1 parent) 4 categories: secure, avoidant
story task ambivalent, & cannot classify;
and a superordinate category:
disorganized
oped somewhat differently. Solomon et al.’s (1995) system is derived empirically, based on
the inspection of protocols of 6 year olds who were known to be classified as A, B, C, or D
in the M–C observation system. Thus, these authors made a distinction between four
categories. Green et al.’s (2000) system draws on concepts and methods from attachment
research in infancy and in adulthood. It includes four main categories (A, B, C, and Can-
not Classify), a superordinate D category, as well as various ratings of narrative coherence
similar to the ratings from the Adult Attachment Interview.
Attachment Doll-play Procedures: Overview of Empirical Results
Inter-coder reliability was not reported in the Bretherton et al. (1990) study, but was
satisfying in all other studies. The percentage agreement ranged from 71 to 88%. Cassidy
(1988) investigated the test–retest reliability for one story. Stability of classification was
73% over a 1-month period. Green et al. (2000) report a stability of 77% for the ABC
classification over a 5- to 8-month period.
Theoretically predicted associations with attachment quality as concurrently assessed by
observational assessments (C–M or M–C observation systems), were established in three
studies (Bretherton et al., 1990; Cassidy, 1988; Solomon et al., 1995, see above). In addi-
tion, Bretherton and her colleagues (1990) found significant associations with attachment
quality in infancy as measured in the Strange Situation. Oppenheim (1997) examined the
connection between preschoolers’ responses to his doll-play interview and their separa-
tion–reunion behavior toward their mother in a small, new classroom setting. He found
that both positive emotional tone and more emotional openness in the stories were related
to more classroom exploration in the preseparation period, and less contact maintenance
with mother when she returned.
Evidence for a connection with parent–child interactions observed in the home or in
theoretically relevant laboratory situations other than separation–reunion situations, is not
available yet. Connections with self-reported family functioning are reported in two stud-
ies. Bretherton et al. (1990) found that mothers’ self-reported marital satisfaction, family
cohesion, and family adaptability were positively related to the children’s attachment secu-
rity as measured by the doll-play procedure one year later. Verschueren (1996) reported a
positive connection between kindergartners’ attachment security, measured via doll play,
and parents’ self-reported encouragement of the children’s independence. Interestingly,
the quality of the child–father attachment representation was only related to autonomy
encouragement (reported) by the father, whereas the quality of the child–mother attach-
ment representation was only related to autonomy encouragement (reported) by the mother.
Connections with self-reported parental warmth were, however, not significant.
Associations with socioemotional functioning have been investigated in three studies. In
a study with 6 year olds, Cassidy (1988) found a positive connection between the security
of the child–mother attachment representation, assessed via doll play, and the quality of
self as indexed by the Puppet Interview. Oppenheim (1997) found that preschoolers’ emo-
tional openness and positive emotional tone in the doll-play interview were related in the
predicted way to teacher ratings of behavioral self-esteem and quality of attention seeking.
In a study with 5 year olds, Verschueren and Marcoen (1999) examined the associations
between representations of attachment to mother and to father, representations of self, and
several aspects of socioemotional functioning (teacher ratings of school adjustment, social
competence with peers, anxious/withdrawn behavior, etc.). The predicted connections were
largely found. Surprisingly however, differential effects of attachment to mother and to
father were revealed. The children’s positiveness of self, as measured by the Puppet Inter-
view, was most strongly predicted by the quality of attachment to mother, whereas their
degree of anxious/withdrawn behavioral problems were most strongly predicted by the
quality of attachment to father. Moreover, the insecure children who told bizarre, hostile,
disorganized stories showed most signs of maladaptation. In two studies, such insecure
attachment stories were found to be related to the Controlling (D) observational pattern in
the M–C system (Cassidy, 1988; Solomon et al., 1995).
Picture Response Procedures: Overview of Measures
Another type of representational assessment makes use of photographs depicting parent–

child separations. Most of these picture-response procedures are based on Klagsbrun and
Bowlby’s modification of Hansburg’s Separation Anxiety Test – the SAT (Bohlin, Hagekull,
& Rydell, 2000; Fonagy, Redfern, & Charman, 1997; Kaplan, 1987, cited in Solomon &
George, 1999; Main et al., 1985; Shouldice & Stevenson-Hinde, 1992; Slough & Greenberg,
1990; Verschueren & Marcoen, 2000). Some researchers constructed and validated their
own separation pictures (Jacobsen, Edelstein, & Hofmann, 1994; Wright et al., 1995).
The Klagsbrun–Bowlby modification of the SAT is developed for 4- to 7-year-old chil-
dren. It comprises pictures of three parent–child separations considered to be mild (e.g.,
mother putting child in bed), and three parent–child separations considered to be severe
(e.g., parents departing for a 2-week vacation). Each picture is introduced in a standard-
ized way. Next the children are asked how the child in the picture might feel, why he or she
might feel that way, and what this hypothetical child might do. In Slough and Greenberg’s
(1990) Seattle version of the SAT, the children are also requested to describe their own
feelings and coping behavior, if they were to be confronted with these separations.
To code the children’s responses to the SAT, several schemes have been developed. In
Kaplan and Main’s system (Main et al., 1985), the emotional openness and the construc-
tiveness of the coping responses are rated. Kaplan (1987, cited in Solomon & George,
1999) later constructed a four-category system based on the same two criteria. Jacobsen et
al. (1994) successfully applied this classification system and labeled the four categories as:
secure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized. The most widely used system is the Seattle
scoring scheme developed by Slough and Greenberg (1990). Based on a 21-category sys-
tem, three summary scores are computed: (a) the ability to express vulnerability in the
context of severe separations; (b) the ability to express self-confidence in the context of
mild separations; and (c) the degree of avoidance in discussing separations. Secure children
are assumed to score high on the first two measures, and low on the third. These scales
and/or scales based on the Seattle category system are used in the studies of Bohlin et al.
(2000), Fonagy et al. (1997), Verschueren and Marcoen (2000), and Wright et al. (1995).
Picture Response Procedures: Overview of Empirical Results
Inter-rater reliability of the SAT coding systems (if reported) was satisfactory. Test–retest
reliability was examined in one study by Wright et al. (1995). In a small clinical sample of
15 children, they found positive but very low test–retest correlations (between .12 and
.39). However, the respondents in this study were older (8–12 years), and a self-constructed
set of pictures was administered.
In several studies theoretically predicted concurrent relations were found between re-
sponses to the SAT and attachment quality as assessed by an observational measure (C–M
or M–C system: Main et al., 1985; Shouldice & Stevenson-Hinde, 1992; Slough &
Greenberg, 1990). Moreover, concurrent connections with security scores based on an
attachment story completion task were found, even when controlling for the children’s
verbal competence (Verschueren & Marcoen, 2000). Relations with the Strange Situation
classification at age 1 were found in two studies using the Kaplan coding scheme (Jacobsen
et al., 1994; Kaplan, 1987, in Solomon & George, 1999). No such association was found
by Bohlin et al. (2000). Again however, the respondents in this study were older (8–9
years).
Very few studies investigated the associations with parent–child interactions in contexts
other than separation–reunion situations. Slough and Greenberg (1990) reported a signifi-
cant association with mother affect ratings (p. 82), but the way these ratings were gathered
is not described. Verschueren (1996) found a connection between an overall security score
based on the Seattle system, and the self-reported encouragement of independence by
mother and by father. As for the story completions, connections with self-reported paren-
tal warmth were not significant.
Verschueren and Marcoen (2000) examined the connection between children’s responses
to the SAT and aspects of their socioemotional functioning. Results showed a positive
association between children’s overall security score on the SAT and their popularity,
prosocial behavior, and global school adjustment as seen by the teacher. Moreover, higher
overall security scores were related to a more positive representation of self as indexed by
the Puppet Interview. In a study with 8 year olds, Bohlin et al. (2000) found significant
concurrent associations between this SAT overall security score and popularity and social
initiative-withdrawal as evaluated by parents, teachers, and observers. In a sample of 3 to 6
year olds, Fonagy and colleagues (1997) concluded that attachment security as assessed by
the SAT significantly predicted children’s social-cognitive capacities, specifically their be-
lief-desire reasoning ability. In two longitudinal studies, significant connections were found
between security of attachment representations at age 7 and later performance on reason-
ing tasks (Jacobsen et al., 1994), attention-participation and security about self according
to the teacher, and grade point average in school (Jacobsen & Hofmann, 1997), even
when controlling for differences in intelligence. Finally, as compared with a nonclinical
control group, children in a clinical group had more difficulty in discussing feelings about
separations openly and in expressing feelings of vulnerability in the context of severe sepa-
rations (Wright et al., 1995).
Conclusion
Thus with strange situation classifications from infancy to about 7 years, a coherent pic-
ture is emerging. In addition to interobserver reliability and reasonable stability over time,
classifications have been related in predictable ways to other indices of attachment, aspects
of caregiving including maltreatment, interactions with peers, and behavior disorders.
The picture emerging with representational assessments is somewhat less coherent, partly
due to the use of various procedures and coding schemes. Overall, however, results are very
encouraging. Inter-rater reliability and test–retest reliability are generally adequate, and con-
nections with concurrent and antecedent strange situation classifications were found in sev-
eral studies from different research groups. Research on the connection with children’s
socioemotional functioning is growing and provides considerable evidence for the construct
validity of the representational attachment measures. Up to now, research on the relation
with caregiving or parent–child interactions assessed at home or in relevant laboratory situ-
ations (besides separation–reunion situations) is scarce. Examining how patterns of narra-
tives are related to patterns of caregiving remains an important task for future studies.
Current Issues and Future Directions
Now that predictable differences have been found between Secure versus Insecure groups
over this age range, the next challenge is to make further distinctions in antecedents and
outcome among the Insecure categories (Avoidant, Ambivalent, Disorganized/Control-
ling, and Insecure-other). Unfortunately for research purposes (but not for child develop-
ment), about two-thirds of a normative sample tend to be classed as Secure. Thus, sample
selection for more Insecure children is needed within community samples, as well as fur-
ther work with clinical samples. We should be open to the possibility of additional catego-
ries emerging as clinical samples are explored further.
We should caution that coding strange situation procedures requires extensive training.
Furthermore with the C–M and M–C systems, training workshops are held only on an ad
hoc basis rather than routinely as with the infancy system. Assessment would be greatly
helped by organizing routine training sessions, encompassing the age range of both the C–
M and M–C systems. This would require making an explicit link between the two systems,
with a single coding manual for ages 2.5 to 7 years, perhaps with age-appropriate sections.
Regarding the representational attachment measures, several issues remain to be ad-
dressed. Firstly, more attention should be given to establishing connections with patterns
of caregiving as observed in the home or the laboratory. However, the relations between
parenting style and children’s attachment representations need not be perfect. They are
likely to be moderated by child characteristics (e.g. meta-cognitive or social-cognitive ca-
pacities) and/or correcting experiences within the larger network of attachment relation-
ships (Verschueren & Marcoen, 1999). Examining such interactive effects of caregiving
experiences and child characteristics on the quality of attachment representations as in-
dexed by narrative measures is a prominent task for further research.
Secondly, research should focus more on relations with cognitive and social-cognitive
development. To what degree are the patterns of verbal communication about attach-
ment-related issues related to children’s verbal and cognitive capacities in general? And to
what degree are attachment representations related to other aspects of social cognition?
Although significant connections are to be expected (e.g., Meins, 1997; van IJzendoorn,
Dijkstra, & Bus, 1995), relations should not be too high in order to support the discrimi-
nant validity (Green et al., 2000; Verschueren & Marcoen, 1999).
Thirdly, the number of insecure response patterns that may be distinguished is still
unclear. All classification systems comprise at least two insecure patterns. Some systems
include an additional third insecure category (corresponding to the C-observational cat-
egory). Whether such a further differentiation within insecure patterns is necessary or de-
sirable, remains an open question (e.g., given the very small proportion of these
“C-narratives” found by Green et al., 2000, and Jacobsen et al., 1994). In each case, the
number of meaningfully distinguishable categories may vary across developmental periods
and types of assessment, and need not fixed be a priori in order to match patterns in infancy.
This leads us to a final important challenge for the future. In contrast to the observa-
tional assessments, diversity among representational measures has been much larger. This
is especially true for the doll-play assessments. This “intellectual freedom” certainly has
advantages, especially in an early stage of instrument development. However, in order to
make significant progress in the future, researchers with expertise in doll-play assessments
may want to collaborate in developing a standardized doll-play assessment, clearly rooted
in theory and research on the normative development of attachment in children, and com-
bining the strong elements of existing measures. This kind of collaborative effort may
provide the best guarantee for the systematic examination of remaining questions.
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Parent–Child Relationships 205
11
Parent–Child Relationships
Alan Russell, Jacqueline Mize, and Kerry Bissaker
Relationships between parents and children are among the many close relationships that
individuals experience throughout their life. Parent–child relationships are important be-
cause they are central to the lives of both parents and children, and provide one of the most
important environments in which children develop as individuals and as functioning mem-
bers of their culture (Hartup & Laursen, 1991).
In this chapter, we discuss special features of parent–child relationships against other kinds
of close relationship. Consideration is given to issues of definition and conceptualization,
especially about the core elements and dimensions of parent–child relationships. Included is
a discussion of the distinction between interactions and relationships. Influences of the broader
social context on parent–child relationships are outlined. The focus throughout is mainly on
parent–child relationships from early childhood (about 3–4 years of age) through middle
childhood (to about 12 years of age). Special attention is given to the child’s contribution to
parent–child relationships. Emphasis is placed on the active role of children, and therefore of
parent–child relationships as bidirectional and co-constructed. Another emphasis in the chap-
ter is on the diversity of parent–child relationships.
Throughout the chapter, the need to examine parent–child relationships at different
levels is recognized. Dialectic tensions between personal/individual, interpersonal, and so-
cial or systems orientations have been noted (Levinger, 1994). This means that when dis-
cussing parent–child relationships, attention must be directed to the individuals as
participants in the relationship, to the interpersonal aspects of the relationship, and to the
broader social context and systems that influence parent–child relationships.
Some themes we develop are: (a) the definition and core dimensions of parent–child
relationships remain in dispute, (b) parent–child relationships need to be seen as co-
constructed, with due acknowledgment of the active role of children in this process, (c) the
middle childhood period provides for a number of important developments in parent–
child relationships, and (d) diversity is a strong feature of parent–child relationships.
206 Alan Russell, Jackie Mize, & Kerry Bissaker
Definitional Matters
Relationships
At the most basic definitional level there are issues such as “what is a personal relation-
ship?” (e.g., Duck, Acitelli, Manke, & West, 1999), and “what are close relationships?”.
These definitional issues help in efforts to better understand parent–child relationships
(Hinde, 1987, 1997). Included in Hinde’s work has been an attempt to separate inter-
actions and relationships, and to provide an overall model for the analysis and understand-
ing of relationships.
Hinde’s analysis of relationships. Hinde’s analysis of relationships has been widely used in
research on parent–child relationships. He argued that “a relationship involves a series of
interactions over time between two individuals known to each other” (Hinde, 1987, p.
24). In turn, interactions involve a series of specific interchanges. Hinde’s definition is part
of a perspective that sees relationships as dialectically linked with interactions. Therefore,
relationships comprise interactions, and two-way processes link relationships and interac-
tions, so that interactions are in turn influenced by relationships.
Hinde’s (1997) model of relationships was used to provide a structure for the present
chapter. In this model, not only are relationships dialectically related to interactions, but
interactions and relationships in turn arise out of psychological processes within individu-
als. Further, relationships influence and are influenced by the groups and broader society
in which the individuals participate. Finally, relationships are influenced by the sociocul-
tural structure of beliefs, values, and institutions, and by characteristics of the physical
environment.
Hinde’s model directs attention to the influence of characteristics and processes within
individuals, in this case features of both parents and children. This suggests a consideration
of how personal beliefs, values, and attitudes impact on parent–child relationships. It also
directs attention to characteristics such as sex (parent and child), parent illness, such as
depression, and child temperament and child disabilities as contributors to relationships.
Second, Hinde’s model emphasizes the link between interactions and relationships. Al-
though there has been general acceptance of the relationships/interactions distinction in
research on parent–child relationships, there is a need for greater clarity on this matter.
Researchers will often claim they are assessing parent–child relationships, but in fact study
interactions only, and do not address issues about the extent to which or in what ways
parent–child relationships are more than the sum of interactions.
This raises questions about what comprises relationships that could be over and above
interactions. Relationships appear to be more global and long lasting than interactions,
and relationships are usually defined and influenced by more than just the particular inter-
actions. Features such as beliefs, values, commitment, goals, affect, and expectations are
important in describing and understanding parent–child relationships. These features are
not readily examined through specific observed interactions.
Interactions and interchanges occur at specific points in time. In contrast, relationships
involve a past, present, and future. A passing comment to a stranger walking her dog is an
interaction, but by itself, this interaction is not part of a relationship. In the case of parents
and children, interactions comprise individual elements in a continual flow of exchanges
over time. Furthermore, each of the interactions, when considered alone, will have a spe-
cific theme or focus, for example, about the child’s bedtime, or about their day at school.
The relationship comprises large numbers of interactions, with different features or themes.
The research and theoretical literature on parent–child relationships appears to have
directed little attention to questions about how interactions influence relationships and in
turn how relationships influence interactions. Hinde (1997) emphasized the role of cogni-
tive and affective process in the move from interactions to relationships, including expec-
tations of relationships and interactions, and affective responses to interactions. For example,
a harsh exchange and disagreement between parent and child in relationship terms needs
to be seen in the context of expectations that the parent and child have of each other, their
satisfaction with the relationship, and their affective response to the interaction (as well as
to prior interactions of a similar kind). Researchers often include measures of both inter-
actions and relationships, but then do not examine the link between these two levels of
social complexity (e.g., Colpin, Demyttenaere, & Vandemeulebroecke, 1995).
In addition to factors at the levels of (a) psychological processes and individual behavior
and (b) interactions and relationships, Hinde’s (1997) model emphasizes a third level, (c)
that included groups and society. It is at this level that ethnic and cultural influences are
apparent as well as the ecological context such as the neighborhood. Throughout the chap-
ter, factors at all three of these levels are discussed.
Before turning to an examination of parent–child relationships per se, two other areas of
debate in the literature are helpful to consider in order to better understand these relation-
ships. They are the nature of close relationships and the difference between “parenting”
and “parent–child relationships.”
Close relationships
Central among children’s close relationships are those with their parent/s, and in under-
standing these relationships, it is helpful to consider in what ways this close relationship
might differ from other close relationships.
Close relationships are associated with participants having strong influence on one an-
other over an extended time period and in multiple ways (Berscheid & Peplau, 1983).
Parent–child relationships display many of the core characteristics of close relationships.
For example, they are relatively enduring, extending over time even without propinquity,
usually have strong elements of emotional involvement and commitment, with mutual
influence a powerful component of the relationship.
Although features of parent–child relationships overlap those of other close relation-
ships, such as in the roles of affection and conflict, parent–child relationships have been
argued to contain a number of unique characteristics (Maccoby, 1999). For example,
Maccoby (1999) argued that parent–child relationships are not typical of “exchange” rela-
tionships because what children offer to their parents could not balance what parents pro-
vide. Further, they are not typical of “communal relationships” (Mills & Clark, 1994)
because children typically do not take responsibility for their parents’ welfare and young
children have a limited capacity to understand their parents’ needs. Nevertheless, there are
some communal elements in parent–child relationships, as shown in interactions that in-
volve mutuality or synchrony.
Overall, it can be seen that parent–child relationships contain some elements of other
types of close relationships. However, parent–child relationships are unique in a number
of ways. The uniqueness appears to be especially associated with the level of commitment
and obligation, in a relationship that contains aspects of asymmetry, but also where the
child has considerable power. This matter of asymmetry and power will be revisited below
in the discussion of dimensions of parent–child relationships.
Parenting versus parent–child relationships
Recent writing on parent–child relationships (e.g., Maccoby, 1999; Mills & Grusec, 1988)
has emphasized the need to separate parenting per se from parent–child relationships.
When parenting is the focus, attention is directed to matters such as parenting practices
and styles (Darling & Steinberg, 1993). Linked to styles, for example, is the discussion of
different parenting patterns, such as authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting
(Baumrind, 1967, 1971). Parenting classified using one or other of these patterns might
also be described in terms of the type of relationship that the parent has with the child. For
example, an authoritarian parent would likely have a relationship with his/her child that
involved demanding and controlling behavior from the parent. However, the child could
either respond to this with compliance or with resistance. Therefore, once the child’s side
is considered, the overall relationship could be one of demandingness and compliance or
of demandingness plus resistance and conflict. The point is that parenting considers mainly
the parents’ side of the equation, and if relationships are to be examined, then both parent
and child need to be taken into account.
The importance of considering both the parent and child sides of relationships is also
evident from the literature that deals with socialization. For example, Bugental and Goodnow
(1998) as well as Parke and Buriel (1998) have much to say about parent–child relation-
ships, but both chapters are written from a socialization perspective. In considering the
family’s role in socialization, parent–child relationships are central, but much of the em-
phasis is on the effects on the child of the relationship or of parents’ behavior, goals, etc.
That is, socialization focuses on parent’s roles in influencing child behavior and develop-
ment rather than on relationships per se.
Dimensions of Parent–Child Relationships
Parent–child relationships are complex and multidimensional. They vary over time, differ
from the perspective of the parent and of the child, and differ from one situation to an-
other, and so on. Depending on one’s theoretical perspective, there are many ways to
describe the central features or dimensions of parent–child relationships. For example,
discussions of family relationships (e.g., Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1993) typically cover areas
such as affection, conflict, and power and control. When other close relationships are
discussed (e.g., Canary & Emmers-Sommer, 1997), intimacy and control have been given
special treatment. Duck (1992) emphasized communication, including verbal and non-
verbal communication, as central elements in a relationship.
Hodges, Finnegan, and Perry (1999) raised connectedness/closeness and independence
(autonomy) as major issues in parent–child relationships. Some of the key dimensions that
Hinde (1997) highlighted include matters of reciprocity versus complementarity, conflict
and power, and closeness. The discussion of closeness covered satisfaction and commit-
ment.
Maccoby (1999) discussed important questions about the conceptualization of parent–
child relationships in terms of intra-individual differences. The notion here is that within
the overall parent–child relationship there are likely to be differences according to the
context or domain of the interactions. For example, if the domain pertains to discipline,
one set of “rules” or relationship qualities will be apparent. On the other hand, if the
context is one of play and games, then another set of relationship characteristics will be
appropriate. Contexts differ and the roles of parent and child are multiple. Thus, there are
multiple parent–child relationships rather than the parent–child relationship.
A helpful scheme for examining the different dimensions of relationships is provided by
the vertical/horizontal distinction (Hartup, 1989; Kochanska, 1992; Kuczynski, 1997;
Russell, Pettit, & Mize, 1998). The same distinction can be drawn in terms of relation-
ships qualities that display asymmetry versus symmetry (Hinde, 1997). Parent–child rela-
tionships have generally been assumed to be vertical. This is because parents have been
considered to have greater knowledge and power than children. Accordingly, it is expected
that parent–child relationships will be asymmetrical and complementary. In contrast, hori-
zontal relationships are said to occur when there is reasonable equality between the part-
ners (such as between peers), and therefore display symmetrical qualities. For example,
Bugental and Goodnow (1998) quoted Youniss, McLellan, and Strouse (1994) in saying
that “Peer relationships are marked by use of symmetrical reciprocity and guided by the
overarching principle of cooperation by equals” (p. 102) and then contrasted this with the
so-called unilateral authority or power asymmetry that is more characteristic of adult–
child relationships.
The traditional view, therefore, is that parent–child relationships are typically vertical,
asymmetrical, and complementary. There are two principle ways in which these vertical
qualities are apparent. The first concerns relationships or components of relationships where
parents are directive or controlling with their children. For example where parents in-
struct, correct, teach, or discipline their children. When these matters are the focus of the
parent–child relationship, indeed parents and children are in complementary or asym-
metrical roles. However, complementarity also can occur when parents are nurturing and
supportive. Therefore, child-centered behavior, such as parents attempting to facilitate the
interests and wishes of the child, also involve complementary and different roles. In this
case, parents are being nurturant and the child is the recipient of the nurturance.
In contrast to a stress on complementary roles, recent writings have drawn attention to
the possibility that parent–child relationships can contain more peer-like qualities (Bigelow,
Tesson, & Lewko, 1996; Bugental & Goodnow, 1998; Kuczynski, 1997; Russell et al.,
1998). In doing so, equality rather than complementarity is emphasized. Features of
parent–child relationships such as mutuality, synchrony, power sharing, and reciprocity

become the focus. Terms generally used to characterize horizontal relationships are egali-
tarian, cooperative, symmetrical, fair, and collaborative. Throughout childhood, horizon-
tal qualities such as these are increasingly evident, as children make greater contributions
to relationships with parents. Two examples of horizontal qualities are power sharing and
reciprocity.
Reciprocity, according to Hinde (1979), occurs when participants show similar behavior,
either simultaneously or alternatively. Reciprocity has been described as a fundamental
feature of human relationships (Gouldner, 1960; MacDonald, 1996), including parent–
child relationships. By middle childhood, children are likely to reciprocate both positive
and negative moods and behavior from parents. Children have power to accept or reject
parental behavior and efforts at socialization or relationship formation. Some of this ac-
ceptance and rejection can be best conceived in terms of children displaying reciprocity.
Reciprocity between parents and children involving negative behavior and relationship
qualities is likely to be associated with difficulties in the relationship. On the other hand, a
system involving positive reciprocity and mutual cooperation has been argued to be a
foundation for successful socialization (Kochanska, 1997). Maccoby (1992) and Kochanska
(1997) described this system as a mutually binding, reciprocal, and mutually responsive
relationship (Kochanska, 1997, p. 94).
Shared power is an especially significant indication of horizontal qualities in parent–
child relationships. Child development from early through middle childhood means that
parent–child relationships increasingly are open to possibilities for shared power. Shared
power occurs, for example, when parent and child cooperate, negotiate, make joint deci-
sions, argue about rules and then reach a compromise, and when they collaborate. To
some extent “shared power” occurs because parents give up some of their power. Neverthe-
less, significant amounts of power also reside with the child in parent–child relationships.
Mutuality is one way in which shared power has been investigated. For example, Lindsey,
Mize, and Pettit (1997) studied mutuality in terms of the relative balance during parent–
child play of (a) parent and initiations and (b) compliance to the other’s initiations.
Clearly, there are a number of perspectives on the central dimensions of parent–child
relationships. Dimensions to do with affection and closeness as well as control appear to be
widely acknowledged. The vertical/horizontal distinction appears to provide helpful strat-
egies for analyzing parent–child relationships. Nevertheless, while there is some consensus
about the definition and core dimensions of parent–child relationships, much remains in
dispute. This is an area of active debate and research.
Parent–Child Relationships as Bidirectional and Co-constructed
Although Bell argued strongly for an active role for children in socialization as long ago as
1968, recent authors continue to find it necessary to make the case for child effects,
bidirectionality, or co-construction in relationships. Kuczynski and Lollis (in press),
Kuczynski, Marshall, and Schell (1997), and Lollis and Kuczynski (1997), for example,
recently proposed that research on parent–child relationships has been constrained by a set
of assumptions connected to what they called a “unilateral model of parent–child rela-

tions.” In this model, there are assumptions that (a) influence flows from the parent to the
child, (b) parents are considered active agents and children as passive, (c) parents and
children are separate interacting individuals rather than connected through their relation-
ship, and (d) there is an asymmetry in power, with most of the power residing in the
parent. They attacked each of these assumptions. Their alternative model is based on equal
agency, bidirectional causality, parent–child interactions occurring within a relationship
context, and power as interdependent asymmetry. Similar arguments were developed by
Mills and Grusec (1988).
At a conceptual level it is easy to make a case for parent and child effects, with relation-
ships being jointly constructed. However, empirically it is more difficult to describe and
measure the separate effects of parents and children or to articulate the processes and steps
involved in the co-construction of relationships (A. Russell & G. Russell, 1992). One of
the factors contributing to the empirical difficulties arises from the role of cognitive proc-
esses. For example, if a child is shy and parents undertake attempts to support the child’s
social endeavors, this might be described as a child effect (the parents are responding to the
child’s shyness). However, not all parents will respond in this way in Western cultures, and
in other cultures shyness could be seen as not problematic. Clearly, parental perceptions
and beliefs about children and shyness are implicated in their behavior and the type of
relationship they develop with their child. When the role of parental cognitions is taken
into account, the matter of who is shaping the relationship (the parent or the child) in-
creases in complexity. The complexity is multiplied when child cognitions are added to the
equation.
Current research should pay more attention to notions of bidirectionality and co-con-
struction. There is a need for more sophisticated models of the way in which relationships
are co-constructed over time. That is, we need to move beyond the finding that children
have an impact on parents, and more to evidence about the construction of parent–child
relationships using principles such as bidirectionality and co-construction.
When parent–child relationships are considered to be bidirectional or co-constructed,
attention is drawn to (a) how characteristics of both parents and children contribute to the
relationships and (b) the processes through which relationships are formed and maintained.
In the present chapter, the role of individual attributes will be illustrated through a discus-
sion of child characteristics in terms of sex and features such as ADHD, and parent charac-
teristics such as sex and personality. Included is a discussion of how developmental changes
in middle childhood have an impact on parent–child relationships.
Child characteristics: ADHD
Conclusions that parent–child relationships are bidirectional and co-constructed have of-
ten been drawn when the focus is on how child characteristics influence parent behavior
and the relationship. A good example is provided by children with attention deficit hyper-
activity disorder (ADHD). These children may exhibit overt behaviors including impulsivity
and aggression, or more covert behaviors of stealing and property destruction with a mid-
point of this overt-covert continuum being noncompliance lying (Hinshaw, Zuppan,
Simmel, Nigg, & Melnick 1997). Viewpoints differ about whether such behaviors are the
result of inappropriate parenting, or whether difficulties in parenting and parent–child
relationships arise from the behavior and characteristics of the child (Miller, Cowan, Cowan,
Hetherington, & Clingempeel, 1993).
The middle-ground possibility is that relationships between parent and children with
ADHD are bidirectional. This is shown in the coercive cycles that are evident in interac-
tions between children with ADHD and their parents (Anderson, Hinshaw, & Simmell
1994; DeKlyen, Biernbaum, Speltz, & Greenberg, 1998). For instance, there is evidence
that boys with ADHD are more noncompliant and controlling of their parents than their
nonproblem peers. In turn, parents of boys with ADHD are more controlling and critical
than the parents of nonproblem boys (Pelham et al., 1997). Along these lines, Pelham et al.
(1997, p. 414) noted the importance of considering the “role of children’s behavior in a
reciprocal, transactional family system” citing several studies that indicate the “distressing
effects that defiant child behavior has on immediate reactions and long term functioning
of parents.” Parents rated interactions with such children as being significantly unpleasant,
resulting in feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, depression, and hostility. One mother reported:
“My experience as a parent with him was one of being totally inept and frustrated, not
knowing what to do for this child. It was not a happy experience” (Paltin, 1993, p. 225).
The role of child behavior is shown by the results of Anderson, Lytton, and Romney
(1986) suggesting that mothers’ behavior was influenced by the child’s characteristics.
Barkley’s (1989) results also support this conclusion, where it was found that harsh and
punitive parenting practices diminished significantly when the behavior of the child with
ADHD was bought under control with medication. However, as Anderson et al. (1994, p.
249) suggest, “the acute shift in parental style induced by medication does not rule out the
possibility that the child’s negative, externalizing behaviors while unmedicated may have
been shaped by parental coercion in earlier interactions.”
The research on children with ADHD provides evidence of apparent child effects on
parents. When this is combined with findings such as those dealing with cycles of coer-
cion, there is support for conclusions about the co-constructed nature of parent–child
relationships.
Relationships with boys and girls
Among the individual characteristics often assumed to have an impact on parent–child

relationships is the child’s sex. Research (Russell & Saebel, 1997) and theoretical treat-
ments such as psychoanalytic theory (Chodorow, 1978; Washburn, 1994) have highlighted
differences in parents’ relationships with boys and girls. In an analysis of 116 studies con-
taining both mothers and fathers and boys and girls as subjects that were published in four
leading developmental journals over a 4-year period, Russell and Saebel (1997) noted that
36 studies reported some sex-of-child differences in relationships. This suggests that differ-
ences in relationships with sons and daughters are relatively prominent in the research.
Supporting this, in a meta-analysis of mothers’ language behavior with boys and with girls,
Leaper, Anderson, and Sanders (1998) outlined evidence of greater amounts of talk with
girls than with boys and more supportive speech with girls than with boys. This result was
interpreted as consistent with a greater emphasis by parents on verbal interaction and

affiliation with daughters than with sons and points to differences in the qualities of rela-
tionships with boys and with girls, partly along the lines of gender expectations.
A conclusion that there are some differences in parent–son and parent–daughter rela-
tionships should not be taken to imply that this arises simply because parents are respond-
ing to differences in the characteristics (e.g., behavior or personality) of boys and girls. This
type of difference could also arise from parental expectations and socialization goals.
Child development and parent–child relationships
Parent–child relationships evolve and change throughout childhood (Ambert, 1997; Collins
& Russell, 1991; Maccoby, 1984), partly as a consequence of, and in response to, child
development. Selman (1980), Ambert (1997), and Collins, Harris, and Susman (1995)
provide accounts of some of the developmental changes during this period that impact on
parent–child relationships.
Selman (1980) set out a developmental framework for children’s understanding of rela-
tionships, including stages in conceptions of parent–child relationships. From early child-
hood through middle childhood, for example, it would be expected that children might
move from Stage 1 through to Stages 2 and 3. In Stage 1, children identify with parental
views and opinions and they accept parental knowledge. Parents are viewed as “knowing
best.” In Stage 2 children conceive of parental advice as guidelines rather than as an abso-
lute authority. Reciprocal feelings now define love between parent and child, and there is
an appreciation of the other’s intentions. There is an awareness of the quality of the emo-
tional tie between parent and child. In Stage 3, children are able to take a third-party
perspective and consequently better appreciate the complexities of the parental role. Chil-
dren in this stage consider that it is important that parents foster psychological competence
and maturity, and they expect parents to provide for self-esteem and to help with psycho-
logical concerns. These children also are sensitive to parents’ psychological needs and are
expected to show respect. Therefore, in this stage children appreciate the needs of parents
to be respected and acknowledged as a source of authority, and become aware of differ-
ences in the needs and expectations of parents and children. They also gain a sense of
fairness and are sensitive to whether they believe they are being treated fairly.
Selman’s analysis of developmental changes has a number of implications for parent–
child relationships. The move away from acceptance of parental authority, for example,
opens the way for areas of dispute between parents and children, with a need for a better
appreciation of each other’s viewpoint and the use of perspective taking skills. Smetana
(1989) showed that by about ages 11 and 12 there were a number of issues that generated
conflict between parents and children. These included matters such as homework, not
getting along with others (such as siblings), and choice or timing of activities (e.g., how
much time is spent on the telephone or watching TV). This illustrates that by late middle
childhood parent–child relationships typically incorporate aspects of dispute and negotia-
tion. Children’s conception of fairness, albeit limited, also becomes a source of dispute and
negotiation, for example about how they are treated in the relationship, especially vis-à-vis
siblings. Throughout middle childhood, reciprocity is a stronger feature of parent–child
relationships (Collins & Russell, 1991). From parents’ viewpoint, the need for respect
from a maturing individual becomes an important factor in the relationship.
Collins et al. (1995) provide an account of some of the normative changes in children
during middle childhood. They note a growth in cognitive competence, with increased
capacity for solving problems and resourcefulness, and conclude that these changes neces-
sitate adjustments in parenting and the relationship. Part of the change is that parent–
child relationships during middle childhood are less oriented to disciplinary situations
than in earlier years. Collins et al. (1995) and Ambert (1997) note the expanding social
worlds and networks of children during middle childhood. Relationships with peers in-
crease in importance, with a consequent change in the significance of relationships with
parents. Also at this age Ambert (1997) mentions the increased significance that children’s
exposure to television has for parent–child relationships.
It can be seen that child development from early childhood through middle childhood
engenders associated changes in parent–child relationships, with an increased role for reci-
procity, greater importance of perspective taking from both parent and child, and a re-
duced focus on discipline, with greater emphasis on persuasion and negotiation. Overall,
the parent–child relationship is increasingly part of an expanding network of relationships
for the child.
Parent characteristics: Children’s relationships with mothers and fathers
A substantial empirical (see Collins & Russell, 1991; Leaper, Anderson, & Sanders, 1998;
Parke, 1995) and theoretical (e.g., Chodorow, 1978; Washburn, 1994) literature is now
available about differences between mother–child and father–child relationships. The de-
gree to which these relationships differ is under dispute, and recognition needs to be given
to similarities as much as to differences. Similarities between mothers and fathers, or at
least the absence of differences, is a more usual finding than differences. For example,
Russell and Saebel (1997) examined 116 studies of parent–child relationships that in-
cluded both sexes of parents and children published in four major developmental journals
over a 4-year period and found that only 16 studies reported significant differences be-
tween mother–child and father–child relationships. When such differences were found
they tended to be for measures dealing with closeness/cohesion and affect (greater in rela-
tionships with mothers) (Leaper et al., 1998; Russell & Saebel, 1997). In addition, differ-
ences have been noted in terms of (a) more frequent interactions with fathers than with
mothers, and (b) interactions with mothers being more around caregiving and with fathers
more around play and recreation, especially with sons (Collins & Russell, 1991).
It can be seen that the extent and significance of differences in children’s relationships
with mothers and fathers remains in dispute. There is the further possibility that relation-
ships are differentiated by both sex of child and sex of parent. This suggests that the four
dyads of mother–son, mother–daughter, father–son, and father–daughter could involve
relationships that are somewhat distinct. Despite frequent claims about the distinctness of
these four relationships, however, the evidence in support of the proposition is limited
(Russell & Saebel, 1997). Nevertheless, it remains an intriguing possibility worthy of fur-
ther consideration.
Parent characteristics: Personality and relationships with children
It might be expected that parent–child relationships would vary according to the personal-
ity of parents and of children. This proposition has been tested to some degree in terms of
parents’ personality. For example, Russell (1997) examined links between parent personal-
ity and mothers’ and fathers’ observed warmth and affection directed to their early school-
aged children during a home observation. Personality was assessed using a self-report
questionnaire containing 50 items pertaining to positive personality traits, for example,
appreciative, loves children, patient, and confident. Positive personality was significantly
related to observed warmth and affection (positive association) only for dyads containing
mothers and sons. For mother–daughter, father–son, and father–daughter dyads this cor-
relation was negative and not significant. These results suggest that parents’ positive per-
sonality characteristics were expressed in relationships with their children only for mothers
with sons. This result is partially consistent with those of Belsky, Crnic, and Woodworth
(1995) who found that mothering was predicted more strongly and consistently by per-
sonality than was fathering with first-born sons over the first 2 years.
Russell’s (1997) and Belsky et al.’s (1995) results need to be interpreted in the context of
multiple determinants of parent–child relationships. For mothers, it appears that their
personality could be a factor in relationships with their children, but not so for fathers. The
latter means that factors other than personality could be important for father–child rela-
tionships. In Russell (1997), for example, evidence was obtained that fathers were more
likely to be warm and affectionate when their children displayed positive characteristics.
This suggests that at least one of the factors affecting father–child relationships is the de-
gree to which the child displays positive qualities such as involvement and warmth. The
other side of this situation is that fathers might be especially reactive to disruptive or diffi-
cult behavior from their child.
Kochanska, Clark, and Goldman’s (1997) results are also relevant here. They exam-
ined mothers with children from toddler to preschool age and found that mothers high
on negative emotionality (e.g., depression, anxiety, and neuroticism) and disagreeable-
ness (e.g., angry, aggressive/hostile) displayed more negative affect with their children
and were more power-assertive and less nurturant. These results point to some important
ways that mothers’ personality is likely to impact on relationship with their children. In
this case, the evidence suggests that negative aspects of personality are associated with
mothers forming more vertical relationships with their children, with less responsiveness
and warmth.
It appears, therefore, that recent evidence is pointing to a role for parents’ personality in
relationships with their children, but mainly for mothers. An implication is that influences
on father–child relationships are likely to arise from factors other than their personality.
Parent–Child Relationships in Context: Neighborhood, Social, Ethnic

and Cultural Factors
Families are part of larger social groups that can be described in social, ethnic, or cultural
terms. These larger groups provide a context for families that in turn influences parent–
child relationships (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1986; Hinde, 1997; Parke & Kellam, 1994;
Tudge, Gray, & Hogan, 1997). Research in this area has included the impact on parent–
child relationships of work (Crouter, 1994), stress, formal, and informal support mecha-
nisms (Parke & Buriel, 1998), and the marital relationship (Dunn et al., 1999). From the
child’s perspective, their school attendance brings experiences and relationships with oth-
ers (especially peers) that should have an impact on parent–child relationships. Overall,
therefore, it is apparent that parent–child relationships need to be understood as con-
nected with other relationships and influences both inside and outside of the family. For
present purposes, only a selective treatment can be provided of the wider context, and it
will be based on a brief mention of the neighborhood and ethnic/cultural differences.
Neighborhoods
An important recent emphasis in the literature on parenting, child development, and par-
ent–child relationships has been on neighborhood characteristics (e.g., Parke & Buriel,
1998; Sampson, Morenoff, & Earls, 1999). Sampson et al. (1999) examined “neighborhood
effects” in terms of the social mechanisms that might mediate neighborhood structural
effects on the lives of children. This research emphasized the network of relationships
within neighborhoods and how these impact on children’s relationships and development.
It was apparent that characteristics of the neighborhood (in terms of links with other par-
ents) are an influence on parent–child relationships.
Parke and Buriel (1998) included neighborhoods as part of a discussion of ecological
determinants of family socialization strategies. It is possible to extend ideas of socialization
strategies to incorporate elements of parent–child relationships. For example, Parke and
Buriel refer to a study by O’Neil and Parke (1997) where it was “found that when mothers
and fathers perceived their neighborhoods as dangerous and low in social control, they
placed more restrictions on their fourth-grade children’s activities” (Parke & Buriel, 1998,
p. 493). It could be inferred from this result that when families live in neighborhoods
perceived as dangerous, parent–child relationships might focus more on issues about where
children spend their time, with whom they spend their time, and matters relating to self-
protection.
Ethnic and cultural influences on parent–child relationships
In recent years, there has been increasing interest in ethnic and cultural differences in
parent–child relationships. This has arisen partly from an increase in international research
in different cultures and ethnic groups (Hart, Nelson, Robinson, Olsen, & McNeilly-
Choque, 1998; Ingoldsby & Smith, 1995; Lancy, 1996), but partly from greater attention
to migrant groups in countries such as the United States (Parke & Buriel, 1998). It is clear
that there is a need to move beyond a white middle-class view of parent–child relationships
and to incorporate either ecological or systems perspectives in attempts to understand
differences in parent–child relationships. In addition, there is a need to recognize that
there are cultural differences even among so-called Euro-American cultures.
Parke and Buriel (1998) use “ethnicity” to refer to an “individual’s membership in a
group sharing a common ancestral heritage based on nationality, language, and culture”
(p. 496), with “culture” referring to “shared values, behaviors, and beliefs of a people that
are transmitted from one generation to the next” (p. 496). Research on different ethnic
and cultural groups has revealed profound differences in parent–child relationships. These
differences show that it is critical to set parent–child relationships in the context of cultural
values, beliefs, and practices. Further, this research emphasizes the diversity in parent–
child relationships.
Parke and Buriel (1998) discuss a number of ethnic groups, including American Indi-
ans, Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans. Each group displays unique fea-
tures that serve to reinforce views about the importance of cultural factors in parent–child
relationships. For example, the role of extended kin systems in African-American families
has a clear impact on relationships within families, the roles of parents and extended kin,
and the relationships that children have with parents and related adults. Parke and Buriel
(1998) note that in multigenerational households, mothers are primary caregivers, fol-
lowed by grandmothers and fathers. Further, grandmothers tend to increase the moral-
religious emphasis in the family. It is apparent, therefore, that parent–child relationships
in African-American families where grandmothers are coresident are influenced by the role
of grandmothers. This suggests that both the content (such as issues that are the focus of
discussion and negotiation) and style of children’s relationships with their mothers and
fathers will be affected by the presence and role of the grandmother.
An important finding from recent research on African-American families has been that
ostensibly similar relationship qualities could have different meaning and significance from
what has been found in white middle-class families. Some of this can be illustrated around
the role of authoritarian relationships and practices. Kelley, Power, and Wimbush (1992)
described the disciplinary style of African-American parents as more parent-centered (with
an emphasis on parental authority, and obedience) than child-centered. However, the in-
terpretation of this finding has to take into account not only the context of many African-
American families, but cultural factors as well. With respect to the context, Kelley et al.
(1992) noted that obedience could be adaptive in dangerous neighborhoods and serve as a
means of highlighting the need to following rules in a society where family members are
part of a disadvantaged group with low power.
It can be seen that African-American parent–child relationships might be characterized
as relatively vertical. However, these vertical qualities should be interpreted differently
from their occurrence in white middle-class families. For example, in African-American
families, harsh discipline has been found to covary with warmth and a nurturing relation-
ship more than in white families (Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997a, b). Further, as Parke
and Buriel (1998) note, although African-American parents may use physical discipline,
this is rarely coupled with withdrawal of love from children. These findings point to
vertical relationships in which the parent-centered components are combined with posi-
tive aspects of relationships with children, rather than rejection that is often assumed to be
present if white parents are harsh and parent-centered. This conclusion is supported by
evidence that harshness of discipline is related to externalizing problems in European-
American children, but not in African-American children (Deater-Deckard & Dodge,
1997a, b; Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1996). Potentially parallel findings to
those of Deater-Deckard and colleagues on links between harsh discipline and externaliz-
ing behavior in African-American children have been obtained by Chao (1994) on immi-
grant Chinese families.
It can be seen that recent research on African American and immigrant Chinese families
highlight not only ethnic and cultural differences, but also show the importance of cultural
factors in shaping parent–child relationships and in providing meaning to parent and child
behavior in their relationships.
Conclusions
The present discussion of parent–child relationships was informed by a model that incor-
porates several levels of analysis (Hinde, 1997; Levinger, 1994), from psychological proc-
esses to individual behavior and characteristics, to interactions and relationships through
to system and ecological factors. An understanding of parent–child relationships requires
an appreciation of factors at each of these levels. Attention was directed to some problem-
atic matters in the current literature on parent–child relationships. In particular, there
remains some dispute about the core dimensions of parent–child relationships. We argued
here for the value of the vertical/horizontal distinction as a basis for understanding parent–
child relationships. Second, although there is increasing recognition of a perspective that
emphasizes these relationships are bidirectional and co-constructed, this emphasis has still
to be fully accepted in the literature. Third, it was evident that there is considerable evolu-
tion of parent–child relationships from early childhood through middle childhood. We
documented some aspects of child development over this period and showed how this
development is likely to have an impact on parent–child relationships. Finally, we noted a
number of broader ethnic and cultural factors linked to differences in parent–child rela-
tionships. The latter discussion helped to highlight the considerable diversity in normative
parent–child relationships.
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Sibling Relationships 223
12
Sibling Relationships
Judy Dunn
The majority of individuals (around 80% in Europe and the United States) grow up with
siblings, and for many, their relationships with their brothers and sisters are the longest last-
ing in their lives. While siblings have had a key place in folk stories, legends, history, and
literature all over the world, the scientific study of the psychology and relationships of broth-
ers and sisters is relatively recent. Clinicians and family theorists have since early in the twen-
tieth century argued that siblings play an important role in family relationships, and influence
individual adjustment. However, with the notable exception of the classic studies of siblings
conducted by Koch in the 1950s and 1960s (1954, 1960), systematic research on siblings was
relatively rare until the 1980s. In the last two decades, research interest in siblings has broad-
ened and increased greatly; it has centered chiefly on studies of childhood and adolescence
(Boer & Dunn, 1990; Brody, 1996; Hetherington, Reiss, & Plomin, 1994; for a useful re-
view of research on adult siblings see Cicirelli, 1996). Studies of siblings in childhood have
focused on three general domains which we consider here: first, the nature of sibling relation-
ships and why they differ; second, their developmental influence and the illuminating per-
spective they provide on key developmental issues; and third, the challenge they provide to
our understanding of how families influence individual development – why siblings differ
notably in personality and adjustment even though they grow up within the same family.
The Nature of Sibling Relationships
Characteristics of sibling relationships
Three characteristics of sibling relationships stand out, from the findings of systematic
research. The first is that sibling relationships are from infancy through adolescence
224 Judy Dunn
notable for their emotional power and for the uninhibited expression of these emotions.
One observational study reported that around 20% of interactions between siblings of the
preschool and toddler age group were characterized by intense negative emotions (Dunn,
Creps, & Brown, 1996) – a far higher percentage than was found for children’s interac-
tions with their parents or friends; intense positive emotions expressed in sibling interac-
tion were also notably high. For many siblings, the relationship is one of mixed emotional
color – both positive and hostile emotions are freely expressed (Dunn, 1993).
A second characteristic of siblings’ relationships is their intimacy. Most children spend
more time in interaction with siblings than with parents (Larson & Richards, 1994; McHale
& Crouter, 1996). They know each other extremely well, and this intimacy means the
relationship can be a source of support or of conflict. Teasing, for example, depends on
knowing an individual well enough to be able to gauge what will upset and annoy; teasing
by siblings is observed early in the second year of life, and increases rapidly over the next
months, showing considerable sophistication, thus reflecting considerable understanding
of the other child (Dunn, 1988). The familiarity of siblings, coupled with the emotional
power of the relationship, means that the potential for siblings’ influence on one another is
high.
A third characteristic of the relationship is the great range of individual differences which
is evident from early infancy through to adolescence, in both observational and interview
studies. Some siblings show affection, interest, cooperation, and support in the great ma-
jority of their interactions; when interviewed they describe their affection and positive
feelings vividly. Other siblings show hostility, irritation, and aggressive behavior, and de-
scribe their dislike very clearly. Yet other children are ambivalent about their relations with
their siblings, and show both hostility and positive interest in one another (for siblings’
perceptions of their relationship, see for instance, Dunn & Plomin, 1990; McGuire, Manke,
Eftekhari, & Dunn, 2000). This notable range of differences raises questions for both
psychologists and parents: Why should some siblings get along so well and be important
sources of support and comfort for one another, while others are so hostile?
Individual differences in sibling relationships
The answer to the question of why siblings differ markedly in their relationship quality
was, until relatively recently, answered in terms of birth order, sex of siblings, and the age
gap between the siblings (e.g., Ernst & Angst, 1983; Sutton-Smith & Rosenberg, 1970;
for a recent approach see Sulloway, 1996). These family constellation variables were thought
to affect the children’s relationships through effects on the children’s personalities or tem-
peraments, their intelligence, or motivation. Since the 1980s the framework has broad-
ened, with models that incorporate, in addition to the family constellation variables, the
personality characteristics of the children themselves, the quality of relationships within
the family, and the social adversities or risks faced by the family (e.g., Furman & Lanthier,
1996; Stoneman & Brody, 1993).
Temperament and personality. Links between the temperamental characteristics of both

individuals in a sibling dyad and the quality of their relationship have been reported for
siblings in the preschool period, middle childhood, and early adolescence (Brody, Stoneman,
& Burke, 1987; Furman & Lanthier, 1996; Munn & Dunn, 1989; Stocker, Dunn, &
Plomin, 1989). However, the precise findings vary across studies, the various projects are
based on very different populations, and they vary in the age of siblings studied, and in the
methodologies employed. Furman and Lanthier point out one general pattern, however:
The personality and temperamental characteristics are more clearly related to conflict in
the sibling relationship than to the positive aspects of the relationship. This may reflect the
problems of measuring the positive features, such as feelings of warmth and affection,
which tend to be less evident when parents are present. In contrast, conflict between sib-
lings is all too evident in a range of settings! The match in siblings’ temperaments was
found to be important in relation to the frequency of conflict and affection that they show
one another, both in early and middle childhood (Brody, 1996; Munn & Dunn, 1989).
This finding parallels the evidence from the adult relationship literature for the signifi-
cance of similarity in attraction between people: “like me” attracts (Hinde, 1979).
Gender and age gap Evidence for the significance of gender and age gap for individual
differences in sibling relationship quality varies with the age of the siblings under scrutiny.
For young siblings, the findings are inconsistent. During middle childhood, it appears that
gender may increase in importance as an influence on the sibling relationship (Dunn,
Slomkowski, & Beardsall, 1994a). Boys become increasingly less likely to report warmth
and intimacy in their relationships with their siblings. Among older adults, relationships
with sisters appear to be particularly important; this is generally attributed to women’s
emotional expressiveness and their traditional role as nurturers. While findings on gender
and children’s sibling relationships are mixed and inconsistent, clear associations are re-
ported between the quality of sibling relationships and other family relationships; these are
considered next.
Connections with Other Family Relationships
How far and in what ways are individual differences in sibling relationships linked to the
children’s relationships with their parents, or to the quality of the parents’ own relation-
ships with each other? There is some inconsistency in the research findings, and much
current debate about the extent of parental influence on sibling relationships. A number of
general developmental points stand out from the research.
First, there is evidence that the security of young children’s attachments to their parents
is correlated with individual differences in the quality of later sibling relationships. Chil-
dren who were secure in their attachments to their parents were reported to have more
positive sibling relationships than those who were insecure in their parent–child relation-
ships (Teti & Ablard, 1989; Volling & Belsky, 1992). There is also an impressive consen-
sus of evidence from research focusing on a broader range of dimensions of parent–child
relationships that positive parent–child relations are associated with positive, prosocial sib-
ling relationships (for review, see Brody, 1998). In a parallel fashion, negativity, punitive-
ness, and overcontrol in the parent–child relationship are correlated with aggressiveness
226 Judy Dunn
and hostility in the sibling relationship. It is important to note that these studies are corre-
lational, and conclusions cannot be drawn about the direction of causal influence, or the
family processes that might be implicated in the links. While such connections are often
interpreted as reflecting parental influence on siblings, it could well be that children’s tem-
peramental characteristics or other individual qualities contribute to difficult relationships
with both siblings and parents. It could also be that in families in which the siblings are
particularly hostile and aggressive with one another, this in turn affects the relationships of
the children with their parents. In commonsense terms it appears plausible that all of these
processes may contribute to the interconnections between family relationships.
Second, there are also research findings that, in contrast to the links between positivity
in parent–child and sibling relationships, indicate that intense supportive sibling relation-
ships can develop in families in which the parent–child relationships are distant or unin-
volved (Bank & Kahn, 1982; Boer & Dunn, 1990). Such patterns of findings, which fit
with a “compensatory” model of family relationships, may be more characteristic of fami-
lies at the extremes of stress and social problems than of families within the normal range.
Third, there is consistent evidence that more conflicted, hostile sibling relationships are
associated with differential relations between parents and their various children. That is, in
families in which more affection, attention, and less discipline and control are evident in a
parent’s relationship with one sibling than with another, the siblings are likely to get along
less well than in families in which parents and siblings do not report such differential
relationships (Brody, 1998; Hetherington et al., 1994; Reiss, Neiderheiser, Hetherington,
& Plomin, 2000; Stocker et al., 1989; Volling & Belsky, 1992). Such patterns are particu-
larly evident in families that are under stress (Bank, Patterson, & Reid, 1996), such as
those who have recently experienced parental separation, those with steprelationships, and
those with disabled or sick siblings. It is important to note, again, that the evidence for
these links is correlational and inferences about the direction of causal influence are not
justified. Children’s interpretation of their parents’ differential behavior has been seen as
key: Sibling relationships are thought to be compromised particularly when children inter-
pret their parents’ differential behavior as an indication that their parents are less con-
cerned about them, or that they are less worthy of love than their siblings (Kowal & Kramer,
1997). Children monitor with vigilance the interactions between their parents and sib-
lings, from a surprisingly early age: During the second year of life, one observational study
showed, they ignore relatively few of the exchanges between their siblings and parents
(Dunn & Munn, 1985).
Differential parent–child relationships are often associated with conflict or distress be-
tween the parents: Increased levels of differential treatment have been linked with such
marital problems, and in turn both contemporaneously and longitudinally with higher
levels of sibling conflict (Brody, Stoneman, & McCoy, 1992; Brody, Stoneman, & McCoy,
1994; Hetherington, Henderson, & Reiss, 1999; McHale & Crouter, 1996). More gener-
ally, several research programs report that the quality of the relationship between parents
was linked to that of the sibling relationship (Brody, Stoneman, McCoy, & Forehand,
1992b; Erel, Margolin, & John, 1998; MacKinnon, 1989; Stocker, Ahmed, & Stall, 1997).
Both direct pathways between marital and sibling relationships, and indirect pathways (via
the parent–child relationships) are implicated (Dunn, Deater-Deckard, Pickering, Beveridge,
& the ALSPAC Study Team, 1999). Interestingly, these patterns of association appear to
differ in stepfamilies from those in families with two biological parents. Thus Hetherington
and her colleagues (1992) reported that positive relations between mothers and their “new”
partners were associated with high levels of negativity in parent–child relationships in step-
father families – in direct contrast to the patterns found in nonstepfamilies. In the study by
Dunn and colleagues, mother–partner hostility showed no significant relation to the hos-
tility siblings showed one another – a pattern quite different from that of nonstep families.
Finally, it should be noted that the changes in parent–child relationships that accom-
pany the arrival of a sibling are linked to the quality of the relationship that develops
between the siblings. Both relatively small-scale intensive research (Dunn & Kendrick,
1982; Stewart, 1990; Stewart, Mobley, Van Tuyl, & Salvador, 1987) and large-scale sur-
vey studies (such as those based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in the
United States (Baydar, Greek, & Brooks-Gunn, 1997a; Baydar, Hyle, & Brooks-Gunn,
1997b) report consistent findings – that the birth of a sibling is accompanied by a decline
in positive mother–child interactions, an increase in controlling, negative interactions, and
an increase in behavioral problems in the “displaced” child. These changes are accompa-
nied by a decline in material resources for families, which may be implicated in the seque-
lae for the children’s adjustment and relationships – an issue we return to below. The
general developmental point highlighted by these findings is that indirect links between
parent–child and sibling relationships are likely to be important as influences on indi-
vidual differences in the siblings’ relationships.
Developmental change and continuities in individual differences in sibling

relationships
Developmental changes in sibling relationships have been documented in studies follow-

ing siblings through early and middle childhood. During the preschool years, the younger
siblings in a dyad play an increasingly active role in the relationship, as their powers of
understanding and communicative skills develop. They begin to initiate more games, and
their ability to cooperate makes them more interesting companions in play for their older
siblings (Dunn et al., 1996). The welcome recent increase in studies of siblings in middle
childhood and adolescence has clarified some of the developmental changes in this period,
though it should be noted that with the exception of the research of Brody and his col-
leagues (Brody et al., 1992a, 1992b, 1994), much of the research is cross-sectional in
design. It has been concerned with charting normative changes, rather than continuities in
individual differences. Such research reports changes in the balance of power between
siblings as they reach middle childhood: the relationship between siblings becomes more
egalitarian (Buhrmester, 1992; Buhrmester & Furman, 1990; Vandell, Minnett, & Santrock,
1987). There is some disagreement about the extent to which this reflects an increase in
the power that the younger sibling is able to exert, or a decrease in the dominance that both
older and younger attempt to exert. During adolescence, there tends to be a decrease in the
warmth that siblings feel and express toward each other. This parallels the patterns of
change reported for parent–child relationships over this period, as adolescents become
increasingly involved with peers outside the family.
To what extent do the striking individual differences in sibling relationships evident in
228 Judy Dunn
early childhood show continuity over time? One relatively small study that followed sib-
ling pairs for over 7 years reported evidence for considerable stability in children’s behavior
and feelings toward their siblings, particularly for the older siblings during the period from
5 years to 12–13 years of age (Dunn et al., 1994a). However, many sibling pairs also
changed in the relative friendliness or hostility that they felt toward each other. Increases in
friendliness and support were found, for example, to follow life events with negative im-
pact that the children faced together. In contrast, in many of the families, negative changes
in the sibling relationship were attributed by both siblings and their mothers to the new
friendships that the children had formed outside the family, particularly after the school
transition that in the UK takes place around 8 years of age. Siblings also attributed in-
creases in coolness or distance between them to the development of different interests by
the two siblings during middle childhood, and to developmental changes in the younger
siblings’ powers of argument.
Developmental Influence of Sibling Relationships
The emotional intensity of siblings’ interactions, their familiarity and frequent interaction
during childhood, and the significance of their competitiveness over parental attention
and love, all combine to suggest that they may well exert developmental influence upon
one another. Two particular domains of development have been studied in relation to
children’s experiences with their siblings: children’s adjustment, and their social under-
standing.
Siblings and children’s adjustment
There is evidence for associations between the quality of siblings’ relationships and their
externalizing (aggressive, oppositional, rule-breaking) and internalizing (worrying, anx-
ious) behavior, links found both contemporaneously and over time. Patterson and his
colleagues established in the 1980s in their research with both community samples and
clinical samples of conduct-disordered children, employing direct observations of the chil-
dren at home, that siblings reinforce each other’s aggressive behavior by fighting back,
teasing, and escalating the level of conflict (Patterson, 1986). As Patterson points out,
children whose family relational experiences train them to select coercive behavior are
doubly handicapped: not only have they learned to be coercive, they have also not learned
the prosocial actions required for supportive relationships (Snyder & Patterson, 1995).
Longitudinal research following children from the preschool period to early adolescence
has demonstrated that not only externalizing behavior but also internalizing problems in
middle childhood and adolescence were more common among children whose siblings
had been very negative and hostile to them during the preschool years (Dunn, Slomkowski,
Beardsall, & Rende, 1994b). This pattern of associations was significant even when the
mothers’ current mental state was controlled for. A large-scale community study with cross-
sectional data on 4 and 7 year olds found that negativity between siblings contributed to
adjustment problems, and negatively to levels of prosocial behavior, beyond the contribu-
tion of poor parent–child relationships (Dunn et al., 1999). A substantial body of research
findings employing cross-lagged models of analyses suggest that younger siblings are more
influenced by their older siblings’ behavior and adjustment than vice versa (e.g. Hetherington
et al., 1999); longitudinal analyses in the Hetherington study of adolescents indicates that
the impact of the sibling’s adjustment – rather than the quality of the relationship per se –
is important in predicting long-term adjustment.
The issue of how far siblings’ hostile relationships contribute to the development of
behavior problems independently of the parent–child relationship has been addressed re-
cently in a number of studies. Garcia and colleagues for example in a study of conduct
problems in a low-income sample of 5-year-old boys found that the interaction between
destructive sibling conflict and rejecting parenting predicted aggressive behavior problems
across time and informants: A rise in aggression scores was evident for children who had
both high levels of sibling conflict and rejecting parent–child relationships. Sibling conflict
was also directly related to later delinquency (Garcia, Shaw, Winslow, & Yaggi, 2000).
These studies implicate direct effects of sibling interaction on behavioral adjustment
outcome. However, it should be noted that while the experience of sibling aggression not
only increases the risk of aggression in other social contexts, but also leaves adolescent
siblings with a sense of inadequacy and incompetence (Bank et al., 1996), these associa-
tions are not likely to develop in isolation from other sources of stress, and for many of the
reported findings we have to be cautious about attributing causal effects to the siblings
alone. A number of lines of evidence do indicate that indirect effects involving siblings are
implicated in later behavioral adjustment problems. Two of these sets of evidence are noted
briefly next: first, differential parent–child relationships, and second the impact of the
arrival of a sibling.
Many of the studies of differential parent–child relationships have focused on the sib-
lings’ adjustment as outcome, and in particular the differences in siblings’ adjustment
(Conger & Conger, 1994; McGuire, Dunn, & Plomin, 1995; Reiss et al., 2000; Stocker,
1993, 1995). The least “favored” sibling was found in such studies to show greater adjust-
ment difficulties. Differential paternal treatment has also been included in several studies,
and found to be also related to adjustment outcome (Brody et al., 1992; Stocker, 1993,
1995; Volling & Elins, 1998). Volling and Elins, for instance, found that preschool aged
siblings showed greater internalizing and externalizing symptoms when both mothers and
fathers disciplined them more than their younger siblings. The findings indicate that the
correlates of differential treatment with such very young siblings differ in some respects
from those with older children, and that future studies need to examine differential paren-
tal treatment as a developmental process across childhood. It should also be noted that
most studies of differential parental treatment and adjustment do not examine whether the
effect of differential experiences is significant beyond the effect of the “absolute” level of
parent–child interaction.
A second line of evidence suggesting indirect effects of siblings on children’s adjustment
comes from the research on the arrival of a sibling. The birth of a sibling is consistently
found to be linked to increased problems of adjustment in firstborn children: Disturbance
in bodily functions, withdrawal, aggressiveness, dependency, and anxiety have been re-
ported in detailed home observations (Dunn & Kendrick, 1982; Stewart et al., 1987), and
230 Judy Dunn
in large-scale surveys (Baydar et al., 1997a). The changes in children’s adjustment that
follow the arrival of a sibling are correlated with parallel changes in the interactions be-
tween the “displaced” older sibling and his or her parents. There is a notable increase in
critical negative behavior from mothers, an increase in demanding difficult firstborn
behavior to mothers, and a decrease in positive joint activities shared by parents and firstborn
(Dunn & Kendrick, 1982). Baydar and colleagues reported similar changes in family in-
teraction patterns, and described negative effects on adjustment, achievement, and self-
perception about 2.5 years after the sibling birth, and makes two further, important points.
The first is that these effects are stronger among the children of economically disadvan-
taged children, and the second, that there is a significant decrease in the income-to-poverty
ratio with the birth of a child, and the accompanying loss of maternal employment income
(Baydar et al., 1997b).
Siblings as sources of support
Siblings can also be an important source of support to children faced with stressful experi-
ences. For example, Jenkins (Jenkins, 1992; Jenkins & Smith, 1990) reported that chil-
dren growing up in disharmonious homes have fewer problems if they have a good sibling
relationship. It seems that both offering comfort to, and receiving comfort from, a sibling
are associated with benefits for children. Note that other studies of parental separation and
family reconstitution report that siblings are relatively infrequent confidants for children
(Dunn, Davies, O’Connor, & Sturgess, 2001). But children faced with other negative life
events report becoming more intimate and close with their siblings following the stressful
event (Dunn et al., 1994a). This is a growing area for clinical research, as in the research
with siblings involved as therapists for children with eating disorders (Vandereyken & Van
Vrecken, 1992), and as donors for children undergoing bone-marrow transplants.
Siblings and the development of social understanding
The study of siblings has played an important role in changing our views of the nature and
development of children’s discovery of the mind – their understanding of others’ emotions,
thoughts, beliefs, and their grasp of the links between such inner states and people’s behavior.
In standard experimental settings, young preschool children show limited understanding of
“other minds” and feelings; in contrast, in the context of the emotional drama and the
familiarity of interactions with siblings, they reveal remarkable powers of manipulating oth-
ers’ emotions, anticipating intentions, and of understanding the significance of inner states
for human action (Dunn, 1999). Their ability to tease, deceive, manage conflict by antici-
pating the other’s intentions and perspective, share an imaginative world in joint pretend
play, and engage in conversations about why people behave the way they do, with reference
to mental states as causes and consequences of action – all these are seen in their daily inter-
actions with their siblings in the second, third, and fourth years of life. All reflect a growing
sophistication about inner states and social behavior. Sibling research thus has offered a new
perspective on a central aspect of early sociocognitive development.
It has also alerted us to the range of individual differences in young children’s abilities in
these domains, which are striking, and until very recently, little studied. Research address-
ing the question of what experiences contribute to these striking individual differences in
understanding has clearly implicated experiences with siblings.
For example, children who have engaged in frequent shared pretend play with an older
sibling, and talked about mental states (knowing, remembering, thinking, believing, and
so on) with a sibling are, over time, especially successful on the standard assessments of
understanding emotions and mental states (Dunn, 1999; Howe, Petrakos, & Rinaldi, 1998).
Children with older siblings, in some studies, perform better on such tasks than those
without siblings (Perner, Ruffman, & Leekham, 1994). Other research indicates that it is
interaction with familiar others (kin or friends) that is linked to individual differences in
performances on understanding of inner states – rather than interaction with siblings per
se (Lewis, Freeman, Kyriakidou, Maridaki-Kassotaki, & Berridge, 1996). In general these
studies demonstrate associations, and do not directly test causes, so again, we should be
wary of inferring the causal contribution of experiences with siblings to social understand-
ing. The children who are good at understanding emotions and at mind-reading are likely
to be particularly effective play companions: their early sophistication at reading minds
and emotions may well contribute to the development of shared imaginative play with
their siblings, and this in itself is likely to foster further developments in understanding
others’ inner states (Howe et al., 1998).
But though direction of effects is still an intractable issue to be addressed, the sibling
research has established firmly the potential significance of certain social processes within
the family, for the development of the marked individual differences in the core develop-
mental domain of understanding others.
Siblings and peer relationships
The notion that the quality of sibling relationships will be associated with, and possibly
influence, children’s relationships with other children outside the family is one that would
be supported by a number of different developmental theories: attachment theory, social
learning theory, and by those who propose that an individual’s characteristics will elicit
similar responses from different people (e.g., Caspi & Elder, 1988). The mechanisms sug-
gested to underlie such links differ in these various theoretical frameworks, but each would
predict positive associations between sibling and peer relationships. Within a social learn-
ing framework, it would be expected that what is learned through interaction with a sib-
ling would generalize to interactions with familiar peers outside the family.
In contrast, it can also be argued that the clear differences between sibling and peer
relationships mean that simple positive associations should not be expected. Although
both are intimate, dyadic relationships with other children, friendships involve a commit-
ment of trust and support that not all siblings feel about each other, and friendships do not
involve rivalry for parental love and attention, or resentment about differential treatment.
Children do not choose their siblings, but they do select their friends. The evidence for
positive links between individual differences in sibling and peer relations is inconsistent.
With young children, studies of conflict management, and of connected communication
232 Judy Dunn
show some associations across the two relationships (Slomkowski & Dunn, 1992), and
some correlations have been reported for aggression with siblings and with peers (Vandell
et al., 1987), but other research reports no links (Abramovitch, Corter, Pepler, & Stanhope,
1986). One study of slightly older children reports links in controlling and positive behavior
between sibling and friend relationships (Stocker & Mantz-Simmons, unpublished), but
also notes that children who were particularly cooperative with their siblings reported lower
levels of companionship with their friends. Two other studies also report evidence for
“compensatory” patterns – rather than evidence for consistency across the relationships
(Mendelson, Aboud, & Lanthier, 1994; Stocker & Dunn, 1990). Studies of popularity
with peers also report very few associations with children’s sibling relationships, either as
preschoolers or as 5–10 year olds (Stocker & Dunn, 1990).
The lack of consistency across the two relationships could be interpreted in various
ways. “Compensatory” mechanisms could be invoked; alternatively (or in addition) it could
be that the experience of conflict and competitive interactions with siblings fosters chil-
dren’s capacities in social understanding – and this understanding helps children to form
particularly close relationships with friends. There is some evidence that frequency of sib-
ling arguments in the preschool period are associated with later successful performance on
sociocognitive tasks (Slomkowski & Dunn, 1992), but we are very far from being able to
draw conclusions about the mechanisms underlying such correlational data. Internal working
models, social understanding as a mediator, and temperamental characteristics have all
been invoked to explain connections across relationships.
Siblings and the Nature of Family Influence
The third aspect of sibling research that has notable implications for psychology concerns
the ways in which family experiences influence individual development. One of the strik-
ing findings of recent research has been the documentation of the differences in personality,
adjustment, and psychopathology between siblings growing up in the same family (Dunn
& Plomin, 1990). These differences, which have been reported in a wide range of studies,
present a considerable challenge to those who study family influence. The aspects of family
life that have been seen as key influences on children’s development, such as mothers’ and
fathers’ educational and occupational level, the parents’ mental health and the quality of
their spousal relationship, the neighborhood in which the family lives, the social adversities
faced by the family, are all apparently shared by the siblings. Yet these siblings grow up to
be very different from one another. Answers to this puzzle, suggested by the findings of
extensive studies by behavior geneticists, include the proposal that experiences within the
family differ markedly for siblings, and are key to their developmental differences. It is
these experiences specific to each sibling that need to be studied, rather than the between-
family differences that have been chiefly studied. The message is not that family influences
are unimportant, but that families are experienced very differently by the children who are
members of those families (Hetherington et al., 1994).
The evidence for the significance of differential parental treatment, described above,
and for the vigilance with which children monitor such differences from early childhood
support this new perspective on family processes. Of course, individual differences in the
temperament, adjustment, and other characteristics of each sibling are likely to play a
major part in eliciting different responses from other family members, as well as in contrib-
uting to differences in their responses to others both within and outside the family, and in
their responses to “shared” stresses and difficulties that the family faces.
Growing Points and Gaps in Sibling Research
Recent research on siblings has opened up a series of exciting questions about both norma-
tive development, and individual differences in development. If we include siblings in
studies of the growth of social understanding, of social competence, in research on family
influences on adjustment, on the nature and individual differences in peer relations, we
gain a powerful new perspective on these areas of development. There is growing interest
in siblings in the clinical literature, as in the research on the effects of children’s response to
illness, disability, or injury in their siblings (Stallard, Mastroyannopoulou, Lewis, & Lenton,
1997), and of traumatic experiences on siblings (Newman, Black, & Harris-Hendriks,
1997). A lively new area of study is investigation into the relationships of step- and half-
siblings, and individual differences in their development; with the marked increase in the
numbers of families that do not conform to the traditional pattern of two biological par-
ents and their biological children, this is a growth area of considerable practical signifi-
cance (Hetherington et al., 1999; O’Connor, Dunn, Jenkins, Pickering, & Rasbash, 2001).
Comparison of full, half, and stepsiblings provides a useful strategy for discovering the
role of genetics in the development of individual differences (Deater-Deckard et al., in
press).
However, although the inclusion of siblings in research strategies represents a major
opportunity to learn more about not only their relationships, but also about key issues in
developmental psychology more broadly considered, there are still notable gaps in the
research on siblings. Most studies focus on young or middle-childhood children, though
interest in research on adolescent siblings is rapidly growing (e.g., Hetherington et al.,
1999), but there is little longitudinal research in adulthood, or studies that take a life-
course perspective. We are left comparatively ignorant of the long-term significance of
early experiences with siblings.
Studies of siblings from minority communities are notably lacking, as are cross-cultural
studies, and studies of non-Western cultures more generally. These gaps are especially
striking, given that ethnographic studies have shown that siblings play important roles as
caregivers for children from a very early age in many cultures (Weisner, 1989; Weisner &
Gallimore, 1977). Weisner’s (1989) reviews make clear siblings are key figures in chil-
dren’s lives in many non-Western communities, and he considers these experiences play an
important role in “socialization for parenthood.” Anthropological research has documented
that siblings are also key in adults’ lives in such communities (e.g., Nuckolls, 1993). Little
research in the United States, or the UK, has focused specifically on ethnic differences in
sibling relations. In a national sample in the United States, the relationships between
siblings in African American, Hispanic, non-Hispanic White and Asian American adults
234 Judy Dunn
were compared. The conclusion was that the similarities across the groups in terms of
contact and social support far outweighed the differences (Riedmann & White, 1996).
Parallel research on childhood and adolescence is needed.
These gaps in what we know about siblings represent opportunities for studies that are
likely to prove both theoretically and practically important; the study of siblings is provid-
ing a novel perspective on widely differing domains of psychology – clinical, developmen-
tal, on family processes, on the contribution of genetics to individual differences in
development.
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238 Dale F. Hay & Alison Nash
13
Social Development in Different Family

Arrangements
Dale F. Hay and Alison Nash
Objectives
The aim of the chapter is to demonstrate the importance of studies of family arrangements
for theories of social development. In line with the aims of the volume, we focus on early
and middle childhood, asking how family arrangements affect children’s social develop-
ment, that is, their abilities to relate to others, to regulate emotion, and to function compe-
tently in the social world, free of major mental health problems.
Although some investigators of family structure highlight psychological processes (e.g.,
Hetherington, 1998), most studies are guided by the methods and theories of demogra-
phy, family sociology, and ethnography, and thus do not test developmental theory. Rather,
the existing literature arises from concerns about the increased prevalence of “nontraditional”
family structures. Investigators often apply a “deficit model,” using the nuclear family (two
biological parents and their children) as the standard with which other families are com-
pared. This assumption is made explicit in newer studies that use statistical modeling pro-
cedures, where conventional nuclear families are set as the baseline value (e.g., Cleveland,
Wiebe, Van den Oord, & Rowe, 2000).
These comparisons are challenged by the fact that nuclear families are increasingly un-
representative. For example, the number of families headed by single mothers in the United
States has increased 25% since 1990 (U.S. Census, 2000). Only about half the children in
the United States live in homes that include only their two biological parents and any full
siblings (Hernandez, 1997). UK demographers estimate that, by 2010, more children will
live with stepparents than two biological parents (Office of National Statistics, 2000). In
much of the world, the extended family is the norm. Even in the United States and Britain,
single parenting and stepfamilies are not new phenomena, being quite common in the past
as a result of death during childbirth (Muzi, 2000). Because contemporary families live in
Social Development in Different Family Arrangements 239
diverse ways, the study of family influences on social development must draw upon repre-
sentative samples, and go beyond simple pair-wise comparisons against a “normal” base-
line.
Studies of family arrangements have critical implications for current theories of social
development, as they provide the strongest tests of claims that family influences are not as
great as once thought, in comparison with genetic predispositions (Scarr, 1992), sibling
contributions (Sulloway, 1996), and the role of peers (Harris, 1998). Thus we describe
how studies of family arrangements address theoretical issues in five perspectives in devel-
opmental psychology that emphasize family influences: (1) the attachment model, which
highlights the importance of formative social experiences in very early life; (2) the parenting
model, which is a contemporary heir to the long-standing tradition of the study of indi-
vidual variation in childrearing strategies and the competence of individual parents; (3) the
nuclear family model, which emphasizes the importance of both fathers and mothers in
children’s lives; (4) the family systems model, which characterizes families as dynamic sys-
tems in which all members play important roles and there are important effects of relation-
ships on other relationships; and (5) the social networks model, in which family relationships
are seen in the context of wider social networks and cultural frameworks.
In the sections that follow we illustrate ways in which different types of families have
been studied in each of these five perspectives. However, before highlighting key findings,
it is important to introduce a note of caution. The body of evidence on family arrange-
ments is weakened by many methodological flaws, so that few firm conclusions can be
drawn (some common methodological problems are shown in Table 13.1). Most impor-
tantly, serious confounds in many research designs lead to alternative interpretations of
many findings. These confounds are illustrated clearly by the literature on divorce and
remarriage.
Confounds in the Study of Family Arrangements
Intergenerational continuities
An intergenerational link between parents’ and children’s traits (through heritable charac-
teristics or socialization patterns in families) might account both for children’s behavioral
problems and marital discord, divorce, and multiple transitions. For example, parents who
are angry, aggressive, or abusive could transmit such behaviors to their children, either
through genes or behavioral models, and also create a family climate that makes divorce
likely (e.g. Emory, Waldron, Aaron, & Kitzmann, 1999). Evidence for genetic contribu-
tions is supported by the fact that effects of divorce are stronger in biological than adoptive
families (O’Connor, Caspi, De Fries, & Plomin, 2000), and by comparisons of house-
holds containing one or two parents and sibling pairs who share both or one parent (Cleve-
land et al., 2000).
240 13.1
Table Dale F.Some
HayCommon
& AlisonMethodological
Nash Problems in the Study of Family Arrangements
Type of problem Illustrative examplesa
Sampling Small, Many studies of rare family structures, e.g., same-sex

problems unrepresentative parents (Braeways et al., 1997), families who use fertility
samples treatments (Golombok et al., 1999), and families who rear
children communally (Hamilton, 2000) rely on small,
volunteer samples who may not be representative of a
general population
Secular trends and Large cohort studies are rooted in time and place, and
cohort effects long-term effects found in studies begun in the 1950s
(e.g., the British NCDS Sample) might not generalize to
younger cohorts
Attrition and There is substantial attrition in the cohort studies (e.g.,
selective NCDS). Furthermore, selective participation may
participation compromise results, e.g., in a comparison of same-sex and
heterosexual couples, all lesbian couples who were
contacted agreed to participate but substantially fewer
fathers did. Fathers who used donor insemination were
more willing to participate than normally conceiving
fathers (Braeways et al., 1997)
Problems with Quasi-experimental case-control designs have often been
matching and used to compare family arrangements. Matching on some
case-control designs variables may lead to systematic unmatching on others;
problems may be exacerbated when control groups are
constructed long after the original observations were made
(e.g., Wallerstein, Lewis, & Blakeslee, 2000)
Measurement Defining and Families are very fluid, shifting arrangements over short
problems categorizing family time periods (Muzi, 2000; Seltzer, 2000). Definitions are
arrangements problematic. The concept of “parent” in the case of
fostering, adoption, fertility treatments, and same-sex
relationships is not always clear, and the concept of
“family” does not always equate to “household,” especially
with respect to extended families and contexts such as the
Bahamas, where fostering arrangements and time spent in
different households are familiar parts of children’s lives
(Dean, personal communication)
Informant biases Large, representative studies often use single informants,
most commonly mothers (e.g., Dunn et al., 1998). A
single informant’s reports about children’s adjustment
may be biased by the informant’s own mental health
problems (see Boyle & Pickles, 1997; Hay et al., 1999) or
continuing conflict with the spouse before and after
divorce. Role relationships also affect reporting. Step-
parents provide reports of children’s psychological
adjustment that are much more negative than those
from other informants (Hetherington & Clingempeel,
1992)
a
The studies cited are no more flawed than others in the literature, but rather provide clear illustrations of
specific problems that are common to many other studies of family arrangements. It should be noted that even
the best studies in this area must make “trade-offs” between large, representative samples and reliable and valid
measurement. Thus, detailed qualitative and quantitative data of psychological processes in family life are more
likely to be possible in smaller, selected samples, whilst large, representative cohort studies often use standard-
ized questionnaires completed by single informants.
Conditions that predate changes in family arrangements
Pre-existing conditions may make it more likely that children have behavioral problems
and that their parents will divorce. For example, marital conflict that predates divorce may
be the primary cause of children’s problems. Children whose parents eventually divorce
are more likely to have shown problems years prior to the divorce (e.g., Amato & Booth,
1996; Cherlin et al., 1991; Shaw, Winslow, & Flanagan, 1999). Even economic disadvan-
tage, a common consequence of family disruption (McLanahan & Teitler, 1999), may
cause it as well: for example, African-American couples living in poverty more often sepa-
rated whilst those with more financial resources tended to stay together (Shaw et al., 1999).
Socioeconomic status
The correlation between income and family structure is apparent. For example, in the
United States in 1995, the median income for mother-headed families was $18,000, com-
pared to $50,000 for two-parent families (McLanahan & Teitler, 1999). When income
levels and family education are controlled, the effects of family structure are either negligi-
ble (e.g., Clarke-Stewart, Vandell, McCartney, Owen, & Booth, 2000) or much reduced
(e.g., Amato & Keith, 1991). Furthermore, perceived income affects the parents’ levels of
stress and their manner of coping, which in turn influence parenting style (Brody, Flor, &
Gibson, 1999). In general, it is important to integrate analyses of the different economic
dimensions of family arrangements (e.g., DeGarmo, Forgatch, & Martinez, 1999) with
assessments of parents‘ mental health and parenting style.
Social perceptions of family arrangements
A particular family structure is inevitably confounded with the views of that structure held
by others. Families outside the “norm” may be perceived negatively and consequently
receive less support than those who live in ways closer to cultural ideals. For example, 300
professionals and 300 lay observers watched videotapes of 10-year-old boys interacting
with other children (Fry & Addington, 1984). The observers were randomly informed
that boys were living either with divorced mothers, divorced fathers, or in “intact” homes.
Boys thought to be from “intact” families were rated the most well-adjusted, boys from
father-headed families the least so. Such perceptions can result in biased reports from in-
formants such as teachers and care workers and create self-fulfilling prophecies.
It is important to measure family members’ beliefs about their circumstances, as a mis-
match between ideal and reality may have profound effects. For example, Pyle (2000)
found that Korean and Vietnamese immigrants to the United States contrasted their own
families of origin – characterized as overly strict, emotionally distant, and deficient – with
the idealized American family. Beliefs that one’s own family is not ideal may affect parents’
feelings of efficacy, which then affects parenting style and children’s competence (Brody et
al., 1999). Departures from one’s own ideals of family life may be painful. For example,
“loss of a cherished ideal” (such as an “ideal marriage”) is a life event capable of inducing
depression (Brown & Harris, 1989).
Absence of guiding theory
Families cannot be randomly assigned to live in different ways. It is almost impossible to

disentangle confounds and test alternative explanations in the absence of theoretical frame-
works in which to evaluate the mass of correlational studies that are characterized by many
methodological problems (Table 13.1). It often seems that a variety of standardized out-
come measures have been chosen on an arbitrary basis, and few studies have attempted to
examine the effects of family arrangements with respect to a coherent set of questions
about social development. Thus, in the sections that follow, we identify conceptual issues
and highlight illustrative findings that are pertinent to current theories of social develop-
ment.
The Attachment Model
Of central importance to attachment theory is the early relationship between an infant and
its primary caregiver, usually, though not inevitably, the mother (Bowlby, 1969). Infants
are assumed to be “monotropic,” needing a focused attachment with a particular “mother-
ing figure.” Family arrangements that disrupt the tie between infants and their mothers are
thought to put children at risk. Thus, attachment researchers study the consequences of
maternal employment and day care (e.g., NICHD, 1997) and communal experiences such
as that provided in Israeli kibbutzim (Sagi, Lamb, & Gardner, 1986). Attachment theory
makes no clear predictions about the consequences of father absence. For example, Bowlby
(1969) argued that the natural unit was that between mother and child, with a male (though
not necessarily the biological father) in a supporting role. The security of attachment with
the father is less stable over time than that with the mother (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy,
1985). Family structure is not associated with the quality of attachment relationships in
early life, but changes in family life result in changes in attachment classifications, in both
directions. If family arrangements change, some secure children become insecure, but some
insecure children become secure (Thompson, Lamb, & Estes, 1982).
Long-term longitudinal studies of attachment highlight the influence of the quality of
the child’s relationship with the parents in later years and the changes in family arrange-
ments that take place after infancy (e.g., Hamilton, 2000). In one follow-up study, current
feelings of security and divorce predicted adolescents’ psychological adjustment, but secu-
rity measured in infancy did not (Lewis, Feiring, & Rosenthal, 2000). These findings
show that classic attachment theory alone is not sufficient to explain social development in
middle childhood and adolescence. Rather, parent–child relationships need to be studied
over time.
The Parenting Model
A dominant perspective in contemporary developmental psychology is one that focuses on

parenting style as a characteristic of individuals. In this perspective, which follows from the
earlier tradition of studying patterns of child rearing (e.g., Sears, Maccoby, & Levin, 1957),
parents differ in skills, cognitions, warmth, and mental states (e.g., Baumrind, 1989;
Bugental & Johnston, 2000; Maccoby, 2000). Individual differences in “parenting” are
widely believed to mediate the effects of family arrangements on children’s lives, and inter-
ventions to improve parenting are of considerable interest for public policy (Cowan, Powell,
& Cowan, 1998).
Theorists in this tradition argue that some family structures place parents at risk for
poor parenting (see Hetherington & Stanley-Hagen, 1999a; Waite & Gallagher, 2000).
The parenting model is often applied to studies of divorce and single parenthood, which
were first cast in terms of questions about “father absence” (for a review see Herzog &
Sudia, 1973). Current accounts emphasize variation in parenting skill within as well as
across different family structures.
Never-married mothers
Never-married mothers are thought to be at particular risk for problems in parenting.

Although a substantial number of children in single-parent families live with mothers who
have never married, there are few studies of this family arrangement (for a review see
Weinraub & Gringlas, 1995), and most focus on adolescent motherhood, which has its
own unique set of issues. In the United States, 8% of all children live with never-married
mothers as opposed to 14% who live with separated or divorced mothers (Hernandez,
1997).
Never-married mothers show higher levels of rejecting parenting compared to other
types of families (Shaw et al., 1999) and lower supervision and control over their children
than mothers in two-parent families (Thomson, McLanahan, & Braun-Curtin, 1992).
The parenting style of single mothers reflects mental health problems and worries that
transcend the mother–child relationship; for example, young single mothers behave in
parallel ways with their infants and their boyfriends (Hart, Field, Jones, & Yando, 1999).
In a study of a London birth cohort (Schmuecker, 1998), all single mothers in the sample
had suffered from depression by the time the children were 4 years of age. The well-estab-
lished links between maternal depression, parenting problems, and poor outcomes for
children (e.g., Murray & Cooper, 1997) account for some of the risks attached to single
parenthood (Dunn, Deater-Deckard, Pickering, & O’Connor, 1998).
Studies of never-married mothers provide important support for the parenting model,
in that they clearly document sources of variation within such families. Not all single
parents are unskilled. For example, studies of poor, single African-American mothers docu-
ment considerable within-sample variation in parenting style and skill (e.g., Brody et al.,
1999). In a sample of 193 single mothers, most provided nurturant or cognitively stimu-
lating behavior to their children, though some women also expressed annoyance with their
children and their situations (McGroder, 2000). The minority of women who were not
nurturant were themselves more likely to have had a history of abuse and a longer history
of welfare dependency.
The effects of single parents’ parenting difficulties on children’s adjustment are unclear.
As toddlers, boys living with never-married mothers had higher rates of externalizing and
internalizing problems than did those from other family types, but no differences emerged
beyond toddlerhood (Shaw et al., 1999). Longer-term follow-up studies of representative
samples of never-married mothers are badly needed.
Divorced families
A major research question within the parenting model is the extent to which parenting
deteriorates in the face of life changes, economic setbacks, and psychological stress. The
study of divorce is therefore of particular interest within this perspective. Decades of corre-
lational studies have shown that divorce is associated with deleterious outcomes for chil-
dren (e.g., Hanson, McLanahan, & Thomson, 1998; Wallerstein, Lewis, & Blakeslee,
2000). The earlier “father absence” studies demonstrated social, psychological, and eco-
nomic disadvantages for children whose parents divorced (Herzog & Sadia, 1973). More
recent studies have demonstrated that, even under conditions of stress and turmoil, com-
petent, emotionally responsive parenting provides opportunities for sound child adjust-
ment (Hetherington & Stanley-Hagen, 1999a; Wyman et al., 1999). It thus becomes
possible to design interventions to improve parenting skills and sensitivity (Cowan et al.,
1998), even when marriages have moved beyond repair.
Distressed parents may find it very hard to provide competent parenting. Authoritative
parenting helps children of divorced parents as much as those who live with both biologi-
cal parents (Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992), but divorced parents are often less able
to be authoritative (Hetherington & Stanley-Hagen, 1999a). Parenting difficulties are bound
up with the divorced parent’s own emotional problems. The parent’s mental state directly
impinges on the parent–child relationship (e.g., Cummings & Davies, 1994) and some
studies suggest that parents‘ own mental health problems often mediate the effects of di-
vorce on children (e.g., Dunn et al., 1998). The evidence is unclear, however, in that
informants who are depressed may exaggerate the extent of their children’s problems (see
Boyle & Pickles, 1997; Hay et al., 1999).
Some investigators have tried to observe the qualitative features of family life in different
types of families, which provides interesting insights into the values held by parents in
different circumstances. For example, children in divorced families participate more in
family decisions and have more responsibility, which predicts higher levels of maturity,
self-esteem, empathy, and androgyny (Gately & Schwebel, 1992). One study showed that
single mothers read more to their children but eat fewer meals with them than do married
mothers; remarried mothers spent little time either reading to or eating with their children
(Thomson et al., 1992). Sometimes things can be simpler in single-parent families. For
example, a study of effective single parenting showed that, under some circumstances,
single mothers, who do not have to engage in conflict with a spouse who might hold
different opinions and values about child rearing, provide a very peaceful, consistent fam-
ily climate (Morrison, 1995). In general, future research within the parenting model needs
to concentrate on family activities and values as well as the skills used by parents in differ-
ent arrangements.
The Nuclear Family Model
An over-emphasis on parenting as an individual difference variable may limit our under-

standing of the dynamics of particular parent–child relationships (see also Russell, this
volume). It is not clear whether the concept of parenting can completely account for the
differential contributions of fathers and mothers to children’s social development. Child
rearing is not necessarily a sexless enterprise. For example, Amato’s (1993) review of the
divorce literature indicated that the presence of a father or stepfather added explanatory
power to the prediction of boys‘ psychological adjustment, beyond information about
parenting style. Thus some theorists still emphasize the importance of a two-parent family
for social development.
The nuclear family model has a long history and several contemporary versions, which
owe much to earlier psychoanalytic writings. The attachment perspective draws on Bowlby’s
(1958) interest in object relations and the early mother–infant bond, and studies of child
rearing were influenced by concepts in ego psychology such as dependency (Cairns, 1979).
In contrast, the nuclear family model is heavily influenced by another strand within psy-
choanalysis, Freud’s account of gender roles, identification, and moral development (e.g.,
Freud, 1938). Freud drew attention to children’s relationships with both biological par-
ents and the effects of an initial attraction to the opposite-sex parent and a final identifica-
tion with the same-sex parent. Implicit in the theory was the notion that identification
with the same-sex parent occurs in the context of a stable marriage between the biological
mother and father. In this perspective, boys who do not live with their fathers are thought
to be at risk for identity problems and atypical gender role development. Thus the central
question is not simply, are children mentally healthy and well adjusted, but also, are they
acting in ways that are deemed appropriate for members of their sex? Family arrangements
of particular concern here are those of separated or divorced families, single-parent fami-
lies, and families headed by two same-sex parents.
Freud’s concern with the dynamics of the nuclear family is echoed in current views
emphasizing the importance of fathers as well as mothers (e.g., Cabrera et al., 2000), show-
ing that positive interactions with both parents enhance development (e.g., Harris,
Furstenberg, & Marmer, 1998; Hart, Nelson, Robinson, Olsen, & McNeilly-Choque,
1998; Isley, O’Neil, Clatfelter, & Parke, 1999). Although much of this work concentrates
on mother–child and father–child relationships within nuclear families, rather than com-
parisons across family structures, these studies draw attention to the unique features of
each relationship, and raise questions about “father absence.” The evidence suggests that
positive interactions with fathers are better than negative ones, but what are the effects of
positive and negative interactions with fathers, compared to no or little interaction?
Deviation from the nuclear family structure takes different forms. “Illegitimate” chil-
dren may be seen to be at some degree of social disadvantage, which may affect their social
development and eventual well-being. Thus there is interest in comparing the children of
married couples with those whose parents are cohabiting (Seltzer, 2000). Arrangements
that include biologically unrelated family members, such as stepparent families or those
created through donor insemination, also deviate from the nuclear family model. Risk here
is sometimes seen to go beyond issues of social adjustment and gender identity. For exam-
ple, sociobiological accounts suggest that children’s lives are actually endangered when
they live with unrelated individuals (Daly & Wilson, 2000). Issues concerning the impor-
tance of the nuclear family structure for children’s social development often become inter-
twined and confounded in studies that merely compare children in nuclear families against
one particular alternative. Here we highlight some current findings that bear on the im-
portance of same-sex role models, the advantages of legal marriage and the dynamics of
children’s relationships with genetically unrelated family members.
Parental sex and gender role development
Father absence versus father presence. A meta-analysis of 67 studies comparing children in

father-absent and father-present families indicated that girls’ sex-typed behavior appeared
unaffected by the absence of fathers, whereas preschool-aged boys were less stereotypical in
categorizing toys (Stevenson & Black, 1988). A more direct test of Freud’s (1938) claim
that identification with the same-sex parent is critical for healthy psychological develop-
ment is provided by comparisons of children living with same-sex as opposed to opposite-
sex parents.
Same versus opposite-sex single parents. Very few empirical studies compare children from
households with same-sex and opposite-sex single parents, but those that do demonstrate
that children are not advantaged by living with same-sex parents (Downey & Powell, 1993).
Nevertheless, strong cultural beliefs that boys model themselves after and identify with
their fathers and girls with their mothers, and that same-sex parents better understand the
feelings and needs of their children, are reflected in the courts, which are increasingly
willing to grant same-sex requests for custody. Consequently, more sons than daughters
live in single-father households (Muzi, 2000).
Relationships with non-custodial fathers. Relationships with fathers who do not have cus-
tody differ, depending on whether the parents have ever been married or cohabiting. For
example, Coley (1998) found that children of divorced mothers reported higher levels of
warmth from noncustodial fathers than children from never-married mothers. Although
these differences disappeared when SES was controlled, the link between paternal warmth
and control and children’s school achievement was greater for divorced or separated fa-
thers than for never-married fathers, especially for girls. Thus daughters who live with their
fathers for part of their lives are more influenced by them, and so the study of paternal
influences needs to go beyond the issue of same-sex role models.
Same-sex parents. Studies of families with two female parents or two male parents also
provide a test of the necessity of having a parent of each sex. Earlier work in this area
focused on children of heterosexual couples who subsequently divorced and forged same-
sex relationships (Patterson, 1992); more recent work focuses on the children born to
same-sex partners, often with the help of new reproductive technologies (Patterson, 2000).
More studies focus on the children of lesbian couples than on those of gay men.
The children of lesbian mothers are not usually compared to the “baseline” of hetero-
sexual, married biological parents. When the focus was on the children of divorced women
who were now in lesbian relationships, the comparison group was single heterosexual women
(Golombok, Spencer, & Rutter, 1983). Now that there is increased interest in the families
created by lesbian couples with the aid of donor insemination, comparison groups include
heterosexual couples who similarly availed themselves of reproductive technologies (e.g.,
Braeways, Panjaert, Van Hall, & Golombok, 1997). These comparisons reveal no defi-
ciencies in parenting or the quality of the parent–child relationship in families headed by
lesbians (Golombok, Tasker, & Murray, 1997; Patterson, 1992).
For example, in a European study of 4 to 8 year olds, there was no difference in the
quality of the interaction between biological mother and child in three different groups:
lesbian couples who had used donor insemination; heterosexual couples who had used
donor insemination; and heterosexual couples who had conceived their child in the ordi-
nary way (Braeways et al., 1997). Some comparisons favored the lesbian couples. For ex-
ample, the quality of parent–child interaction was significantly more positive between
children and their “social mothers” in lesbian couples than between children and fathers in
the other two groups. Children in all three sets of families, boys as well as girls, expressed
stronger positive feelings for their biological mothers than for the mothers’ partners.
Although research on same-sex parenting has been criticized for methodological limita-
tions (Cameron, 1999; Lerner & Nagai, 2001), the existing studies on families with same-
sex parents have revealed no significant effects on the quality of parent–child interaction,
on children’s peer relations, or on the child’s own sexual identity (Golombok et al., 1997;
Patterson, 2000). Children who grow up with same-sex parents have more flexible views
about gender roles, are more tolerant of homosexuality and unconventional family ar-
rangements, and are somewhat more likely to engage in sexual experimentation with mem-
bers of their own sex. However, they are no more likely than members of the population as
a whole to identify as lesbian or gay (Golombok, 2001; Golombok et al., 1997).
The importance of legal marriage
Recent societal changes reflecting a decline in legal marriages are of increasing interest to
researchers and policy makers. For example, U.S. 2000 census data confirm that the number
of unmarried partners living together has increased 72% over the past decade (mainly
opposite-sex couples). Married couples with children now account for less than a quarter of
all U.S. households. Historically in the United States and in many societies, the nuclear
family has not been just a social but a legal arrangement, and so-called illegitimate children
have been seen as disadvantaged (e.g., Collishaw, Maughan, & Pickles, 1998). Compari-
sons of the children of cohabiting versus married couples thus help to specify the key
elements in the lives of nuclear families that benefit children. If what is important is the pres-
ence of same- and opposite-sex parents, and the complementary skills and contributions
of fathers and mothers, legal status should not matter. Alternatively, marriage as a social
institution may have important effects on parents‘ behavior and children’s lives.
Little evidence addresses this issue (see Seltzer, 2000). Many studies do not distinguish
between those two-parent families where the parents are married and those where the
parents’ relationship has not been legalized; others do not distinguish between single mothers
who are or are not living with the fathers of their children. The sociological emphasis on
household structure, rather than interpersonal relationships, has identified very heteroge-
neous groups of cohabiting couples (Seltzer, 2000). However, many of the children who
are officially born to single mothers have parents who live in stable partnerships. For exam-
ple, in an urban community sample of children born in South London in the late 1980s,
63% of the mothers were married, 8% were single, and 29% were cohabiting at the time of
the child’s birth (Hay et al., 2001). Similar proportions were found in a large British com-
munity sample, in which there were no clear differences between married and cohabiting
families (Dunn et al., 1998). However, cohabiting families are more likely than married
ones to experience negative life events that could facilitate negative outcomes in children
(Schmuecker, 1998). Cohabiting couples are also more likely than married ones to sepa-
rate (Seltzer, 2000), though it is not clear that the legal status of the prior partnership adds
to the risks associated with parental separation.
The importance of genetic relatedness
Tests of a third implication of the nuclear family model – that biological parents are advan-
tageous for children – are provided by studies comparing nuclear families with stepfamilies,
and with families using reproductive technologies.
Stepparent families. The strongest claim regarding the importance of genetic relatedness
is provided by Daly and Wilson (2000), who present an evolutionary argument for the
adaptive value of biological parents raising their children. They support this theory with
evidence of increased rates of abuse for children who live with stepparents. Thus, in this
view, children are actually in danger if they live with genetically unrelated parental figures.
Other studies indicate that the introduction of a stepparent may solve some problems
associated with divorce but creates others (Deater-Deckard & Dunn, 1999; Hetherington
& Stanley-Hagen, 1999b). For example, stepchildren find it difficult to balance their rela-
tionships with biological parents and stepparents; this balancing act appears to be espe-
cially difficult for girls living with fathers and stepmothers, particularly if they spend greater
amounts of time with their noncustodial biological mothers (Clingempeel & Segal, 1986).
In general, meta-analyses have suggested that stepparenting has stronger negative effects
on girls than on boys (Amato & Keith, 1991; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagen, 1999b).
It is not always possible to disentangle the effects of genetic relatedness from the other
factors associated with stepparenting. Stepparent families do not restore the conditions
existing in the original family prior to divorce. For example, stepfamilies are not necessarily
likely to enjoy higher income levels and social status than families headed by single parents
(Deater-Deckard & Dunn, 1999). Stepfamilies may also be more likely than “intact” families
to experience life events and stressful experiences. For example, one-parent families move
house more frequently than original two-parent families, but stepparents move even more
often (McLanahan & Teitler, 1999). Moving house can cause disruptions for children and
parents, loss of support networks, adjustment to new schools for children and new jobs for
parents.
It is not clear how much additional risk accrues when a child acquires a stepparent,
which is an event that has usually been predated by exposure to marital conflict, separation
of the parents, and the exigencies of life after divorce. In a large, representative New Zea-
land sample, 18 year olds who had grown up in stepfamilies were at elevated risk for juve-
nile offending, substance use, leaving school without qualifications, and early, promiscuous
sexual relationships (Nicholson, Fergusson, & Horwood, 1999). However, when factors
antecedent to the experience of stepparenting were taken into account, the odds ratios
were no longer significant.
Families who use fertility treatments. Currently there is great interest in a group of families
that might be characterized as “stepparenting from birth,” that is, those with children born
through donor insemination or egg donation. In these procedures, one of the parents is
not the biological parent of the child, in contrast to in vitro fertilization, where both par-
ents are genetically related to the child. Unlike stepfamilies formed through remarriage,
families formed through reproductive technology provide an opportunity for examining
the influences of biological and perceived biological relatedness without the confounding
effects of previous family disruptions.
In a study of families who had attended fertility clinics in the UK, with a comparison
group of adoptive families, genetic relatedness affected dimensions of the parent–child
relationship (Golombok, Murray, Brinden, & Abdalla, 1999). Mothers expressed less
warmth when the child was not genetically related to the father, even when the mother
herself was the child’s biological parent. Parents reported more cooperation in disciplining
the child when there was a genetic relationship between the child and the father. Mothers
who had experienced egg donation had more serious disputes with their children than did
adoptive mothers; thus mother–child conflict was more intense if the father but not the
mother was genetically related to the child. No effects of genetic relatedness were found on
measures of the children’s behavioral problems. However, some emotional problems and
issues regarding identity may later emerge, given the fact that the circumstances of the
child’s conception were shrouded in secrecy. None of the families who had used donor
insemination and only one of those who had used egg donation had told the child that one
of the parents was really a stepparent.
The studies of stepparent and donor insemination families draw attention to the com-
plexities of the different roles and relationships within families, and the changing dynam-
ics of family life over time, issues of major concern to family systems theory.
The Family Systems Model
In family systems theory (e.g., Cox & Paley, 1997), families are seen as dynamic wholes.
This perspective emphasizes the multifaceted roles played by all family members (not just
parents), including children themselves. Considerable attention is given to the dynamics

of conflict and alliances across different relationships in the family. Furthermore, the idea
that a family is a dynamic system incorporates the notion of change, as well as structure.
Thus family systems perspectives are especially applicable to the study of the changing
roles in separating or divorcing families, the balancing of roles within both heterosexual
and same-sex couples, and the new alliances and animosities that emerge when families are
blended together upon remarriage.
Although it seems apparent that family arrangements directly affect all family members,
empirical research is rarely guided by systems theory. However, some findings in the litera-
ture on divorce provide examples of how relationships influence other relationships within
a changing family system. Three illustrative examples include the effects of conflict in one
relationship on the quality of other relationships in the family, children’s effects on par-
ents, and the importance of sibling relationships within the family system.
Effects of the marital relationship on parent–child relationships
Although divorce may in some circumstances place parents at risk for poor parenting, it
can also provide the opportunity for increased parent mental health and better parenting
through the reduction of conflict between the parents. Much research has demonstrated
the negative effects of marital conflict on children (e.g., Fincham, 1998). Even the earliest
relationships between parents and their infants are affected by marital conflict; taking indi-
vidual differences in parents’ psychological adjustment into account, both mothers and
fathers interact more positively with very young infants when they are in close, confiding
marriages (Cox, Owen, Lewis, & Henderson, 1989). Strong evidence for a causal link
between conflict and parenting was provided by Kitzmann (2000), who manipulated spousal
conflict experimentally, and then examined its effects on the couples’ 6- to 8-year-old sons.
After quarreling with their partners, fathers were less supportive of their sons, and the
couples were less democratic in their parenting.
The long-term negative effects of divorce on children are primarily due to the nature of
the couple’s relationship prior to and following the divorce, rather than to parental absence
and the change in family structure. High amounts of conflict prior to divorce mediate the
link between divorce and negative child outcomes (e.g., Amato & Booth, 1996; Shaw et
al., 1999). To the extent that divorce improves the custodial parent’s mental state and frees
children from an atmosphere of conflict, there are positive opportunities as well as risks in
divorced families (see Morrison, 1995).
Children’s perceptions of conflict between their parents may be more important than the
actual extent of conflict that occurs (e.g., Harold & Conger, 1997). Furthermore, the
effects of marital conflict on children’s mental health are not always direct, but rather
mediated by the parent–child relations; whether marital conflict has direct or indirect ef-
fects depends on whether the child in question is a girl or a boy (Paley, Conger, & Harold,
2000). Thus an understanding of gender differences in response to family change may be
clarified by analyses of the family system as a whole.
Children’s effects on the marital relationship
The literature on marital conflict shows that a couple’s relationship affects their children’s
development; but children also influence parents. In divorced families, a cycle of influence
could be observed in which problematic childrearing behaviors were followed by negative
behaviors in children which, in turn, were followed by decreases in parents’ psychological
adjustment (Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1982). The fact that children’s behavioral prob-
lems predate divorce (e.g., Amato & Booth, 1996) suggests that problems in children place
additional strain on the relationship between the two parents, thus increasing the risk of
divorce. Furthermore, vulnerable children may place extra strains on their parents; chil-
dren who are high in impulsivity are especially likely to develop problems in response to
divorce (Lengua, Wolchick, Sandler, & West, 2000).
The importance of siblings
Family systems often include more than one child. Family arrangements following upon
divorce and stepparenting may have different effects on older and younger siblings in a
family (e.g., Dunn et al., 1998). Patterns of conflict in the parent–child relationship may be
mirrored in sibling interaction (Hay, Vespo, & Zahn-Waxler, 1998). Furthermore, the quality
of relationships with siblings may either ameliorate or exacerbate the effects of parental con-
flict and divorce. For example, it has been observed that same-sex pairs of siblings become
especially close after divorce (Kier & Lewis, 1999). It also seems likely that discordant sibling
relationships, or alliances made by parents with one or another child, might add to the levels
of family distress that accompany divorce and remarriage. Relationships between unrelated
siblings may also contribute to problems in stepfamilies (Dunn et al., 1998).
The Social Networks Model
Finally, some developmental theorists see family relationships, including those between
parents and children, in the context of the greater social network in which the family
resides (e.g., Dunn, 1993; Lewis, 1982; Rheingold & Eckerman, 1975). Peers, teachers,
and other adults affect children’s lives, and may serve to buffer children against the delete-
rious effects of family conflict, separation, and divorce. The phenomenon of “social sup-
port” has usually been studied as an individualistic variable, presumed to affect an individual’s
parenting skills. In contrast, the social networks model holds that it is necessary to study
children’s various relationships directly, so that the social and cultural framework sur-
rounding family life may be understood. Cultural and subcultural arrangements such as
child rearing in the context of extended families, fostering, and communal child rearing
deserve study. Furthermore, parents sometimes function as “gatekeepers” of their chil-
dren’s networks, and the boundary with the outside world is more permeable in some
types of families than others.
Multiple influences on children’s lives
Relationships with individuals other than primary caregivers affect children’s development
(see Nash & Hay, 1993). Positive relationships with grandmothers, siblings, other rela-
tives, friends, and other adults have been found to buffer the effects of family turmoil
(Florsheim, Tolan, & Gorman-Smith, 1998; Gadsden, 1999; Hunter, Pearson, Ialongo,
& Killam, 1999; Werner, 1995; Wyman et al., 1999). However, the availability of resil-
ience-promoting social networks for single mothers and their children is often overlooked
(Brody et al., 1999), and the impact of single parents’ economic distress may be reduced
with access to high quality school and community support programs (Guttman & Eccles,
1999). Support from friends and extended family members, including nonpaternal men
(Coley, 1998), and families’ community involvement are positively associated with chil-
dren’s functioning (Wyman et al., 1999).
Different types of families have different types of networks
The social support available to families and the type of networks they have vary across
family structures. For example, the children of divorced women who entered into lesbian
partnerships had more frequent and more positive contact with their noncustodial, bio-
logical fathers than did a comparison group of children whose divorced mothers remained
heterosexual (Patterson, 1992).
Single parents may draw heavily on relationships with other extended family members
and friends (Amato, 1995; Barbarin, 1999; Gadsden, 1999; McLanahan & Teitler, 1999).
However, Hetherington (1998) suggested that support and involvement from extended
family members, especially the lost parent’s family, is greater following death of a parent
than divorce. On the other hand, grandparents, and especially grandfathers, forge closer
ties to grandchildren whose mothers are divorced and bringing up their children on their
own (Clingempeel, Colyar, Brand, & Hetherington, 1992). Grandparents are less willing
to “interfere” in the child rearing of married daughters, a judgment in line with research
findings. Family relationships and social networks often promote positive outcomes for
the children of single mothers (Brody et al., 1999; Wyman et al., 1999), but the close
involvement of grandparents in married families can lead to stress and conflict, as in the
case of Muslim mothers living in extended families in Britain (Sonuga-Barke, Mistry, &
Qureshi, 1998).
Communal rearing
In some cultural and ideological contexts, children are reared communally. The greater
tolerance of unconventional behavior and flexibility of views about gender roles shown by
the children of same-sex parents (Golombok et al., 1997) also characterizes children who
have been raised in communal arrangements, either in households shared for economic
reasons or ideologically based communes (Weisner & Wilson-Mitchell, 1990). The nu-
clear family model would imply that the presence of multiple caregivers might disrupt
identification with one’s same-sex parent and therefore might produce confused sexual
identities. This does not appear to have occurred in the sample of children born in varying
circumstances in the early 1970s (the Family Lifestyles Project, Weisner & Wilson-Mitchell,
1990).
The study of communally reared children also poses critical questions for the attach-
ment model. Issues about attachment relationships loom large in many other studies of
children reared communally along a gradient that includes paid childcare (e.g., NICHD,
1997) and institutional upbringing (Hodges & Tizard, 1989). Such studies draw attention
to the effects of quality of care in communal arrangements and also raise the methodologi-
cal issue of the appropriateness of conventional assessments in different types of families.
Additionally, they question a central tenet of attachment theory, that is, the formative
influence of the early primary attachment relationship. A recent follow-up of the Family
Lifestyles Project indicated that attachment security was associated with economic and
social factors and later life events. Furthermore, there were no significant effects of family
type on the distribution of secure and insecure attachments (though that might be due to
lack of statistical power). Rather, later experiences seemed more important than early ones
and the negative impact of divorce on security of attachment was no different in conven-
tional and unconventional families (Hamilton, 2000).
The studies of communal rearing extend Bowlby’s (1969) emphasis on the importance
of monotropic attachments to primary caregivers (see Nash, 1988). Israeli kibbutz-reared
children have qualitatively distinct attachments to mothers, fathers, and familiar caregivers,
each relationship predicting different dimensions of the child’s later functioning (Oppenhein,
Sagi, & Lamb, 1988). Decades of research on kibbutz children yield very little evidence for
ill effects, save a cautionary note regarding children who spend nights as well as days away
from their biological parents (Aviezer, van Ijzendoorn, Sagi, & Schuengel, 1994).
Extended families
The nuclear family in the Western world is a phenomenon that is rooted in place and time.
In other places and at other times, extended families are the norm. For example, in the
Sudan, the nuclear family is a relatively new invention, associated with urbanization, social
isolation, and disruption of important extended family ties. Children in the Sudan who
lived in nuclear families had more psychological problems than those who lived in tradi-
tional extended families (El Hassan El Awad, & Sonuga-Barke, 1992). Grandmother in-
volvement was the strongest predictor of normal social and emotional adjustment in the
children. Similarly, schoolchildren in Korea who lived in extended families fared better
than those who lived in nuclear families (Hwang & St. James-Roberts, 1998).
The comparison of nuclear and extended family structures thus needs to be undertaken
with reference to the values and ideals of different cultures. For example, the importance of
grandmothers for children growing up in the Sudan (El Hassan Al Awad & Sonuga-Barke,
1992) may partly derive from the twofold role of the grandmother (haboba) in that cul-
ture. She provides social and practical support to inexperienced mothers and transmits
cultural values to the new generation. The Sudanese nuclear families were shorn of much
needed practical support and a culturally valued childrearing mechanism. Thus, in gen-
eral, the social networks perspective does not just identify complex structures and webs of
relationships, but also the values and cultural ideals that underpin child rearing in different
communities.
Conclusions
Current research on family arrangements is fraught with conceptual and methodological

problems (Table 13.1), but has nonetheless advanced considerably since the early days of
studies of “father absence.”‘ Most differences between family types are accounted for by a
host of mediating and moderating variables (see Baron & Kenny, 1986), including eco-
nomic, social, and psychological factors (Clarke-Stewart et al., 2000; Dunn et al., 1998;
Nicholson et al., 1999). The wide adoption of multivariate modeling procedures and a
concomitant tendency to report effect sizes, not just significant group differences, has un-
covered important mechanisms and demonstrated the rather modest contribution of fam-
ily structure variables to children’s social development.
We concur with other reviewers’ recommendations to concentrate attention on under-
lying processes responsible for variation within as well as across different family arrange-
ments (e.g., Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 1999a). Such process-orientated research has
important implications for public policy and clinical interventions. At the same time, we
have argued that the research on family arrangements is of great importance for “main-
stream” theories of social development. The topic poses important challenges for each
perspective on social development, but also highlights prospects for synthesis across differ-
ent theories.
For example, the study of divorce shows that attachment relationships do not always
remain as they were in infancy, but rather change, for better or worse, in the face of chang-
ing family arrangements. Furthermore, studies of children reared communally draw atten-
tion to the qualitatively different consequences for social development that derive from
different attachment relationships. These data extend attachment theory beyond Bowlby’s
original speculations (see also Waters & Cummings, 2000). At the same time, the empha-
sis on cognitive representations and emotional regulation that derives from attachment
theory provides a theoretical language in which some consequences of family disruption
can be analyzed.
The studies of different family arrangements provide considerable support for the
parenting model, as they demonstrate the importance of parenting style rather than family
structure for many aspects of social development (Hetherington & Stanley-Hagen, 1999a).
At the same time the qualitatively unique features of different family arrangements, and
the clear evidence for the importance of social, economic, and ideological pressures on
parents’ own feelings of competence and self-esteem, extend the perspective beyond classic
typologies and standardized assessments. Most critically, studies of different family ar-
rangements have challenged the notion of parenting as a gender-neutral activity, and drawn
attention to the differential contributions made by fathers and mothers, both when living
together and after marriages have been dissolved.
Although it is never safe to accept null hypotheses, particularly when the power to reject
the alternative hypothesis is far too low, the studies of children living in nontraditional
arrangements do not show dramatic changes in gender development or psychological ad-
justment. The effects so far identified seem to be rather subtle ones. At the same time,
research on the children in stepfamilies and those born with the aid of reproductive tech-
nologies draw attention to the importance of genetic relatedness, or at least attributions
made on the basis of genetic relatedness. The meager findings with respect to cohabiting
families remind us that children may be affected by marriage as a social institution as well
as by their parents’ overt behavior. Thus studies of family arrangements have both revived
and extended the classic nuclear family model, in some cases refuting its strong claims, but,
most importantly, drawing attention to the importance of parent–child relationships, not
just the individual characteristics of particular parents (see also Russell, this volume; Parke
this volume).
Studies of changing families, in terms of divorce and remarriage, offer some of the strongest
empirical support that exists for the abstract principles outlined by family systems theo-
rists. Family alliances and coalitions, and the effects of relationships on other relationships,
are thrown into sharp relief in the context of divorce and remarriage. Studies of extended
families and those that adopt communal rearing are also likely to provide data that chal-
lenge and extend current versions of family systems theory. Most importantly, family sys-
tems theory reminds us that families do change, and children do exert influence on other
members of their families.
Finally, the study of different family arrangements in the context of wider social net-
works lends much-needed empirical support to this broader view of influences on social
development. The social networks perspective has often been offered as a critical frame-
work, providing a theoretical alternative to attachment theory (Dunn, 1993; Lewis, 1982;
Nash & Hay, 1993; Rheingold & Eckerman, 1975). As an organizing framework for the
analysis of children’s social development in the context of different family arrangements,
with access to different networks and cultural institutions, these critiques take more solid
form as a developmental theory in its own right.
The study of family arrangements encourages constructive synthesis across these various
theoretical perspectives. The findings call for a unified theory, which would emphasize
emotion and representation; variation across individual families; unique properties of par-
ticular relationships, including those with siblings (Sulloway, 1995) and peers (Harris,
1998) as well as with parents; relationships amongst those relationships; and attention to
the social and cultural context in which families reside. In other words, we require a gen-
eral theory of social development, the like of which has not been seen since the rise of social
learning theory in the mid-twentieth century, when child rearing was assumed to be a
topic of fundamental importance for developmental psychology as a whole. The behaviorist
assumptions of classic social learning theory are no longer adequate to explain social devel-
opment, but a full understanding of the ways in which families affect children’s develop-
ment will certainly require a synthesis of existing mini-theories.
We hope that the next wave of research on children and their families will focus on
mutual activities, beliefs, traditions, and individual ways of dealing with the inevitable
dilemmas of family life in all sorts and conditions of families. We hope to see more empha-
sis on the web of important relationships that surround children and their families. Newer
statistical procedures such as hierarchical linear modeling allow us to study family influ-
ences at different levels of analysis. Thus the theoretical synthesis proposed here is testable.
It is surely time to move beyond the static and methodologically inadequate comparisons
of different family structures that dominated research on this topic in the late twentieth
century.
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Peer Acceptance and Rejection in Childhood 263
Part V
The Peer Group
Studies over the past several decades have emphasized the importance of competent peer
group functioning and healthy interpersonal relationships for current and later life success.
Alternatively, childhood difficulties with peers have been concurrently and longitudinally
related to a host of psychosocial challenges (e.g., Chapter 20; and Rubin, Bukowski, &
Parker, 1998).
Peer acceptance and rejection is an integral aspect of group functioning in childhood.
Research in this area has a rich tradition of empirical inquiry that has illuminated many
interpersonal processes that lend themselves to adaptive or maladaptive peer group func-
tioning. Shelley Hymel, Tracy Vaillancourt, Patricia McDougall, and Peter Renshaw con-
duct a comprehensive historical and methodological overview of sociometry, and consider
a number of sociometric approaches as well as their psychometric adequacy. They go fur-
ther by synthesizing recent research in ways that provide a clear picture of social cognitive,
behavioral, and academic strengths and deficits that often accompany acceptance or rejec-
tion by peers. This information is invaluable to students, researchers, clinicians, and prac-
titioners who are concerned with understanding how children adjust to peer group dynamics.
Although competent peer group functioning is important for successful life adjustment,
close interpersonal relationships with family members, friends, and even enemies can help
children develop self-awareness in ways that can round out social development for good or
for ill. In this context, Willard Hartup and Maurissa Abaecassis overview research that
helps us understand how and why, for example, friends come together on the basis of
attraction and enemies maintain their relations on the basis of mutual antipathy. They
point out how friendship expectations change across early and middle childhood develop-
ment, why enmities between individuals form, and what mechanisms draw children to-
gether and pull them apart. Other intriguing questions are addressed. Is there any evidence
that opposites attract? How do children sort themselves out into friendship dyads? What
patterns of interaction are characteristic of friends and enemies? How are boys and girls
friendships and antipathies similar or different? What are the developmental implications
264 The
Shelley
PeerHymel
Groupet al.
of having friends and enemies? Hartup and Abaecassis treat readers to an enlightening
discussion of these and other issues.
Susan Denham, Maria von Salisch, Tjeert Olthof, Anita Kochanoff, and Sarah Caverly
focus on emotional processes that underlie peer group behavior. They provide a compre-
hensive overview of the research that explicates interdependencies between emotional and
social competence. Broadly speaking, more positive and less negative affect is associated
with more friendly interactions with and acceptance by peers. Denham and colleagues go
beyond this general conclusion and explicate the processes that feed into emotional expres-
sion in terms of how children understand, experience, and regulate emotion in ways that
change across the early and middle childhood years. For example, as children mature,
many learn to adopt an “emotional front” to save face and survive potential peer hostilities.
Of additional interest are insights that Denham and colleagues provide for how parents
can socialize emotional competence through emotion talk, empathy, and nonpunitive regu-
lation strategies. They conclude with suggestions for future research that include a greater
emphasis on cross-cultural comparisons and measurement enhancements.
What about children who withdraw from peer group interaction? Ken Rubin, Kim
Burgess, and Robert Coplan overview a systematic line of theory and research that helps us
not only better define social withdrawal, but also understand how various forms of solitude
carry with them different psychological meanings. Withdrawal is conceptualized and em-
pirically validated as an umbrella construct for reticence, solitary-passive, and solitary-
active forms of solitude, each of which plays out differently in peer group interactions
across early and middle childhood. Biological factors and socialization influences that may
play a role in children isolating themselves from peers are considered in depth. For exam-
ple, children who are prone to solitude may be so, due to physiological mechanisms that
are reflected in EEG asymmetries, vagal tone, and cortisol readings (see also Fox, Henderson,
Rubin, Calkins, & Schmidt, 2001). Insecure attachment relationships, intrusive and over-
protective parenting may serve to maintain and further exacerbate these predispositions in
ways that lead to maladaptive withdrawal from peers. How all this plays out in peer rela-
tions, friendships, and psychological adjustment in the short and long terms is carefully
considered. The emerging picture for how withdrawn children fare is not good, and un-
derscores the need for a greater emphasis on helping children who suffer from this diffi-
culty. Rubin and colleagues conclude by outlining some promising approaches for
intervention and future directions for research in this area.
References
Fox, N. A., Henderson, H. A., Rubin, K. H., Calkins, S. D. & Schmidt, L. A. (2001). Continuity
and discontinuity of behavioral inhibition and exuberance: Psychobiological and behavioral
influences across the first four years of life. Child Development, 72, 1–21.
Rubin, K. H., Bukowski, W., & Parker, J. G. (1998). Peer interactions, relationships, and groups.
In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3: Social, emotional, and personality
14
Peer Acceptance and Rejection in Childhood
Shelley Hymel, Tracy Vaillancourt, Patricia McDougall, and

Peter D. Renshaw
Human beings are social animals. We live in a complex social world in which we juggle a
variety of social roles and operate in a number of different groups simultaneously. We have
evolved a multifaceted system of social, political, and economic interdependence that de-
mands both competitive and cooperative skills and respect for group differences. How do
we develop the competencies necessary for success within social groups? What are the
consequences if we fail to function effectively within the group? This chapter considers one
aspect of group functioning in childhood: peer acceptance and rejection.
Social and developmental psychologists have increasingly acknowledged the critical role
of peer relations for life success (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Goleman, 1995; Harris,
1998; McDougall, Hymel, Vaillancourt, & Mercer, 2001), echoing arguments put for-
ward years ago by Viennese psychiatrist, Jacob L. Moreno, in his classic 1934 work, Who
Shall Survive?. Moreno argued that human behavior must be understood in terms of the
social contexts and groups in which individuals function. His emphasis on group func-
tioning was a departure from the zeitgeist of the 1930s (Bukowski & Cillessen, 1998),
when human behavior was primarily understood in terms of internal mechanisms (e.g.,
psychoanalysis), and the “social environment” was defined in terms of external rewards
and punishments (e.g., behaviorism). However, Renshaw (1981) points out that Moreno’s
work was part of a larger effort to understand children’s social development, including
studies of children’s play (e.g., Parten, 1934) and friendships (e.g., Koch, 1933).
Moreno’s work has contributed in critical ways to our understanding of childhood in-
terpersonal development, and especially to how we study group functioning (see Bukowski
& Cillessen, 1998; Cillessen & Bukowski, 2000a, Renshaw, 1981), with the establishment
of a broad measurement approach called sociometry. Sociometric measures offer a unique
window into how individuals are received within their social world, and the degree to
which they are effectively integrated within a group. The history of sociometry and its
266 Shelley Hymel et al.
methodological issues are the focus of the first part of this chapter. We consider a range of
sociometric approaches, focusing on issues of administration, measurement, and psycho-
metric adequacy. Next, we move from measurement to meaning, as we examine the corre-
lates of peer acceptance and rejection. Finally, we move from meaning to mechanisms,
considering the processes through which peer rejection is causally implicated in long-term
adjustment outcomes. Throughout the chapter, we identify future research directions.
Sociometric Measures
Sociometry involves the measurement of interpersonal attraction among members of a

specified group, providing a means of quantifying information about individuals within
groups. Although peers can (and have) been used as sources of information on behavior
and personality (Landau & Milich, 1990; Terry, 2000), sociometric indices of attraction
are distinct from peer assessments of behavior (Asher & Hymel, 1981; Gronlund, 1959).
This chapter focuses on indices of attraction rather than behavior.
The use of peers as informants in sociometric assessments is advantageous for several
reasons (Asher & Hymel, 1981; Hymel & Rubin, 1985). First, peers provide an “insider”
perspective, based on the perceptions of those who ultimately determine one’s status. As
such, peer evaluations have clear face validity, relative to more “outside” and potentially
limited adult perspectives about what constitutes appropriate peer relations. For instance,
with regard to the predictive utility of peer evaluations, Cowan, Pederson, Babigian, Izzo,
and Trost (1973) found that peer sociometric evaluations predicted later mental health
status better than did adult evaluations. A second advantage is that peer evaluations are
based on varied experiences with a child, and can reflect low frequency but potentially
significant events that contribute to social status and influence within the group. Moreo-
ver, peer evaluations are derived from multiple observers, who have different experiences
and information about an individual child.
Moreno (1934) hypothesized three basic dimensions of interpersonal experience – at-
traction, repulsion, and indifference (see Cillessen & Bukowski, 2000b). These three re-
sponses could be used to reflect two different perspectives – how others view individuals in
the group and how individuals view others in the group. Despite the complexity of Moreno’s
model, subsequent research has focused almost exclusively on how individuals are perceived
by group members. Two different outcomes have been emphasized, one assessing the status
of individuals within the group, and the other mapping group social structures (e.g., net-
work analysis). The former, emphasizing the individual as the unit of analysis, has been far
more prominent than the latter, emphasizing the group as the unit of analysis (see Bukowski
& Cillessen, 1998), and constitutes the focus of this chapter.
Over the years, sociometric studies have emphasized only two of the dimensions pro-
posed by Moreno (1934): attraction and repulsion. Positive peer evaluations assess accept-
ance, while negative peer evaluations assess rejection within the group. Four types of
sociometric evaluations have been used. With nomination methods, participants select group
members according to specified sociometric criteria (e.g., “Who do you like to play with?”).
Alternatively, participants are asked to rank order or to rate others according to specified
criteria (e.g., “How much do you like to play with ____?”). Finally, paired comparison
methods require that participants evaluate all possible pairs of peers (e.g., “Which person
would you rather play with?”). Across methods, peer evaluations are combined in particu-
lar ways to yield summary indices of acceptance, rejection, and/or overall status. Ranking
and paired comparison methods are seldom used, owing primarily to the excessive admin-
istration time required, despite the advantage of ensuring equal consideration of all group
members and providing more reliable sociometric indices, based on a larger number of
data points (see Cohen & Van Tassel, 1978; Vaughn & Waters, 1981). Instead, research-
ers have typically relied on nomination or rating scale procedures, with considerable de-
bate regarding the relative advantages of each (e.g., Hymel, 1983; Hymel & Rubin, 1985;
Landau & Milich, 1990; Rubin et al., 1998; Terry & Coie, 1991).
Nomination measures
Historically and currently, peer acceptance and rejection have been measured most often
using a nomination methodology. Classmates are asked to identify peers in terms of speci-
fied positive or negative criteria. The number or proportion of positive nominations re-
ceived provides an index of attraction or acceptance, whereas the number or proportion of
negative nominations received provides an index of repulsion or rejection within the group.
Self-nominations are typically not permitted or not counted.
Although there are many ways to phrase nomination questions (see Terry, 2000), the
most common forms include direct preference questions (e.g., “Name three classmates you
like most/least”) and task-specific or indirect preference questions (e.g., “Name three class-
mates you like/don’t like to play with/sit next to”). Moreno (1934) strongly advocated for
the use of concrete, task-specific sociometric criteria rather than abstract and multidimen-
sional criteria such as “friendship” or “liking” that reflect different things for different
people, thus resulting in summary measures that are not truly meaningful.
Nomination measures also differ in how responses are indicated by participants. Asking
children to spontaneously name classmates has long been considered problematic in terms
of its demands on children’s memory. Thus, children are usually given a list of all group
members and asked to circle or check off each nominee. With younger, preliterate chil-
dren, researchers have used picture nomination procedures developed by McCandless and
Marshall (1957), using photographs instead of names.
Efforts to refine nomination measures have dominated this literature, with debates re-
garding just what is being assessed and how to categorize individuals in terms of status.
One long-standing debate concerns the use of limited versus unlimited nominations. Should
the number of nominations be restricted or can children nominate as many people as they
wish? Studies in the 1950s and 60s demonstrated little difference between limited versus
unlimited nomination scores (see Terry, 2000), and argued for limited nominations (usu-
ally three to five), based on observations that children typically nominate only a few indi-
viduals, and because data collection and analysis is easier. However, Terry demonstrated
that unlimited nomination data yields sociometric scores with superior distributional prop-
erties (e.g., less skewed, wider range of scores). Thus, limited nominations take less time,
but unlimited nominations are more psychometrically sound.
A second debate concerns the use of weighted versus unweighted scoring procedures. With
weighted scoring, more weight is given to first nominations than subsequent nominations
(e.g., Dunnington, 1957; Hartup, Glazer, & Charlesworth, 1967; Vaughn & Waters,
1981), based on the assumption that first nominations indicate a better friend or a more
extreme enemy. Such an assumption may be unwarranted, since differential weighting is
not indicated in instructions and is undermined by the practice of providing lists of group
members. Given high correlations between weighted and unweighted scores, most subse-
quent studies have relied on less time-consuming, unweighted scores (e.g., Coie, Dodge &
Coppotelli, 1982; Terry & Coie, 1991).
Another debate involves the use of absolute versus probabilistic criteria for determining
status classifications. Moreno (1934) distinguished “isolates” from “stars” on the basis of
whether or not the individual received positive nominations from three or more group
members (see also Gronlund, 1959). Bronfenbrenner (1943, 1944) argued for relative
rather than absolute criteria to account for variations in group size, using statistical,
probabilistic criteria (e.g., a “star” is accepted by peers at a rate greater than chance). Al-
though support for the probability approach continues (e.g., Newcomb & Bukowski, 1983),
few studies utilize statistical probabilities. Proportion scores or standardization procedures
are typically used to account for variations in group size.
Perhaps the most important debate concerns the dimensionality of acceptance and rejec-
tion. Initially, acceptance and rejection scores were thought to be unidimensional – low
scores on one meant high scores on the other. However, studies in the 1960s and 70s
demonstrated that acceptance and rejection scores were only modestly negatively related
(Moore & Updegraff, 1964; Roff, Sells, & Golden, 1972) or unrelated (Hartup et al.,
1967), and were differentially correlated with behavior (e.g., Gronlund & Anderson, 1957;
Hartup et al., 1967). These data were used to support arguments that acceptance and
rejection scores tap different aspects of attraction.
Over the years, the assumption that acceptance and rejection represent two distinct
dimensions led to different approaches to assessing status. Despite arguments for a more
complex, two-dimensional system (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1944), many early studies em-
phasized only the positive dimension of acceptance (e.g., Dunnington, 1957; Northway,
1940; Thompson & Powell, 1951). These were criticized (e.g., Lemann & Solomon, 1952)
for not distinguishing between “rejected” individuals (not accepted and openly rejected)
and “neglected” children (not accepted but not openly rejected). Others proposed single
indices of status based on combinations of acceptance and rejection scores (e.g., acceptance
minus rejection, Hartup et al., 1967). They were criticized for not identifying children
who were less visible, or for whom the peer group was “indifferent” in Moreno’s terms,
although efforts to include the dimension of “indifference” (Lemann & Solomon, 1952),
or “notice” (Dunnington, 1957) were limited. It was Gronlund (1959) who provided the
conceptual basis for currently used status classification schemes that considered acceptance
and rejection as separate dimensions. His system distinguished four groups using absolute
criteria: “stars” (many positive but few or no negative nominations); “rejected” children
(few or no positive but many negative nominations); “neglected” children (few or no posi-
tive or negative nominations); and “controversial” children (many positive and many negative
nominations).
Two decades later, Peery (1979) developed a sociometric taxonomy that considered ac-
ceptance and rejection as well as social visibility. Peery used acceptance and rejection scores
to create two orthogonal dimensions – “social impact” (acceptance plus rejection) and “so-
cial preference” (acceptance minus rejection) – reminiscent of the earlier notions of “notice”
and “status” (e.g., Dunnington, 1957; Hartup et al., 1967). These dimensions were used to
distinguish four groups: popular (above the mean on both impact and preference); isolated
(below the mean on both impact and preference); rejected (above the mean on impact,
below the mean on preference); or amiable (above the mean on preference, below the mean
on impact). Although the system was not used extensively, Peery provided a clearly specified,
two-dimensional model for sociometric classification that reflected all three interpersonal
experiences initially proposed by Moreno (attraction, repulsion, indifference).
Subsequent classification schemes (e.g., Coie et al., 1982; Newcomb & Bukowski, 1983)
followed Peery (1979), by utilizing social preference (i.e., relative degree of liking by peers)
and social impact scores (i.e., visibility within the peer group), as well as acceptance and
rejection, with two notable improvements (Cillessen & Bukowski, 2000b). The newer
schemes allowed for greater differentiation across individuals and for more extreme group
classifications, using well-defined cut-offs based on either standard scores (Coie et al., 1982)
or binomial probabilities (Newcomb & Bukowski, 1983). For example, Coie et al. defined
rejected children as those receiving standardized social preference scores that were one
standard deviation below the mean, standardized rejection scores above the mean, and
standardized acceptance scores below the mean. Newcomb and Bukowski defined rejected
children as those whose rejection scores were greater than would be expected by chance
and whose acceptance scores were at or below the mean of the group. Despite these differ-
ences, most children (88%) are similarly classified across the two schemes (Terry & Coie,
1991), with approximately 12–13% of elementary children classified as popular among
their peers, about 12–13% classified as rejected, 6–7% classified as neglected, and another
6–7% classified as controversial in status. The remaining 58–60% of students are catego-
rized as average in status or unclassifiable.
Recently, Maassen and colleagues (1997, 2000) have revisited the issue of
unidimensionality of acceptance/rejection. They argue that the low correlations observed
between acceptance and rejection are in part attributable to artifacts of measurement, in-
cluding the highly skewed nature of acceptance and rejection scores that reduces the mag-
nitude of the intercorrelation that can be obtained. Maassen et al. further argue that liking
or attraction is unidimensional at the individual level. How one feels about another person
reflects a single continuum of liking–disliking, attraction–repulsion or sympathy–antipa-
thy. Nomination measures artificially trichotomize this single dimension by omitting the
middle range. At the group level, the relation between acceptance and rejection scores
depends on the nature of the group. When groups contain individuals for whom peer
attraction is mixed (controversial) or not intense (neglected), a second dimension of vis-
ibility or impact influences the relation between acceptance and rejection. Furthermore, at
the group level, Bukowski, Sippola, Hoza, and Newcomb (2000) have recently demon-
strated that the relationship between acceptance and rejection is actually linear and nega-
tive, as well as curvilinear. Thus, at high levels of acceptance, virtually all children are low
in rejection, but at low levels of acceptance, one finds a wider range of rejection scores.
Similarly, although highly rejected individuals are typically low in acceptance, low rejected
children are not necessarily high in acceptance.
Rating measures
With rating-scale measures, children are asked to rate their level of preference for each
group member on a Likert-type scale (e.g., “How much do you like to play with ___?”).
With elementary children, a 5-point numeric scale is typically used (e.g., Ladd, 1983),
although 7-point scales have been employed (Maassen et al., 1997). Following McCandless
and Marshall (1957), Asher, Singleton, Tinsley, and Hymel (1979) creatively adapted the
rating procedure for use with younger (preschool) children by having children assign peer
photographs to one of three boxes, distinguished with a happy, neutral, or sad face, in
response to sociometric questions. The average rating received from peers provides an
index of overall liking versus disliking, or popularity versus unpopularity within the group,
with higher scores reflecting greater peer acceptance, liking or popularity, and lower scores
reflecting greater rejection, disliking or unpopularity within the group.
Proponents of the rating approach (e.g., Asher et al., 1979; Asher & Hymel, 1981,
Maassen et al., 1997; Thompson & Powell, 1951) point to the advantage of tapping per-
ceptions of all group members, thereby providing more refined, ordinal measurement in-
formation, and yielding more reliable and stable summary scores, relative to nomination
measures. The primary disadvantage (Terry & Coie, 1991) is that rating scales are
unidimensional and cannot distinguish neglected and rejected children (as identified in
nomination schemes). When distinct “status” groups are needed (e.g., French, 1990; Ladd,
1983), cut-off points are used to divide this single continuum into three groups of children
– popular, average, and rejected – on the basis of the average or standardized ratings re-
ceived (e.g., cut-offs of + one standard deviation, Terry & Coie, 1991). Neglected chil-
dren, as identified by nomination-based schemes, are not distinguished, and have been
shown to receive average peer ratings that span the entire scale (Hymel & Rubin, 1985;
Maassen et al., 1977, 2000). Given evidence that “neglected” children can be liked or
disliked on a rating scale measure, as well as observations that neglected children are often
viewed by peers as likeable (Newcomb, Bukowski, & Pattee, 1993), one might question
whether sociometric neglect, as defined by nomination measures actually reflects a mean-
ingful or consistent sociometric category. The issue of interpersonal indifference, at both
the individual and group level, therefore remains a contentious one.
Are rating and nomination measures tapping the same social constructs? Bukowski et al.
(2000) have shown that rating scale indices of liking/disliking are more highly related to
nomination-based social preference scores than to acceptance scores. However, the number
of highest ratings received from peers is comparable to nomination-based indices of ac-
ceptance, and the number of lowest ratings received is consistent with nomination-based
indices of rejection at both the group (Bukowski et al., 2000) and individual levels (Maassen
et al., 1997). Thus, average sociometric ratings tap the construct of social preference, al-
though both rating scale and nomination data can be used to tap the constructs of accept-
ance and rejection (assessed by number or proportion of highest/lowest ratings and positive/
negative nominations).
Terry and Coie (1991) compared nomination and rating-scale sociometric status classi-
fications of elementary children, noting that the two sociometric approaches identified
similar numbers of students as rejected and popular, with a larger average status group in
the rating system. The correspondence between these classifications was only fair to mod-
erate for popular and rejected children in grades 4–5, with lower estimates observed for
younger, grade 3 students. Nevertheless, several studies indicate that children who are
categorized as rejected on nomination-based classification schemes are also those rated as
highly disliked on rating-scale sociometric measures (e.g., Hymel & Rubin, 1985; Rubin,
Chen, & Hymel, 1993; Rubin, Hymel, Le Mare, & Rowden, 1989).
Until recently, neglected and controversial status categories could only be distinguished
using nomination measures. However, Maassen and colleagues (2000) have developed a
new procedure called “SSrat” for classifying students into the five traditional status groups
(popular, average, rejected, neglected, controversial) using 7-point sociometric ratings.
Specifically, peers are rated on a scale from –3 (extremely disliked) to +3 (extremely liked),
with the midpoint of the scale (0) reflecting neutral judgments. For classification purposes,
ratings of +1 to +3 are used to create acceptance (like most) scores and ratings of –1 to –3
are used to create rejection (like least) scores, with 0 ratings indicating peers who are “not
nominated”. These simplified rating data are then transformed using a probability ap-
proach to classify students into the five traditional status categories. Maassen et al. found
that SSrat status classifications were more stable over a 1-year interval than classifications
based on either the Coie et al. (1982) or the Newcomb and Bukowski (1983) systems.
In terms of prevalence rates, the traditional, unidimensional rating scale identifies about
13–14% of elementary children as popular and about 16% as rejected, with the remaining
70% of students classified as average in status (Terry & Coie, 1991, using mean + one
standard deviation criteria for these categories). With the more recent, 5-category rating-
scale system, Maassen et al. (2000) identified about 10–15% of children as popular, 13–
17% as rejected, 0–1% as controversial, 1–5% as neglected, and 67–70% as average in two
samples of elementary children. Relative to nomination-based classifications, Maassen et
al.’s system identifies proportionately more popular and rejected children and fewer ne-
glected and controversial children, although these numbers vary depending on the cut-off
criteria employed.
Debates regarding the relative utility of nomination versus rating scale approaches have
dominated the sociometric literature for decades (e.g., Asher & Hymel, 1981; Hymel &
Rubin, 1985; Landau & Milich, 1990; Rubin et al., 1998; Terry & Coie, 1991; Maassen
et al., 2000). Although these debates have been largely methodological, issues regarding
how individuals experience their relationships with others remain. Indeed, it is still not
entirely clear whether interpersonal experience reflects a single continuum of liking–dislik-
ing, sympathy–antipathy (Maassen et al., 1997, 2000), or a more complex triangular model
of attraction, repulsion, and indifference (Moreno, 1934). Future theoretical as well as
empirical and methodological studies will likely continue to address these fundamental
issues.
Psychometric adequacy
Evaluations of the psychometric adequacy of sociometric measures has been surprisingly

limited within this literature, owing in part to difficulties separating issues of measurement
from characteristics of the phenomenon being measured. As Terry (2000) points out, the
classic criteria used to assess psychometric adequacy – reliability and validity – are prob-
lematic in evaluating measures of acceptance and rejection. Sociometric studies have fo-
cused primarily on test–retest reliability, assessing the short-term as well as long-term stability
of peer assessments of status based, albeit implicitly, on the assumption that group status is
a rather stable, trait-like characteristic. If groups are dynamic and changing, however, such
measures reflect the stability of the group rather than the reliability of the measurement.
Nevertheless, some demonstration of stability is necessary if the sociometric construct is to
be useful in prediction (see Terry, 2000). The assessment of reliability in terms of internal
consistency is also problematic, since sociometric judgments across members of a group
are not expected to be consistent, especially in the case of some status groups (e.g., contro-
versial students).
Despite these concerns, acceptance and rejection scores (at the group level) have been
shown to be fairly stable over time for elementary school age children. Over 6 months,
Asher and Dodge (1986) reported test–retest correlations of .55 for acceptance and .65
for rejection scores, for both nomination and rating measures. Over 2 years, Terry and
Coie (1991) reported test–retest correlations of .45 for acceptance, .32 for rejection, .46
for social preference and .29 for social impact scores, and .46 for average ratings. Over a 3-
year period (grades 3–6), Roff et al. (1972) reported test–retest correlations of .42 for
acceptance, .34 for rejection, and .45 for social preference scores, and Hymel, Rubin,
Rowden, and Le Mare (1990) reported correlations of .56 for peer ratings from age 8 to
11 (grades 2–5). Among preschool children, sociometric indices have been shown to be
somewhat less reliable over even shorter time periods, with higher test–retest correlations
reported for rating than nomination measures (see Hymel, 1983; Wu, Hart, Draper, &
Olsen, 2001). For example, over an 8-week period, Wu et al. reported test–retest correla-
tions of .47 for acceptance, .44 for rejection, and .64 for rating-scale scores among
preschoolers (3–6 years).
With regard to sociometric categories, Cillessen, Bukowski, and Haselager (2000) re-
viewed 12 studies examining stability over periods of 1 month to 4 years, in children
ranging from preschool to grade 12. Not surprisingly, the stability of status classifications
was found to decrease as test–retest intervals increased. Moderate stability was evident over
1–3 months, among middle to late elementary age children (grades 4–6). Sociometric
classifications were less stable over intervals of 4 months to 4 years. For example, Coie and
Dodge (1983) reported that 41% of elementary students maintained their status over 1
year, but only 23% maintained their status classification over 4 years. The stability of
status classifications also varies across status groups, with average, popular, and rejected
status categories showing greater stability than controversial and neglected children (Cillessen
et al., 2000).
Another consideration is the degree to which peer evaluations are consistent with assess-
ments by others, providing information on inter-rater reliability and/or concurrent valid-
ity. Studies of preschool and elementary children have consistently demonstrated moderate
correspondence between peer and teacher sociometric evaluations, with coefficients rang-
ing from .20 to .70 across studies (see Landau & Milich, 1990; Wu et al., 2001 for re-
views). Thus, peer and teacher sociometric evaluations tap both similar and unique aspects
of interpersonal experience (Wu et al., 2001), with some but not complete overlap be-
tween teacher and peer perceptions of popularity and status. The meaning of these modest
relationships must be considered carefully, however, given arguments that peers provide a
more face-valid, “insider” perspective on group social functioning.
Inter-rater agreement has also been considered by examining the consistency of socio-
metric assessments derived from same-sex versus opposite-sex peers within the same group.
Same- and opposite-sex sociometric evaluations have been found to be very highly corre-
lated for “like most” and “like least” nominations, social preference, and social impact
scores, as well as average peer ratings (Asher & Hymel, 1981; Terry & Coie, 1991). Moreo-
ver, Terry and Coie found excellent agreement across the two voting populations for each
of the five status groups (i.e., rejected, neglected, popular, controversial, and average stu-
dents). Although there is some evidence that children tend to nominate and/or rate same-
sex peers more favorably (e.g., Asher & Dodge, 1986; Hartup, 1983), the strong
correspondence between same- and opposite-sex evaluations suggests that elementary school
boys and girls hold quite similar perceptions of their peers. Thus, there may be no advan-
tage to the more time-consuming practice of including both same-sex and opposite-sex
sociometric evaluations at the elementary level.
Peer group context
To date, researchers have usually evaluated sociometric status within the classroom and
school context, since classrooms represent a primary socialization group during childhood
that can be conveniently accessed. However, the classroom and school context provides a
narrow view of childhood social relations, and reflects neither the breadth nor the dynamic
nature of children’s peer interactions (e.g., Internet contacts, neighborhood, extracurricu-
lar groups, etc.) nor the potential compensatory role of relationships with adults, siblings
(e.g., East & Rook, 1992) or high-quality friendships (Parker & Asher, 1993). Considera-
tion of a more diverse range of social groups becomes increasingly important with age, as
reference groups expand rapidly beyond the school context during adolescence (e.g., Brown,
1990). This seems an important consideration in future sociometric research.
Within the classroom context, however, it is critical that sociometric evaluations be
based on an adequate sampling of peer group members, that is, on an adequate “participa-
tion rate.” Crick and Ladd (1989) used computer simulations to demonstrate that the
accuracy of sociometric measures becomes compromised as the proportion of peer group
members who provide ratings declines. Their findings suggest that sociometric evaluations
should be based on data obtained from at least 75% of the group members to preserve a
reasonable degree of accuracy. It is also important to recognize that participation rates are
typically nonrandom, and are often tied to issues of informed consent. Comparisons of
students who did and did not receive parent consent for participation in sociometric stud-
ies have shown that nonparticipants are often viewed more negatively by teachers and
peers in terms of social behavior, academic performance, and/or popularity (see Iverson &
Cook, 1994; Noll, Zeller, Vannatta, Bukowski, & Davies, 1997). Thus, high rates of
participation are required to increase the accuracy and minimize potential biases in socio-
metric evaluations (see Iverson & Cook, 1994, for effective strategies).
Ethical considerations
Some educators, parents, researchers, and ethics review committees question the use of
sociometric measures, concerned that asking children to negatively evaluate peers will im-
plicitly or explicitly sanction saying harmful things about others or contribute to poor
treatment within the group (Asher & Hymel, 1986; Foster & Ritchey, 1979; Landau &
Milich, 1990). Several studies have demonstrated that completion of sociometric assess-
ments does not increase negative interactions with less accepted peers, and does not con-
tribute to social withdrawal or to feelings of loneliness and unhappiness following testing.
Indeed, most students report positive reactions to sociometric tasks (see Iverson, Barton,
& Iverson, 1997 for a review).
Although encouraging, these results do not eliminate concerns regarding potential risk,
as administration procedures vary widely across researchers. Several practices have been
recommended to minimize potential negative effects (Asher & Hymel, 1986; Bell-Dolan
& Wessler, 1994; Landau & Milich, 1990), including explicit emphasis on confidentiality
in instructions, optimal scheduling (i.e., not prior to unstructured [recess] periods, embed-
ded within other structured, distracter activities), and planned debriefing and follow-ups
with participants. Others have reduced negative effects by using unlimited nominations,
allowing children to identify friends outside the classroom if they had no friends in class,
carefully wording negative criteria (e.g., “least preferred” or “rather not play with” rather
than “disliked”), and/or avoiding negative nominations altogether. Rating scales, allowing
children to evaluate peers along a continuum, are often seen as more ethically defensible, as
they do not require children to identify peers according to negative criteria, although nega-
tive ratings are possible. Accordingly, Asher and Dodge (1986) developed procedures for
combining positive nomination and rating-scale data to identify rejected and neglected
children, using low ratings in lieu of negative nominations. Until recently (Maassen et al.,
2000, SSrat system), this was the only alternative to negative nominations that identified
both neglected and rejected children (Terry & Coie, 1991).
A second ethical consideration is whether or not to include “nonparticipants,” for whom
parental consent or self assent has not been received, on sociometric lists. Some interpret
negative consent as complete noninvolvement, both as an evaluator and as a person who is
evaluated. For others, negative consent is interpreted as not allowing the child to complete
the sociometric questionnaire, with the names of “nonparticipants” retained as potential
peers to be rated or nominated. As Bell-Dolan and Wessler (1994) suggest, being evaluated
by peers may be as much of a concern as evaluating peers. Researchers must continue to
seriously consider the ethical issues involved in sociometric research and be vigilant regard-
ing the appropriateness of their procedures.
Concurrent Correlates
Numerous studies have examined the correlates of acceptance and rejection (see Asher &
Coie, 1990; Cillessen & Bellmore, this volume; Newcomb et al., 1993; Rubin, Bukowski,
& Parker., 1998) in order to determine what it means to be popular, rejected, controver-
sial, or neglected within the peer group. In a large-scale meta-analysis, Newcomb et al.
(1993) identified four major areas that distinguish accepted and rejected children: aggres-
sion, withdrawal, sociability, and cognitive skills. Accepted children exhibit more sociable
and less withdrawn and aggressive behavior, as well as greater cognitive competence than
rejected children. The primary focus in the literature, however, has been on the correlates
of peer rejection.
Rejected status is associated with a number of deficits (see McDougall et al., 2001;
Rubin et al., 1998), including social-cognitive skills (poor sociability, limited perspective-
taking, poor communication skills), and academic performance (low achievement, poor
school adjustment). Researchers have also linked peer rejection to lower socioeconomic
status (e.g., Pettit, Clawson, Dodge, & Bates, 1996) and physical unattractiveness (e.g.,
Coie et al., 1982). However, the two most consistent correlates of peer rejection are aggres-
sive and withdrawn behavior. These have been viewed as two distinct pathways leading to
peer rejection (Rubin, LeMare, & Lollis, 1990) and have been used to distinguish sub-
groups of rejected children (see Boivin, Hymel, & Bukowski, 1995). About 40–50% of
rejected children are behaviorally aggressive, and about 10–20% are behaviorally with-
drawn (Rubin et al., 1998).
Links between peer rejection and aggressive as well as withdrawn behavior are robust,
but do appear to be influenced by the behavioral norms of the peer group in which they are
studied. For instance, the link between social withdrawal and peer rejection is not evident
during the preschool years (Rubin, 1982), when withdrawn behavior is neither salient nor
unusual. However, withdrawal is linked to peer rejection during the elementary years (e.g.,
Hymel & Rubin, 1985; Rubin, Hymel, & Mills, 1989), as withdrawal becomes increas-
ingly nonnormative with age (Younger, Gentile, & Burgess, 1993; see Rubin et al., 1998).
Further, although associations between rejection and aggression are common, there is evi-
dence that some aggressive children enjoy elevated peer acceptance in some settings (e.g.,
Dodge, Coie, Pettit, & Price, 1990; Vaillancourt, 2001). Also, links between aggression
and peer rejection are less likely in classrooms where aggression is normative and more
likely in classrooms where aggression is rare (Boivin, Dodge, & Coie, 1995; Stormshak et
al., 1999; Wright, Giamarino, & Parad, 1986). These findings underscore the need to
consider mitigating factors like age and peer group context before concluding that all re-
jected children are aggressive or withdrawn. The relationship between social behavior and
rejected status is more complicated than is often assumed.
Just as peer rejection is consistently associated with a plethora of unappealing character-
istics, peer acceptance (sociometric popularity) is typically associated with desirable quali-
ties (see Newcomb et al., 1993; Rubin et al., 1998). Accepted children are more sociable,
helpful, and cooperative than less accepted children, and display better leadership, per-
spective-taking, and problem-solving skills. Also, highly accepted individuals are perceived
by peers to possess greater assets and competencies including being athletic, attractive,
rich, stylish, etc. (Vaillancourt, 2001).
Far less is known about the correlates of controversial and neglected status, owing pri-
marily to the fact that these categories are rather rare and unstable, requiring large samples
to identify them in adequate numbers (see Rubin et al., 1998). The available evidence
indicates that controversial children represent a behavioral mélange of popular and
rejected children in that they are described as both highly sociable and highly aggressive. In
fact, controversial children have been found to be more aggressive than rejected children
(e.g., Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariepy, 1988; Coie & Dodge, 1988), and to
be perceived as more popular (dominant, visible) than popular children (e.g., Parkhurst &
Hopmeyer, 1998). Neglected children appear to be less sociable, less aggressive, less dis-
ruptive, and less interactive than their average status peers (e.g., see Newcomb et al., 1993;
Rubin et al.,1998). Although neglected status has been associated with withdrawn behavior
in some (e.g., Coie & Kupersmidt, 1983; Coie & Dodge, 1988; Dodge et al., 1982), but
not all studies (e.g., Coie et al., 1982; Rubin et al., 1993), social withdrawal is generally
viewed as a characteristic of peer rejection, rather than neglect.
In summary, researchers have delineated the behavioral profiles of rejected and accepted
children, describing what it typically means to be part of these two sociometric groups.
More recent (and future) research is beginning to uncover a more complex picture in
which the links between peer rejection and various characteristics differ as a function of age
and group norms or priorities. The characteristics of controversial and neglected children
are less clear, and this remains an important question for future research. Our knowledge
of the correlates of status lends strong support to the concurrent validity of sociometric
measures (at least for indices of acceptance and rejection), but tells us little about the
processes through which children come to achieve their status and the mechanisms through
which status contributes to later adjustment. The predictive utility of sociometric indices is
considered next.
Mechanisms and Processes: Long-Term Outcomes
Although the present volume focuses on childhood, it is important to understand the

implications of early peer experiences for later adjustment, extending into adolescence and
adulthood. Research on the long-term correlates of social status has demonstrated predic-
tive links between early peer rejection and three major adjustment outcomes (see McDougall
et al., 2001): academic difficulties, internalizing problems (loneliness, low self-esteem, de-
pression), and externalizing problems (aggression, acting-out behavior, criminality). Ques-
tions remain, however, regarding whether status is a cause or simply a consequence of
adjustment and behavior.
Research on the consequences of one’s status within the peer group has focused largely on
rejected children and has commonly followed a theoretical sequence first articulated by Parker
and Asher (1987). In this causal sequence, children who demonstrate deviant or negative
social behavior (e.g., aggression and/or withdrawal) are predisposed to experience difficult
peer relationships (rejection). Rejection, in turn, deprives them of the positive peer socialization
experiences that help build adaptive social skills, and places them at risk for negative peer
experiences including victimization and involvement with deviant peers (e.g., gangs) (see
also Parker, Rubin, Price, & DeRosier, 1995). What evidence is there to support this causal
sequence? Longitudinal research reveals strong support for the idea that the combination of
negative or deviant social behavior and peer rejection can lead to quite damaging outcomes,
although this pattern seems to vary somewhat depending on the outcome explored.
Academic outcomes
Early peer rejection has been linked to subsequent school difficulties, including grade re-
tention, absenteeism, truancy, and school dropout (see Hymel, Comfort, Schonert-Reichl,
& McDougall, 1996; McDougall et al., 2001). The causal nature of these long-term links
is not always clear. For example, although peer rejection in childhood predicts early school
leaving, there is no evidence that students are rejected at the time they drop out. Here, it
appears that social behavior works in concert with peer rejection in contributing to aca-
demic difficulties. Specifically, students who are both aggressive and rejected seem to be at
greatest risk for early school leaving (e.g., Cairns, Cairns, & Neckerman, 1989, Kupersmidt
& Coie, 1990). Hymel et al. (1996) propose that these aggressive-rejected students are
more likely to affiliate with what many would characterize as the “wrong” peer group, who
place less value on academic pursuits and who themselves may be at risk for drop out.
Thus, aggressive students who are rejected are effectively deprived of the positive socialization
experiences that cultivate both the skills and the desire to remain in school, and gradually
disengage from the school milieu, eventually dropping out. Future research is needed to
verify the role of deviant socialization as a mechanism in the causal sequence for school
dropout.
Externalizing problems
The role of peer rejection in the prediction of externalizing problems has been somewhat
confusing (see McDougall et al., 2001). Although studies have shown that being poorly
accepted in childhood contributes directly to later delinquency and criminality (e.g., Parker
& Asher, 1987; Kupersmidt, Burchinal, & Patterson, 1995), other research suggests that it
is aggressive behavior (rather than rejection) that predicts subsequent aggression and anti-
social behavior (e.g., Kupersmidt et al., 1995; Kupersmidt & Coie, 1990). Still others
indicate that it is the combination of aggression and rejection that most strongly predicts
later externalizing difficulties like conduct problems (e.g., Bierman & Wargo, 1995), at
least for boys (e.g., Coie, Terry, Lenox, Lochman, & Hyman, 1995). Within the context
of our causal sequence, there is some converging evidence for the path linking aggressive
behavior and difficult peer relationships to long-term externalizing problems, although
peer rejection appears to play an indirect role. In particular, Patterson, Capaldi, and Bank
(1991) argue that when individuals are rejected by their peers, they are more likely to
become affiliated with deviant peer groups, which increases their risk of externalizing prob-
lems (e.g., delinquency, acting out). As in the case of academic outcomes, then, the nega-
tive impact of peer rejection depends in part on whether the rejected child is exposed to
deviant socialization experiences. Preliminary findings support this contention (e.g., French,
Conrad, & Turner, 1995), although further research is needed before definitive conclu-
sions can be reached.
Internalizing problems
There is no shortage of research indicating that both withdrawn behavior and peer rejec-
tion are important predictors of subsequent internalizing problems (see McDougall et al.,
2001), including loneliness (Renshaw & Brown, 1993) and depression (Boivin et al., 1995,
1997). The links between withdrawal, rejection, and later internalizing difficulties, how-
ever, are complex, mediated in part by negative peer experiences as well as how the indi-
vidual feels about his/her social situation. Specifically, Boivin et al. documented that the
pathway from withdrawn behavior and rejected status to subsequent depression was strongest
when children were not only rejected but also victimized by their peers. Moreover, the
impact of negative peer experiences on depression held true only for those children who
felt lonely and dissatisfied with their social circumstances. Alongside socialization experi-
ences, then, children’s view of their own social circumstances might help to explain the
mechanisms by which social behavior and peer rejection contributes to internalizing prob-
lems (see also Valas & Sletta, 1996). The potential significance of self-perceptions brings
us back to Moreno’s initial proposal that it is important to consider both the perspective of
the individual as well as the perspective of the group. As Parker et al. (1995) point out, a
more complete examination of mechanisms and processes involving peer acceptance/rejec-
tion requires that we track the connections between the environment (i.e., poor peer rela-
tionships) and characteristics of the child (e.g., negative social cognitions, maladaptive
behavior) across time.
Conclusions
Research on childhood peer acceptance and rejection has a long and rich history, dating
back to the early writings of Moreno in 1934. The primary focus, however, has been on
peer-group perceptions of the child, operationalized in terms of summary sociometric scores
or status categories quantifying the degree to which children are accepted or rejected within
the peer group. Although much of this literature has focused on methodological issues,
these studies have contributed importantly to our understanding of social development
and the degree to which peer socialization and preference contributes to adjustment, both
concurrently and in later life.
Over the years, progress in this area has been and will continue to be linked to the
development of new statistical and analytical approaches that extend the range of possible
empirical inquiries (see Rubin et al., 1998 for a discussion). In addition, however, future
research will continue to echo theoretical arguments made by Moreno over 60 years ago.
Like Bukowski and Cillessen (1998; Cillessen & Bukowski, 2000), we acknowledge that
much of the research on acceptance and rejection has been and will continue to be in-
spired, directly or indirectly, by Moreno’s early formulations about the nature of individu-
als and groups. Two important future directions are highlighted in this regard. First, our
primary emphasis to date has been on how the group perceives the individual, using peer-
derived indices of acceptance and rejection. As Johnson and colleagues (1991, 1994) point
out, neither nomination nor rating approaches are adequate in that they fail to consider
the more complex structure of the peer group in which rejected children may occupy very
different levels of integration and influence within the social network. We have only begun
to explore the complexities of the larger social network, although the measurement tools
for such an exploration now exist (e.g., see Cairns, Xie, & Leung, 1998; Kindermann,
1998). Second, despite Moreno’s (1934) suggestions for multiple perspectives on group
functioning, much of our research to date has considered the perceptions of the group,
rather than perceptions of the individual. However, recent recognition of the importance
of the child’s perspective on his/her own group functioning and social status (see McDougall
et al., 2001), as well as recent advances in theory and measurement of self-perceptions (see
Cillessen & Bellmore, 1999; Hymel, LeMare, Ditner & Woody, 1999; Kupersmidt,
Buchele, Voegler, & Sedikides, 1996) now set the stage for a new focus in future research
within this area.
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Friends and Enemies 285
15
Friends and Enemies
Willard W. Hartup and Maurissa Abecassis
Relationships are the contexts in which our social selves originate. Social referencing, emo-
tional regulation, and language emerge in relationships with family members, friends, and
even enemies. Within these contexts, self-awareness emerges along with a variety of atti-
tudes and skills that carry over into other relationships.
Close relationships are usually portrayed by social scientists with an emphasis on har-
mony, on the one hand, and disharmony, on the other. At one and the same time, how-
ever, relationships can be dark as well as bright, constricting as well as actualizing, and
constitute both developmental risk and developmental protection. Most relationships have
dark sides, and developmental impact is determined by the manner in which these darker
elements are intertwined with brighter ones. Other relationships are characterized almost
exclusively in terms of hatred, fear, anxiety, aversion, and nonsupportiveness. Although
empirical studies are rare, recent work shows that these “negative” relationships are also
developmentally significant – by middle childhood if not before.
Friends and enemies, examined together, provide an opportunity to better understand
the crosscurrents existing in children’s social networks. On the one hand, friends come
together and maintain their relationships on the basis of attraction (liking). Attraction
stems from common ground and the expectation that cost–benefit ratios across social ex-
changes will be generally favorable. On the other hand, enemies maintain their relations
with one another on the basis of antipathy (disliking). Enmities may derive from bullying
and aggression, contractual violations, and expectations that cost–benefit ratios in the so-
cial exchange will be unfavorable. Relatively little is known, however, about similarities
and differences between enemies as contrasted with friends, distinctive modes of interac-
tion, and the adaptational significance of mutual antipathies as contrasted with mutual
attractions. Nevertheless, these two types of relationships are brought together in this chapter
based on the argument that, within children’s social networks, darker relationships co-
exist with brighter ones and developmental outcomes derive from both.
286 Willard W. Hartup & Maurissa Abecassis
We believe that the state of knowledge in these fields can be most clearly described by
comparing these relationships with respect to the following issues: (a) children’s expecta-
tions about friends and enemies and the social provisions they associate with them; (b)
relationship formation; (c) the incidence of friends and enemies in children’s experience at
various ages; (d) similarities (homophilies) between friends and between enemies; (e) dis-
tinctive patterns of social interaction associated with these relationships; (f) correlates and
consequences of having friends and having enemies, respectively; (g) characteristics of chil-
dren’s friends and enemies and their developmental implications; and (h) socioemotional
qualities among friendships and among enmities, along with their developmental signifi-
cance. One note: The terms “enemies” and “mutual antipathies” are used interchangeably
in this chapter even though we recognize that the latter construct is more inclusive than the
former. Future studies may well demonstrate that these terms should be used more pre-
cisely.
Relationship Expectations
Friends
The friendship expectations of younger and older children are both similar and different.
The most striking similarities involve the centrality of reciprocity and mutuality in the mean-
ing structure. Friends are not described by children as abiding by equivalence norms, in
the sense that resource exchanges must be exactly equal or that one individual’s behavior
must match the other’s. Nevertheless, interviews with children show that giving and taking
in a broad sense (“symmetrical reciprocity”) are emphasized in friendship expectations at
all ages (Hartup & Stevens, 1997; Youniss, 1980). Even so, preschool-aged children de-
scribe their friends in terms of concrete reciprocities (“We play ”); primary-school children
describe their friends in terms of loyalty, trustworthiness, and time spent together; and
preadolescents emphasize sympathy, self-disclosure, and other aspects of social intimacy
(Bigelow, 1977). The cognitive representations of friendships thus undergo extensive change
during childhood even though the underlying meaning structure remains the same. Stated
another way, continuity marks the friendship “deep structure” but discontinuity its “sur-
face structure” (Chomsky, 1965).
Some of the age changes in friendship expectations reflect increases in the number of
psychological constructs children use to describe their friends, their greater complexity,
and a re-organization of information and ideas; that is, these changes reflect general changes
in cognitive development (Livesley & Bromley, 1973). Changes in friendship expectations
may also reflect changes in the developmental tasks that confront children as they grow
older. Young children expect their friends to behave in ways that are consistent with their
own struggles in mastering new social skills, especially cooperation and conflict manage-
ment. Older children’s concerns, however, shift to intimacy, identity, sensitivity to the
needs of others, and what it takes to keep relationships going (Hartup & Stevens, 1997).
Both these continuities and discontinuities demonstrate how friendships support the de-
velopment of social understanding and social skill from early childhood into adolescence.
Children’s friendship expectations are different from their expectations about other re-
lationships. Preschool children, for example, recognize the existence of differences in social
power between themselves and their parents but not between themselves and their friends;
they also expect friends to be less likely to give them help than parents. At the same time,
young children expect conflict to occur more frequently with siblings than with either
parents or friends (Gleason, 1998). Older children make similar differentiations: Friend-
ships are understood by school-aged children to provide companionship and intimacy
more frequently than parent–child relationships, but compliance and control less frequently.
Nurturance, in general, is understood by older children to be provided by both friends and
parents; overt affection, however, less frequently by friends. Power sharing continues to be
seen by school-aged children as a hallmark of relations between friends – not relationships
between children and adults (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985). Differentiation between friend-
ships and other close relationships is thus established in early childhood and remains rela-
tively constant thereafter. Elaborations in the way children think about these relationships
occur as children grow older, but relationship schemas emerge early and their deep struc-
tures are relatively stable across time (Gleason, 1998).
Enemies
Enemies are individuals who mutually dislike one another and perceive one another as
threats to desired goals (Abecassis, 1998). Sometimes, a child regards another child as an
enemy when this attitude is not reciprocated. Nothing, however, is known about chil-
dren’s use of the word “enemy” – for example, when it enters the working vocabulary and
what meanings are attached to it. Although children use the word “friend” by the fourth
year, anecdotal evidence suggests that the word “enemy” is not used as soon. Investigators
who are experienced in sociometric testing know that young children understand what it
means to “not like” somebody; disliking someone, however, is a necessary, but not suffi-
cient criterion for identifying that person as an enemy.
The reasons given by young children for not liking someone are similar to those given
by older ones, the main reason being aggressiveness (Hayes, Gershman, & Bolin, 1980;
Moore, 1967). Engaging in rule violations and other aberrant behavior are also mentioned,
again by both preschool children and preadolescents (preadolescent boys only since girls at
that age have not been studied). Older boys also dislike classmates who are insincere and
not helpful (Hayes, Gershman, & Halteman, 1996). Such conditions suggest that enmity
may be based on aggression or inappropriate behavior directed from one child to another
but this extrapolation needs to be made cautiously. Enmities, especially mutual ones, may
have intense affects associated with them (e.g., hatred) and complex expectations (that
one’s enemy is a threat to obtaining one’s goals). Beyond these observations, child develop-
ment research tells us nothing about the social expectations associated with either mutual
enmities or mutual antipathies among preschool- or school-aged children.
Becoming Friends and Becoming Enemies
Friends
Friendship formation begins with “propinquity,” that is, the condition that children can-
not become friends if they never meet. Consequently, the social forces that bring two
children together in the same place at the same time need to be taken into account in any
workable theory of friendship formation: for example, what draws children and their fami-
lies to the same neighborhoods, the same schools, and the same playgrounds.
Although relatively little is known about first encounters, the available evidence indi-
cates that these initial meetings are largely devoted to establishing common ground (or its
absence). Social interaction is mostly driven by the activities or tasks at hand; the social
exchange is thus task constrained. Emotionally speaking, relationships are superficial in
these early stages. As children begin to “hit it off,” a shift occurs from an ego-centered to a
relationship-centered orientation. Those who get along best show connected communica-
tion, successful conflict management, attention to similarities between themselves, and
self-disclosure (Gottman, 1983). Relationships, however, are not very stable in this “build-
up” stage: Should children not maintain common interests, they must exchange relevant
information again, much as they did during their first encounters. Over the long term,
friendships are maintained largely through continued validation of common interests and
by commitment to the relationship that older children believe friends are obliged to have.
Not much is known, however, about commitment and its role in children’s social rela-
tions.
Children terminate their friendships for many reasons although disagreements, fights,
and commitment violations are less salient than one might expect. Friendships are known
to be less stable when the “friendship talk” of the individual children is negative and
nonsupportive (Berndt & Perry, 1986). On many occasions children simply drift apart
(and sometimes regret it) but cannot explain exactly why. Observations in one first-grade
classroom demonstrated that friendships ceased mainly because children stopped interact-
ing; neither emotional outbursts nor arguments foreshadowed these endings, nor did the
children make much fuss (Rizzo, 1989).
Enemies
The events that establish mutual antipathies among children are unclear. Survey studies
among adults (Wiseman & Duck, 1995) suggest that enmities are unanticipated and often
come as a surprise. Sometimes, an aura occurs (bad “vibes,” slights, sneers) but some kind
of hostile action, viewed as malicious, is the inciting incident that most frequently estab-
lishes two individuals as enemies. Enmities carry relatively few social expectations because
role responsibilities do not exist in the same sense as in friendship relations. Control issues
(including threats to one’s rights and privileges) are associated with relationship animosi-
ties among many adults.
Some theorizing suggests that the prehistories of enemy relationships are quite varied:
Some involve falling away from a friendship (see above), some involve dispositional or
personality clashes, some are based in encounters between bullies and victims, and some
stem from scapegoating (Abecassis, 1998). Although no one knows the extent to which
these prehistories are involved in generating enmities between children, each undoubtedly
is relevant.
Incidence
Friends
Social preferences can be identified among toddlers (Howes, 1983), but these relationships
do not carry the same nuances evinced among older children. By 4 years of age, about three
quarters of children are involved in mutual friendships as indicated by time spent together,
cooperation and reciprocities in social interaction, and various affective markers (Hinde,
Titmus, Easton, & Tamplin, 1985; Howes, 1983). Observations, teachers’ reports, and
maternal interviews – singly or in combination – have been used to arrive at these esti-
mates. Friendship frequencies rise only slightly through middle childhood (to about 85%).
Children who have friends at one age are likely to have them at other ages (Elicker, Englund,
& Sroufe, 1992) thus illustrating an important continuity in childhood social relations.
Friendship networks are relatively small among preschool children, averaging 1.7 for
boys and 0.9 for girls (Hartup, Laursen, Stewart, & Eastenson, 1988) increasing to 3.0–
5.0 during middle childhood, depending on whether one includes unreciprocated choices
as well as reciprocated ones (Hallinan, 1980). Time spent with friends increases through
the school years, too, rising to its peak (29% of time awake) in adolescence.
The vast majority of children’s friendships are gender concordant. Opposite-sex friend-
ships occur in relatively small numbers, even among preschoolers. The proportion of boys
and girls who have friends does not differ – among either younger or older children –
although friendship networks are likely to be somewhat smaller among girls than among
boys (Eder & Hallinan, 1978).
Enemies
More children have friends than enemies. Observational studies have failed to establish
that preschool-aged children fight or quarrel disproportionately with certain classmates.
To the contrary, aggressive young children tend to “spread it around” rather than quarrel
or fight consistently with the same partners (Dawe, 1934; Ross & Conant, 1992). Mutual
antipathies, identified by asking children to name other children “whom you dislike more
than anyone else,” are also rare among young children. In one investigation (Hayes et al.,
1980), 59 of the 78 children who were interviewed identified children that they disliked,
but mutual antipathies were revealed in only two instances, suggesting either that these
nominations are not reliable or that these relationships are very uncommon among young
children.
This situation changes during middle childhood. Same-sex mutual antipathies were stud-
ied among 8-year-old school children by Hembree and Vandell (2000), with the results
revealing that 65% were involved in at least one (half of these in more than one). Mutual
antipathies were identified by comparing children’s nominations lists of three same-sex
classmates whom “you would not like to play with.” Although significant concordance was
observed between sociometric status and the prevalence of these antipathies, involvement
in these relationships occurred in all sociometric groups: Popular children had fewer mu-
tual antipathies (32%) than neglected (39%), average (70%), rejected (95%), or contro-
versial children (100%). Sex differences were not reported nor the incidence of mixed-sex
antipathies.
Similar data were obtained with 10 and 14 year olds, using sociometric nominations
requiring the children to list three classmates “whom you do not like at all” (Abecassis,
Hartup, Haselager, Scholte, & Van Lieshout, 2001). Prevalence rates were established
separately for the two sexes and separately for same- and mixed-sex mutual antipathies. In
this instance, same-sex mutual antipathies were identified for 9% of the school-aged girls
but 25% of the boys, and for 14% of the adolescent girls and 20% of the adolescent boys.
Mixed-sex antipathies, however, were identified for 17% and 16% of the school-aged boys
and girls, respectively, and for 15% and 14% of young adolescent girls and boys, respec-
tively. Comparisons across these studies are difficult because a more conservative socio-
metric criterion was used with the older children and the adolescents (Abecassis et al.,
2001) than was used earlier with the 8 year olds (Hembree & Vandell, 2000). Moreover,
the children differed in country of residence (the Netherlands, and the United States,
respectively) as well as chronological age. Since these are the only studies available, it is
impossible to conclude now whether or not the incidence of mutual antipathies changes
with age.
Similarities Between Friends and Between Enemies
Friends
Since common ground is necessary for the formation and maintenance of friendships from
early childhood onwards (Gottman, 1983), friends can be expected to be similar to one
another in many ways. The weight of the evidence supports this thesis, beginning in early
childhood and extending through the school-aged years. Friends are more concordant
than nonfriends in age, gender, ethnicity, and sociometric status. Behavioral concordances
occur, too, although not as extensively among preschool-aged children as among their
school-aged counterparts. Even so, research shows that the probability that two young
children will be friends varies directly as a function of the number of behavioral attributes
they share (Kupersmidt, DeRosier, & Patterson, 1995). And, among 8 year olds, initially
strangers to one another, greater attraction between children occurs during play sessions
when cognitive and play styles are similar than when they are different (Rubin, Lynch,
Coplan, Rose-Krasnor, & Booth, 1994).
Behavioral similarity is clearly evident among school-aged friends. Comparisons be-
tween children and their friends and between children and “neutral” classmates show greater
similarity between friends in prosocial behavior, antisocial behavior, shyness-dependency,
depression, sociometric status, and achievement in both Western and Eastern cultures
(French, Jansen, Riansari, & Setiono, 2000; Haselager, Hartup, Van Lieshout, & Riksen-
Walraven, 1998; Poulin & Boivin, 2000). Concordant similarities are evinced for children
who are victimized: Friends of victimized children are physically weak, have internalizing
problems, and are victimized, too (Hodges, Malone, & Perry, 1997).
Friends also share biases in their perceptions of both persons and relationships: For
example, when two friends rate other children’s behavior, their ratings are more similar to
one another than nonfriends’ ratings are (Haselager et al., 1998). Friends are also more
concordant than non-friends in relationship stance (being “preoccupied” or “avoidant”)
both with one another and with their mothers and fathers (Hodges, Finnegan, & Perry,
1999).
Similarities between friends come about for a number of reasons. Schools and
neighborhoods are organized so children come together in classrooms, on playgrounds,
and on street corners with others who are similar to themselves rather than dissimilar.
Subsequently, children in these “homophilous pools” are exposed to similar socialization
agents in schools and elsewhere. In addition, children are especially attracted to other
children who resemble themselves (Kupersmidt et al., 1995; Rubin et al., 1994). Children
are also more likely to dislike associates who are different from themselves (Rosenbaum,
1986) and to terminate relationships with children who are different rather than similar
(Poulin & Boivin, 2000). No evidence exists to suggest that “opposites attract.”
While the “similarity-attraction” hypothesis thus explains some of the similarity be-
tween children and their friends, no one knows exactly how children go about sorting
themselves into friendship dyads. Similarities between friends do not seem to derive from
carefully weighed decisions made by the children themselves but from complex assort-
ments that some investigators have called “shopping expeditions” (Dishion, Patterson, &
Greisler, 1994). Children seem to make their social choices in terms of what “feels right”
and what does not. These shopping expeditions frequently occur within social networks,
so that friendship similarities emerge within two interconnected selection systems: dyadic
interaction and assortative dialectics.
Friendship similarities are also known to derive from mutual socialization, that is, chil-
dren become more alike as a consequence of their interaction with one another over time.
The relative extent to which mutual selection and mutual socialization contribute to the
similarity between friends, however, depends on many conditions including characteristics
of the children themselves, the nature of their interaction, and the behavioral characteris-
tics being measured (Kandel, 1978; Poulin & Boivin, 2000; Urberg, 1999).
Enemies
Whether children involved in mutual antipathies are similar or different from one another
as compared with neutral associates is not known.
Patterns of Interaction
Friends
Children spend more time with their friends than with nonfriends, suggesting to some
researchers that time sharing is a valid means of identifying friendships, especially in early
childhood (Hinde et al. 1985). The activities of boys and their friends differ from those of
girls and their friends (this is obvious to everyone). The two sexes also differ in the behavioral
provisions that children expect from these relationships: Girls anticipate greater affection,
intimacy, and instrumental help from their friends than boys do (Furman & Buhrmester,
1985). Moreover, intimacy is more central in girls’ talk about friends than in boys’ talk,
self-ratings of friendships by girls are more intimate than boys’ self-ratings, and self-disclo-
sure is more common (Sharabany, Gershoni, & Hofman, 1981). Intimacy has been stud-
ied largely, however, with constructs especially applicable to girls (e.g., empathy and
self-disclosure) rather than ones applicable to boys (i.e., task mastery and camaraderie).
Good reason exists, therefore, to refine the measurement of intimacy before drawing final
conclusions about sex differences in children’s friendships.
Social exchanges differ between friends and nonfriends beginning in early childhood.
Children identified as friends are more cooperative than nonfriends, and reciprocities are
more evident in their interaction (Howes, 1983). Behaviors differentiating friends from
nonfriends among school-aged children have been examined in a large number of investi-
gations, and have been scrutinized in both narrative reviews (e.g., Hartup, 1996) and one
meta-analysis (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). Differences occur in four broad categories:
positive engagement (friends talk, smile, and laugh more frequently than nonfriends); rela-
tionship mutuality (friends are more supportive, more mutually oriented, and emphasize
equality (parity) more frequently in their exchanges than nonfriends); task behavior (friends
talk more about the task at hand and spend more time on-task than nonfriends); and
conflict management (although friends do not have more frequent conflicts than nonfriends,
they use disengagement and negotiation proportionally more often and their conflicts are
not as intense). These results demonstrate once again that reciprocity and symmetry are
the behavioral hallmarks of friendship during middle childhood.
Enemies
The behavior of enemies toward one another has never been systematically described, ei-
ther in early or middle childhood. In certain instances, investigators have considered two
children who fight frequently with one another to be enemies (Ross & Conant, 1992) but
the fact of the matter is that not many preschool-aged dyads do this. Since children do not
concentrate hostile actions on specific associates, this must mean one of two things: either
enemies do not exist among young children (as mentioned above) or enemies consistently
use other strategies, for example, avoiding one another. Avoidance indeed seems likely to
be a coping mechanism used by children who mutually consider themselves to be enemies
or who dislike each other. Adults report that they minimize contact with their enemies and
avoid them whenever possible (Holt, 1989). Demonstrating avoidance with young chil-
dren, however, is surprisingly difficult.
Motives attributed by children to their enemies are likely to be more hostile than those
attributed to friends or acquaintances. In one investigation (Ray & Cohen, 1997), school-
aged children were asked to evaluate the victim’s attributions in hypothetical scenarios
when either a friend, an acquaintance, or an enemy committed a hurtful act under either
accidental, ambiguous, or hostile circumstances. In ambiguous situations, an enemy’s in-
tentions were evaluated less positively than were the intentions of friends or acquaintances.
In accidental situations, victims were believed to be more likely to retaliate when provoked
by enemies than by either friends or acquaintances. Finally, self-reported liking for en-
emies (as provocateurs) was low regardless of motivational condition; in contrast, liking for
friends and acquaintances (relatively high prior to the provocation) decreased. School-aged
children thus display attribution biases suggesting that they assume “the worst” of their
enemies.
Persuasion studies suggest that enemies, in general, are seen as power-assertive, threat-
ening, and uncooperative: 6 and 7 year olds were asked how they would make requests of
a friend or an enemy, respectively (Bernicot & Mahrokhian, 1989). Results showed that
children were more direct and more imperative in persuading friends (e.g., “give me the
toy”) than enemies (“gee, that toy looks like it would be fun to play with”). Apparently,
children believe that one approaches enemies cautiously when attempting to exert social
influence – the same caution they display in attempting to persuade parents and other
persons possessing greater power and authority than they do (Cowan, Drinkard, &
MacGavin, 1984). While scattered, these findings nevertheless indicate that the “enemy
construct” is behaviorally salient by middle childhood.
Having Friends and Having Enemies: Developmental Implications
Friends
Children differ from one another according to whether or not they have mutual friends.
Such differences are significant because friendships may be contexts that enhance social
competence (Sullivan, 1953); concomitantly, social competence may enhance the likeli-
hood that a child has friends. Indeed, correlational studies suggest such a linkage. Among
preschool-aged children, individuals with emotional difficulties are friendless more fre-
quently than better-adapted children, and are less likely to maintain the friendships they
have (Howes, 1983). Children with reciprocated friendships enter groups more easily,
engage in more cooperative play, are more sociable, more prosocial, and are less aggressive
and have fewer conflicts with other children than those who do not have friends (Howes,
1989; Sebanc, 1999). Moreover, these conditions hold true for both Caucasian and Afri-
can American children in the United States (Vaughn, Azria, Krzysik, Caya, Newell, &
Cielinski, 2000). Among young children who have friends, a significant advantage also
accrues in having several friendships as opposed to one (Vaughn et al., 2000).
Cross-sectional studies also show that, among school-aged children, those who have
friends are more socially competent than those who do not: They are more sociable, coop-
erative, altruistic, self-confident, and less lonely (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). Children
who lack friends are more likely to endorse revenge as an appropriate goal in social rela-
tions than those who have friends (Rose & Asher, 1999a) as well as goals involving distanc-
ing oneself from other children (Rose & Asher, 1999b). Finally, among children who are
at risk of being victimized (owing to both internalizing and externalizing problems), the
occurrence of abuse varies negatively with the number of friends the children have: Nu-
merous friends appear to offer physical protection to victimized children, are feared by the
child’s bullies, and are sources of advice concerning how to handle conflicts and threats
(Hodges et al., 1997).
Although research is consistent in showing that children who have friends evince better
social adaptation than those who do not (and that having more friends is better than
having few), the meaning of these results is not clear. First, the results can be over-inter-
preted: Having friends may not be as closely linked to social adaptation as certain other
measures (e.g., social rejection). In one investigation involving 8 year olds (Gest, Graham-
Bermann, & Hartup, 2001), the number of mutual friends was correlated only with lead-
ership, humor, and not being teased whereas peer rejection was correlated with a wide
range of different behaviors (e.g., peer rejection was negatively related to cooperation and
prosocial behavior and positively to aggression and antisocial behavior). In one other in-
stance (Schwarz, Hess, & Atkins, 1999), the number of the child’s friends did not contrib-
ute unique variance to any peer-rated behavior except shyness. Second, other close
relationships (e.g., family relationships) may moderate the relation between having mutual
friendships and psychological well-being. Among older children, for example, having friends
is more strongly related to social adjustment among children from noncohesive and
nonadaptable families than among children from better family environments. At the same
time, family environments are more strongly linked to adjustment among children who do
not have mutual friends than among those who do (Gauze, Bukowski, Aquan-Assee, &
Sippola, 1996). The outcomes of either relationship, then, are moderated by the other.
Clearly, univariate studies do not reveal the complex developmental implications of having
mutual friends.
Longitudinal studies assist in sorting out these issues. Such studies of preschool-aged
children, however, are rare: One investigation shows that social competence is a better
predictor of friendship status across time than the reverse (Vaughn et al., 2000) which
assists with causal questions. Certain other studies show that the transition to kindergarten
is made more easily among children who have friends and keep them (Ladd, 1990). Longer
term derivatives of preschool friendships have not been studied, however.
Among older children, having friends increases self-esteem and decreases psychosocial
difficulties during changes from lower to middle to high school (Simmons, Burgeson, &
Reef, 1988). The relation between behavior problems and increases over time in victimiza-
tion is attenuated among children who have friends (Hodges, Finnegan, & Perry, 1999).
The relation between having friends and later outcomes, however, is complex. For exam-
ple, having friends in middle childhood predicts adult feelings of self-worth in early adult-
hood, family attitudes, and the absence of depression but not sociability, school performance,
educational aspirations, and job performance, which are better predicted by sociometric
status (Bagwell, Newcomb, & Bukowski, 1998). Once again, having a mutual friend pre-
dicts some outcomes but not others. Finally, moderator effects occur in social develop-
ment: Adjustment outcomes when one gains or loses a friend (either one) are greater among
children from nonadaptable families than more adaptable ones (Gauze et al., 1996).
One other consequence of having friends in childhood is success is romantic relation-
ships. First, having same-sex friends during middle childhood forecasts having romantic
relationships in early adolescence (Neeman, Hubbard, & Masten, 1995). Second, having
friends enhances success in adolescent romantic relationships (Sroufe, Egeland, & Carlson,
1999) as well as successful functioning in romantic relationships in early adulthood (Collins,
Hennighausen, & Ruh, 1999). Other-sex friendships are related to romantic affiliations as
well, but not until adolescence (Feiring, 1999). The weight of the evidence thus supports
Sullivan’s (1953) notions concerning the importance of same-sex friendships during “the
juvenile era” in generating the intimacy required subsequently for success in opposite-sex
relationships.
Enemies
Relatively little attention has been given to the developmental significance of having en-
emies. Since the central dynamic in these relationships is reciprocal rejection (Hembree &
Vandell, 2000), the children involved could be affected by the conflict and aggression
associated with being disliked. Alternatively, one can argue that a mutual antipathy is an
especially intense and personalized rejection and, as such, increases developmental risk
over and beyond the risk that derives from general peer rejection. No one knows whether
these conditions represent the phenomenology of mutual antipathies but the possibility
makes the linkage between having enemies and social development worth studying.
Neither cross-sectional nor longitudinal studies addressing these questions have been
conducted with preschool-aged children. Cross-sectional studies with school-aged chil-
dren, however, have been carried out separately with 8 and 10 year olds. Hembree and
Vandell (2000) examined the relation between involvement in same-sex mutual antipa-
thies (mutual nomination as “someone I don’t want to play with”) and four composite
measures: social-emotional adjustment, including prosocial and antisocial behavior rated
separately by parents and teachers; academic adjustment, including grades, test scores, and
work habits; and self-ratings of perceived competence. Teacher-rated social adjustment and
the measure of academic adjustment were both negatively related to involvement in same-
sex antipathies with parent education, single-parent status, and peer rejection factored out.
Using assessments of several thousand Dutch 10 year olds, Abecassis et al.,(2001) stud-
ied the relation between involvement in mutual antipathies and a wide variety of social and
adaptational behaviors. Same-sex and mixed-sex antipathies (defined as children who mu-
tually nominate one another as “someone not liked at all”) were both linked to social
competence using composite measures based on peer and self-ratings. Sociometric assess-
ment (i.e., peer rejection) was included as a covariate in the analyses in order to determine
whether unique adaptational variance was associated with antipathy involvement. Results
showed that same-sex antipathies were positively associated with antisocial behavior, espe-
cially fighting and bullying, social ineffectiveness, and being victimized; prosocial behavior
was not related to involvement in these antipathies. These data are consistent with earlier
findings that both bullies and victims have more enemies than nonbullies or nonvictimized
children, respectively (Hodges et al., 1999), but apply to children more widely than to
bully–victim dyads.
Mixed-sex antipathies were associated with more dysfunctional behavior in girls than in
boys: Girls with mixed-sex antipathies were less antisocial than girls without, but more
socially ineffective, less prosocial, more victimized, had fewer friends, and more frequently
reported depressive symptoms and somatic complaints. In contrast, boys with mixed-sex
antipathies were more antisocial than boys who were not involved in these relationships
(including fighting, bullying, and being disruptive), but were also more prosocial, socially
effective, less frequently victimized, and suffered no negative consequences in terms of
depression or somatic complaints. Taken together, the results show that mutual antipa-
thies are associated with a wide range of socially maladaptive behaviors for school-aged
children, carrying predictive variance not shared entirely with peer rejection.
One longitudinal study shows that involvement in same-sex antipathies among 10-year-
old boys predicts social behavior when they have become adolescents. Abecassis (1999)
found, among boys only, that a group of intercorrelated social behaviors measuring social
reservedness and social withdrawal (e.g., noninvolvement in addictive behaviors,
nonparticipation in delinquency, fewer somatic complaints, lack of support from parents,
and parental unwillingness to respect the adolescent’s autonomy) were forecast by earlier
involvement in same-sex antipathies. Baseline controls were included in the analyses, so
that the results suggest that involvement in same-sex antipathies as children translates into
behavior in adolescence that differs from the concurrent correlates at either age. Actually,
since a combination of antipathies involvement and depression among the boys during
childhood predicted the social reservedness pattern, developmental trajectories need to be
studied more closely. The results demonstrate, however, that involvement in inimical rela-
tionships in middle childhood may have long-term significance.
Characteristics of Friends and Enemies: Developmental Implications
Social interaction between friends or between enemies reflects characteristics of both chil-
dren; each is being socialized simultaneously within these relationships. Consequently, the
variance deriving from the characteristics of children’s friends or enemies is conflated with
characteristics of the children themselves. Only longitudinal studies convincingly demon-
strate the extent to which developmental outcome depends on who a child’s friends or
enemies are.
Friends
Friendships ought to enhance social competence when a child’s friend is socially compe-
tent but not when friends are incompetent. Friendships may actually contribute deleteri-
ously to developmental outcome when the child’s friend is antisocial, not well socialized,
or socially rejected. According to these arguments, the social advantage for the individual
child does not reside merely in having friends but in having socially competent, well-
adjusted friends.
Several kinds of evidence support these notions: (a) Among 12 year olds, social adjust-
ment improves across a one-year school transition when friends are well adjusted but not
otherwise (Berndt, Hawkins, & Jiao, 1999). (b) School-aged children whose friends have
conventional social orientations and good social skills become even more likely to endorse
normative values as time passes (Kandel & Andrews, 1987). (c) Among children experi-
encing the stress of marital transitions (e.g., divorce or remarriage of their parents), having
socially well-adjusted friends who have few behavior problems promotes resilience whereas
having immature friends or friends with behavior problems does not (Hetherington, 1999).
(d) “Desisting” delinquency is forecast among children at risk for antisocial behavior more
strongly by turning away from antisocial friends to more socially skilled friends than by
any other variable (Mulvey & Aber, 1988). (e) Increases in victimization among children
at risk are inversely related to the number of externalizing problems evinced by their friends,
suggesting that children with externalizing difficulties may retaliate in defense of their
friends, thereby protecting them from escalating victimization (Hodges & Perry, 1999).
Taken together, these results suggest that friendships with socially well-adjusted children
promote better developmental outcomes than friendships with poorly adjusted children.
Complicating the situation, however, are social comparison processes occurring between
children and their friends: Children’s evaluations of their own academic achievement, for
example, are more accurate when their friends are low rather than high achievers (Guay,
Boivin, & Hodges, 1999). Such results suggest that social comparisons with friends have
more positive outcomes when they reflect positively on the child rather than negatively
(Tesser, Campbell, & Smith, 1984).
On the other side of the coin, association with antisocial friends increases a child’s anti-
social behavior, especially among children already identified as aggressive and rejected
(Dishion, 1990; Kupersmidt, Burchinal, & Patterson, 1995; Tremblay, Masse, Vitaro, &
Dobkin, 1995). One reason is that antisocial friends oftentimes are not socially skilled,
and thus lack the capacity to instigate socially competent behavior in their companions.
Second, the interaction between aggressive children and their friends is more contentious
and conflict-ridden than interaction between matched controls (Dishion, Andrews, &
Crosby, 1995). Still other studies show that overtly aggressive children are not notably
intimate with one another and are not as exclusive in their relationship attitudes as their
nonaggressive counterparts (Grotpeter & Crick, 1996).
Taken together, then, the friendships of some children are mixed blessings: On the one
hand, these friends support good developmental outcomes through social support and the
increased sense of well-being that accompanies experience in close relationships. On the
other hand, aggressive friends are risk factors since the children are not well socialized and
instigate aggressive behavior in one another. Whether other socially incompetent children
(e.g., extremely shy children) socialize one another toward increased maladaptation is not
known. Actually, shy friends may assist one another in alleviating the loneliness that ac-
companies and exacerbates the risk associated with shyness (Asher, Parkhurst, Hymel &
Williams, 1990).
Enemies
The developmental implications of the characteristics of children’s enemies are largely

unknown. In a cross-sectional study of victimization among 10 to 14 year olds (Card,
Isaacs, & Hodges, 2000), the investigators identified children with same-sex mutual an-
tipathies (least like to work or play with) and correlated the children’s victimization scores
with four theoretically relevant characteristics of their enemies: aggression, physical strength,
victimization, and internalizing behaviors. Results show that the first three variables sig-
nificantly and uniquely predicted victimization. Although not longitudinal in design, these
results suggest that making enemies with aggressive, strong, and nonvictimized children
may be a risk factor in victimization, supplementing the risk these children experience by
virtue of having friends who are themselves physically weak and nonaggressive. Whether
children consciously select friends who are different from their enemies (or the reverse) is
an interesting inference that can be drawn from the results. Regardless of the limitations
on these results, there is a suggestion that the developmental significance of having en-
emies may lie in who one’s enemies are, not merely in whether one has an enemy.
Relationship Quality: Developmental Implications
Friends
Friendships vary in their social and emotional qualities: Some children have supportive
and intimate relationships with their friends, some nonsupportive and contentious ones.
Differences among the friendships of young children can be measured either with behavioral
observations or reports based on the observations of teachers or mothers. The Dyadic Rela-
tionships Q-set (Park & Waters, 1989) uses detailed behavioral observations and encom-
passes a two-factor structure including positive and coordinated interactions, respectively.
Teacher ratings have been used to differentiate the friendships of young children according
to a somewhat more elaborated structure consisting of supportiveness, exclusivity, conflict,
and asymmetry (Sebanc, 1999).
Using these measures, several investigators have reported that the quality of relation-
ships between mothers and children is related to the quality of friendships among pre-
school-aged children. Secure mother–infant relationships in both members of 4-year-old
friendship pairs are associated with more harmonious, less controlling, and greater
responsivity between the children than when one child has a history of insecure attach-
ment (Park & Waters, 1989) and are more positive and coordinated one year later (Kerns,
1994). Children with secure attachment histories are also less likely to have negative and
asymmetrical friendships during the preschool years than children with insecure attach-
ments (Youngblade & Belsky, 1992) and to be sadder when their friends move away (Park,
1992). Mechanisms responsible for these associations have not been clearly identified but
it is clear that certain continuities exist between the mother–child attachment system and
friendship quality. Moreover, these extend into middle childhood (Elicker et al., 1992;
Sroufe et al., 1999). Other correlates of friendship quality have not been explored exten-
sively among preschool-aged children, although supportive relationships have been linked
to prosocial behavior displayed by the children, relationship exclusivity linked to relational
aggression, and relationship conflict linked to overt aggression (Sebanc, 1999).
Among older children, friendship qualities have been assessed with instruments that
differentiate between “positive” and “negative” relationships (Furman, 1996) although
more finely grained assessments are also available (Parker & Asher, 1993). Correlational
studies show that: (a) friendship success is positively related to sociability and negatively
related to emotionality (Stocker & Dunn, 1990); (b) supportiveness in friendship relations
among school-aged children is positively related to popularity and good social reputations
(Cauce, 1986), self-esteem (McGuire & Weisz, 1982), social involvement and achieve-
ment (Berndt, 1996) and good psychosocial adjustment (Kurdek & Sinclair, 1988; Gauze
et al., 1996); and (c) good-quality friendships are negatively related to children’s endorse-
ment of revenge, avoidance, and blaming as social goals and strategies in relating to other
children (Rose & Asher, 1999a, b). The weight of the evidence thus suggests that
supportiveness and harmony in friendship relations are linked to good social adaptation.
Longitudinal studies support the hypothesis that friendship quality affects developmental
outcome but also demonstrate that these linkages are complex. In making the transition into
kindergarten, for example, children who enter with supportive friendships, as contrasted
with nonsupportive ones, are happier at school, perceive classmates as more supportive, and
show increasingly positive attitudes toward school over the course of the year; school adjust-
ment difficulties occur less frequently, especially among boys (Ladd, Kochenderfer, &
Coleman, 1996). The transition from elementary school to secondary school is also affected
by friendship quality: Supportiveness of the child’s friends, assessed shortly after school en-
trance, predicts increasing sociability, positive attitudes about classmates, and popularity
over the next year, especially in stable relationships (Berndt et al., 1999).
Oftentimes, however, the developmental effects of friendship quality depend on other
conditions and characteristics. For example, friendships that children regard as providing
them with companionship, support, security, and closeness compensate for vulnerabilities
and stresses that derive from poor family environments (Gauze et al., 1996; Sesma, 2001)
but provide fewer benefits when family environments are good. Concomitantly, an adap-
tive or cohesive family environment helps children with poor quality friendships more
than those with good quality relationships (Gauze et al., 1996).
Child characteristics moderate the effects of friendship quality, too: (a) Among aggres-
sive, but not nonaggressive children, increases over time in delinquency are greater for
those who have low quality friendships than better quality ones (Poulin, Dishion, & Haas,
1999); and (b) the relation between internalizing behaviors and increases over time in
victimization is attenuated when children have a “protective” friendship (Hodges, Boivin,
Vitaro, & Bukowski, 1999). Taken together, then, the evidence suggests that good devel-
opmental outcomes are most likely when a child has friends, those friends are socially
skilled, and these friendships are supportive and intimate. Friendships between children
who are aggressive or not well socialized are mixed blessings, as are friendships which are
negative and contentious. Moderator effects, however, are common.
Enemies
No one has yet studied qualitative features of mutual antipathies as related to developmen-
tal outcome. Certainly, all enmities are not alike either in affective intensity or modes of
social interaction.
Conclusion
Several generalizations can be made about friends and enemies in child development: First,
both of these relationships account for unique variance in long-term as well as concurrent
adaptation. Too little is known, however, about the developmental dynamics of mutual
antipathies to be able to determine whether “being friends” and “being enemies” are rela-
tionship opposites or relationship orthogonalities in children’s experience.
Second, these relationships may not be as important developmentally speaking as whether
children are generally accepted or rejected. Comparative studies suggest that being disliked
by other children, especially one’s same-sex peers, accounts for greater amounts of unique
variance than having friends or occupying a central position in the social network. Peer
rejection also identifies children at risk across a wider range of social behaviors than friend-
lessness does. Although the developmental consequences of having good friends encom-
pass self-esteem, success in romantic relationships, and good relationship attitudes,
friendships may still have more restricted consequences than peer acceptance/rejection.
Third, children’s enemies should not be ignored in developmental research. Effect sizes
in the existing data are small and only one longitudinal study suggests that these relation-
ships have long-term consequences, but these relationships may be more important in
child development than previously suspected. Mutual antipathies may not predict devel-
opmental outcomes as powerfully as being generally disliked and one can guess that these
antipathies are more critical to the development of certain behaviors (e.g., antisocial dispo-
sitions, victimization) than others. But we do not know these things. One must also con-
sider the possibility that childhood antipathies are more important in the social development
of some individuals than others.
Fourth, we know relatively little about the processes (mechanisms) through which friends
and enemies influence the development of the individual child. Laboratory studies dem-
onstrate that friends talk more with each other than nonfriends, are more mutually ori-
ented, and manage conflicts more constructively. One can assume that these behaviors are
evinced in everyday circumstances when observers are not present. Friends may be better
socializers than nonfriends (for example, in the induction of scientific reasoning on diffi-
cult tasks through the use of constructive conflicts (Azmitia & Montgomery, 1993)). Few
investigators, however, have identified developmental mechanisms like these. We know as
little about the processes by which friends and enemies influence the individual child as we
do about the processes through which peer rejection brings about its effects (Rubin,
Bukowski, & Parker, 1998).
Process-oriented studies of several kinds ought to be conducted: Macro-analytic studies
are needed to show the manner in which relationships with friends and enemies combine
over time with temperament and early experience, family relationships, the social context,
and emerging social competence in the child. Good beginnings can be made by showing
how relationships affect coping and children’s encounters with stress. Close examination
of naturally occurring stressors such as being victimized or being a child of divorce can
greatly enhance our understanding of both friendship and inimical processes.
Micro-analytic investigations are also needed. Models need to be constructed for utiliz-
ing information about behavioral mechanisms to predict long-term developmental out-
comes. One of the most successful attempts to build a developmental model at both
microscopic and macroscopic levels has been “the performance model” of antisocial devel-
opment developed by Gerald R. Patterson and his colleagues (cf., Patterson, Reid, &
Dishion, 1992). Friendship experience is woven into that model and empirical studies
have verified some of the processes that may be involved (Dishion et al., 1995). Other
models in other domains of social development now need to reflect the same attention to
friends and enemies and the mechanisms through which these relationships have (or do
not have) developmental effects.
Our review shows that, while much is known about friends and a little is known about
enemies, much is not known about these relationships. Investigators need to examine them
more closely, tying distinctive modes of interaction to both developmental antecedents
and developmental consequences. Attention must also be given to the manner in which
different children utilize these relationships to arrive at different adaptations in childhood
and beyond.
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Emotional and Social Development 307
16
Emotional and Social Development in

Childhood
Susanne Denham, Maria von Salisch, Tjeert Olthof, Anita

Kochanoff, and Sarah Caverly
Gary and Ron are practicing soccer moves on the playground. They have all their equipment –
goal, shinpads, regulation ball – and they’re having fun together. Ron shows Gary how to head
the ball into the goal, both shouting, “Hurray!” But then things get complicated, changing fast,
as interaction often does. Ron, thinking twice about sharing his best technique, kicks the ball
ferociously away from Gary on the next play. Then Huynh, who had been watching from the
sidelines, shyly asks Gary if he can join them. Simultaneously, Gary trips over a swiftly kicked
ball, and slumps to the ground. And just then, Jack, the class bully, approaches, laughing at
Gary’s discomfort and demanding they leave so that he and his buddies can use the field. Some-
how, Gary deals with all of this. He hands the ball to Huynh, extends a hand to Ron, and
calmly tells Jack, “It’s our turn now.” When the teacher calls them inside, everybody except Jack
is satisfied with recess.
What do emotions have to do with social development? Our example abounds with
instances where emotions help determine the flow and outcome of interaction. First,
behaviors of others in one’s social group often constitute antecedent conditions for a child’s
emotions. When Ron became angry, it was because his goal of being “the best” was threat-
ened. Huynh approached diffidently because he often had been “left out” from play. Sec-
ond, when the child exhibits emotion within a dyad or group, this emotional expressiveness
also is important information for these others. When Gary experienced delight at making
a goal, he probably wanted to keep playing; others, like Huynh, want to join him. Jack is
cranky, irritable, and easily provoked; he often strikes out at those he perceives to be “in his
way.” His classmates, observing his emotional behaviors, wisely seek to leave the scene.
Third, one child’s expressions of emotion may form antecedent conditions for others’
experience and expression of emotions. Playmates exiting from Jack’s wrath may
308 Susanne Denham et al.
themselves feel some combination of discomfort at his uncontrolled display, fear at his
targeted nastiness, answering anger, and even spiteful delight when he doesn’t get his way.
In concert with these views, theorists highlight the interdependency of emotional and
social competence (Denham, 1998; Saarni, 1999). The interpersonal function of emotion
is central to its expression and experience, its very meaning. Conversely, social interactions
and relationships are guided, even defined, by emotional transactions (Halberstadt, Denham,
& Dunsmore, 2001). Emotional and social competence are intimately intertwined, and,
we argue, become even more so with development. Unfortunately, however, the peer lit-
erature still lags in integrating explicit elements of emotional competence into its models
(Ladd, 1999; but cf. Hubbard & Coie, 1994; Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000).
Given these considerations, our first goal is to outline how social developmental tasks
differ across childhood. The defining social issues of each age help clarify the role of emo-
tion within each period. Our second goal is to describe aspects of emotional competence
important to social interaction and relationship building with parents, peers, and friends
(Denham, 1998; Halberstadt et al., 2001). The social tasks and emotional competencies of
each period of childhood are situated within ascendant social relationships. Our third goal
is to detail and evaluate existing research on the contribution of emotional competence to
social competence, using the framework of aspects of emotional competence changing
across developmental epochs and differing within relationships. We will identify gaps in
theory, methodology, and evidence, to suggest future directions.
Developmental Tasks of Social Competence
The nature of adaptive social functioning changes with development; what is useful for
coordinating preschoolers’ interactions may be less helpful later. These changes in chil-
dren’s social competence and relationships are accompanied by parallel reorganizations of
ways to deal with emotional issues.
Preschoolers’ social tasks include managing emotional arousal within interaction and be-
ginning to meet social expectations of persons other than their parents (Gottman & Mettetal,
1986). Coordination of play is the preschool child’s overriding goal. Serving this goal are
social processes of common-ground activity, conflict management, creation of a “me too”
climate, shared fantasy, and achievement of good will and harmony. The processes inherent
in succeeding at these social tasks call for skills of emotional competence – arguments must
be resolved so that play can continue; enjoying one another’s company greases the cogs of
sustained interaction. Emotion regulation is key; young children must learn to avoid the
disorganization of a tantrum, to think reflectively about a distressing situation.
The goals, social processes, and emotional tasks central to social competence then change
radically, as gradeschoolers become aware of a wider social network than the dyad. Peer
norms for social acceptance are complex and finely tuned, with inclusion by one’s peers
and avoiding rejection or embarrassment paramount (Gottman & Mettetal, 1986). In-
stead of reining in vivid emotions, gradeschoolers want to avoid embarrassment, rejecting
sentiment in favor of logic. Hence, socially competent responses to many salient social
situations, such as group entry and provocation, are to be guarded, cool, and unflappable.
Social processes of gossip, social support, relationship talk, self-disclosure, and informa-
tion exchange serve this goal. Conversation assumes particular importance, perhaps carry-
ing the weight of earlier, more overt, emotionality. Managing how and when to show
emotion becomes crucial, as does knowing with whom to share emotion-laden experiences
and ideas.
Elements of Emotional Competence
Next, we elaborate a model of emotional competence, showing its complex relation with
social competence. We focus on three basic components crucial for success in these social
developmental tasks: experiencing, expressing, and understanding emotion. Each compo-
nent of emotional competence follows a partially independent developmental trajectory,
which we now describe.
Experience of emotions
We refer to “experience of emotions” as not only the awareness and recognition of one’s
own emotions, but also as the effective regulation of one’s emotional expression in the
context of an ongoing social interaction (Halberstadt et al., 2001). In Figure 16.1, we
depict the process of emotional experience (Denham, 1998). First, there is arousal. Some-
thing happens – an environmental event (as when Gary fell down on the soccer field),
one’s actions (as when Ron made a goal), the actions of others (as when Jack came up to
boss them), or even memories (as when Ron ruminated over giving up his “soccer se-
crets”).
Sometimes this arousal is automatic – when Gary fell down, he didn’t need contempla-
tion to experience his pain and dismay. Emotion ensued automatically, along with its
attendant behavior – holding his knee, trying unsuccessfully not to cry (leftmost column,
Figure 16.1). Sometimes emotional arousal needs to be understood, not just reacted to,
because children create an increasingly complicated network of desires and outcomes they
want to attain – their goals. Huynh needed to represent the notable change, what hap-
pened to him as he walked up to Gary. How do the “butterflies” in his stomach impact his
goal of joining play, if at all? What does this arousal mean? Does he acknowledge it as
apprehension? Before any specific emotional reaction was felt by Huynh, or noticed by
Gary, Huynh attended to the event, comprehended it, and interpreted it (middle column,
Figure 16.1).
Interpretations of events’ relations to ongoing goals lead not only to felt emotions, but
also to actions associated with each specific emotion, and new changes in arousal (rightmost
column, Figure 16.1). Does Huynh try to “deal with” his jitters so that he can present
himself as a worthy teammate, maybe taking a deep breath and making an effort to walk
steadily? Do these attempts at regulation work, so that he really is calmer, and his chances
with Gary are better? Ability to access and manage emotions, and to communicate (or not
communicate) them to others, is important to relationships’ success.
Notable change in
the child’s world
Self-montoring of emotion-related behaviour
Higher brain activity:

Autonomic nervous
As required Emotion–specific
system arousal UNDERSTANDING tendencies to act,
Arousal physiological
Leads to lower regarding concerns changes
brain activity and coping
EMOTIONAL
BEHAVIOR,
EMOTIONAL CONSCIOUSLY
BEHAVIOR AND LABELED
FEELINGS FEELINGS
Figure 16.1 Emotional experience
To be emotionally competent, one must first recognize an emotion is being experi-

enced. The valence of the emotion is registered at this level of skill. This low-level aware-
ness is necessary for higher level abilities of understanding – What emotional signal am I
sending to others? How do my emotional signals affect them? Identifying one’s emotions
accurately is also important intrapersonally. If Ron is not able to recognize his annoyance,
that it stems from wanting to be “the best,” he is in danger of experiencing a cascade of
feelings and behaviors related to misplaced anger – which, once enacted, are resistant to
reorganization.
One also must comprehend one’s emotional experience within the constraints of the
emotion scripts that are active, and the ongoing social context. Knowledge of feeling rules
may guide children in selecting aspects of their emotional experiences upon which to fo-
cus. The glee that Gary experiences at getting a goal is more complicated than it appears.
He may experience a conglomeration of delight, mild “macho” contempt, and fear when
he almost didn’t make it; the feeling rule, “when you win, you feel happy,” may help him
discern the emotional tone of his experience, or decide which aspects to communicate to
others. Further, understanding that inner and outer emotional states may differ (“I know
I’m scared of Jack, but I am going to put on a calm face”), also is important.
Next, the management or regulation of emotional experience is necessary when the
presence or absence of emotional expression and experience interfere with a person’s goals
– when emotions are distressing, positive but possibly overwhelming, or needing amplifi-
cation for intra- or interpersonally strategic reasons. By preschool age, such emotion regu-
lation becomes both necessary, due to the increasing complexity of children’s emotionality
Regulate
Primary Regulate Regulate
perception &
appraisal emotions behavior
cognitions
The “heat of the the moment”
Secondary Cope Cope Cope

appraisal emotionally cognitively behaviorally
The “reasoned approach”
Figure 16.2 Model of emotion regulation
and the demands of their social world, and possible, because of their increased comprehen-
sion and control of their emotionality. The child chooses responses that serve the goal of
modulating emotional experience (Denham, 1998). “Doing something” about the experi-
ence of emotion need not be overt and active; regulatory responses may be emotional,
cognitive, or behavioral (Figure 16.2). The experience of emotion may need to be dimin-
ished or modulated, or even transformed; a child feeling anxious at preschool may smile to
convince herself and others that she is happy.
Perceptual and cognitive coping steps are also possible. Refocusing attention is a useful
perceptual means of regulating emotional experience – Huynh may focus on the soccer
ball rather than the boys whose social status makes him uncomfortable. Problem-solving
reasoning can be particularly useful. The child may relinquish a goal, choose a substitute
goal, or conceive new attributions that bring comfort. A boy who is sad about not going
swimming may say, “I didn’t want to go anyway.” Children also do things to cope with the
experience of emotion – enacting a solution to the emotional situation, looking for sup-
port from adults, lashing out, or crying.
To succeed at emotion regulation, then, several abilities are key. One must experience
clear rather than diffuse feelings, to know what to regulate! Managing false self-signals is
also crucial – sometimes we may experience self-signals that aren’t actually emotional, but
could be mistaken for feelings (e.g., Huynh had a sudden “tummy rumble” as he ap-
proached Gary, but ignored it as not pertinent). One must also know what to feel and
what not to, to attain one’s goals. Children learn to retain or enhance relevant and helpful
emotions, to attenuate relevant but not helpful ones, and to dampen those that are irrel-
evant; these regulatory behaviors help them to maintain genuine and satisfying relation-
ships.
Experiencing and regulating emotion during the preschool period. Little research has
focused specifically on how preschoolers experience emotion. More has been done with
respect to emotion regulation. Preschoolers often need external support for skillful emo-
tion regulation; caregivers’ support allows their strategies to be maximally effective. Par-
ents assist them in cognitive coping strategies they will eventually use themselves (e.g.,
purposely redeploying attention). Adults also use emotion language to help children regu-
late emotion – by identifying and construing their feelings, and processing causal associa-
tions between events and emotions. They also demonstrate behavioral coping strategies
when they problem solve around emotional situations, or structure their child’s environ-
ment to facilitate regulation (e.g., a father avoids arranging a play date with someone who
will leave his son cranky).
As preschoolers become more autonomous and capable of cooperation, they collaborate
with caregivers’ regulation efforts. They also make independent attempts, such as orienta-
tion of attention toward or away from a stimulus, self-distraction via physical self-comfort-
ing or self-stimulation, approaching or retreating from a situation, or symbolic manipulations
of a situation through play (Grolnick, Bridges, & Connell, 1996). Next, young children
slowly see connections between their emotion regulation efforts and changes in their feel-
ings. Their awareness of the need for, and use of, coping strategies increases. Finally, they
begin to appreciate the success or failure of their emotion regulation, and become more
flexible in choosing optimal ways of coping in specific contexts. Behavioral disorganization
resulting from strong emotion decreases dramatically.
Experiencing and regulating emotion during middle childhood. Age changes in emotion
regulation occur due to the socialization messages of others, as well as cognitive abilities to
appraise the controllability of emotional experience, shift one’s thoughts intentionally,
reframe situations, and examine different aspects of the situation so that new solutions are
possible (Denham, 1998; Saarni, 1999; Salisch, 2000a). Thus, gradeschoolers use and
refine the same coping strategies as preschoolers – in different frequencies (Saarni, 1997).
They increasingly use cognitive and problem-solving behavioral coping strategies to regu-
late emotion, and rely less on support seeking. Finally, they endorse distancing when stressors
are not controllable. They are aware of the multiple strategies at their command, and that
some strategies are most adaptive in specific situations.
Expression of emotions
Another key element of emotional competence is expressiveness. Emotions must be ex-

pressed in keeping with the child’s goals, and in accordance with the social context. Thus,
emotional competence includes expressing emotions in a way that is advantageous to mo-
ment-to-moment interaction and relationships over time. First, emotionally competent
individuals are aware that an affective message should be sent in a given context (Barrett,
1995). Perhaps Ron ruminates that Gary is becoming a better soccer player because Ron
showed him new moves. Gary inadvertently pokes him on the way to the pencil sharpener;
because of his emotionally toned rumination, Ron may feel like sending a high intensity
message – “come closer at your own risk!” But what affective message should be sent, for
interaction to proceed smoothly? Second, children learn which expressions of emotion
facilitate their goals in a given social context. Third, after determining the affective mes-
sage appropriate in the current context, children must also send it convincingly. The method,
intensity, and timing of sending an affective message are crucial to its meaning and even-
tual success or failure. Showing brief annoyance over a friend winning a game conveys a
very different message than remaining angry for days. Fourth, affective messages must be
sent within the constraints of display rules. Finally, the unique characteristics of interac-
tion partners and of their interpersonal interchange must be considered (Halberstadt et al.,
2001). Some situations, like a raucous game of street hockey, and some people, like Great
Aunt Martha, “pull for” particular modes of expressiveness.
Accordingly, it is important to express clear, nonredundant emotional messages. Often
it is most productive for a child to show what she feels, such as anxiety when lost in a store.
Nonetheless, real affective messages often need to be managed – what affective message is
relevant and helpful? There are also times when real affective messages are not appropriate
– some are relevant to the situation but not the context, and some irrelevant ones need to
be masked. The quite relevant emotions of disappointment and rage at being barred from
playing Scrabble with the adults make sense, but are inappropriate in front of company.
Anxiety when meeting a new friend is probably irrelevant to the goal of fun, and should be
suppressed.
Expressiveness during the preschool period. Preschoolers’ emotional lives become quite com-
plex. They are aware of the need to send an affective message, and can express vividly all
the “basic” emotions. They also begin to show “social” emotions that require a sense of self
and of others, including empathy, shame, guilt, and contempt (Barrett, 1995; Denham,
1998). Preschoolers also begin to show blended emotions. After his best friend leaves an-
grily – “You broke my truck – I won’t be your friend anymore” – Antonio expresses a
multifaceted mixture of sadness, guilt, and anger.
Young children’s propensity to show emotions also tends to become stable across time, and
across some situations. Preschoolers also have a rudimentary awareness that there are impor-
tant contextual differences about what to send or not send (Zeman, Penza, Shipman, &
Young, 1997). They begin to use, but not completely understand, display rules and “dissem-
bling” emotions (Cole, 1986). Perhaps, despite feeling sad and guilty, Antonio may show his
friend only his righteous anger. To look sad or act guilty would only make things worse.
Expressiveness during middle childhood. With time and experience, older children learn
that goals are not always met by showing their most intense feelings. They often do not
express emotions as directly and vividly as they did earlier, with emotional expression de-
pending on the person with whom, and the situation in which, they are interacting. For
example, they regulate anger due to the negative consequences they expect (Zeman &
Shipman, 1996). Along with the “cool rule” that mandates their more muted emotions
within most settings, older children’s emotional messages can be more complex, with the
use of more blended signals and better-differentiated expressions of the social emotions.
Their new ability to express (and experience) guilt, pride, and shame is buttressed by attri-
butions of responsibility and normative standards (Harris, 1989; Olthof, Ferguson, &
Luiten, 1989). Although empirical evidence is sparse, social emotions undoubtedly influ-
ence the nature of interactions and relationships.
Understanding emotions
Understanding emotion lies at the heart of emotional competence, with both experiencing
and expressing emotions contributing to understanding, and understanding contributing
to both other aspects. An initial appraisal that another individual is sending affective infor-
mation is necessary – missing such information definitely puts one at a disadvantage (e.g.,
if Gary misses the muted expressions of annoyance on Ron’s face, he may gloat about
learning to head the soccer ball, to the dismay of both). Once perceived, the other’s affec-
tive message must be interpreted accurately. Then this information must be understood
within the constraints of display rules and applied within the “ongoing flow” of the con-
text. The key here is receiving as clearly and nonredundantly as possible, the emotional
messages of others.
Realizing that inner and outer emotional states may differ, that different individuals
have differing emotional “styles,” is also important. It is tricky to manage true or false
emotional signals from others. One must be able to ignore false affective messages if ignor-
ing benefits one’s goals, or to accept them as real if that is advantageous. Ron may notice
Gary’s attempts to mask his pain and accept them, to allow Gary to save face. One must
also: (1) pick up real, relevant, helpful messages; (2) ignore real but irrelevant messages;
and (3) somehow deal with real and relevant but not helpful messages. When Ron notices
Gary’s real but not helpful message of annoyance, he has to decide whether to ignore this
expressiveness as a momentary “blip.”
Understanding emotions during the preschool period. Preschoolers can name and recognize
expressions for most basic emotions, and identify common emotion-eliciting situations
(Denham, 1998). They can talk about emotions’ causes and consequences, especially when
ecologically valid measures are used. Young children also are acquiring the beginnings of
even more sophisticated knowledge of emotion. They are becoming aware of equivocal
emotions (some people love oatmeal, others would be angry to be served it) and using
personalized information about emotional reactions (Gnepp, 1989). They are just begin-
ning to understand emotion regulation, display rules, simultaneity, and ambivalence; of-
ten they can grasp these concepts if assistive methods are utilized (Josephs, 1994; Kestenbaum
& Gelman, 1995). However, there are limits to preschooler’s understanding of emotions;
despite emerging abilities, they often remain wedded to an emotion’s outward expression
or its eliciting situation, which of necessity hampers their accuracy (Hoffner & Badzinski,
1989).
Understanding emotions during middle childhood. Intricate understanding of emotions

blossoms during this period. Gradeschoolers show marked improvement in understanding
that different events elicit different emotions in different people, and that enduring pat-
terns of personality affect individuals’ emotional reactions (Gnepp & Chilamkurti, 1988).
They better understand finer nuances of emotions in self and others, including (1) display
rules, serving both prosocial and self-protective functions (Gnepp & Hess, 1986); (2)
multiple emotions (Harris, 1989; Olthof, Meerum Terwogt, Van Eck, & Koops, 1987);
(3) the time course of emotions and sophisticated means to regulate them (Meerum Terwogt
& Olthof, 1989); and (4) social emotions (Nunner-Winkler & Sodian, 1988). Taken
together, these new understandings bode well for emotional competence as children ma-
ture, affecting their reactions to others’ emotions, and their understanding of how others
perceive emotions in themselves.
Relationship-Specific Interconnectedness of Emotional and Social

Competence
The utility of such emotional competence, its relation to socially competent outcomes,
often depends on the specific relationship in which it is embedded. In the following, we
consider the unique links between social and emotional competence in three relationships
differing along the dimensions of symmetry and closeness, that is, “ordinary” peers (sym-
metrical and not close), friends (symmetrical and close), and parents (asymmetrical and
close). When considering relationships influential in the development of emotional com-
petence, many minds first turn to parents, as we do now.
Emotional development in parent–child relationships
Children’s relationships with their parents are close dyadic relationships. In contrast to
peer relationships and friendships, however, these relationships are asymmetrical and com-
plementary (Youniss, 1980); for example, most children rarely give advice on their parents’
emotional problems. The complementary nature of the parent–child relationship has im-
plications for children’s emotional competence in four respects. First, from birth, parents
are primary attachment figures in times of pain, anxiety, or distress. As children develop,
the importance of this support gradually diminishes, but parents still play a major role in
times of need. A secure attachment to mother tends to promote preschoolers’ understand-
ing of basic emotions (Laible & Thompson, 1998; Suess, Grossmann, & Sroufe, 1992)
and mixed emotions (Steele, Steele, Croft, & Fonagy, 1999). Children with an insecure
attachment to their mother are more likely to express hostility during the preschool years
(DeMulder, Denham, Schmidt, & Mitchell, 2000).
Second, parents are experienced adults. Their children are likely to model their emo-
tional behavior, to be exquisitely attentive to parental reactions to their emotions, and
learn much from their emotion language (Denham, 1998; Eisenberg, Cumberland, &
Spinrad, 1998; Halberstadt, 1991). These aspects of socialization contribute to strengths
and weaknesses in all elements of children’s emotional competence.
Parents also have a more advanced knowledge of emotions and of strategies for regulating
them than children. Because of their life experience and sophisticated knowledge, parents
can teach children about appraisals of emotional events, verbal labels for emotional experi-
ences, and antecedents and consequences of expressive displays (Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski,
Tesla, & Youngblade, 1991). Such teaching promotes children’s later emotional understanding
(Brown & Dunn, 1996; Denham, Zoller, & Couchoud, 1994), as well as their moral sensi-
tivity (Dunn, Brown, & Maguire, 1995). Type of emotion talk also may be important –
empathy-related statements, explanations about causes and consequences of emotions, and

descriptions of parents’ own emotions appear especially compelling for children (Garner,
Jones, Gaddy, & Rennie, 1997; Kochanoff, Denham, & Caswell, 1998).
When parents’ admonitions about emotions are misleading or idiosyncratic, children
may develop distorted emotion understanding. The anger-intensifying tendency to at-
tribute hostile intentions to another, even when none are present, is a particular problem
(Weiss, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1992). Although there are no studies on “feeling talk“ in
middle childhood, we can assume that parents also speak to school-age children about
emotion-relevant issues, such as complex emotions, mixed feelings, masked emotions, and
regulatory strategies (Harris, 1989; see also Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1996).
Third, parents introduce their children to cultural rules about experiencing, expressing,
and regulating emotions, such as expressing politeness toward the elderly (Hochschild,
1983; Joshi & MacLean, 1994; Saarni, 1999; Weber, 1996). In addition, parents usually
have subcultural, familial, or personal goals and values for appraising emotional events, as
well as ways of feeling and displaying emotions in certain situations (e.g., Zahn-Waxler,
Friedman, Cole, Mizuta, & Hiruma, 1996). Baltimore working-class mothers’ childrearing
values motivate them to teach their toddlers “toughness,” to prepare them for the chal-
lenges of their inner-city neighborhood (Miller & Sperry, 1987).
Fourth there are possible negative contributions of parents to children’s emotional com-
petence. Because parents are adults, their understanding of their children’s emotional ap-
praisals may be limited. Parents may also vary in how much they value children’s emotional
lives; for example, a ghost that frightens their child may not impress them. Childrearing
values also may stand in the way of parents’ ability to empathize with their children’s
emotions. Further, even well-meaning, empathic parents cannot know all of today’s peer
norms about appraisal, experience, and display of emotions.
Parents may differ in their willingness and ability to share children’s joy and exuberance
(Downey & Coyne, 1990; Halberstadt, 1986). Some parents also have difficulties with
negative emotion – depressed parents tend to instill higher levels of unjustified guilt in
their children (Zahn-Waxler, Kochanska, Krupnick, & McKnew, 1990). Angrier mothers
tend to have less empathic, more defiant children (Denham, 1998). Witnessing interadult
anger causes distress and sometimes anger in children (El Sheikh & Reiter, 1996), allevi-
ated only when the adults resolve their disagreement and show positive emotions (Shifflett-
Simpson & Cummings, 1996).
Despite possible negative trajectories, parents of gradeschoolers continue to be important
supports for their children’s growing emotional competence. Most school-age boys still share
their fears with their parents (Rimé, Dozier, Vandenplas, & Declercq 1996). A majority of
elementary school children endorsed the genuine expression of anxiety, sadness, and pain in
hypothetical vignettes in which their parents watched their emotional reactions (Saarni, 1988,
1989; Zeman & Shipman, 1996). But, gradeschoolers also expected that their expressions of
anger about third parties would displease their parents. These findings may depend on the
gender of child and parent; when disclosing their sadness, elementary school boys expected
fathers to react more negatively than mothers (Zeman & Garber, 1996).
Experience and regulating of emotion and parent–child relationships. No research that we

know directly addresses parent–child experience of emotion and its association with social
competence. As noted, however, parents do use emotion language to support their young
children’s emotion regulation efforts. Preschoolers with access to more sophisticated ma-
ternal language about emotion coped more productively with their own emotions expressed
in their preschool classroom (Denham, Cook, & Zoller, 1992). Teachers and peers alike
viewed these more affectively balanced children as more socially competent (Denham,
McKinley, Couchoud, & Holt, 1990). In contrast, with depressed mothers who did not
talk productively about emotion, the opposite pattern of findings obtained (Zahn-Waxler,
Ridgeway, Denham, Usher, & Cole, 1993).
Parents’ means of coping with their children’s negative emotions also has received some
attention. Concern over the child’s need for emotion regulation, if not punitive, fosters the
child’s awareness of, and attention to, his or her own emotions (Denham, 1997; Roberts
& Strayer, 1987). In contrast, overly strict sanctions about emotional expressiveness may
motivate children to hide, not regulate, their easily aroused negativity. In turn, children’s
coping is associated with their social functioning, and with sociometric status, even with
the contribution of child temperament partialled (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1994; Eisenberg,
Fabes, & Murphy, 1996; Eisenberg et al., 1999).
Expression of emotion. Fruitful investigation of the contribution of parental emotion to

children’s social competence, as mediated by children’s emotion expressed during interac-
tion with parents, has begun. Isley, O’Neil, Clatfelter, and Parke (1999) have found that
parents’ positive affect during game playing was related to their children’s social compe-
tence, as mediated by the children’s positive affect while interacting with their parents (see
also Denham & Grout, 1993; Jones & Eisenberg, 1997). Parental negative affect had only
a direct, negative contribution to children’s social competence (Isley et al., 1999). Angry
interchanges with mothers and fathers unfortunately can help children become easily aroused
during interaction, and/or learn a confrontational style, that carry over to peer aggression
and avoidance (Carson & Parke, 1996; Denham & Grout, 1993). Parental affect is espe-
cially related to social competence for father–son shared negativity and maternal positive
emotion. Taken together, these investigations suggest an important alignment of parents’
expressiveness with children’s emotional and social competence.
Understanding of emotion. Parents’, especially mothers’, contributions to their preschool-

aged children’s understanding of emotion have been investigated with some interesting
results. Denham, Zoller, and Couchoud (1994) found that when mothers explained emo-
tions, showed predominantly positive emotion, and were positively rather than negatively
responsive to the children’s emotions, children evidenced greater emotion understanding
(see also Dunn, Brown, & Beardsall, 1991). Presumably, children who experience moth-
ers’ positive meta-emotion philosophy (Gottman et al., 1996) are more willing to explore,
and have greater access to, the world of emotions, which in turn enhances their social
interactions and relationships (Dunn & Cutting, 1998; Dunn & Herrera, 1997).
Emotional development in interaction with peers
The peer group is expected to have a pervasive influence on children’s emotional develop-
ment for two reasons. First, because of their similarity, peers are in a better position to
understand the emotional life of age-mates than parents or children of other age groups
(Dunn & Hughes, 1998). Age-mates argue at about the same sociocognitive and moral
level, face the same transitions and (normative) life events, and share the same role vis-à-vis
school and teachers (Salisch, 2000c). Second, being with a group of like-minded peers may
intensify children’s emotional experiences, such as glee over a teacher’s faux pas or panic
over crawling insects. Children create group cultures with their own norms and values
(Corsaro & Eder, 1990), including the shared appraisal of emotion-eliciting events, and
explicit and implicit rules about the expression and the regulation of emotions.
Experiencing and regulating emotion and peer relations. From preschool through the pri-
mary grades, children who improve, or are consistently average or high in emotion regula-
tion, show higher social competence than those whose regulation ability is consistently low
or declining. Experience of emotions and their regulation also interact in contributing to
social competence. Especially for highly negative children, attentional and behavior regu-
lation are related to social functioning and sociometric status (Eisenberg, Fabes, Shepard,
Murphy, et al., 1997; Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, Murphy et al., 1996; Eisenberg, Guthrie,
Fabes, Reiser, et al., 1997). Further, high attentional regulation and low emotional inten-
sity, as well as their interaction, predict sympathy concurrently and over time (Eisenberg,
Fabes, Murphy, Maszk, et al., 1995).
Gradeschoolers learn to adopt an “emotional front” (Saarni, 1988, 1989). “Letting it all
hang out” is uniformly selected as the worst reaction to negative emotional experiences
with peers (Saarni, 1997). Gradeschoolers apply differing strategies to achieve their “fronts”;
they report cognitively distancing themselves from anger-provoking situations, redirecting
attention to alleviate distress, avoiding confrontations altogether, or problem solving calmly
(Murphy & Eisenberg, 1996; Stegge & Meerum Terwogt, 1998; Salisch, 2000a). Although
these “fronts” make children’s expressions less genuine, they also have positive aspects,
including saving face and “surviving” in a possibly hostile environment.
Expressiveness and peer relations. Preschoolers’ expression of specific emotions also relates
to their peer status and to teachers’ evaluations of their friendliness and aggression. Positive
affect is important in the initiation and regulation of social exchanges, and for communi-
cation during socially directed acts; sharing positive affect may facilitate the formation of
friendships. Happier, less angry preschoolers react more prosocially to peers’ emotions, are
better liked by peers, and are rated as friendlier and more cooperative by teachers (Denham
et al., 1990). Conversely, preschoolers, who show larger proportions of negative affect, are
often seen as troublesome and difficult (Denham et al., 1990). Sadness is related to teacher-
rated withdrawal (Denham & Burger, 1989).
The relation of emotional expressiveness to social competence is often context-depend-
ent. Arsenio, Cooperman, and Lover (2000) have examined preschoolers’ emotions within
and outside periods of conflict, to investigate these emotions’ relations to aggression and
social competence. Children’s nonconflict anger (and less nonconflict happiness), and hap-
piness during conflict were positively related to initiation of aggression and negatively
related to sociometric status. Anger during conflict appears normative – after all, it is a
conflict. A generally irascible demeanor, or glee at another’s discomfort, however, is incon-
gruent with social competence.
Little work has described observed expressiveness and social competence in older chil-
dren. It becomes more difficult to code emotion because of the “cool rule!” There are clear
indications, however, that rejected and accepted children’s emotional profiles differ
(Underwood, Hurley, Johanson, & Mosley, 1999). To avoid peer rejection, gradeschoolers
are challenged to reduce expressions of anger, triumph over others’ failures, and envy, in
favor of polite negotiation (Krappmann & Oswald, 1995; Tassi & Schneider, 1997). Chil-
dren also say they would express only extreme or visible anxiety and hurt to peers (Saarni,
1989), and expect harsher reactions when expressing sadness or pain in front of peers
rather than parents (Zeman & Garber, 1996). Some expectations are gender dependent.
Boys say they are unlikely to share fears, but girls report not displaying anger (Underwood,
Coie, & Herbsman, 1992). Finally, although some studies support that children prefer to
befriend peers who are “fun” (Parker & Seal, 1996), there is little research on rules about
expressing positive emotions.
Understanding emotions and peer relations. Children who strategically apply emotion knowl-
edge more often succeed in peer interactions. Preschoolers’ understanding of emotion is
related to their positive peer status, to teachers’ views of their social competence, and to
their prosocial reactions to the emotions of peers and adults (Denham, 1986; Denham et
al., 1990). Barth and Bastiani (1997) have uncovered a more subtle relation: Preschoolers’
mistaken perceptions of peers as angry – a recognition bias similar to the hostile attribution
bias of later years – are associated with negative social behavior.
Other discrete types of positive social behavior also are related to preschoolers’ emotion
knowledge. For example, preschoolers’ emotion knowledge is related to use of reasoned
argument, and caregiving, with siblings (Dunn, Slomkowski, Donelan, & Herrera, 1995;
Garner, Jones, & Miner, 1994). Older children’s understanding of prosocial display rules
is related to: (1) prosocial behavior; (2) prosocial responses to hypothetical conflicts; and
(3) teacher- and peer-rated social competence (Garner, 1996; Jones, Abbey, & Cumberland,
1998).
Emotional development within friendships
Because friendships now attain a new quality of intimacy, friends’ emotions are experi-
enced “close up” (Krappmann, 1996). Observing another’s emotions in a symmetrically
reciprocal relationship, where the child takes more responsibility for successful interaction,
may be accompanied by attention that facilitates learning. A friend’s conformance to dis-
play rules, display of complex emotions, and demonstration of ambivalence may be espe-
cially instructive. Thus, sharing emotions with friends may contribute to children’s emotional
competence, but these theoretical speculations badly need empirical support.
Caution is warranted, however, against assuming only beneficial aspects of friendships;
all friends and friendships are not equal (Hartup, 1999). Reciprocal negative, as well as
positive, effects can operate (Salisch, 2000b). Several issues to consider are: (1) Is the friend
socially competent? (2) Is the friendship amicable? intimate? conflictual? (3) Child charac-
teristics, including temperament and family processes.
Experiencing and regulating emotion within friendship. Friends may assist each other to
manage their experience of emotion, for example, by reframing the break-up of another
friendship (“he’s not worth crying over“), or by giving explicit advice on emotion regula-
tion (“don’t think about it any more”; Gottman & Mettetal, 1986). Preadolescent friends
also use distraction to keep their friends from ruminating over negative attributions that
accentuate emotions like shame, guilt, or depression (Denton & Zarbatany, 1996). Not all
is amiable, however. Gradeschoolers who endorsed revenge goals and hostile strategies in
conflict scenarios quarreled more in their best friendships and had fewer reciprocal best
friends (Rose & Asher, 1999a). In conflicts during a computer game, competitive friends
expressed anger, contempt, and disgust, and self-reported more intense experiences of shame
and guilt (Salisch, 1999).
Expressiveness within friendship. Preschoolers display positive affective reciprocity more

frequently, and are more expressive overall, with friends than with siblings (Brachfeld-
Child & Schiavo, 1990; Volling, Youngblade, & Belsky, 1997). Although preschoolers’
experience similar intensity of anger with liked and disliked peers, their behavioral re-
sponses, especially boys’, are more controlled to liked peers (Fabes, Eisenberg, Smith, &
Murphy, 1996). Children also are more sympathetic to the hypothetical plight of a friend
than a nonfriend, and more readily propose an intervention (Costin & Jones, 1992). Be-
cause the tasks of middle childhood friendship include caring, concern, help, conflict man-
agement, forgiving, and affection, friends are children’s “best bets” for sharing emotional
experience, especially feelings of vulnerability, and helping each other acquire emotional
competencies (Rose & Asher, 1999b; Saarni, 1988, 1989).
Understanding emotions and friendship. Preschoolers’ understanding of the causes and

consequences of emotions already is differentiated by relationship (Dunn & Hughes, 1998).
Understanding of emotions and others’ minds is related to 4 year olds’ positive interaction
with friends – both child and friends’ emotion knowledge contribute to cooperative shared
pretend, low frequency of conflict, and successful communication (Dunn & Cutting, 1999).
Child–friend conversation about emotion also is related to cooperative interaction (Brown,
Donelan-McCall, & Dunn, 1996). Finally, positive play within friendships predicts un-
derstanding of mixed emotions at the end of the preschool period (Maguire & Dunn,
1997), suggestive of a bidirectional relation.
The shifting developmental tasks served by conversations between friends (Gottman &
Mettetal, 1986) point to middle childhood as a time when friends may use emotion talk in
various ways, specifically about the aspects of emotion understanding undergoing rapid
development at this age – display rules, ambivalence, and complex emotions like guilt.
First, friends’ ubiquitous gossip allows them to mention potential insecurities without
naming them, similar to earlier fantasy play (e.g., “I hate it when he ‘blows up’, don’t
you?”). Second, close friendships challenge preadolescents to be helpful to the friend in
need, to not respond in an ignoring or hostile way (Rose & Asher, 1999b). Friends’ ap-
proval, sympathy, and affection could easily include emotion language. Emotion-colored
accounts are compared, contrasted, and validated as friends help each other to sort out
their shared and idiosyncratic feelings (Sullivan, 1953). Third, conflict processes also rear
their not-necessarily-ugly head, with conversations replete with emotion talk about regu-
lating anger, sadness, envy, jealousy, shame, guilt, and hurt feelings. Fourth, friends react
to each other’s emotions during their conversations. Reactions that comfort (“Don’t worry
about the test”) and exhort (“Stop crying – everybody’s looking!”) may be pivotal in assist-
ing the friend learn about emotions and feel generally positive, while conforming to group
norms. Research on emotion-related aspects of elementary school-aged friends’ conversa-
tion and behaviors, especially their relations to other aspects of their emotional compe-
tence, is sorely needed.
Where Do We Go From Here?
It should be obvious that much exciting work has been done, to show the ways in which
emotional competence is an integral part of social competence. There also are many readily
discernible ways to expand upon this work, primary among them to follow children’s lives
across time – what is the predictive power of emotional (in)competence? What happens to
Gary, Ron, Huynh, and Jack? Only longitudinal study can spell out the significance of
emotional development for children’s long-term adaptation and settle issues about the
direction of causality. Thus, although our evaluations may be somewhat biased, it seems
clear that we must:
● Flesh out the dual roles of each relationship partner – parent, peer, and friend. That is,
it is probably apparent to the reader that our exposition of parents’ influence centered
on socializing emotional competence, whereas discussion of peers and friends focused
on the role of the child’s emotional competence within such relationships. We need to
know: (1) how children’s emotional competence in interaction with parents is related
to successful parent–child relationships; and (2) how peers and friends act as socializers
of other children’s emotional competence. What does Huynh learn about expressing emo-
tions from Gary, or from Jack? Conversely, how does Gary’s shrewdness about emotions play
out in the transformations of his relationship with his father, as he nears adolescence?
● Make more headway in the investigation of children’s “live” experience of emotions,
especially during preschool (e.g., Olthof & Engelberts-Vaske, 1997). Was Jack really
feeling so dominant in his bullying, or was that a “front”? What emotions does he experience
and display in high school, and how do they affect his relationships?
● Plumb the relation between use of display rules and social competence, despite the
efforts of Zeman and Shipman (e.g., 1996); in fact, the union of investigation of social
and emotional competence still lags, in our view. What if Huynh hadn’t managed to
conceal his fear? What sort of peer relations and friendships would he have years later?
● Investigate more thoroughly the emotional world of gradeschoolers, especially in com-
parison to more easily accessible preschoolers; more work on emotional/social compe-
tence links in middle childhood friendships is sorely needed. Did Ron and Gary con-
tinue to use their emotional competence skills to the utmost with each other? Are they still
friends in high school?
● Examine these phenomena with minority and low SES children (with the exception of
Garner’s work, which often suggests that low SES, minority children’s emotional com-
petence milestones, and their socialization, often are similar to more affluent children’s).
If the boys had been playing stickball in an inner-city neighborhood, would they need the
same or different emotional competence skills? And what would their trajectory be?
● Uncover possible gender effects, going beyond main effects (which seem to be sparse);
the ways in which emotional competence contributes to social competence may differ
for boys and girls (but see Eisenberg, Fabes, et al., 1997). What if the four children
playing soccer had been girls?
● Consider that emotional competence is not always beneficial for establishing and main-
taining harmonious relationships. For example, even though a well-developed empathic
sense might keep aggressors from attacking their victims, they might use it to enhance
the maliciousness of their attacks (Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999). Similarly,
developmental change in competence concerning envy, jealousy, and anger may influ-
ence social development negatively. Did Jack’s perceptive reading of peers’ weaknesses
allow him to become an ever more powerful thug?
These specific needs must be addressed in future research. Steps toward rapprochement
of peer and emotions subdisciplines are hopeful signs. For example, Lemerise and Arsenio’s
(2000) inclusion of emotions with their model of social information processing should
spawn much fruitful work.
There also are more overarching areas needing attention. One problem area is cultural.
Most of the studies reviewed so far come from the Western industrialized countries. This
limits the generalizability of their results. What if the four soccer players had been Nigerian?
Or Chinese? How would “emotional competence” be different for the children?
A further limitation is measurement related. Many studies of gradeschoolers use self-
report measures, especially in research on emotional competence with peers and friends.
Self-reports are subject to biases, and may be influenced by gender-role concepts or cul-
tural styles of self-presentation. Many investigations on emotional development in
gradeschoolers’ relationships use hypothetical vignettes, sometimes of questionable eco-
logical validity. New, more ingenious, methods of self-report also can be devised. To meas-
ure experiencing and regulating, children could review videotapes of themselves, pressing a
button when they were feeling (and showing or not showing) an emotion. They could
describe their feelings and causes, as well as means of regulation. To measure expressive-
ness, children could view a videotape of social interaction, and press a button when an
affective message needed to be sent. They could be asked, as well, what message should be
sent? Emotional reactions to others can be measured within “created” situations in the
laboratory or within real social settings, for example, helping an older confederate, consol-
ing an adult, and discussing the experience during a post-event interview (Denham, 1986;
Saarni, 1992). To measure understanding, a child could press a button when there is an
affective message on videotape, and identify it.
Observational research covering a broad range of age groups and emotion-eliciting situ-
ations is especially needed for the joint study of peer influences and emotional develop-
ment (e.g. Denham et al., 2001; Underwood et al., 1999). For example, observed facial
expressions of anger do not become less frequent across middle childhood, nor is a subtler
variant substituted for the full anger expression, as might be expected (Salisch, 1997; cf.
nonobservational studies, Zeman & Garber, 1996; Underwood et al., 1992).
We also must integrate inter- and intrapersonal aspects of emotional competence in our
investigations, rather than centering on one or another, because bidirectionality can be
assumed between them. For example, intrapersonal representations, such as lack of emo-
tion understanding or a hostile attribution bias, may influence the expression of anger and
hostility in interpersonal contexts, ultimately leading to peer rejection. Conversely, inter-
personal practices, such as ample emotion talk in the family, are likely to promote chil-
dren’s intrapersonal understanding of emotions. A transactional model that depicts the
reciprocal influences between intra- and interpersonal features of emotional competence,
both concurrently and longitudinally, is necessary.
Finally, we realize that at the interpersonal level, it is somewhat artificial to tease apart
the differential influences of parents, peers, and friends because most children take part in
each of these kinds of relationships. In addition, some influences may not be specific to
one type of relationship. Nevertheless, differentiating between the emotion components of
experience, expression, understanding, and regulation strategies, and tracing the influences
of different interpersonal relationships on the development of the emotion components,
seems to be a worthwhile undertaking for the future, considering how important emotions
and relationships are to the participants.
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Social Withdrawal and Shyness 329
17
Social Withdrawal and Shyness
Kenneth H. Rubin, Kim B. Burgess, and Robert J. Coplan
And the Lord God said “It is not good that the man should be alone.”
Genesis 2:18
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
Albert Einstein
There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when
it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against
the wall.
Colette, Earthly Paradise
For centuries philosophers, writers, artists, and psychologists alike have offered opinions,
hypotheses, and data pertaining to the phenomenon of solitude. For many writers, soli-
tude is viewed romantically as a phenomenon that brings safety, quiet, and escape from the
“madding crowd.” Solitude is viewed as a source of inspiration, as a psychological venue
for quiet reflection. For others, however, solitude brings with it loneliness and suffering. In
this chapter, we describe the origins, correlates, and consequences of this second vision of
solitude – that which brings wariness in social company, fear of rejection, victimization,
and loneliness. Thus, our focus is on the topic of social withdrawal.
For many years, researchers neglected the study of solitude and withdrawal from social
company. In part, this neglect stemmed from assumptions that shyness (not withdrawal)
was neither an accompaniment of maladaptation nor a predictor of subsequent psycho-
logical difficulty. In the past 20 years, however, a burgeoning literature has accumulated
on the topic. The phenomenon has undergone definitional scrutiny, developmental ex-
amination, and theory generation.
330 Kenneth H. Rubin, Kim B. Burgess, & Robert J. Coplan
Defining Social Withdrawal
Prior to the contemporary research and thinking of the past decade, researchers and clini-
cal psychologists were habitually using the following terms interchangeably: social with-
drawal (passive or solitary-passive), isolation, shyness, and inhibition. In an edited volume,
Rubin and Asendorpf (1993) attempted to bring order to the perceived chaos endemic in
the study of children’s solitary behavior and solitude. In their leadoff chapter, they defined
inhibition as the disposition to be wary and fearful when encountering novel (unfamiliar)
situations. Fearful shyness refers to inhibition in response to novel social situations; in mid-
dle childhood, self-conscious shyness is reflected by the display of inhibition in response to
social-evaluative concerns. Social isolation has little to do with the behavioral expression of
wariness; rather the term reflects the experience of solitude that derives from peer rejec-
tion, as in being isolated (rejected) by the peer group. Finally, social withdrawal refers to the
consistent (across situations and over time) display of all forms of solitary behavior when en-
countering familiar and/or unfamiliar peers. Simply put, social withdrawal is construed as
isolating oneself from the peer group.
Unfortunately, the two constructs of passive withdrawal and solitary-passive withdrawal
have created an understandable confusion in the literature. Passive withdrawal refers to the
child’s withdrawal from the peer group. Typically, this construct is drawn from rating scale
data (e.g., Revised Class Play, Pupil Evaluation Inventory) and is illustrated by items such
as “very shy,” “feelings hurt easily,” “rather play alone than with others.” The passive with-
drawal construct may be contrasted with active isolation, a term which suggests that the
child is actively isolated by the peer group (e.g., “often left out,” “can’t get others to lis-
ten”). Solitary-passive withdrawal is observed solitary behavior that involves exploratory
and constructive activity. Since we were responsible for using the term “passive” in several
ways, we hereby provide a clarification and offer an apology for any possible confusion.
Moreover, we fully recognize that solitary-passive withdrawal is actually not passive at all
given that it consists of active exploration and construction.
Reticence is a construct embodied within social withdrawal and should not be confused
with the broader construct of social withdrawal. Reticence has been operationalized as the
demonstration of solitary, wary behavior. It appears to be a reflection of shyness in unfamiliar
peer settings and social wariness among familiar peers (Coplan & Rubin, 1998; Coplan,
Rubin, Fox, Calkins, & Stewart, 1994; Rubin, 1982a). Behavioral reticence stands in con-
trast with solitude that reflects social disinterest (e.g., solitary-passive play in early child-
hood) or social immaturity (e.g., solitary-active play in early childhood). Solitary-active play
comprises sensorimotor and/or dramatic activity acted out by oneself despite being in social
company (Rubin, 1982a). Social withdrawal, on the other hand, is operationalized by all
forms of solitude across contexts of familiarity and unfamiliarity; thus, reticence and soli-
tary-passive and -active play together comprise the “umbrella” construct of social withdrawal.
To this constellation of related constructs, one can now add the clinical terms social
phobia or social anxiety disorder. This phenomenon is marked by a fear of saying or doing
things in public that will result in humiliation and embarrassment (Beidel, Turner & Morris,
1999). This latter construct is viewed as a clinical disorder (DSM IV, 1995) and appears to
share much in common with social withdrawal at the extreme.
The forms of solitude described above carry with them different psychological mean-
ings. For instance, there may be different motivations underlying the shy or withdrawn
behaviors. Children, and adults for that matter, may spend time alone because they choose
to do so, even when they are amongst others (e.g., socially disinterested). In this regard
they may be said to lack an approach motivation while at the same time not necessarily
having the motivation to avoid others (Asendorpf, 1993). In short, when such individuals
are approached by others, they do not back away and exhibit wariness and social anxiety.
Instead, they welcome the approach and thereafter make the choice to continue interact-
ing or to return to that which occupied their solitary pursuits.
Other individuals may have conflicting motivations; that is, they may be motivated to
approach others whilst at the same time feel the need to avoid those in their social milieu
(e.g., socially wary; Rubin & Asendorpf, 1993). For some individuals, this approach–avoid-
ance conflict is demonstrated mainly when in the company of unfamiliar others; for oth-
ers, the motivational conflict exists across time and venue, including with familiar others.
Lastly, some individuals may have a high approach motive and low avoidance motive, but
for one reason or another they are rejected, and thus isolated by those in their social com-
munity of peers (Rubin, LeMare, & Lollis, 1990). In short, there are various reasons for
the behavioral expression of solitude or social withdrawal.
Keeping in mind the psychological meanings and definitional issues, we now elaborate
and explain why social withdrawal may bring social costs and angst rather than the pleas-
ures to which the above quotes refer.
The Developmental Significance of Solitude and Social Withdrawal
Theories pertaining to social interaction
Piaget. Early developmental research on social withdrawal had, as its theoretical origins,
the writings of Piaget and Mead about the significance of social interaction for normal
development. Piaget (1932), for example, posited that peer interaction provided a unique
cognitive and social-cognitive growth context for children. He focused specifically on the
relevance of disagreements with age-mates and the opportunities for negotiation arising
from disagreements. These naturally occurring differences of opinion were assumed to
engender cognitive conflict that required both intra- and interpersonal resolution in order
for positive peer exchanges and experiences to occur. The resolution of interpersonal dis-
putes was thought to result in a better understanding of others’ thoughts and emotions,
the broadening of one’s social repertoire with which to solve interpersonal disputes and
misunderstandings, and the comprehension of cause–effect relations in social interaction.
Support for these Piagetian notions derived from research demonstrating that peer ex-
change, conversations, and interactions produced intrapersonal cognitive conflict and a
subsequent decline in egocentric thinking (e.g., Damon & Killen, 1982). Evidence was
also offered for the associations between the inability to perspective-take and the demon-
stration of maladaptive social behavior (e.g., Crick & Dodge, 1994). Finally, researchers
found that perspective-taking skills could be improved through peer interactive
experiences, particularly those experiences that involved role-play. In turn, such improve-
ment led to increases in prosocial behavior and to decreases in aggressive behavior (e.g.,
Selman & Schultz, 1990).
Mead. Like Piaget, Mead (1934) emphasized the importance of the development of per-
spective-taking (and the corresponding decline of egocentrism) through peer interaction.
In his theory of symbolic interactionism, Mead suggested that the ability to reflect on the
self developed gradually over the early years of life, primarily as a function of peer interac-
tion experiences. Participation in rule-governed games and activities with peers was be-
lieved to help children understand and coordinate the perspectives of others in relation to
the self. Thus, perspective-taking experiences led to the conceptualization of the “general-
ized other” or the organized perspective of the social group, which in turn led to the emer-
gence of an organized sense of self.
Summary. Early developmental theories and the data supportive of them (see Rubin,
Bukowski, & Parker, 1998 for a review) allow the conclusion that peer interaction influ-
ences the development of social cognition and, ultimately, the expression of competent
social behavior. Peer interaction also influences children’s understanding of the rules and
norms of their peer subcultures. It is this understanding of normative performance levels
that engenders in the child an ability to evaluate her/his own competency against the per-
ceived standards of the peer group.
If peer interaction does lead to the development of social competencies and the under-
standing of the self in relation to others, it seems reasonable to think about the develop-
mental consequences for those children who, for whatever reason, refrain from engaging in
social interaction and avoid the company of their peers. It is this reasonable thought that
“drives” much of the current research on social withdrawal.
Developmental Origins of Social Withdrawal
Biology and behavioral inhibition
Where might social withdrawal come from? One line of thinking is that it derives from a
biological disposition to be emotionally primed to react to novelty with wariness and fear.
Drawing from the writings of Rothbart and Derryberry (1981), it has been suggested that
temperament, or the degree to which individuals vary with regard to reactivity, frequency,
intensity, and latency of response in the expression of emotions, may play a significant role
in the early demonstration of behavioral inhibition. Supporting this premise, Kagan and
Fox (e.g., Calkins, Fox, & Marshall, 1996; Kagan, Snidman, & Arcus, 1998) have identi-
fied groups of infants who display a high degree of reactivity and who are likely to express
this reactivity via singular discrete emotions. Kagan and colleagues identified infants who
exhibited not only a high degree of motor reactivity, but also cried when presented with
novel visual and auditory stimuli. Calkins et al. (1996) singled out infants who were both
highly reactive to novelty and expressed this reactivity via a high frequency of negative
affect and distress. In both instances, these infants displayed more fearfulness and behavioral
inhibition as toddlers than did other children (Calkins et al., 1996).
Following from this research, it has been argued that behavioral inhibition emanates
from a physiological “hard wiring” that evokes caution, wariness, and timidity in unfamil-
iar social and nonsocial situations (Kagan, 1997). Inhibited infants and toddlers differ
from their uninhibited counterparts in ways that imply variability in the threshold of excit-
ability of the amygdala and its projections to the cortex, hypothalamus, sympathetic nerv-
ous system, corpus striatum, and central gray (Calkins et al., 1996). Stable patterns of right
frontal EEG asymmetries in infancy predict temperamental fearfulness and behavioral in-
hibition in early childhood. Fox and colleagues (Fox & Calkins, 1993) recorded brain
electrical activity of children at ages 9, 14, and 24 months and found that infants who
displayed a pattern of stable right frontal EEG asymmetry across this 15-month period
were more fearful, anxious, compliant, and behaviorally inhibited as toddlers than were
other infants. The findings suggest that unique patterns of anterior brain electrical activity
may be involved in the expression of fear and anxiety (Schmidt, 1999) and may reflect a
particular underlying temperamental type. Indeed, a profile of asymmetric resting right
frontal EEG activity has consistently been associated with social fear, withdrawal, and
anxiety in both adults and young children; on the other hand, left frontal EEG activity has
been associated with sociability and approach (Schmidt & Schulkin, 1999).
Another physiological entity that distinguishes wary from nonwary infants/toddlers is
vagal tone, an index of the functional status or efficiency of the nervous system (Porges &
Byrne, 1992), marking both general reactivity and the ability to regulate one’s level of
arousal. Reliable associations have been found between vagal tone and inhibition in infants
and toddlers (Andersson, Bohlin, & Hagekull, 1999; Garcia Coll, Kagan, & Reznick,
1984): children with lower vagal tone (consistently high heart rate due to less parasympathetic
influence) tend to be more behaviorally inhibited.
Lastly, the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical (HPA) axis is affected largely by stress-
ful or aversive situations that involve novelty, uncertainty, and/or negative emotions (Levine,
1993); and behaviorally inhibited infants evidence significant increases in cortisol as a
function of exposure to stressful social situations (Spangler & Schieche, 1998). Moreover,
socially wary, fearful children have shown elevated home baseline cortisol readings relative
to nonwary children, suggesting that they are continually “primed” to react with wariness
to novel or unsettling social situations (Schmidt, Fox, & Schulkin, in press).
Stability of behavioral inhibition. Those who have argued for a biological cause of behavioral
inhibition point not only to the physiological concomitants and predictors of the phenom-
enon, but also to the reasonably consistent finding that wary, fearful behavior is stable.
Kagan and colleagues have suggested that extremely inhibited toddlers may be character-
ized as inhibited with adults and peers in later childhood (Kagan, 1989; Kagan, Reznick,
& Snidman, 1987, 1989; Reznick et al., 1986); and have shown that toddlers identified as
extremely inhibited are likely to be similarly identified five years later (Kagan et al., 1988).
Others have shown that behavioral inhibition, from early through late childhood and ado-
lescence is stable, but only moderately so (Broberg, 1993; Hart, Hofman, Edelstein, &
Keller, 1997; Rubin, Burgess, & Hastings, in press; Rubin, Nelson, Hastings, & Asendorpf,
1999; Sanson, Pedlow, Cann, Prior, & Oberklaid, 1996).
Given the modest stability of behavioral inhibition, it seems reasonable to argue that it
is hardly immutable. Therefore, the interplay of endogenous, socialization, and early rela-
tionship factors might be responsible for the development, maintenance, and dissolution
of inhibition and its putatively negative consequences.
Attachment relationships and behavioral inhibition
According to attachment theorists, children develop an internalized model of the self in

relation to others from the quality of their early parenting experiences (Bowlby, 1973). In
the case of a secure parent–child relationship, the internal working model allows the child
to feel confident and self-assured when introduced to novel settings. This sense of “felt
security” fosters the child’s active exploration of the social environment (Sroufe, 1983).
Exploration of the social milieu allows the child to answer such other-directed questions as
“What are the properties of this other person?”, “What is she/he like?”, “What can and
does she/he do?” (Rubin, Fein, & Vandenberg, 1983). Once these exploratory questions
are answered, the child can address self-directed questions such as “What can I do with this
person?” Thus, felt security is viewed as a central construct in socioemotional development:
it enhances social exploration, which results in interactive peer play. Peer play, in turn,
plays a significant role in the development of social competence (Rubin & Rose-Krasnor,
1992).
Not all children are fortunate enough to develop internal working models of security.
Approximately one third of all children develops insecure internal working models of so-
cial relationships and come to view the world as unpredictable, comfortless, and unrespon-
sive (Sroufe, 1983). That subgroup of insecurely attached young children who refrain
from exploring their social environments have typically been classified as anxious-resistant
or “C” babies. In novel settings these infants maintain close proximity to the attachment
figure; and when the attachment figure (usually the mother) leaves the paradigmatic “Strange
Situation” for a short period of time, “C” babies become disturbingly unsettled. Upon
reunion with the attachment figure, these infants show ambivalence – angry, resistant
behaviors interspersed with proximity, contact-seeking behaviors (e.g., Greenspan &
Lieberman, 1988).
Direct evidence for a predictive relation between infant temperament and insecure “C”
attachment status derives from several sources. Infants who are dispositionally reactive to
mildly stressful, novel social events are more likely to be classified as insecurely attached
“C” (anxious-resistant) babies than their less reactive counterparts (Calkins & Fox, 1992).
Spangler and Schieche (1998) reported that of 16 “C” babies they identified, 15 were rated
by mothers as behaviorally inhibited.
Although support exists for a direct relation between temperament and insecure attach-
ment, recent research indicates that this association is rather complex. It appears that when
behaviorally inhibited toddlers are faced with novelty or social unfamiliarity, they become
emotionally dysregulated: it is this dysregulation that seems to lead toddlers to retreat from
unfamiliar adults and peers. That these youngsters become unsettled is supported by find-
ings that confrontation with unfamiliarity brings with it increases in hypothalamic–pitui-
tary–adrenocortical (HPA) activity (Spangler & Schieche, 1998). Interestingly, this relation
between confrontation with unfamiliarity and increases in HPA activation has been re-
ported for insecurely attached children in the Strange Situation (e.g., Gunnar, Mangelsdorf,
Larson, & Hertsgaard, 1989; Nachmias, Gunnar, Mangelsdorf, Parritz, & Buss, 1996).
More to the point, this increased HPA activity is experienced by “C” babies (Spangler &
Schieche, 1998).
Taken together, both insecure “C” attachment status and behavioral inhibition might
predict the subsequent display of socially reticent and withdrawn behaviors among peers.
Empirical support for such conjecture derives from findings that anxious-resistant (“C”)
infants are more whiny, easily frustrated, and socially inhibited at age 2 than their secure
(“B”) counterparts (Calkins & Fox, 1992); and they also tend to be rated by their teachers
as more dependent, helpless, tense, and fearful (Pastor, 1981). Finally, “C” babies lack
confidence and assertiveness at age 4 years (Erickson, Sroufe, & Egeland, 1985); then, at
age 7 years they are observed to be socially withdrawn (Renken, Egeland, Marvinney,
Sroufe, & Mangelsdorf, 1989).
It might appear that the putative consequences of disposition-based behavioral inhibi-
tion and insecure-ambivalent attachment status are identical. Indeed, some have argued
that the behavior displayed by “C” babies in the Strange Situation is little more than the
expression of inhibited temperament (Kagan, 1998). However, Spangler and Schieche
(1998) found that the relation between behavioral inhibition and the increased production
of cortisol after being observed in the Strange Situation was significant, but only for infants
who had an insecure attachment relationship with their mother; for children with a secure
attachment relationship, there appeared to be a buffering effect on felt or experienced
stress for behaviorally inhibited babies. These data suggest that the instability of behavioral
inhibition from one year to the next may well be a function of the quality of the parent–
child relationship.
Parenting and behavioral inhibition
Thus far, we have described factors that may be responsible for the development of behavioral
inhibition, and ultimately the demonstration of social withdrawal in childhood – factors
such as the child’s dispositional characteristics, the quality of the parent–child attachment
relationship, and the interaction between dispositional and social relationship factors. Note,
however, that an insecure attachment relationship is itself predicted by maternal behavior.
For example, mothers of insecurely attached “C” babies are more controlling and
overinvolved than are mothers of securely attached babies (Erickson et al., 1985). It is this
particular parenting style that is significant in the lives of behaviorally inhibited infants
and toddlers.
Maternal overcontrol and oversolicitousness. The developmental course of behavioral inhi-

bition is better understood by referring to the quality of parenting associated with it. Given
that inhibited children may fail to adequately explore the social and nonsocial environ-
ment, it has been suggested that their parents may arrive at the belief that the best (if not
only) way to help their children understand their “worlds” is to either manipulate their
child’s behaviors in a power assertive, highly directive fashion (e.g., telling the child how to
act or what to do) or to intervene and take over for the child the management of his/her
interpersonal or impersonal dilemmas (see Burgess, Rubin, Cheah, & Nelson, 2001, for a
review). The upside is that the child’s difficulties will be solved. The downside is that for
socially fearful children, the experience of such parental overcontrol is likely to maintain or
exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, their difficulties. Parental overdirection will not allow
the child to solve impersonal or interpersonal problems on her/his own. In controlling
what their children are exposed to and how such situations are handled, these parents may
prevent their children from engaging in necessary, self-initiated coping techniques. Lack-
ing practice in behavioral self-regulation, children who are poor physiological regulators
may not learn to overcome their dispositional vulnerabilities. Further, such parenting ex-
periences may prevent the development of a belief system of self-efficacy, and likely will
perpetuate feelings of insecurity within and outside the family.
Given the above scenario, is there evidence that intrusively controlling parenting is an
accompaniment and/or response to behavioral inhibition? Recent studies have demon-
strated that parental influence and control does appear to maintain and exacerbate chil-
dren’s inhibition and social withdrawal. For example, Rubin, Hastings, Stewart, Henderson,
and Chen (1997) found that mothers of inhibited toddlers were “oversolicitous”; that is,
they were observed to be highly affectionate and shielding of their toddlers when it was
neither appropriate nor sensitive to do so. In a recent follow-up of these children, Rubin,
Burgess, and Hastings (in press) found that behavioral inhibition at 2 years did predict
socially reticent behavior during the preschool years; however, maternal overcontrol was a
significant predictor as well. For toddlers whose mothers were highly intrusive, inhibited
behavior among peers predicted subsequent reticent behaviors; but for toddlers whose
mothers were not intrusively controlling, the relation between toddler inhibition and pre-
school reticence was nonsignificant.
Henderson and Rubin (1997) explored whether emotion regulation, as measured physi-
ologically, interacted with parental behavior to predict preschoolers’ socially reticent behavior
among preschool peers. These researchers began with the premise that vagal tone, a marker
of the tonic level of functioning of the parasympathetic nervous system (Porges & Byrne,
1992), should be associated with the display of social behavior in the peer group. For
preschoolers who exhibited low resting vagal tone, observations and maternal reports of
highly intrusive and critical behavior with the child were associated with observed child
reticent, wary and anxious behaviors among peers; but for preschoolers with high resting
vagal tone, such maternal intrusiveness and criticism were not associated with behavioral
reticence.
Examining parents’ behaviors toward anxious-withdrawn children (ages 2.5 to 6 years),
LaFreniere and Dumas (1992) found that mothers were poor reciprocators of their own
child’s displays of positive behavior and positive affect. In addition, these mothers re-
sponded aversively to their child’s negative behavior and negative affect. Such noncontingent
responding to their children’s positive behavior accompanied by punishment of negative
behavior could hinder a child’s development of self-worth and felt security.
Finally, in a recent examination of reported (rather than observed) parenting styles,
Rubin and colleagues found that for both mothers and fathers, perceptions of their tod-
dlers as shy and inhibited at age 2 years were (a) stable to age 4 years, and (b) predicted a
lack of parental encouragement of independence at age 4 years (Rubin, Nelson, Hastings,
& Asendorpf, 1999). Parents’ expressed lack of encouragement of independence, although

stable from 2 to 4 years, failed to predict child shyness at age 4 years. These findings
suggest that parents are responsive to child characteristics; and from the longitudinal data
described above (Rubin et al., in press), it appears that those inhibited toddlers whose
mothers are intrusively controlling and likely to discourage independence would be more
likely to continue on a developmental trajectory of social withdrawal than those whose
mothers were not inclined toward intrusiveness and overcontrol.
From inhibition to reticence and withdrawal
Investigators have consistently demonstrated that inhibited toddlers are likely to remain
inhibited in the early and middle years of childhood (e.g., Broberg, Lamb, & Hwang,
1990; Reznick, Kagan, Snidman, Gersten, Baak, & Rosenberg, 1986). Notably, Kochanska
and Radke-Yarrow (1992) reported that social but not nonsocial toddler inhibition pre-
dicted shy, inhibited behavior at age 5 years when children played with an unfamiliar
peer. Rubin et al. (in press) found that toddlers’ inhibited behavior either in the company
of an unfamiliar adult or an unfamiliar peer predicted subsequent preschoolers’ social
reticence. Thus, behaviorally inhibited toddlers are at risk for becoming socially reticent
as preschoolers.
Children’s shy/reticent behaviors in unfamiliar contexts are not strongly predictive of
socially withdrawn behaviors of any form in familiar contexts (Asendorpf, 1990; Paquette
& LaFreniere, 1994). Asendorpf (1994) has argued that the relation between children’s
social behaviors in familiar and unfamiliar novel settings is mediated by the quality of
children’s peer relationships and their internalized thoughts about these relationships, a
premise that has not been well studied in the literature.
Social withdrawal in early childhood
Social withdrawal and social skills. If socially withdrawn children fail to engage in much
peer interaction, do they also fail to develop those social and social-cognitive skills that
purportedly emanate from such peer experiences? In early research on the construct of
social withdrawal, researchers did not distinguish between its various forms. With this
understood, it was found that socially withdrawn 4 and 5 year olds differed from their
more sociable counterparts in the ways that they think about solving interpersonal dilem-
mas. For example, Rubin and colleagues have reported that when 5 year olds were asked
what a cartoon character might do or say to obtain an attractive object from another car-
toon character, withdrawn children produced fewer alternative solutions compared to their
more sociable age-mates. Moreover, when informed that the strategies suggested would be
unsuccessful, withdrawn youngsters displayed more rigidity in generating alternative re-
sponses: they were more likely to persevere and repeat the first strategy when compared to
their more sociable counterparts. A qualitative analysis of strategies indicated that, com-
pared to more sociable age-mates, withdrawn children were more likely to suggest adult
intervention to aid in the solution of hypothetical social problems (Rubin, 1982b; Rubin,
Daniels-Beirness, & Bream, 1984). Consistent with these findings, LeMare and Rubin
(1987) reported that social withdrawal in early childhood is associated with deficits in the
ability to take the perspectives of others.
Rubin and colleagues (Rubin et al., 1984) have also found that socially withdrawn 4 and
5 year olds have relatively poor interpersonal problem-solving skills when observed during
peer interaction. These researchers focused on children’s social goals, the means by which
they attempted to meet these goals, and the success rates of these strategies in relation to
the sociability of the child. Their findings revealed that, compared to the more sociable
children: (1) The goals of socially withdrawn children’s requests appeared less “costly”; for
example, they were more likely to attempt to request attention from a playmate rather than
attempt to obtain an object or elicit active behaviors from their playmates; (2) the strategies
used by withdrawn children were less assertive and less direct; specifically, the requests of
withdrawn children were less likely to be spoken in the imperative; and (3) the outcomes of
withdrawn preschoolers’ requests were more likely to result in failure despite the fact that
such overtures were less costly and less direct.
This latter finding pertaining to peer rebuff and nonattainment of social goals is true
not only for socially withdrawn children (identified by using all forms of solitude) when
they are observed with familiar peers, but also for reticent children when observed among
unfamiliar peers (Nelson, 2000). Importantly, this connection between peer rebuff and
social withdrawal or reticence alone may be taken as an in vivo assessment of peer rejec-
tion. Note that sociometric measures of peer group rejection do not assess the personal
experience of felt rejection.
The early experience of social failure as one goes about one’s life in the “real world” may
well give already fearful and insecure children good reason to further withdraw from their
peer milieu. For example, as a result of frequent interpersonal rejection by peers, with-
drawn children may begin to attribute their social failures to internal causes: they may
come to believe that there is something wrong with themselves rather than attributing
their social failures to other people or situations. Supporting these notions, Rubin and
Krasnor (1986) found that extremely withdrawn children tended to blame social failure on
personal, dispositional characteristics rather than on external events or circumstances. The
combination of peer rejection and internal (dispositional) attributions for peer noncom-
pliance could be construed as creating a feedback loop whereby an initially fearful, with-
drawn child begins to believe that his/her social failures are personality based, and then
these beliefs are reinforced by increasing failure of social initiatives or interactions (Rubin
& Stewart, 1996). Ultimately, the consequence of such cognitions may be further with-
drawal from the social environment.
Social withdrawal during mid-to-late childhood
In almost all research on social withdrawal in middle childhood, a distinction is not made
between reticence and solitary-passive behavior. The rationale for not doing so is drawn
from the writings (and findings) of Asendorpf (e.g., 1993) who suggested that the varying
types of solitude become “blended” by mid-childhood. Moreover, by middle childhood all
types of social withdrawal become highly salient to the peer group (Younger, Gentile, &
Burgess, 1993). As such, the literature reviewed below is drawn from research on the “um-
brella” construct of social withdrawal and not its subtypes.
Self-perceptions and internalizing problems. Previously, we have argued that the constella-
tion of social withdrawal, social inadequacy, and peer rejection sows the seeds for internal-
izing problems such as low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and loneliness (Rubin, 1993;
Rubin et al., 1995; Rubin & Burgess, 2001). In fact, investigators have found that begin-
ning in middle childhood, socially withdrawn children have negative self-perceptions of
their social competence and interpersonal relationships (e.g., Hymel, Bowker, & Woody,
1993; Rubin, Hymel, & Mills, 1989). In addition to negative self-perceptions, socially
withdrawn children actually do experience feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and depressed
mood by mid-to-late childhood (e.g., Bell-Dolan, Reaven, & Peterson, 1993; Burgess &
Younger, under review; Rubin et al., 1989). Considering the unpleasant nature of their
psychological state, it would be useful to explore whether aspects of their peer relationships
can exacerbate or ameliorate these negative experiences.
Peer relationships. The kinds of relationships that shy/withdrawn children have with peers
may have an important bearing on their psychological adjustment and social-behavioral
outcomes (Boivin & Hymel, 1997; Burgess, Ladd, Kochenderfer, Lambert, & Birch, 1999;
Ladd & Burgess, 1999). Given the theoretical and practical significance of peer interaction
for development, and the lack of social participation by shy/withdrawn children, one won-
ders about the nature of their peer relationships. Whereas much knowledge has been gained
about socially withdrawn children’s adjustment with respect to social and social-cognitive
skills, surprisingly little is known about these children’s relationships with peers during
childhood. Yet, withdrawn children’s social and psychological adjustment may partly stem
from the quality of their experiences in peer relationships.
In the peer relationship literature, the prominent foci of investigators have been friend-
ship, peer acceptance/ rejection, and bully–victim relationships (see Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker,
1998 for an extensive review). Although these three forms of peer relationships bear an
empirical connection to each other, they have unique conceptual and operational defini-
tions and represent distinct social experiences for children (Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman,
1997; Vandell & Hembree, 1994). An argument could be made, however, that the con-
struct of peer acceptance/ rejection does not necessarily imply that a “relationship” exists in
the same way that friendship and victimization involve dyadic, mutual or reciprocated
behaviors, affect, and social processes. The peer acceptance or rejection of withdrawn chil-
dren is nevertheless considered here because it has typically been considered within the
peer relationship domain.
Peer acceptance/rejection and social withdrawal. Peer acceptance or rejection refers to evi-
dence of consensual liking or disliking, respectively, by group members for individuals in
the peer group (see Asher & Coie, 1990). Consequently, if the peer group rejects a with-
drawn child, it could be seen as a unilateral situation (i.e., not a reciprocal event), one in
which there is not necessarily a response or effect. There may be negative effects, though,
particularly for certain types of withdrawn children as opposed to others; for instance, shy
or reticent children whose fear or self-consciousness drives the social decisions they make.
Based on traditional sociometric assessments, which have been utilized in numerous

studies, it appears that findings pertaining to the relation between social withdrawal and
peer rejection in early childhood are equivocal. When preschoolers’ solitude was observed
in the classroom, Rubin (1982a) found that reticent behavior was not associated with
sociometric ratings of acceptance, but solitary-sensorimotor and solitary-dramatic behaviors
were negatively associated with sociometric acceptance. In contrast, Hart et al. (2000)
reported that preschoolers’ reticent behavior assessed via teacher ratings was associated
with sociometric peer rejection; but teacher-rated solitary-passive behavior was not. Ladd
and Burgess (1999) found that teacher-rated passive withdrawal was not associated with
peer rejection from kindergarten to second grade.
Evidence from observational studies of small peer-group interaction (Stewart & Rubin,
1995; Rubin & Borwick, 1984; Rubin & Krasnor, 1986) has shown that young with-
drawn children’s peers are less likely to comply with their requests or reciprocate social
initiations than is the case for non-withdrawn children. Thus, peer rejection (observed
noncompliance and rebuff) may actually occur in large groups and yet not be captured
with general ratings of peer likeability or acceptance. Taken together, it seems that the
relation between different forms of solitude and sociometric rejection may vary depending
upon whether the data were derived from observed or rated behavior, who assessed the
behavior (observers vs. teachers), where the behavior was observed (familiar vs. unfamiliar
settings), and whether the sociometric measure was a rating or nomination scale.
With increasing age, the equivocal findings reported above become relatively congru-
ent. Observed and peer-assessed withdrawal becomes strongly associated with sociometric
measures of peer rejection or unpopularity by mid-to-late childhood (Boivin, Hymel, &
Bukowski, 1995; Rubin, Chen, & Hymel, 1993). These consistent findings may be attrib-
uted to the suggestion that social withdrawal becomes increasingly noticeable as children
get older. Recognizing that social solitude represents behaviors outside the norm, the peer
group begins to view it as deviant (Younger et al., 1993). Also, older children are better
able to perceive others’ “internally driven” problems, such as anxiety and hypersensitivity,
which often accompany social withdrawal. Moreover, relatively poorer social skills un-
doubtedly contribute to the lower likeability ratings of some withdrawn children.
Friendship and social withdrawal. Friendship refers to a voluntary, reciprocal, and mutu-
ally regulated relationship between a child and a peer. During childhood, friendships have
been viewed as support systems that facilitate psychological and social development (Ladd,
Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1996). Several indices have evolved to represent aspects of this
relationship, including the size of the child’s friendship network (i.e., number of mutual
friendships), participation in a very best friendship, and quality of the friendships (see
Bukowski & Hoza, 1989; Parker & Asher, 1993). Unfortunately, a paucity of information
exists with respect to shy, withdrawn children’s friendships; and the data are limited for all
ages and for all aspects of friendship. Much more is known about average and aggressive
children’s friendships from early childhood to adolescence.
Children with larger networks of mutual friends may receive higher levels of support; in
turn, friendship network size may be associated with better psychological health (Ladd &
Burgess, 2001). Whilst one might expect that withdrawn children would have fewer mu-
tual friendships than average children because they seldom initiate exchanges with peers
and respond to peers’ initiations less often (Wanlass & Prinz, 1982), Ladd and Burgess
(1999) found that they had as many mutual friends as their normative counterparts. The
authors speculated that even though withdrawn children interact with peers less often than
average, they may still interact occasionally and engage in parallel play; and these encoun-
ters may be enough for them to nominate and be nominated as a friend. Note that this
result was obtained among young children (ages 5–8) and that these withdrawn children
were considered solitary-passive (asocial, disinterested) as opposed to reticent.
Being part of one very best friendship, especially a mutual positive one, may also help
children’s adjustment. Ladd and Burgess (1999) found that young withdrawn children
were as likely to possess a mutual very best friendship as average/normative and aggressive
children. But we have yet to discover whether this type of friendship could buffer with-
drawn children from psychological difficulties such as low self-esteem, loneliness, and de-
pression.
Lastly, the quality of children’s friendships, also linked with psychological and school
adjustment (Ladd et al., 1996), usually refers to supportive features such as validation/
caring, help/guidance, and self-disclosure or to stressful features such as conflict and be-
trayal of trust (Parker & Asher, 1993). Again, it remains an empirical question as to whether
socially withdrawn children’s friendships differ in quality from those of other children.
Victimization and social withdrawal. Victimization has been viewed in a relationship con-
text because it is marked by a unique and enduring pattern of interactions that occur
between children and specific bullies or attackers (Elicker, Englund, & Sroufe, 1992; Troy
& Sroufe, 1987). Being victimized by peers implies that a child is regularly exposed to
abusive interactions (e.g., physical or verbal aggression), and these negative events lead to
fear of classmates, and ultimately to further withdrawal from peer interaction and possibly
from school-related activities.
During early childhood, socially withdrawn children do not seem to be victimized by
their peers. By mid-to-late childhood, however, evidence reveals that some peers do vic-
timize them (Boivin, Hymel, & Bukowski, 1995). Thus, similar to the findings about peer
rejection, social withdrawal has not been associated with peer victimization during early
childhood (Ladd & Burgess, 1999) but does seem to be related to victimization by late
childhood. Perhaps with age, fearful/withdrawn children become viewed as “easy marks”
to their peers; and their anxiety may render them vulnerable to peer victimization.
Consequences of social withdrawal. Highlighting the potential long-term outcomes of so-

cial withdrawal is a recent report which showed that a composite of observed and peer
assessed social withdrawal at age 7 years predicted negative self-perceived social compe-
tence, low self-worth, loneliness, and felt peer group insecurity among adolescents aged 14
years (Rubin, Chen, McDougall, Bowker, & McKinnon, 1995). These latter findings are
augmented by related research findings. Renshaw and Brown (1993) found that passive
withdrawal at ages 9 to 12 years predicted loneliness assessed one year later. Ollendick,
Ross, Weist, and Oswald (1990) reported that 10-year-old socially withdrawn children
were more likely to be perceived by peers as withdrawn and anxious, more disliked by
peers, and more likely to have dropped out of school than their well-adjusted counterparts
five years later. Morison and Masten (1991) indicated that children perceived by peers as
withdrawn and isolated in middle childhood were more likely to think negatively of their
social competencies and relationships in adolescence. Consequently, it appears that early
social withdrawal, or its relation to anxiety, represents a behavioral marker for psychologi-
cal and interpersonal maladaptation in childhood and adolescence.
Summary. By the time children reach the mid-to-late childhood years, social withdrawal
becomes a full-fledged risk factor. Socially withdrawn children become salient to peers,
and many become rejected by them. The seeming upshot of their salience and rejection is
the development of negative self-perceptions of their social relationships and skills, as well
as felt loneliness. In short, their internal working models of the social world comprise
negative representations. Whether the existence of friends, or even a single close friend-
ship, buffers withdrawn children from feeling negatively about themselves and their peer
relationships is not yet known.
Social Withdrawal and Gender
Only recently have researchers begun to investigate questions pertaining to sex differences
in social withdrawal in its various forms. One question is whether the prevalence of with-
drawal varies between boys and girls. A second question pertains to whether the concomi-
tants and predictive outcomes of withdrawal vary between the sexes.
Sex differences in the prevalence of social withdrawal. Gender differences in the prevalence
of behavioral inhibition and shyness have not typically been reported for young children
(Mullen, Snidman, & Kagan, 1993; Rowe & Plomin, 1977; Simpson & Stevenson-Hinde,
1985). In one recent longitudinal study, however, parents rated their daughters as slightly
more shy than sons at 18 and 30 months, but not subsequently at 50 months (Mathiesen
& Tambs, 1999). Also, girls are not more likely than boys to be nominated by their peers
as shy/anxious or socially withdrawn in preschool (Lemerise, 1997), middle childhood
(Pekarik, Prinz, Leibert, Weintraub, & Neale, 1976), or late childhood (Rubin, Chen, &
Hymel, 1993). Yet, in early adolescence some evidence indicates that girls tend to self-
report being shy more than boys (Crozier, 1995). This is consistent with Lazarus’ (1982)
study of 396 fifth graders in which almost twice as many girls as boys labeled themselves
“shy”.
Although these latter findings cast some doubt on the notion that boys and girls do not
differ in terms of shyness level, some inconsistencies in the literature may be attributed to
differences in the conceptualization of the constructs (i.e., shyness, inhibition, or social
withdrawal), the age of the participants, the informant source, and method of assessment
(i.e., self-reports, peer reports, parental ratings, or observations). It is also possible that
gender differences in children’s perceptions and schemas for shyness/withdrawal are re-
lated to these findings. For example, children tend to recall information about a hypotheti-
cal peer described as socially withdrawn when that peer is a girl, and the schema for
withdrawal seems to be more accessible for girls than for boys (Bukowski, 1990).
Sex differences in the concomitants and outcomes of social withdrawal. Evidence drawn from
concurrent and predictive studies suggests that being shy, inhibited, or socially withdrawn
has greater psychological costs for males than females. Shyness in girls is more likely to be
rewarded and accepted by parents, whereas shyness in boys is more likely to be discouraged
(Engfer, 1993; Stevenson-Hinde, 1989). Radke-Yarrow, Richters, and Wilson (1988) re-
ported that mothers were less accepting of their shy sons, and more affectionate and tender
with their shy daughters. Similarly, shy boys tend to have more negative interactions with
parents while shy girls have more positive ones (Simpson & Stevenson-Hinde, 1985). A
similar pattern of results has been found in the school environment, as teachers tend to
praise boys for outspoken behaviors but praise girls for restraining spontaneous conversa-
tion in the classroom (AAUW Educational Foundation, 1995).
Further, evidence has accumulated to suggest that shyness and withdrawal are associated
with more negative outcomes for boys than for girls. In early childhood, extremely shy
preschool-aged boys have more behavior problems than extremely shy girls (Stevenson-
Hinde & Glover, 1996). In middle childhood, socially withdrawn boys, but not girls,
describe themselves as more lonely and as having poorer social skills than their average
peers (Rubin, Chen, & Hymel, 1993). Morison and Masten (1991) reported that with-
drawn adolescent boys had lower self-esteem than girls. Finally, Caspi, Elder, and Bem
(1988) found that males who were shy in childhood married, became fathers, and estab-
lished careers at a later age than their non-shy peers. In contrast, females who were shy in
childhood did not marry or start families later than other women in the same cohort.
It seems reasonable to assume that the different outcomes associated with social with-
drawal for boys may be partly attributable to differential societal or cultural expectations;
in western societies, shyness/withdrawal appears to be less acceptable for boys than for girls
(Sadker & Sadker, 1994). Results from recent work, however, hints that there may be
subtle gender differences in underlying substrates of shyness/withdrawal for boys and girls.
Henderson, Fox, and Rubin (in press) reported that negative reactivity at 9 months pre-
dicted displays of social wariness at age 4 years for boys, but not for girls.
Finally, some preliminary evidence suggests that shy boys and girls may actually differ
physiologically. Dettling, Gunnar, and Donzella (1999) reported that shyness in preschool-
aged boys, but not girls, was associated with increased cortisol level over the day at childcare.
Clearly, future research is required to elucidate these provocative findings.
Interventions for Social Withdrawal
As the psychological and social risks associated with shyness/withdrawal have become ap-
parent, researchers have developed and implemented ameliorative intervention programs
designed to benefit children. In most cases, the goal of intervention programs has been to
increase the frequency of social interaction of shy and socially withdrawn children.
Many researchers have developed interventions involving concepts derived from social
learning theory, including symbolic modeling (O’Connor, 1972) and contingent reinforce-
ment (Hops, Walker, & Greenwood, 1977). Consistent with this theoretical position,
researchers have involved adult figures such as teachers, adult “consultants,” and parents to
prompt, praise, and reinforce social behaviors, as well as to provide direct instruction and
coaching (e.g., Lindeman, Fox, & Redelheim, 1993; Storey, Smith, & Strain, 1993). Par-
ent participation putatively improves the generalizability of intervention beyond the school
setting.
Other researchers have developed interventions that make extensive use of peers. Most
peer-mediated interventions have focused on providing peers with incentives and/or train-
ing to increase their rate of positive social interaction (Christopher, Hansen, & MacMillan,
1991). In this vein, Fantuzzo, Stovall, Schachtel, Goins, and Hal (1987) trained more
sociable children to make competent social initiations to withdrawn peers as means of
encouraging more positive social experiences. Sainato, Maheady, and Shook (1986) as-
signed withdrawn children as classroom managers for various preferred classroom activi-
ties.
Related to this approach is the concept of peer pairing, whereby withdrawn children are
provided with opportunities to engage in joint-task activities with non-withdrawn peers
(Furman, Rahe, & Hartup, 1979). The use of peer pairing may constitute a particularly
effective intervention strategy for socially wary and anxious children because a sociable
peer may serve as a role model, provide positive reinforcement, decrease anxiety, increase
confidence, and enhance generalization (Beidel & Turner, 1998).
Perhaps the most popular intervention strategy for withdrawn children is social skills
training. This type of intervention dates back over 30 years (see Conger & Keane, 1981 for
a review), and involves having children learn and practice a predetermined set of identified
skills that would facilitate social interaction. It has had moderate effects on increasing the
social interactions of those children who have mild to moderate levels of social withdrawal
(Sheridan et al., 1990; Whitehill, Hersen, & Bellack, 1980).
Although most intervention programs have demonstrated at least some success, the lit-
erature is hampered by conceptual and methodological difficulties. Conceptually, it is not
enough to teach shy/withdrawn children social skills. In many cases, socially wary children
know what they should do in social situations (Rubin & Krasnor, 1986), but their problem
lies with “moving” thought to action; and action appears to be inhibited by withdrawn
children’s inability to regulate feelings of social fear or anxiety.
Methodologically, many intervention programs have involved single-subject or numeri-
cally small designs (e.g., Lindeman et al. 1993; Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1986; Sainato et
al., 1986). Further, most studies do not include a control group (e.g., Lindeman et al.
1993; Sainato et al., 1986; Sheridan et al., 1990), and the few with an average control
group (Hodges & McCoy, 1990; Storey et al., 1993) do not include a nontreatment con-
trol group of withdrawn children. Other problems include the sole reliance on teacher
referrals to identify withdrawn children (e.g., Lindeman et al., 1993; Sheridan et al., 1990;
Storey et al., 1993). Ambiguity in the definitions of social withdrawal may result in the
selection of a heterogeneous treatment group that could include socially wary, socially
disinterested, and actively isolated children; therefore, the results of these studies are often
inconsistent among participants. Lastly, follow-up assessments are often too short term
(Lindeman et al., 1993; Sainato et al., 1986), and the gains fail to generalize across settings
(Hops et al., 1985; McConnell, 1987). Despite these difficulties, the interventions extant
are a reasonable starting point for future ameliorative efforts.
Conclusion
The study of the developmental course of social withdrawal has garnered an enormous
amount of attention in the past decade. A glance at the dates of the cited material in this
review will attest to this fact. Much work has been directed toward establishing the devel-
opmental origins of social withdrawal and its related constructs, as well as examining the
contemporaneous and predictive correlates of social withdrawal at different points in child-
hood and adolescence. With regard to the latter, relatively few longitudinal studies exist;
therefore, additional data are required to examine the premise that social withdrawal rep-
resents a risk factor in childhood and adolescence.
Although we have suggested a number of etiological factors that conspire to produce a
socially withdrawn profile in childhood, the supportive data derive from very few develop-
mental laboratories. The extent to which biologically based, dispositional factors interact
with parenting styles and parent–child relationships to predict the consistent display of
socially withdrawn behavior in both familiar and unfamiliar peer contexts needs to be
established. Further, data are required to more precisely examine the consistency of so-
cially reticent and solitary-passive behaviors across settings.
Our knowledge about the developmental course of social withdrawal is obviously con-
strained by the cultures in which the phenomenon has been studied. The vast majority of
the published literature is derived from studies conducted in North America and Western
Europe. Interestingly, though, recent research in the East indicates that behavioral inhibi-
tion and shyness are more prevalent in China and viewed as more normative than in the
West (Chen, Rubin, & Li, 1997; Chen, Rubin, Li, & Li, 1999; Chen, Hastings, Rubin,
Chen, Cen, & Stewart, 1998). Like all social behaviors, then, it would behoove us to
examine cultural norms, the means by which such norms are socialized, and the develop-
mental prognoses for children who, whilst perhaps displaying normative behavior in one
culture, do not conform to expected behavioral norms in their own country. Certainly
such a program of research will go a long way toward helping psychologists appreciate and
be sensitive to cultural similarities, differences, and local definitions of normality and ab-
normality.
In summary, the literature we have reviewed suggests that the quality of life for socially
inhibited and withdrawn children is less than pleasant. Withdrawn children are socially
deferent, anxious, lonely, rejected and insecure in the company of peers. They fail to ex-
hibit age-appropriate interpersonal problem-solving skills and tend to believe themselves
to be deficient in social skills and relationships. The home lives of inhibited and with-
drawn children are no more comforting: as we have noted here, they have insecure attach-
ment relationships with their mothers and they are recipients of overcontrolling, intrusive
parenting. Taken together, these characteristics do not augur well for socially withdrawn
children. As such, researchers would do well to be more active in developing ameliorative,
if not preventive interventions for these children.
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Social Skills and Interpersonal Perception 353
Part VI
Social Skills and Social Cognition
Competence in social understanding and social skills are important for individual psycho-
logical well-being and peer group adjustment. While the term social cognition implies an
understanding of the social world, literature reviewed by Charlie Lewis and Jeremy
Carpendale shows that the terminology reflects a far more complicated and diversified
construct than what appears at first glance. Likewise, how social skills are defined repre-
sents levels of complexity that are not readily apparent. We begin with a chapter by Antonius
Cillessen and Amy Bellmore on the topic of social skills and interpersonal perception,
followed by an illuminating chapter by Lewis and Carpendale that explicates two contrast-
ing views of social cognition. Gary Ladd, Eric Buhs, and Wendy Troop then focus on
interpersonal skills and relationships in school settings with implications for school-based
prevention and intervention programs.
Cillessen and Bellmore approach their topic by distinguishing two traditions in the
study of social skills during early and middle childhood. The first tradition focuses on
“behavioral assessment” where social skills are defined and measurements are created to
assess the veracity of the behavioral constructs. The second tradition stems from a “behavioral
process” definition that explicates how child behaviors lend themselves to competent play
with peers, emotion regulation, peer group entry, and conflict resolution. Behavioral proc-
esses of socially skilled and unskilled children in these critical social tasks are examined
with the intent of linking these processes with interpersonal perception skills. The second
half of the chapter accomplishes just that. Individual differences in how the social world is
accurately perceived are shown to be associated with social self-perceptions of liking and
disliking by peers. Research reviewed by the authors suggests that more socially skilled
children tend to be more accurate in their self-perceptions of how well they are liked than
socially unskilled children. Where do individual differences in perception accuracy come
from? They conclude with a discussion of several mechanisms that might be at work and
an overview of directions for future research in this area.
Lewis and Carpendale illustrate how vastly complex the study of social cognition is.
354 Social
Antonius
Skills
H.and
N. Cillessen
Social Cognition
& Amy D. Bellmore
Two contrasting views of social cognition are explicated; one focuses on the cognitive
approach to the study of children’s social understanding while the other highlights the
social approach. Surprisingly, the social and the cognitive traditions have never been fully
integrated. The authors explain how the division created by these two approaches is prob-
lematic in current research on “theories of the mind.” Recent developments in the “theory
of the mind” literature are reviewed, followed by a discussion of domain specificity in
mental-state understanding versus domain-general processes of reasoning and executive
function. The false-belief test is critiqued and social approaches to children’s understand-
ing of mental states are introduced. Evidence is presented indicating that there is a rela-
tionship between children’s social interactions and “theory of the mind” understandings.
They culminate with a call for integrating the social and cognitive approaches in the study
of children’s social understanding. Suggestions are provided for how to do so.
On a somewhat different note, interpersonal challenges that children confront at school
create difficult tasks for children as they apply their social skills to negotiate needs and
establish relationships with other children and teachers. Little attention has been directed
towards the many types of relationship difficulties that children work through in their
quest to adapt to school environments. Given this backdrop, Ladd and colleagues expound
upon a child by environment model that illustrates how child background variables, child
attributes, behavioral styles, and supportive and stress-inducing interpersonal factors affect
each other and children’s adjustment to school. Research-based evidence for linkages among
aspects of the model are carefully examined with regard to peer acceptance, friendship,
peer victimization, and teacher–child relationships. Given all these factors, how might
children’s adjustment to school be enhanced? Of great interest to researchers, clinicians,
and practitioners are descriptions of school-based interventions that can foster positive
social cognitions, social skills, and peer acceptance and that have been empirically shown
to reduce problematic behaviors. The authors note, however, that there are still needs for
developing interventions that help children form and improve friendships, as well as cope
with the effects of peer abuse at individual, rather than at school-wide levels. Future direc-
tions are provided for enhancing interventions and for conducting research that can fur-
ther our understanding of processes associated with children’s adjustment to school.
18
Social Skills and Interpersonal Perception in

Early and Middle Childhood
Antonius H. N. Cillessen and Amy D. Bellmore
The definition of social skills is a much debated and complex issue. General definitions
refer to adequacy, effectiveness, or competence in interactions with peers. Beyond these
general definitions, what efforts have researchers made to conceptualize and define social
skills more precisely and to observe the behavior of children who differ in social skills? The
answers to these questions have been sought in two parallel research traditions. Both have
made important contributions.
The first research tradition has its roots in educational psychology, has primarily a psy-
chometric orientation, and may be called the “behavioral assessment” tradition. Research-
ers who follow this approach have made explicit attempts to define social skills and several
converging definitions of this construct have been given. The main goals of this research
have been instrument development, the identification of children with deficient social
skills, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of intervention programs. Typically, teacher-
rating scales have been used to assess social skills.
The second research tradition has its roots in social developmental psychology and may
be called the “behavioral process” definition. Researchers in this approach often do not
define the term social skills explicitly and use it interchangeably with terms such as social
competence or social effectiveness. Research in this approach begins with a general indica-
tor of social skills, such as social acceptance, popularity, or general measures of aggression
and withdrawal. Next, children who differ on these dimensions are observed in critical
social tasks, such as entering a new peer group, playing with peers, or handling conflict and
competition. The goal of this research is to observe in detail the behaviors of socially skilled
and socially unskilled children in those situations. The preferred research method is direct
observation of actual behavior, although children’s verbalizations of how they would re-
spond in the task situations (presented to them as hypothetical vignettes) have been used as
356 Antonius H. N. Cillessen & Amy D. Bellmore
well. The strengths of this approach are its orientation on behavioral processes and its
potential to compare between age groups.
In the first section of this chapter, we will distinguish the two traditions in the study of
social skill through discussion of their postulates. We will limit our review of relevant
research to studies that have followed the behavioral processes approach because these
studies extend the focus from the assessment of individual behaviors to the role that these
behaviors play in adaptive social functioning. We will detail the behaviors of children in
critical tasks in relation to their peer acceptance (competent play with peers, peer group
entry, emotion regulation, and conflict resolution). We are choosing peer acceptance as
our indicator of social competence because it is a frequently used index of social compe-
tence as well as a good measure of social skillfulness because it incorporates the judgments
of many individuals.
An additional line of investigation concerning children’s social skills considers how
behavior and acceptance by peers are related to social cognition (see Crick & Dodge, 1994).
Specifically, competent play with peers, peer group entry, emotion regulation, and conflict
resolution not only depend on children’s behavioral skills, but also require adequate inter-
personal perception skills. A process-oriented view of social skills should not only examine
behavioral processes, but also the interpersonal perception processes that both depend on
and influence interactive behavior. Consequently, in the second section of this chapter, we
will consider children’s interpersonal perception processes and their association with social
skillfulness as measured by peer acceptance. Specifically, we consider children’s under-
standing of themselves and of others in relation to their social status. We limit our discus-
sion to individual differences in children’s perceptions of their own and others’ characteristics
and to their estimations of how well liked they are by their peers because these basic per-
ceptions may be particularly influential in determining their behavior with peers. We also
discuss how research on this topic has contributed to understanding the process of how
children arrive at their perceptions.
Assessment of Social Skills in Early and Middle Childhood
The first approach to the study of children’s social skills, the behavioral assessment tradi-
tion, has proven useful in identifying the dimensions of children’s problem behavior that
disrupt adaptive social functioning (Gresham, 1986). Typically, the behavioral dimen-
sions that contribute to social adjustment are assessed via teacher-, parent-, peer-, or self-
ratings on multi-item behavior checklists. This approach can be described by the following
three main characteristics.
First, social skillfulness is viewed as a multidimensional construct. Although researchers
emphasize the significance of different social skills in their work, Caldarella and Merrell
(1997) established five behavioral dimensions that occurred consistently in 19 separate
instruments of children’s social skills: peer relations skills, self-management skills, aca-
demic skills, compliance skills, and assertion skills. They also found that these dimensions
were neither completely distinct nor independent of one another, indicating that although
some skills contribute only to one dimension, other skills contributed to more than one
dimension. Thus, although different dimensions have been identified, some of the behaviors
of which they are comprised are relevant across situations.
Second, this approach places social skillfulness as a behavioral construct at an intermedi-
ate level of complexity, more specific than higher-level constructs such as social compe-
tence but more general than specific individual behavioral skills. This is useful because
separate dimensions of social skill which represent a cluster of related behaviors can be
identified and used for identification, diagnostic, and intervention purposes. However,
given Gresham and Elliott’s (1984) conclusion that social skillfulness is situationally spe-
cific, it would seem that this approach could be further validated by studying children’s
effective and ineffective social behaviors in specific social contexts.
Third, this approach views social skills relative to a child’s age group or developmental
stage. The main focus is not on changes in social skills across age groups, but rather on
individual differences in social skills within age groups. Accordingly, although the scores
are typically standardized within age groups, the main assessment instruments are used
across developmental stages. For example, Caldarella and Merrell (1997) reported that
most of the 19 studies in their review identified similar dimensions across age levels. This
is a limitation of this approach because the dimensions that are most relevant to younger
and older children likely differ. Thus, this approach could benefit from more research
devoted to identifying age differences in the dimensions of behaviors that are effective in
social interactions.
In summary, this assessment approach to social skills is extremely useful for diagnostic
purposes. However, it is a relatively static approach and therefore less useful for the devel-
opmental study of social competence. To understand the development of social compe-
tence, a focus is needed on the developmental processes that underlie the social skills of
children of differing ages in various social contexts. Therefore, in the next section, we will
describe more extensively the efforts undertaken by researchers interested in these develop-
mental processes.
Behavioral Processes of Socially Skilled and Unskilled Children
The second approach to the study of children’s social skills involves identifying how chil-
dren who differ in social skill respond when they encounter potentially problematical so-
cial tasks. This approach has been valuable because researchers have identified numerous
behavioral correlates of social skillfulness (i.e., peer acceptance) for various critical social
tasks. In this section we will consider four tasks that have been particularly useful in iden-
tifying differences between socially skilled and unskilled children. Specifically, we will con-
sider social status differences in how children play with their peers, enter the ongoing
activities of groups of their peers, regulate their emotions, and generate strategies to resolve
conflicts. Each of these tasks is relevant to the social lives of preschool and elementary
school children and requires them to adapt their behavior to allow for continued interac-
tion with their peers. Further, the study of these tasks has utilized observational methods
(both experimental and naturalistic), and is therefore particularly valuable because it in-
forms us of what children actually do in their social worlds.
We review differences in children’s behavior in each situation separately, because re-

searchers have not examined the connections in children’s behavior across these situations.
Thus, we are able to determine the critical components of socially skilled behavior within
each task setting. However, by focusing on single behaviors in specific contexts, we are not
able to recognize how children organize and integrate their skills to produce global adap-
tive social functioning across multiple social settings. Although we present research relat-
ing children’s behavior to their social skillfulness in each task separately, we recognize the
need to consider the cross-contextual connections in future research.
Competent play with peers
Individual differences in play behavior and play competency have been assessed in early
childhood because play is the context in which young children most frequently interact
with their peers. Because play is a salient context for preschool age children, it is believed
that it should both reflect and promote social competence (Creasey, Jarvis, & Berk, 1998).
In this section, we examine preschool children’s play behavior in relation to their social
adjustment in the peer group.
Play behavior is most frequently observed in naturalistic settings such as preschool class-
rooms or childcare settings during periods where children may freely choose both their
playmates and activities (e.g., Howes & Matheson, 1992). Within this context, researchers
have attended to different aspects of play. For example, Howes (1988) assessed the com-
plexity of social play forms (e.g., complementary and reciprocal play) and suggested that
children’s play forms follow a developmental sequence. Ladd, Price, and Hart (1988) at-
tended to differences in the behavioral styles of preschool children’s play (e.g., solitary
play) as well as structural characteristics (e.g., the average size of the group in which play
occurs).
Investigators have established that these various measures of play behavior are related to
both concurrent and later indicators of a child’s functioning with peers. Howes and Matheson
(1992) reported that preschool-age children who engaged in more complex peer play at
earlier developmental periods were rated by teachers as having less difficulty with their peers.
Doyle and Connolly (1989) found that social acceptance, as measured by peer nominations,
was positively associated with the frequency of engaging in social pretend play. Moreover,
Ladd et al. (1988) reported that some styles of play predicted changes in peer acceptance
over the course of one school year. They found that the cooperative play of preschoolers in
the fall of the school year predicted gains in peer acceptance by spring and that arguing
during play in the fall predicted lower peer acceptance by winter of the school year.
In more recent studies, cultural differences in children’s play behavior have received
attention. As Fantuzzo, Coolahan, Mendez, McDermott, and Sutton-Smith (1998) ar-
gued, given the presumed contextual specificity of play, relationships between competent
play behaviors and peer acceptance should be considered within cultural groups. As a first
step, these authors established the validity of an instrument designed to specifically assess
play competencies that differentiate children who have positive peer relationships from
children who have poor peer relationships within a sample of African American Head Start
children.
Farver, Kim, and Lee (1995) presented evidence that play complexity may be affected
by culture specific socialization practices. They found that Korean American preschool
children participated in less social pretend play than their Anglo-American counterparts
and suggested that this difference may be related to either the more structured classroom
setting of Korean American preschools or to the collectivist orientation of Korean culture.
Whatever the reason, this finding demonstrates the importance of assessing the relation-
ship between play behaviors and peer acceptance within natural play settings for diverse
groups of children as the norms for play styles may vary among different cultural groups.
Researchers have also established sex differences in the play behaviors that predict peer
acceptance. For example, Hart, DeWolf, and Burts (1993) reported that lower peer prefer-
ence was associated with observed solitary-passive play for preschool girls but not for boys
and was linked to withdrawn/reticent behavior (onlooker and unoccupied) for preschool
boys but not for girls. Additionally, Hart, DeWolf, Wozniak, and Burts’ (1992) observa-
tions of preschoolers’ social behaviors revealed that prosocial behavior was related to peer
acceptance for girls only. In addition to sex differences in play styles, researchers have also
attended to sex differences in peer interaction contact patterns. For example, Ramsey (1995)
reported that older preschool children decreased their mixed-sex peer contacts over the
course of one school year (i.e., fall to spring), whereas younger preschool children increase
their contacts. Playground behaviors and group composition (e.g., network intensivity vs.
extensivity and network homogeneity vs. diversity) have also been found to predict peer
acceptance differentially for elementary-school age boys and girls (see, e.g., Ladd, 1983).
We expect children’s play behaviors to be sensitive to other contextual effects (e.g., the
play environment and the composition of the playgroup), and the effects of these variables
on the relationship between peer group acceptance and play should be examined. Addi-
tionally, the stability of children’s play behaviors from preschool to middle childhood
should be studied. There is evidence that the quality of elementary school children’s rough-
and-tumble play is positively related to their peer-group acceptance (Pellegrini, 1988), but
negatively related for preschoolers (Hart et al., 1992). However, no evidence exists show-
ing that play behavior is stable from preschool to middle childhood. Thus, an additional
avenue for future research is to establish the degree to which age moderates the relationship
between specific play behaviors and peer acceptance.
Peer group entry
The ability to successfully enter into a ongoing social interaction is considered a marker of
social skill because adequately initiating social contact and being accepted by the peer
group is a prerequisite to developing stable social relationships. Therefore, the behaviors
that result in successful peer group entry are important indicators of social competence.
The research reviewed here includes studies that have examined which aspects of children’s
peer group entry behavior are related to their social status.
Following the protocol established by Putallaz and Gottman (1981), a target child’s bid
behavior is usually assessed in a laboratory with experimenter-formed groups of children
who are involved in a game-like task when the target child arrives. Some experimenters
comprise the “host” group of children with whom the target “guest” child is acquainted
(e.g., Zarbatany, Van Brunschot, Meadows, & Pepper, 1996). Others use host children
who are unacquainted with the guest (e.g., Russell & Finnie, 1990) or hosts who are con-
federates who follow the experimenter’s instructions during the observation session (e.g.,
Wilson, 1999). Less frequently, target children have been observed in more naturalistic
settings including the classroom (Dodge, Coie, & Brakke, 1982) and playground (Putallaz
& Wasserman, 1989).
Using these methods, researchers have established the relationship between peer accept-
ance and group-entry behavior (see Putallaz & Wasserman, 1990, for a review). Specifi-
cally, unpopular children are more likely to call attention to themselves, attempt to control
the interaction, and take longer to enter the peer group than higher status children (e.g.,
Dodge, Schlundt, Schocken, & Delugach, 1983; Putallaz & Gottman, 1981). These dis-
ruptive and self-centered behaviors are ineffective strategies because the children who use
them are less likely to be accepted by the host children (Borja-Alvarez, Zarbatany, & Pep-
per, 1991; Putallaz & Gottman, 1981). Conversely, popular children successfully become
a part of the group by sharing in the group’s interest and offering relevant statements to the
ongoing interaction (e.g., Dodge et al., 1983; Putallaz & Wasserman, 1989).
Investigators also have considered other factors that may influence children’s group-
entry behaviors and their resulting success. Gelb and Jacobson (1988) examined social-
contextual factors and found that unpopular children are less likely to behave aversively in
noncompetitive peer group entry situations than in competitive peer group entry situa-
tions. Rabiner and Coie (1989) examined intrapersonal factors and found that when re-
jected children have positive expectations about an upcoming play session with unfamiliar
peers, they are more likely to be preferred by these unfamiliar peers during a peer group
entry situation than when their initial expectations are neutral.
In addition, researchers have examined the effects of the interactions between the sex
composition of the principal group and the sex of the guest child on the success of the
guest child’s entry behavior. Putallaz and Gottman (1981) failed to find sex differences in
their laboratory study of peer group entry behavior, but naturalistic observations on the
playground showed that girls were less effective and rejected more often than boys during
entry bids with peers (Putallaz & Wasserman, 1989). When only same-sex interactions
were considered, however, girls were more effective and more likely to be accepted than
boys. This may result from the fact that girls are more likely to include newcomers than
boys when they are the hosts in the peer entry paradigm (Zarbatany et al., 1996).
The findings reported above are based on elementary school children’s social interac-
tions. Hazen and Black (1989) reported similar findings for preschool children. Putallaz
and Wasserman (1989) found that the group entry skills of first-, third-, and fifth-grade
children differed. Specifically, older children were more likely to remain with the peers
they initially approached, whereas younger children were more likely to engage in entry
bids with various groups of peers. An important goal for future research is to further these
age differences.
An additional goal for research is to consider the effects of additional social contextual
variables on children’s peer group entry behavior. For example, previous research suggests
that group size (see Putallaz & Wasserman, 1989), sociometric status composition (see
Gelb & Jacobson, 1988), and its psychological state (see Zarbatany & Pepper, 1996) all
may affect the guest’s behavior and entry success. These studies further highlight the
interactional nature of the relationship between the target child and the hosts, further
suggesting that children’s social skills need to be considered in the social context.
Emotion regulation
Because effective social functioning with peers requires attending and adapting to the de-
mands of specific social situations, children’s ability to modulate emotions is expected to
be an important aspect of their social competence. To assess this relationship between
social skill and emotion regulation, researchers recently have designed observational stud-
ies that focus on children’s responses to emotionally arousing situations, using sociometric
status as an indicator of their social competence.
Observational studies of emotion regulation have been conducted in both naturalistic
and experimental settings. Naturalistic observations usually take place in classroom or play-
ground settings. For example, Denham, McKinley, Couchoud, and Holt (1990) attended
to the emotional expression of target children in their preschool classrooms. Fabes and
Eisenberg (1992) observed children on the playground, limiting their observations to chil-
dren’s behavioral responses to provocation during free play.
Observation of children’s responses to provocation is considered a good paradigm to
assess emotion regulation, because it allows us to compare children’s actual feelings in addi-
tion to the behavioral and facial indices of emotion that they display (Hubbard & Coie,
1994). Various experimental paradigms have been designed that provoke children into a
specific emotion, followed by recordings of children’s recovery from that emotion. For
example, Saarni (1984) provoked disappointment in children, whereas Underwood, Hur-
ley, Johanson, and Mosley (1999) provoked anger in target children through the use of a
confederate child actor. Once the target child was provoked, his or her facial expressions,
gestures, and verbal responses were then recorded.
Naturalistic observations of preschool children have revealed a concurrent relationship
between emotion regulation and peer-group acceptance. The expression of positive affect
has been found to be related positively to liking by peers (Denham et al., 1990; Walter &
LaFreniere, 2000), whereas the expression of anger is negatively related to peer-rated likability
(Denham et al., 1990). Similarly, Fabes and Eisenberg (1992), studying preschool chil-
dren’s responses to real anger conflicts, found that children who were accepted peers dealt
with anger provocations in direct and nonaggressive ways.
Underwood et al. (1999) demonstrated developmental differences in response to anger
provocation in middle childhood through the use of an experimental, observational para-
digm. They reported that outward expressions of anger decreased with age in a sample of
8-, 10-, and 12-year-old children. This observational study is unique in that the majority
of studies of the relationship between emotion regulation and peer status with elementary
school children have relied on hypothetical vignettes or self-report measures. Given the
finding of Underwood et al. (1999), further insight into the relationship between emotion
regulation and peer competence at different developmental stages, in particular through
observational methods, is an important goal for future research.
An additional goal for future work is the assessment of sex differences in emotion regu-
lation. To date, the findings from observational studies indicate that girls are less likely
than boys to express angry feelings (e.g., Fabes & Eisenberg, 1992; Underwood et al.,
1999). Further evidence exists that sex differences in emotion regulation interact with
sociometric status. For example, Walter and LaFreniere (2000) found that girls’ anger was
negatively related to peer rejection whereas boys’ anger was positively related to peer rejec-
tion. More research is needed to identify similar differentiations by sex and sociometric
status for positive emotions.
The studies reviewed here highlight the utility of the observational paradigm for under-
standing the relationship between emotion regulation and peer acceptance. Investigators
should continue to modify these methods to assess which situational and interpersonal
variables moderate the status-emotion regulation link. Explicit attention should be given
to identifying specific interpersonal factors (such as liking of the provocateur, see Fabes,
Eisenberg, Smith, & Murphy, 1996) in addition to intrapersonal factors that may affect
children’s emotion regulation skills.
Conflict resolution
Shantz (1987) defines conflict as a dyadic social exchange characterized by mutual opposi-
tion between two parties. Because adequate management of conflict is necessary for the
maintenance of children’s interpersonal relationships, researchers have identified children’s
conflict resolution strategies as an important social skill. This research is corroborated
empirically by research showing that preschool and elementary school children’s conflict
resolution strategies are related to their peer acceptance.
Because conflict responses are situation specific (Putallaz & Sheppard, 1992), the rela-
tion between peer acceptance and conflict resolution strategies needs to be examined in
various settings. Children’s behavioral strategies (e.g., seeking an adult’s help or using physical
aggression) and verbal strategies (e.g., discussing the situation or using verbal aggression)
in peer conflict situations have been investigated by observing children’s naturally occur-
ring interactions in field settings such as classroom free play (e.g., Hartup, Laursen, Stewart,
& Eastenson, 1988). They have also been examined in controlled laboratory settings where
the composition of dyads and the activities are manipulated by the experimenter (e.g.,
Hartup, French, Laursen, Johnston, & Ogawa, 1993). Observations of young children’s
naturally occurring conflicts in free play have revealed that being disliked by peers is posi-
tively correlated with more frequent participation in conflict episodes (D. Shantz, 1986)
and verbal strategies are used far more frequently than physical force within conflict epi-
sodes (Eisenberg & Garvey, 1981). However, research in which observations of children’s
behavior in conflict situations is related to their peer acceptance is lacking.
The most widely used method to investigate the relation between peer acceptance and
conflict resolution is to examine children’s responses to hypothetical conflict situations.
Typically, children are presented with a realistic hypothetical situation that involves a con-
flict with a peer and are asked to indicate how they themselves would respond in that
situation. Because every participating child is exposed to the same social scenarios, this
method allows researchers to make controlled comparisons between children. Rose and
Asher (1999) used this method to assess the strategies that fourth- and fifth-grade children
use in response to conflict with a friend. They found that children’s use of hostile strategies
(e.g., physical or verbal aggression) was negatively correlated with peer acceptance. Chung
and Asher (1996) assessed fourth- through sixth-grade children’s strategies in conflict situ-
ations with a same-sex classmate and reported that selection of prosocial strategies (e.g.,
accommodation of the needs of both parties) was positively correlated with peer accept-
ance. They also found that sex moderated the relationship between peer acceptance and
conflict strategies. Specifically, the selection of hostile strategies was negatively correlated
with peer acceptance for girls, whereas the selection of adult-seeking strategies (e.g., re-
quest help from an adult) was negatively correlated with peer acceptance for boys.
These sex differences in the relation between peer conflict responses to conflict and
social status correspond with the different social orientations expected of boys and girls. In
response to both actual and hypothetical conflict situations (Chung & Asher, 1996; Hartup
et al., 1993; Miller, Danaher, & Forbes, 1986; Murphy & Eisenberg, 1996; Rose & Asher,
1999), girls are more likely to select relationship-oriented strategies, while boys are more
likely to select assertive, self-centered strategies. These sex differences are further qualified
depending on the sex of the interaction partner. Miller et al.’s observational study of chil-
dren’s actual conflict behavior revealed that boys used assertive strategies when interacting
with boys and girls, whereas girls were more likely to use prosocial strategies with girls than
with boys. These differences have not been corroborated by hypothetical vignette studies
as these typically have focused on children’s interactions with same-sex peers.
Although clear sex differences have emerged, there is little information regarding devel-
opmental differences in children’s conflict resolution strategies. Most studies of children’s
strategies have used elementary-school age children, and within these studies, age differ-
ences typically have not been examined. Finally, in addition to individual characteristics
such as age, sex, and ethnicity, various social-contextual factors are expected to influence
children’s responses to conflict (see Hartup & Laursen, 1993). Future research should
examine how contextual variables such as relationship characteristics (e.g., friend vs.
nonfriend), characteristics of the setting (e.g., space, resources, and activities), and conflict
type (e.g., object acquisition, peer provocation, and rights infraction) influence children’s
behavioral and social-cognitive responses to conflict.
Conclusion
Taken together, these results indicate that children’s behavior in various critical social tasks
is related to their peer acceptance and that these social tasks are diagnostic to assess socially
skillful behavior. In spite of these results, the critical social task approach has not provided
much information about developmental changes in the relationship between children’s
behavior and acceptance. While age differences can be identified indirectly by comparing
the findings of studies assessing different age groups for each task, no direct comparisons of
developmental differences in relation to sociometric status exist for any task reviewed here.
Additionally, researchers have not consistently attended to sex differences for every task.
For example, while clear differences between the conflict resolution strategies of boys and
girls have been identified, differences in boys’ and girls’ play styles have not received much
attention. Given the findings from research on peer group entry showing that sex differ-
ences of the actor interacted with the sex of his or her peers, more research is needed on the
situational specificity of skillful behaviors. In particular, researchers should conduct more

detailed analyses of individual characteristics of both the actor and their dyadic or group
partners in particular situations. Finally, researchers should attend to how children form
the strategies that guide their behavior in these specific social situations. Because appropri-
ate behavior may be dependent on accurate perception of the actions and intentions of the
participants in a given social situation, the second section of this chapter considers this
ability in relation to social acceptance.
Interpersonal Perception
Interpersonal perception refers to one’s understanding of self and of others that results
from social interactions. As indicated in the introduction to this chapter, children’s under-
standing of self and others in relationships is expected to both reflect and influence their
social behavior in the domains of peer play, peer group entry, emotion regulation, and
conflict. Therefore, in this section, we consider children’s interpersonal perception skills in
detail and examine, both conceptually and empirically, how they are related to social com-
petence as measured by peer acceptance.
Basic questions of interpersonal perception research
Most early research on the development of interpersonal perception was directed towards
establishing its normative development. For example, researchers addressed the types of
perceptions children form of themselves and others (see Dubin & Dubin, 1965, for a
review). More recent research has focused on establishing individual differences in chil-
dren’s interpersonal perceptions and the factors that are related to these differences (see
Berndt & Burgy, 1996, for a review). In this more recent research trend, researchers have
examined children’s perceptions of their own and others’ general characteristics and com-
petencies in the social, behavioral, cognitive, and physical domains, including their general
peer sociability and liking by peers. In addition, researchers have examined children’s as-
sessments of how well liked they are by specific peers. A major question guiding recent
research on children’s interpersonal perceptions addressed the degree to which children’s
general and dyad-specific interpersonal perceptions are accurate.
In research on the accuracy of children’s interpersonal perceptions, an important dis-
tinction is maintained between accuracy of perceptions of competencies and accuracy of
perceptions of liking because they do not necessarily reflect the same underlying ability,
nor have they been assessed in the same manner. For example, perception accuracy of
characteristics and competencies is usually measured by comparing one child’s ratings of
the self on some characteristic (e.g., disruptive behavior in school) with another person’s
ratings of the same behavior (e.g., teacher ratings of disruptive behavior). In some in-
stances, a child’s self-perceptions are compared to the perceptions of a social group (e.g., all
peers in her grade). Accuracy of liking perceptions, however, is usually assessed by compar-
ing the sociometric nominations or ratings a target child expects to receive from others
with others’ actual nominations or ratings of the target child. This has been done at both
the dyadic and group levels.
Development of interpersonal perception accuracy
Research on the development of interpersonal perception accuracy has been guided by the
assumption that children’s social perception skills develop in accordance with general cog-
nitive abilities (cf. social perspective taking, see Piaget, 1983). For example, based on Piaget’s
conclusion that young children’s egocentric thinking prevents them from being accurate
perceivers of others, most studies of perception accuracy have excluded children under age
6. Consistent with Piaget’s theory, interpersonal perception accuracy has been demon-
strated in children age 6 and older (e.g., Malloy, Yarlas, Montvilo, & Sugarman, 1996).
Additionally, perception accuracy increases throughout middle childhood and into early
adolescence, although the amount of improvement tends to be small across various do-
mains (Ausubel, Schiff, & Gasser, 1952; DeJung & Gardner, 1962; Krantz & Burton,
1986; Malloy et al., 1996; Phillips, 1963).
Although perception accuracy does increase minimally with age throughout middle child-
hood, the notion that interpersonal perceptions will not be accurate until middle child-
hood has not been supported empirically. Smith and Delfosse (1980) found that preschool
age children are able to correctly identify who their own friends are as well as who their
classmates’ friends are. Thus, the specific cognitive skills that underlie this ability might be
established as early as 4 years of age.
Interpersonal perception accuracy as an indicator of social skill
The notion that interpersonal perception is related to social skillfulness has been propelled
by demonstrations of individual differences in accuracy. The majority of studies that have
addressed this topic have used sociometric status as an indicator of social competence.
Rose-Krasnor (1997) argued that this is not only the most widely used, but also the best
measure of social skill. Consequently, for all studies reviewed here, peer acceptance as
measured by sociometric techniques will be used as the measure of social skill.
Perception of traits and competencies. Studies investigating individual differences in per-

ception accuracy for characteristics of self (e.g., the domains outlined by Harter, 1982)
have been conducted almost exclusively with elementary-school age children. These stud-
ies have consistently revealed that low status children are the least able to assess themselves
or others accurately on various traits compared to evaluations by others, while high status
children’s perceptions are more congruent with others’ perceptions.
In one study, Kurdek and Krile (1982) assessed the social self-perceptions of children
in grades 3–8 and found that children who were seen as the most socially competent
also reported the highest perceived social self-competence. This finding indicates that
popular children do have some awareness of their social acceptance. In another study,
Patterson, Kupersmidt, and Griesler (1990) tested the relationship between accuracy of
self-perceptions and social status more explicitly. They classified children in grades 3 and 4
into sociometric status categories and compared these children’s self-perceptions in the
social, academic, and behavioral domains with independent assessments by others. They
reported that rejected children overestimated their social acceptance, popular and average
children underestimated their peer acceptance, and neglected children underestimated their
behavioral competence. Cillessen and Bellmore (1999) also examined the social self-per-
ceptions of fourth graders who were classified into sociometric status groups. They com-
pared self- and teacher perceptions in four domains (disruptive conduct, anxiety/withdrawal,
peer sociability, and school adjustment), and found that rejected children’s self-ratings
showed the smallest amount of agreement with their teachers’ ratings in the areas of con-
duct, peer sociability, and school adjustment.
Overall, the self-perceptions of rejected children have received more attention than those
of other children. Boivin and Bégin (1989) reported that two clusters of rejected children
could be identified based on their self-perceptions: one group who reported lower compe-
tence in various domains than other children, and one group who reported higher ratings
in some domains than other children. These differential patterns of self-perceptions com-
plement other evidence for subgroups of rejected children, typically labeled aggressive-
rejected and withdrawn-rejected (see Boivin, Hymel, & Bukowski, 1995, for a review).
Together, the behavioral and social-perceptual differences suggest that different negative
outcomes may be expected for each group (externalizing vs. internalizing problems), and
that these differences may be related to the accuracy of children’s self-perceptions.
To test this idea, Patterson et al. (1990) used peer nominations to assign third- and
fourth-grade children to one of three groups: rejected only, rejected-aggressive, and aggres-
sive only. When they compared children’s self-reports of their competencies to more ob-
jective assessments they found that relative to peer reports, rejected-aggressive children but
not rejected children overestimated their peer acceptance compared to average children.
Rejected-aggressive children also overestimated their behavioral competence compared to
rejected and average children, even though they rated themselves lower than the other two
groups did on this attribute.
Hymel, Bowker, and Woody (1993) also investigated the perception accuracy of sub-
groups of rejected children. They classified fourth and fifth graders into one of four groups:
aggressive unpopular, withdrawn unpopular, aggressive-withdrawn unpopular, and aver-
age. They assessed accuracy by comparing discrepancies between children’s self-ratings
and their peers’ ratings of their competencies in four domains: academic, athletic, peer
relations, and appearance. The authors reported that average and withdrawn-unpopular
children were the most accurate perceivers while children in both aggressive subgroups
were more likely to overestimate their competencies in all four domains.
Although the sex of the perceiver child is gaining increasing attention in childhood
social perception research, few researchers have included perceiver sex as a variable. The
few studies that have considered perceiver sex indicate that the self- and other-perceptions
of competencies are somewhat more concordant for girls than for boys (Bellmore, 2000;
Cillessen & Bellmore, 1999; Kurdek & Krile, 1982). Clearly, however, there is a need to
include perceiver sex as a variable in future studies.
Perception of liking and disliking. Investigation of individual differences in accuracy of

perceived liking and disliking has been limited to samples of elementary school children.
Most studies of liking perceptions have focused on whether or not children are able to
accurately identify who likes or dislikes them. An exception is the study by Krantz and
Burton (1982), who tested the ability of kindergarten through third-grade children to
identify their classmates’ peer preferences. They found that popularity was positively cor-
related with greater accuracy in identifying the specific friendship preferences of their friends.
Cillessen and Ferguson (1995) compared the accuracy of perceptions of liking and dis-
liking for kindergarten and first-grade boys who were classified into sociometric status
groups. They created accuracy scores at two levels: the dyadic level (the extent to which
each boy knew which specific other classmates liked him) and at the group level (the extent
to which each boy knew how well liked he was by the group as a whole). They found that
rejected boys were the least accurate perceivers of liking perceptions at the dyadic level and
least accurate in both liking and disliking perceptions at the group level.
MacDonald and Cohen (1995) examined dyadic accuracy scores of liking and disliking
for first through sixth graders. They reported that rejected children were least accurate in
their judgments of who liked them and popular children were the least accurate in their
judgments of who disliked them. Cillessen and Bellmore (1999) tested the accuracy of
fourth-grade children’s perceptions of liking and disliking by their peers using a similar
method. They also formed dyadic accuracy scores by comparing liking and disliking nomi-
nations received and expected, but did not find any status differences for perceptions of
liking or disliking with this sample.
Zakriski and Coie (1996) compared the accuracy of perceived liking and disliking by
peers using a sample of fourth-grade children who were classified as aggressive-rejected,
nonaggressive-rejected, or average. They found that aggressive-rejected children underesti-
mated their social rejection more than nonaggressive-rejected did. Interestingly, they also
reported that this inaccuracy did not generalize to perceptions of others but was limited to
perceptions of self and therefore may serve a self-protective function. This study is also
important because it is the only study to find an effect of ethnicity in the study of chil-
dren’s social self-perceptions. They authors found that African American children were
less accurate than white children, but attributed this effect to methodological aspects of
their study. The authors concluded that rejected-aggressive children were the least accurate
social perceivers, and that no differences in perception accuracy were associated with eth-
nicity.
Few researchers have examined perceiver sex differences in accuracy of perceived liking
and disliking by peers and those that have reported different results. Cillessen and Bellmore
(1999) found that girls were more accurate than boys for perceptions of liking only, whereas
MacDonald and Cohen (1995) found no sex differences in perception accuracy. One im-
portant difference between these two studies is that Cillessen and Bellmore allowed cross-
sex nominations in their sociometric procedure, whereas MacDonald and Cohen allowed
only same-sex nominations. Sex differences could not be examined in other studies be-
cause only boys served as participants (Cillessen & Ferguson, 1995; Zakriski & Coie,
1996).
Origins of interpersonal perception skill
Given the individual differences in perception accuracy discussed above, the question of
how children arrive at their perceptions of self and others needs to be addressed. Two
processes have been offered to explain the link between children’s social cognitions and
their interactions with others. The first process describes how perceptions are formed and
is congruent with the ideas of symbolic interactionists (e.g., Cooley, 1902) who claim that
others’ perceptions are internalized to form self-perceptions. Indeed, Cole (1991) found
that teacher and peer perceptions influenced the self-perceptions of fourth graders over the
course of a school year. Felson (1989) found a similar effect of parents’ perceptions on
children’s self-perceptions. Although these findings provide evidence that other’s percep-
tions do affect self-perceptions, how this occurs has not yet been established.
According to symbolic interactionists, the accuracy of children’s perceptions depends
on the extent to which they have had social interactions with others. Theorists agree that
relations with others afford children the opportunity to acquire the skills they need to
successfully interact with others (e.g., Hartup, 1992). Thus, rejected children who are
excluded from peer interaction may be inaccurate social perceivers because they lack the
opportunities to practice this important social skill.
The second process that describes the relationship between social perceptions and social
interactions considers the social cognitions of the child as the antecedent to social interac-
tions. Accordingly, inaccurate self-perceptions are presumed to have negative consequences
for social behavior and peer acceptance. This notion mirrors Dodge’s (1986) model of the
link between social information processing and social adjustment: perception deficits cause
problematic social interactions. Research on social cognition and peer relations has dem-
onstrated that children’s self-perceptions may determine their peer relations (Crick & Dodge,
1994).
The processes explaining the link between interpersonal perceptions and social relation-
ships that are specified by the symbolic interactionist and social-cognitive perspectives
should not be considered mutually exclusive. The accuracy of children’s interpersonal per-
ceptions likely depends on the frequency and/or quality of their peer interactions and, in
turn, the accuracy of children’s interpersonal perceptions is likely to affect the quality and/
or frequency of their social interactions. An important goal for future research is to explore
the directionality of the link between children’s perceptions and their peer relationships.
Longitudinal studies will help to establish the point at which status differences in percep-
tion accuracy emerge and whether they decrease with age and maturing social-cognitive
abilities.
Future directions in interpersonal perception research
Current debate exists about whether normative development or individual differences in

interpersonal perception accuracy should be emphasized. Researchers should continue to
devote attention to each aspect and its related theoretical perspectives, methods, and find-
ings. The findings presented here indicate the necessity of continued study of individual
differences in accuracy, because although differences have emerged, many questions re-
main. For example, all existing studies have examined perceiver differences, however, so-
cial perception is dependent on qualities of the target as well as the perceiver (Kenny,
1994). Thus, researchers need to consider characteristics of the perceiver, target, and their
relationship in future research.
This interaction between perceiver and target is especially relevant for social interactions
that occur between children from different groups (e.g., culture, sex, sociometric status).
For example, interpersonal perception accuracy for children who come from different cul-
tures should be examined because they participate in different types of social interactions
that may affect perceptions. It might be expected that more inaccurate social perceptions
would occur for interactions between children from different cultures than between chil-
dren from the same culture. Thus, children’s interpersonal perception accuracy for chil-
dren from the same group and children from a different group should be investigated. This
requires research in peer groups that are culturally heterogeneous in nature.
In addition to examining cultural differences, sex differences also require further atten-
tion. Although some sex differences have been reported, they tend to be small and incon-
sistent. Also, in addition to establishing whether boys or girls have different perception
abilities, their perceptions of same-sex peers and other-sex peers should be studied. Chil-
dren’s perceptions of the opposite sex are particularly intriguing because of the sex-segre-
gated social context of middle childhood. Accordingly, children might be more accurate
about their same-sex peers’ perceptions than about the perceptions of other-sex peers.
There is also a need to extend interpersonal perception research to younger age groups.
The bias towards studying elementary-school age children derives from the assumption
that very young children have limited cognitive abilities that prevent accurate social per-
ception. However, this assumption has hardly been tested empirically and the limited avail-
able evidence suggests, contrary to the expectations, that perception accuracy may exist in
children as young as 4 years of age. However, more research is needed to determine when
in early childhood this ability emerges, how it is related to other social-cognitive skills (e.g.,
perspective taking), and to what domains it extends (e.g., perceptions of friendships vs.
perceptions of traits and behaviors).
Finally, consideration should be given to the use of the term “accuracy” in research on
children’s interpersonal perceptions. Use of this term is only valid when children’s self-
perceptions are compared with an objective standard. The term “accuracy” is not appro-
priate in studies where children’s self-perceptions of their competencies are compared to
perceptions by others such as teachers, peers, and parents, because these are not necessarily
unbiased judges of children’s behavior. In those cases, it is more appropriate to use the
term self-other agreement instead (Kenny, 1994). The term “accuracy” is appropriate in
studies where children’s self-perceptions of liking are compared to peers’ actual liking judg-
ments. Thus, consideration to variations in the assessment task may improve the consist-
ency between findings from various studies.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have examined two important domains of children’s social skillfulness:
evidence for behavioral processes related to social skills in various critical social situations,
and evidence for the accuracy of children’s interpersonal perceptions in interactions with
others. As indicated by Rose-Krasnor (1997), the definition of social competence remains
a complicated issue, but what is clear in her review is that social competence or social skill
can and should not be conceptualized in terms of a single domain or a limited number of
behaviors. We believe therefore that the examination of both interpersonal behaviors and
interpersonal perceptions in concert may contribute to our understanding of children’s
social competence.
Throughout our review, we have used peer acceptance or sociometric status as an index
of children’s social competence. While peer acceptance provides a useful working defini-
tion of social competence, allowing us to include and examine a wide variety of research
studies, there are limitations to this approach. As indicated by Rose-Krasnor, sociometric
status is a group-based construct, that does not necessarily always adequately reflect a child’s
social skill. For example, popularity with peers may be a questionable index of social com-
petence in deviant peer groups, whereas in other circumstances the ability to form indi-
vidual friendship relations may provide a better indicator of social skill than group
acceptance. The current status of the literature on interpersonal behaviors and interper-
sonal perception, however, does not allow us to make these finer distinctions. Thus, an
important goal for future research is to examine children’s social-behavioral and social-
cognitive skills more precisely at each of the individual, dyadic, and group levels of peer
interaction.
Finally, our review indicates that more research is needed that examines the effects of
development, gender, and ethnicity on children’s behavioral and perception skills. In the
behavioral domain, various age groups have been examined, but few studies exist that
include direct comparisons of age groups. The same is true for studies on children’s inter-
personal perceptions. In both domains, the roles of gender and ethnicity need to be exam-
ined further, and the examination of these effects need to become part of a more complex
conceptualization of interpersonal processes than currently exists. Behaviors and percep-
tions in groups can be considered from a perspective known as the social relations model
(Kenny, 1994). This perspective distinguishes effects due to children as actors towards or
perceivers of others, children as recipients or targets of behaviors and perceptions by oth-
ers, and the unique effects due to specific dyadic relationships than cannot be explained by
actor or partner effects.
Moreover, this approach can take into account individual differences variables such as
gender and ethnicity. That is, the actor, partner, and relationship effects can be qualified
further depending on whether boys and girls interact with same-sex or other-sex peers, and
whether nonminority or minority children perceive or interact with peers of their own or
other ethnicity. This methodological approach will provide a useful tool for estimating
children’s social interaction and interpersonal perception skills in the increasingly diverse
peer system.
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Social Cognition 375
19
Social Cognition
Charlie Lewis and Jeremy Carpendale
Introduction
The term “social cognition” is deceptively simple. On the surface it refers to an under-
standing of the social world. Yet it hides a continuing debate between cognitive models of
social behavior and development, and claims about the social origins of cognition. In this
chapter we explicate and suggest an integration of these two approaches to development. A
complete review of the complexities of this literature would be impossible within the frame-
work of this chapter and there are many valiant attempts at such a summary of the history
(e.g., Valsiner, 1998) and current research elsewhere (e.g., Bennett, 1992; Hala, 1997).
Rather, we review the recent literature on children’s understanding of the mind; for the
past 20 years this has been the crucible for a lively and often heated debate on the nature of
social-cognitive development and its role in children’s developing competence in interact-
ing with others.
We begin by tracing the cognitive and social approaches to the study of children’s social
understanding. Piaget’s is usually assumed to be a prime example of a cognitive or indi-
vidualistic approach to development and he is criticized for neglecting social factors in
development, whereas Vygotskian theory is taken as a source of the social approach. How-
ever, in Piaget’s (1977/1995) “sociological studies” he claimed that social interaction is
essential in the development of knowledge. He argued that individualism ignores the role
of social life in development and collectivism provides no way to distinguish between col-
lective beliefs that are or are not based on reason. As an alternative, Piaget argued for
relationism, focusing on the relations between individuals as the basis of cognition. As
Chapman (1991) pointed out, Piaget is now known for his later interest in subject–object
interaction, yet his early work concerned the idea that interpersonal interaction is the source
of intrapersonal reflection. His first two books were, ironically, criticized by Vygostsky
(1934/1986) for neglecting the child’s interaction with objects. Vygotsky’s ideas about the
376 Charlie Lewis & Jeremy Carpendale
role of social interaction obviously preserved this relational approach and yet are often
depicted in textbooks as the antithesis to Piaget’s theory. We join other commentators in
suggesting that they actually have much more in common than is often argued (L. Smith,
1996).
This apparent contrast between social and individual approaches to development fil-
tered into the literature on social cognition. Such a division has become problematic in the
current research on children’s social understanding referred to under the banner “theories
of mind.” It is our contention that most approaches are individualistic in nature and mini-
mize the social, even though many reject Piaget’s theory (Perner, 1991). The alternative
perspective rejects the cognitive approach to social cognition (e.g. Forrester, 1992) and is
often seen as an enculturation approach in which children simply adopt cultural views
about the mind.
The chapter is divided into five sections. The first briefly describes developments in the
“theory-of-mind” literature over the past few years (for more extensive reviews see Lewis &
Mitchell, 1994; Mitchell & Riggs, 2000; Zelazo, Astington, & Olson, 1999). The second
section suggests that a crucial issue in the current literature concerns domain specificity in
mental state understanding versus domain general processes of reasoning and executive
function. Section 3 reviews critiques of the false-belief test and introduces social approaches
to children’s understanding of mental states. Section 4 explores recent theory and evidence
suggesting a close relationship between “theory-of-mind” understanding and the child’s
interactions in her/his social world. As a result, the fifth part suggests that only a theoretical
perspective based upon relationism can reveal the complete story of development.
Children’s Understanding of Mind
The centrality of false belief
The focus of studies on the development of social cognitive skills has changed dramatically
over the past 20 years. While some continuity is clear, Flavell and Miller (1998) suggest
that there have been three shifts in interest. In the 1970s researchers explored the question
of how and when children overcome an inherent egocentrism (see e.g., Shantz, 1983).
This literature was replaced first by a short wave of research into the executive processes
involved in monitoring and regulating one’s activities, under the heading metacognition,
and subsequently by the most recent phase of studies into the child’s “theory of mind,”
which now dominates this area: “Indeed, it could be argued that it almost dominates the
whole field of cognitive development” (Flavell, 1999, p. 23).
In most of the reviews a reader might gain the impression that the field was miraculously
created either in 1978 upon the publication of Premack and Woodruff’s target article
concerning the question of whether chimpanzees had what the authors referred to as a
“theory of mind,” or a few years later with the publication of Wimmer and Perner’s (1983)
report of a false-belief task, based on suggestions from three philosophers commenting on
Premack and Woodruff’s article. Although these are not clear starting dates, it is agreed
that the false-belief test has been central both as a critical test of developments which occur
in the preschool period and as a point of comparison for other developments.

There are two main versions of the false-belief test. In the Unexpected Transfer test, a
character (e.g., Maxi) leaves an object, like a chocolate bar, in one location and while he is
away it is moved to a new location. Since the protagonist did not see the change in location
of his chocolate we expect him to act on his now outdated, and in fact false, belief and look
in the old location for his chocolate. In the Deceptive Box test the child becomes the pro-
tagonist. She is shown a familiar looking (e.g., confectionery) box and asked what is inside.
Having guessed that appropriate items would be inside (e.g., chocolates) and been shown
than something else was present (e.g., pencils) the child is asked to recall what she had said/
thought was inside and/or what someone else would think.
The counterintuitive, yet robust, finding is that young 3 year olds regularly fail these
standard tests by claiming that Maxi would look in the new location for his chocolate, or
that they and others would know the unexpected contents of the candy box. Four year olds
generally realize that people have and act on false beliefs. Hundreds of research papers have
used these procedures and a meta-analysis of over 50 of these shows that the 3–4-year shift
is reliable (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, in press). In addition, children with autism tend to
fail false-belief tasks until they reach a verbal age somewhat older than 5 years and/or a
chronological age in the secondary school years (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985;
Happé, 1995). However, there are deep divisions about why such a shift occurs.
Theoretical controversies
Since the Premack/Woodruff and Wimmer/Perner papers a deluge of research and theory
has followed on the child’s understanding of mind, not only within developmental psy-
chology but also across other disciplines, particularly comparative psychology, philosophy,
and cognitive science. One of the most interesting aspects of the development of the field
is that there has always been dominant grouping of researchers and a healthy number of
opposition groups. In the first volume of papers (Astington, Harris, & Olson, 1988), the
majority subscribed to a belief that the development of an understanding of mind is theory
like in so far as the child appears to develop a consistent set of principles about the working
of the mind. These principles appear to change in the preschool years in the same way as a
theory changes in science, through a conceptual shift at about the age of 4 when the false-
belief test is passed.
The official opposition, led by Leslie (1987), contrasted the idea of theory change with
a claim that an understanding of mind must be innately specified in a discrete mental
module. The debate between Leslie and the majority greatly influenced the field over the
late 1980s and 1990s. Leslie’s work focused upon symbolic play, which he depicted as a
precursor to a theory of mind: “The emergence of pretence is not seen as a development in
the understanding of events and objects as such, but rather as the beginnings of a capacity
to understand cognition itself. It is an early symptom of the human mind’s ability to
characterize and manipulate its own attitudes towards information” (Leslie, 1987, p. 416).
Leslie’s focus upon pretence was important for three reasons and each stems from the fact
that it emerges so early in the child’s development. First, it heralded a shift occurring
elsewhere in developmental psychology toward a closer link between developmental theory
and cognitive science, somewhat at the expense of social processes. By focusing attention
on a spontaneously emerging ability Leslie’s theoretical analysis homes in on how the cog-
nitive system computes relations between contrastive truth conditions – real versus imag-
ined use of an object; true versus false beliefs etc. The debate on the mechanics of pretence
narrowed most researchers’ attention on children’s understanding of the mind to the cog-
nitive processes involved.
Secondly, the interest in the specific relationship between an understanding of mind
and pretence led Harris (e.g., 1991) and others to suggest that both capacities reflect an
ability to be flexible in one’s imagination. He claimed that just as 18 month olds can use
one object (e.g., a block of wood) as something else (e.g., as a “cup” to pretend to drink
from), so too can the 4 year old come to imagine another’s beliefs. Known as simulation
theory, this approach attempted to avoid elaborate explanations for our understanding of
mental states. All that is required is the ability to put yourself into the shoes of the protago-
nist and reason by analogy: children “need only imagine another person – or their past self
– aiming or failing to aim their mental arrows of seeing, expecting, knowing, liking and
wanting at specific targets within a set of possible targets” (Harris, 1991, p. 292). A great
deal of theoretical debate between simulation theory and the main group who coined the
term theory of mind culminated in the early 1990s in a series of conferences in which most
authors came to the conclusion that an understanding of the mind is likely to involve both
theory-like understanding and the imagination (Carruthers & Smith, 1996; Davies &
Stone, 1995).
Thirdly, Leslie’s theoretical analysis of play reflected a move to explain “the human
mind’s ability to characterize and manipulate its own attitudes towards information.” His
claim of an innate propensity to understand mental states or “theory of mind mechanism”
(ToMM) suggests that an ability to understand mental states emerges early but is con-
strained by a gradually developing information-processing device, labeled the Selection
Processor (Leslie, 1994). Thus the developmental issues, according to this approach, con-
cern information-processing capacity rather than the construction of an understanding of
the mind as a separate entity. This approach, often referred to as the Innate Module ac-
count, contrasts with the view that the child constructs theory-like understanding of men-
tal representations. This latter perspective is known as the Theory Theory, but there are a
number of understandings of what the child’s theory might be like and we will describe
two briefly here. The first is that of Josef Perner (1991) who, in keeping with Leslie, sug-
gests that central to understanding the child’s social-cognitive skills is the ability to under-
stand that mental states serve a representational function. Unlike Leslie he claims that the
realization that the mind is an active entity is constructed by the child and has a profound
influence upon the child’s understanding. This results in a theory-like shift: “One can
think of the concept of ‘representation’ as playing a catalytic role in children’s
reconceptualisation of what the mind is, similar to the catalytic role that important scien-
tific concepts play in the development of new scientific concepts” (Perner, 1991, p. 11).
The other main interpretation of the term Theory Theory derives largely from the work
of Henry Wellman (e.g., 1990). He claims that children have to make ontological distinc-
tions between the plethora of mental states which are identified in natural language –
beliefs, emotion states, desires, values, intentions, etc. – and they have to construct an
understanding of each into a causal explanatory framework. Wellman (1990) suggests that
children develop an understanding of the mind based initially on desires and that in the
third year of life this transforms into a belief–desire framework. This approach is sup-
ported by evidence from a number of areas (see Wellman & Lagattuta, 2000, for a review)
including language development, which shows that desire terms like “want” emerge before
belief terms like “think” and that they gradually become used in a way which suggests an
understanding of false beliefs (e.g., Bartsch & Wellman, 1995).
A theoretical impasse?
A major reason why the child’s understanding of mind has received so much attention
centers around the elegance of the three mainstream theories which have been put forward.
Each of the perspectives – the Simulation, “Theory”, and Innate Module – provides us
with an interesting process model of the development of social-cognitive skills and the
debate between each has been both stimulating and insightful. However, this has had the
effect of narrowing the focus two ways. First, there is the presumption that these are “the
only games in town” as one of the players in the field has arrogantly put it. The main
debate has often been very inward looking as a result. Secondly, the nature of exchange
between the various camps has resulted in two types of conclusion. As stated above the
simulation–theory debate has led to something of a coalescence between the two. The
theory–innate module debate has been more divisive, in that they are mutually exclusive,
to the extent that there appears to be so little common ground between them that each
interprets the same data in radically different ways, each effectively denying the claims of
the other. So, for example, German and Leslie (2000) have recently claimed (not for the
first time) that the theory approach has not shown how a single mental state concept is
constructed by children, how the proposed sequences of theoretical constructs might take
place, or the nature of the critical evidence which might effect a paradigm shift in the
child’s theoretical stance. Critics of the innate module approach have stressed that it does
not appear not to explain the shift which occurs at around age 4 (Frye, 2000; Wellman et
al., in press) and that the evidence from evolution does not support the idea of the emer-
gence of a specifically human ability to understand mental states (Moore, 1996; Tomasello,
1999). More recently, the debate has turned in a different direction.
Current Cognitive Positions
Over the past decade the cognitive debate concerning children’s understanding of mind
has shifted away from an exclusive analysis of the nature and origins of mental-state under-
standing to a fierce debate over the relation between this domain-specific skill and other
more domain-general abilities. Although there are many variations within each position
(e.g., Mitchell & Riggs, 2000), two main perspectives have emerged in opposition to the
theory-of-mind perspective advocated by Perner. The first we call the reasoning position,
while the second concerns the development of executive control.
Reasoning and mental-state understanding
In the mid-1990s the false-belief task came under a great deal of critical scrutiny from a
number of groups who argued that children find this test difficult because it requires the
comparison of a set of contrasting hypothetical premises. For example, Frye, Zelazo, and
Palfai (1995) found that success on a false-belief task correlated with an ability to perform
a card-sort task in which children were required to switch from one rule to another, incom-
patible rule. In one experiment the children had to sort a group of blue and red pictures,
some of which were boats and the rest were flowers. When told that they were now going
to play the “shape game,” 3 year olds continued to sort by color even when explicitly told
to “Put the flowers here; put the boats here.” According to the cognitive complexity and
control (CCC) theory 3 year olds cannot deliberately contrast two contradictory rules.
This skill emerges with the development of other skills, notably working memory, which
permit successively higher levels of understanding of conscious control (Zelazo, 2000).
At the same time Riggs, Peterson, Robinson, and Mitchell (1998) explored the relation
between false-belief understanding and reasoning in comparable tasks which do not in-
volve mental states. For example, they gave children a variant on the unexpected transfer
test in which John’s coveted chocolate is used by his mother to make a cake. Children’s
performance was almost identical on a false-belief question (“Where will John look for the
chocolate?”) and a question which asks children to make a hypothetical or counterfactual
contrast (“If Mummy had not baked the cake, where would the chocolate be?”). This latter
question relies upon children’s ability to reason from false premises, but ones that are not
contingent upon an understanding of the protagonist’s mental states.
The work on reasoning has led to a heated chicken and egg discussion (see chapters 5, 6,
& 18 in Mitchell & Riggs, 2000), in which each logical position (that an understanding of
counterfactuals causes a representational theory of mind, that the representations come
first, or that they both depend on some other influence like processing capacity) has been
suggested and debated.
Executive control
Research inspired by studies of the relationship between cognitive performance and neuro-
logical functioning gave rise to the claim that false-belief tasks require the inhibition of the
prepotent response to say where the chocolate is or what is inside the deceptive box. Early
evidence came from work with autistic children in which it was found that success on a
battery of false-belief tasks correlated with the ability to switch rules on a card-sort task and
carry out a planned sequence of actions on the Tower of Hanoi, in which the child has to
move a set of disks from one pole to two others to match an array presented by the experi-
menter (Ozonoff, Pennington, & Rogers, 1991). At the same time Russell developed a
procedure in which children had to deceive an experimenter into selecting the empty box
in successive trials where a reward was placed in one of two boxes. Known as the windows
task it was found that if the child could see into the boxes, 3 year olds and older children
with autism persisted in telling the experimenter to open the baited box on up to 20
successive trials even though they were “punished” on each trial by not getting the reward
(Russell, Mauthner, Sharpe, & Tidswell, 1991).
Two developments are noteworthy. First, the association between false-belief under-
standing and executive control has led to a close analysis of the nature of the latter. It has
been shown that there are at least three skills involved – inhibitory control, attentional
flexibility, and working memory (following Welsh, Pennington, & Grossier, 1991). Claire
Hughes (1998) has provided evidence suggesting that different executive skills relate to
particular aspects of social understanding. In particular, the ability to deceive appears to be
related to the ability to inhibit a prepotent response.
Secondly, the literature has led to a reconsideration of theory in the area, particularly in
light of Jim Russell’s (1996) book Agency. One problem with research showing a relation
between two functions like executive skills and false belief is that a causal relationship is
not implied. Some, like Ozonoff et al. (1991), assumed that both are controlled by the
development of the same area of the prefrontal cortex, but such accounts pinpoint possible
functional relatedness, not necessarily a causal link between them. Russell claims that ex-
ecutive functions are important in theory-of-mind development, but he is careful to draw
together many of the ideas in the theories discussed in section 2. He attempts to provide an
a priori case for the coexistence of a few innate skills (what he terms “minimal vitalism”), a
connectionist approach to the development (at a subsymbolic level rather than a theoreti-
cal level as described by Theory Theory) and the construction of an understanding of the
mind as a representational system in keeping with Perner’s (1991) theory. However, un-
like Perner, he argues that a grasp of false belief, like other major achievements (notably
object permanence), is part of a general process by which the child constructs a sense of
self-awareness and a self-world dualism as defined by Piaget.
Whither?
The research on domain-general reasoning and the development of executive control has
led to a debate which echoes that between the theoretical positions discussed in section 2.
On both topics there are several “camps” (see Perner, 2000; Perner & Lang, 2000). How-
ever, the safest conjecture seems to be on theoretical accounts of the development of social
skills that do not naively assume that the child constructs a theory-like understanding of
the mind, but which attempt to account for the parallel achievements. Russell’s (1999)
idea of an active agent reintroduces Piagetian theory, although only in a “homeopathic
dose.” Perner’s (Perner & Lang, 2000) view is that the acquisition of a representational
theory of mind is a precursor to other skills. However, we believe that another, comple-
mentary, approach is required.
There is More to Social Cognition than the False-Belief Test
Thus far we have focused on “mainstream” approaches. However, there has always been a
diversity of opinion and we now attempt to piece together an account of the “social”
approach to development. In this section we re-examine the false-belief task from this
perspective, and review evidence of the many correlates of false-belief performance which
put social explanations squarely on the agenda.
Re-analysis of the false-belief test
In addressing the question of whether the false-belief test should be the primary measure of
mental-state understanding many researchers have found that modifying the procedure
allows younger children to demonstrate a competence which appeared lacking when the
standard procedures are employed (e.g., sections 4 & 5 in Lewis & Mitchell, 1994). These
experiments are often perceived by theory theorists as attempts to undermine the theory-
of-mind enterprise by showing that no developmental shifts take place (e.g., Perner, 2000,
pp. 368–375). Indeed some researchers have attempted to show that the test is unreliable
(Mayes, Klin, Tercyak, Cicchetti, & Cohen, 1996), but others find sufficient reliability
(Hughes, Adlam, Happé, Jackson, Taylor, & Caspi, 2000). However, most have modified
the tasks in order to identify the factors that are important in the development of the
child’s understanding of mind.
Three year olds can act to deceive another person (e.g., Chandler, Fritz, & Hala, 1989)
even though they appear to be readily confused into deceiving someone they are supposed
to help (Sodian, 1994). They perform better when they act out the protagonist’s search
pattern (Freeman, Lewis, & Doherty, 1991), if they are actively involved (Hala & Chan-
dler, 1996), if their earlier mental state is made salient by a pictorial cue (Freeman &
Lacohée, 1995; Mitchell & Lacohée, 1991), if they are familiar with the “narrative” of the
unexpected transfer procedure (Lewis, Freeman, Hagestadt, & Douglas, 1994), or if the
test question is phrased so that it refers to a specific point in time (Lewis & Osborne,
1990).
There has been much debate about the importance of these modifications of false-belief
tasks. Wellman et al.’s (in press) meta-analysis has been helpful in teasing apart the factors
which reliably facilitate performance. Examining 178 experiments with 591 conditions
across a range of (mainly industrial) countries, they found that factors like the type of task
used, or whether the target question focused on the protagonist’s thoughts or actions, did
not vary systematically across studies. Five factors did show significantly improved per-
formance in preschoolers across studies: a motive for the protagonist is made explicit; the
child actively participates in the procedure; the object is either not shown to the child or is
destroyed (i.e., eaten) before the test question is asked; the protagonist’s mental state is
made salient – for example by the child being told that Maxi is gone and cannot see the
object being moved; the child is shown a picture which represents the protagonist’s belief
or is reminded of it. None of these factors interacted with age. This suggests that none has
a magic effect of revealing false-belief understanding which is hidden in standard proce-
dures. Indeed Wellman et al. found consistent improvement across the fifth year of life,
suggesting that the task does assess a skill which is mastered at about this time. Only one
factor, temporal marking (following Lewis & Osborne, 1990), interacted with age, but
this seemed to show greater effects in older, not younger, preschoolers.
The Wellman et al. meta-analysis seems to validate the false-belief procedure as a means
of demonstrating the development of mental-state understanding at around age 4. How-

ever, the range of factors which have been shown consistently to relate to children’s success
suggest that performance on the test is contingent upon the nature of experimenter–child
interaction, as we see in the influence of, for example, the adults’ questioning of the child
or casting the test as a competitive game. It thus seems fair to suggest that such variations
give us insights into the social nature of early social cognitive development.
Social correlates of mental-state understanding
The theory-of-mind tradition has long been criticized for being too individualistic (Bruner,
1990; Raver & Leadbeater, 1993), although it has been reluctant to address this criticism.
However, in the mid-1990s a quest to explore individual differences in false-belief per-
formance put social factors squarely on the map even within the theory-of-mind camp.
In one of the early demonstrations that social interaction influences the development of
social understanding, Perner, Ruffman, and Leekam (1994) reported that children with
siblings passed false-belief tests up to a year before children without siblings. Subsequent
research has extended and complicated the “sibling effect.” For a start, in middle-class
homes, the presence of older siblings, more than younger ones, has been more consistently
found to predict false-belief performance (Jenkins & Astington 1996; Lewis, Freeman,
Kyriakidou, Maridaki-Kassotiaki, & Berridge, 1996; Ruffman, Perner, Naito, & Parkin,
1998). However, some studies suggest that the frequency of daily interactions with older
kin (Lewis et al., 1996) or the child’s language level (Jenkins & Astington, 1996) were
stronger predictors. More recent studies of working-class children have failed to replicate
the sibling effect (Cole & Mitchell, 2000; Cutting & Dunn, 1999) and suggest a later
onset of false-belief success in impoverished children (Holmes, Black, & Miller, 1996).
As well as the influence of social background and poverty on social cognitive develop-
ment, culture also seems to be important. Wellman et al.’s (in press) meta-analysis shows
small but statistically significant differences in age of acquisition across cultures which are
mainly similar in their levels of industrialization. Vinden (1996) reported that false-belief
performance in Quechuan people of Peru lagged behind Western children by at least 3
years (and possibly much longer), perhaps because their language appears not to refer di-
rectly to mental states. A more recent study shows that among the Tainae people of Papua,
New Guinea, even 15 year olds were at chance when asked about another’s thoughts (Vinden,
1999).
These data on siblings, social class, and cultural differences pinpoint a glaring weakness
in the literature on theory of mind. It purports to provide insights into the social function-
ing of children, yet it rarely compares children’s social interaction with their performance
on false-belief tests. The “sibling effect” raises much speculation about possible influences
but tells us little about how social interaction influences social-cognitive development. To
address this question we need to turn to additional evidence.
“One miracle”?: From infancy to adolescence
One problem with the literature is that false-belief understanding is treated as a fulcrum
around which development takes place. Chandler (e.g., 1988) has long criticized what he
refers to as the “one miracle” view of development, that false-belief understanding is the
major step into a “theory of mind” which is essentially equivalent to adults’ understanding.
This assumption has been attacked from two sides. First, there has been growing interest in
obtaining a more complete view of children’s social-cognitive development by studying
infants’ joint attention behaviors that seem to indicate some level of social understanding
(e.g., Moore & Dunham, 1995).
Secondly, attention has turned to developments in children’s social understanding be-
yond false-belief understanding. The term “interpretation” has featured centrally in dis-
cussion of developments after the preschool years. Some researchers argue that passing a
false-belief test or related theory-of-mind tasks already indicates an understanding of inter-
pretation (e.g., Perner, 1991). Others argue for a distinction between understanding that
beliefs depend on having access to information (i.e., false-belief comprehension) and the
more complex understanding that even with access to the same information people may
interpret it differently and, thus, end up with different beliefs, an insight achieved several
years after false-belief understanding (Carpendale & Chandler, 1996; Chandler &
Carpendale, 1998; Chandler & Lalonde, 1996). A related insight, also achieved some years
after false-belief understanding, is the understanding that people’s interpretation of an
ambiguous social event may be biased by their previous expectations about the people
involved (Pillow, 1991). Further mentalistic insights that preschoolers still have to acquire
include their understanding of the nature of thinking (Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1995),
and inference (Varouxaki, Freeman, Peters, & Lewis, 1999).
This research on older children alerts us to a need to tie the explosion of theory-of-mind
research into both a longer time perspective and the wider tradition of social-cognitive
studies. However, the field is only now beginning to explore some of these potential con-
nections. Dunn (1996) and others have called for research on connections between theory
of mind and other aspects of children’s development such as morality and emotional un-
derstanding. Competence in social understanding may be important for a number of dif-
ferent aspects of development such as self-awareness (Chandler & Carpendale, 1998),
drawing inferences regarding social situations and the pragmatics of interaction.
Some recent work suggests a relationship between false-belief understanding and wider
social skills. For example, young children’s performance on false-belief tests was found to
be positively correlated with teacher ratings of social skills (Lalonde & Chandler, 1995;
Watson, Nixon, Wilson, & Capage, 1999). But with preadolescents, peers’ ratings were
related to social understanding, not teacher ratings (Bosacki & Astington, 1999). As Watson
et al. acknowledge, these studies are correlational and give rise to many possible explana-
tions. Competence in mentalistic understanding could lead to improved social skills, or
children who are involved in more social interaction may develop more competence in
understanding the mental world. Alternatively, a third factor involving children’s family
background may facilitate development of mentalistic understanding and social skills. Even
more likely perhaps, this relationship may be bidirectional. That is, involvement in more
social interaction facilitates more understanding and this in turn leads to more successful
interaction with peers. Such speculation, of course, requires evaluation with longitudinal
and experimental research.
Recent research has attempted to use the theory of mind to examine real-world issues
like bullying. Sutton, Smith, and Swettenham (1999) argue that the image of the bully as
socially naive is not based on good research and they report evidence that, in fact, bullies
tend to score higher on measures of social understanding. This type of research demon-
strates the close connection between social understanding and morality (Chandler, Sokol,
& Wainryb, 2000), but here more conceptual and empirical work is needed.
Social Interaction and Social-Cognitive Development
Recent links made between children’s understanding of the mind and other social skills are
symptomatic of a move toward a more consolidated theory which integrates the two. In
this section we describe what we feel is an emerging, or continuing, consensus in the field.
First we report the longitudinal evidence which shows that mental-state understanding at
age 4 seems to be related to patterns in the child’s earlier relationships. Secondly we home
in on language as the main means by which children come to develop this understanding.
Longitudinal patterns
Longitudinal research suggests that factors in the child’s early relationships are important
predictors of earlier false-belief understanding. In the area of family relationships, not only
is concurrent attachment security related to theory-of-mind performance (Fonagy, Redfern,
& Charman, 1997), but similar results are found in longitudinal studies (Symons & Clark,
2000). For example, Meins (1997) found that children who were securely attached at 11 to
13 months were more likely than insecurely attached children to pass a false-belief task at
4 years, and more complex tasks at 5 years. However, a number of explanations are possi-
ble and even more complexity in research design is required to tease apart possible lines of
causality. Here the work of Dunn has been seminal.
In a series of longitudinal studies, Dunn and her colleagues found that a number of
factors in family interactions predict levels of performance in theory-of-mind tasks. For
example, cooperative interaction between siblings at 33 months was positively related to
belief understanding at 40 months (Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, & Youngblade,
1991). The most consistent link in Dunn’s and related research is between family talk
about mental states and children’s social understanding (e.g., Brown, Donelan-McCall, &
Dunn, 1996; Dunn, 1996). In one of the first of these studies, Dunn et al. (1991) found
that children who at 33 months participated more in family talk about emotions and the
causes of behavior were more competent on a test of belief understanding 7 months later.
Similar results were found in another longitudinal study in which mothers’ use of mental-
state terms was associated with their child’s later competence in understanding belief (Moore,
Furrow, Chiasson, & Patriquin, 1994). Much of this initial research has focused on words
that are clearly mental-state terms, but some words may be important in learning about the
mind even if they are not obviously mental-state terms such as “see,” “look,” or “hide”
(Turnbull & Carpendale, 1999). Competence in understanding belief is also associated
with mothers who report asking their children to reflect on others’ mental states and feel-
ings in disciplinary situations (Ruffman, Perner, & Parkin 1999), and with mothers who
treat their children as individuals with minds (Meins & Fernyhough, 1999).
Another source of evidence for the role of language comes from research showing that
deaf children tend to be delayed in false-belief understanding (Peterson & Siegal, 2000).
This seems to be because most of these children have hearing parents who are not fluent in
sign language, and thus there is no shared language complex enough to talk about inner
states. In contrast, deaf children with deaf parents who are competent users of sign lan-
guage may not be delayed. Peterson and Siegal (2000) have now reviewed 11 studies that
support these conclusions and point to the role of conversation in the development of
false-belief understanding.
If family talk about mental states is important in the development of social understand-
ing then we might expect that suitable training or teaching might facilitate such develop-
ment, and this approach has demonstrated some success. For example, Appleton and Reddy
(1996) found that discussion of situations involving false beliefs led to 3 year olds’ success
on post tests and to generalize this insight to other tests of belief understanding beyond the
training situations.
The studies described here conflict with ones which rely on laboratory procedures in
that they suggest that young children who consistently fail standard false-belief tasks may
still appear to engage in a wide variety of acts such as deception that seem to reflect some
mentalistic understanding (e.g., Newton, Reddy, & Bull, 2000). Such evidence contrasts
with the idea of a sudden shift into an understanding of false beliefs. For example, Newton
et al.’s close observations of a 2 year old suggest that deception skills emerge from prag-
matic need at around the second birthday rather than as a result of a conceptual miracle.
Instead, such data support the theoretical claims regarding gradual development of con-
cepts concerning the mind (Russell, 1996; Woodfield, 1996).
Language and social understanding
Evidence of the role of family talk about the mental world in the development of social
understanding has led many to the more general issue of the relationship between language
and social understanding (e.g., P. K. Smith, 1996). Several researchers have reported that
false-belief understanding is closely related to language ability, assessed with various meas-
ures (e.g., Cutting & Dunn, 1999; Happé, 1995; Jenkins & Astington, 1996). Further,
children with autism have problems with both language and theory-of-mind tasks. There
are a number of possible relations between language and social understanding more gener-
ally, and false-belief understanding specifically. Language may reveal children’s under-
standing, but language may also be a context for the development of understanding.
Children’s talk about mental states can provide a window on their social understanding.
For example, Bartsch and Wellman’s (1995) exploration of the CHILDES database re-
vealed that children consistently use desire terms like “want” at a younger age than belief
terms like “think.” Although they use this in support of their claim for the development of
a desire-based theory as a precursor to a belief–desire theory, other explanations are possi-
ble. For example, Harris (1996) suggests that it is conversation, not word use, that is an
important context in which children learn about beliefs (see also Tomasello, 1999, pp.
176–178). Here language is considered a context for development. In particular, Harris
argues that information is exchanged in conversation, which should be a constant demon-
stration that people differ in what they think, believe, and know about a topic.
Another aspect of language that may be important in learning about mental states is
syntax. De Villiers and de Villiers (2000) argue that language provides a syntactical struc-
ture, known as complementation, with which to talk about mental states. For example, in
“He thought it was a lion” (de Villiers & de Villiers, 2000, p. 196), the overall sentence can
be true although the embedded complement (“it was a lion”) can be false. In this view, a
grasp of language is required for social-cognitive development because it provides a syntac-
tical structure for thinking about false beliefs. However, there is controversy over whether
this aspect of syntax provides a necessary or a sufficient condition for grasping false belief
(Astington & Jenkins, 1999).
The current longitudinal evidence on language and theory of mind suggests that earlier
language abilities predict later performance on false-belief tests, but not vice versa (Astington
& Jenkins, 1999). Such results support the view that theory of mind depends on language,
at least when the former is defined by false-belief understanding. If we consider social
understanding more generally, then it may be that some initial level of social understand-
ing is required in order to achieve joint attention and determine others’ referential intent
in the process of word learning. Beyond this, language may be an important context in
which to learn how to talk about and reflect on inner experience.
The first two possibilities considered by Astington and Jenkins – that theory of mind
depends on language, or that language depends on theory of mind – assume that these two
abilities are separable. Instead, others argue that they are inextricably intertwined. Argu-
ments from Wittgenstein suggest that thinking about the mental world is not separate
from learning to talk about the mental world (Turnbull & Carpendale, 1999; submitted).
Several authors have pointed out that Wittgenstein’s (1968) private language argument is
an argument against the view, based on simulation theory, that children learn about the
mind through introspection (Chapman, 1987; Montgomery, 1997; Russell, 1996). In-
stead, public criteria are needed in order to learn the meaning of mental-state terms. Crite-
ria are those public circumstances in which it is appropriate to use certain mental-state
terms (Chapman, 1987). In the case of psychological terms such as “look,” “want,” “think,”
“guess,” and “forget” the criteria that justify their use are actions. Children learn the use
and meaning of mental-state terms through the process of the words being grafted onto
earlier or more primitive behavior (Hacker, 1997; Turnbull & Carpendale, submitted).
The conclusion following from this argument is that developing social understanding is
fundamentally social because children must learn the meaning of mental-state terms within
family talk about the mental world.
Conclusion: Integrating the Social and Cognitive Approaches
In this chapter we have explicated two contrasting views of social cognition, that have long
been present within the literature but which have manifested themselves in particular ways
in recent years. As we have suggested in sections 2 and 3, much of the debate on the child’s
understanding of mind concerns the nature of her/his “representation” of mental states.
This once focused on whether they are innate, constructed in a theoretical way, or simply
simulated, but in recent years has concerned, firstly, whether a representational theory of
mind (Perner, 1991) is distinct from other types of counterfactual thinking and, secondly,
how it relates to other higher order or executive thinking skills. In section 4 we have tried
to return the social dimension to the term social cognition by showing that the child’s
entry into an understanding is grounded in her/his communication with others.
We conclude by suggesting that the cognitive and social approaches be integrated. Calls
for such an integration have come from both within (Astington & Olson, 1995; Vinden &
Astington, 2000) and outside (Raver & Leadbeater, 1993) the theory-of-mind movement.
We need a theory that takes the role of social interaction seriously, yet is not a simple
enculturation position, according to which children passively adopt culturally available
concepts concerning the mind. We suggest that Chapman’s (1991, 1999) integration of
the Piagetian and Vygotskian ideas mentioned at the start of this chapter may provide a
suitable framework within which to integrate the individual and social aspects of the devel-
opment of social understanding.
Chapman (1991) suggested that integrating Piaget’s early work on the notion that argu-
mentation is the source of reflective thought with his later interest in subject–object interac-
tion into a single system results in an “epistemic triangle” involving triadic interaction between
the self, others, and the world. Vygotsky’s ideas concerning the role of social interaction are
also preserved in this approach. From this perspective, the development of children’s social
understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child’s experience of the world
as well as her communicative interaction with others about their, often differing, experience
and beliefs. This essential role of social interaction implies that the extent and nature of the
interaction children experience will influence the development of their social understanding.
More interaction and talk about the mental world should facilitate the development of social
understanding through learning the criteria for mental state terms. Aspects of relationships
such as cooperation that influence children’s understanding of others” perspectives should
also facilitate development. These expectations are consistent with the research reviewed
above. Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development is also important in this
context because it is helpful in thinking about a gradual process of development and the role
of adults in supporting such development. This is a perspective that has been lacking in the
field and may be helpful in making sense of the gap between naturalistic observation and
experimental evidence of belief understanding.
There are several approaches within the field that are consistent with such a framework.
For example, Fernyhough’s (1996) Vygotskian account is not an enculturation view, but
rather proposes that children develop a dialogical form of thinking through internalizing
interpersonal dialogue. This form of thinking, involving the ability to consider more than
one perspective, is required in situations involving false beliefs. Hobson’s (1993) work also
has much in common, in fact he proposes a “relatedness triangle,” similar to Chapman’s

epistemic triangle. Hobson argues that the capacity for symbolism arises in the interper-
sonal activity of relating to others about their attitudes to objects. That is, symbolic thought
follows developmentally from symbolic communication. This is based on the Vygotskian
(1934/1986) insight that higher mental functions arise through the internalization of so-
cial interaction. Similarly, Tomasello (1999) argues against the common view of linguistic
reference as a connection between the symbol and the referent. Instead, Tomasello writes
about a “referential triangle” – consistent with Chapman (1991) and Hobson (1993) –
and he argues that “reference is a social act in which one person attempts to get another
person to focus her attention on something in the world” (p. 97). This species-unique
capacity for reference allows children to participate in language and culture, and to take
advantage of cultural learning.
The essence of the approaches discussed in this section is that they are relational in
nature and assume that development occurs in social interaction. The individual charac-
teristics and capabilities of the child as well as of the other people involved contribute to
this interaction – that is, they respond to each other. Social cognition develops within the
relations between the child and others, and it is central to human life.
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394 Gary W. Ladd, Eric S. Buhs, & Wendy Troop
20
Children’s Interpersonal Skills and

Relationships in School Settings: Adaptive
Significance and Implications for School-
Based Prevention and Intervention Programs
Gary W. Ladd, Eric S. Buhs, and Wendy Troop
Introduction
Schools, and the classrooms they contain, are among the most pervasive socialization con-
texts in our culture, and potentially one of the most influential for shaping human devel-
opment over the life span. Of all children between the ages of 5 and 18 in the United
States, 9 out of 10 attend school (Coie et al., 1993), and 12% to 30% of these children
exhibit moderate to severe adjustment problems in the classroom (e.g., Achenbach &
Edelbrock, 1981; Coie et al., 1993). Because early school adjustment problems foreshadow
many types of dysfunction over the life cycle (Ladd, 1996; 1999; Parker & Asher, 1987), it
is important to understand the processes through which children adapt to school.
Schools are challenging contexts for children by nature and design. These challenges
include the instructional features of classrooms, such as didactic small- and large-group
instruction, teacher-initiated/monitored learning activities, and programmatic curriculum
sequences. At present, much is known about children’s cognitive and linguistic skills, and
their socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds as precursors of their adjustment and achieve-
Portions of this article were prepared while the first author was supported by grants 1-RO1MH-49223
and 2-RO1MH-49223 from the National Institutes of Health. Correspondence should be addressed to
Gary Ladd, Department of Family and Human Development and Department of Psychology, Arizona
State University, Box 87250, Tempe, AZ 85287 (email: [email protected]).
Children’s Interpersonal Skills 395
ment. Less well recognized are the many types of interpersonal challenges that children
confront in school. As children enter school, they are typically faced with shifting social
ecologies, relationships, and resources. Beyond basic tasks such as relating with classmates
and forming ties with teachers, children find that they are under increasing pressure to
compare and evaluate themselves, their abilities, and their achievements to those of agemates.
Many of these challenges are repeated as children progress through the grades. In each new
classroom they must negotiate their needs in dyadic and group settings and re-establish
relationships with classmates and teachers. Moreover, it is likely that these challenges are
intensified when children change schools or cope with school transitions (see Eccles,
Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998; Ladd, 1996).
Thus, an important task facing educational and developmental researchers is to investigate
the role of children’s classroom interpersonal skills and relationships as precursors of school
adaptation and adjustment. Given the complexity of this phenomenon, there is a need to
construct models that will focus the search for interpersonal antecedents, and provide a con-
text for understanding how these factors impact children’s school adjustment. It will also be
important to consider not only how specific interpersonal factors exert an influence on ad-
justment, but also which aspects of children’s school adjustment are affected by these factors.
Premises examined in this review
Two primary premises are examined in this chapter. First, we contend that, especially
among younger children, it is unlikely that cognitive, linguistic, or family factors fully
explicate the processes that account for children’s school adjustment and progress. Rather,
our position is that, in order to obtain a more complete picture of the processes and mecha-
nisms that “attach” children to school and enable them to adapt to challenges within this
environment, it is necessary to consider interpersonal factors as well, particularly the adap-
tive significance of children’s interpersonal skills and relationships with classmates and
teachers. Second, we contend that the concept of school adjustment has been construed
too narrowly in past research, and should be expanded to include other relevant indicators
of children’s success or maladaptation in this setting. Alternatively, the concept of school
adjustment is seen as a multidimensional construct that includes children’s attitudes to-
ward school, their affect in the classroom, their engagement or participation in the learn-
ing environment, and their scholastic progress (see Ladd, 1989, 1996).
Toward this end, a child-by-environment model (cf. Coie et al., 1993) of the interper-
sonal antecedents of children’s school adjustment is presented in Figure 20.1, with paths
representing premises about how child attributes, background variables, and interpersonal
factors affect each other and, ultimately, children’s adjustment to school. Over the years,
evidence has been gathered to address each of these pathways, including the link between
children’s classroom behavior and their relationships with peers and teachers, the link be-
tween classroom relationships and school adjustment, and the mediated link from chil-
dren’s behavior through classroom relationships to facets of school adjustment. These three
pathways provide a conceptual focus for this review, and an opportunity to evaluate em-
pirical evidence for each premise.
Background
Children’s Classroom School
and
behavior interpersonal adjustment
demographic
in school relations
factors
• Gender • Prosocial styles Supports: • Attitudes/

• Cognitive maturity • Antisocial styles • Mutual friendships perceptions
• Family background • Asocial styles • Peer group toward school
• Ethnicity acceptance • Comfort/affect
• Close relationship in school
with teacher • Participation in
classroom activities
Stressors: • Scholastic
• Bully–victim performance
relationships
• Peer group
rejection
• Conflictual
relationship
with teacher
Figure 20.1 Interpersonal model of school adjustment.
Evidence examined in this review
An overarching aim for this chapter is to evaluate evidence that reflects upon the three
principal pathways designated within Figure 20.1. Each of these pathways corresponds to
one or more premises about children’s interpersonal lives in school and how they affect
each other and multiple features of their school adjustment. First, we consider evidence
bearing on the hypothesis that children’s interaction patterns in the classroom influence
the types of relationships they form with peers and teachers. Second, we evaluate the tenet
that specific features of children’s relationships with classmates or teachers facilitate or
impede their school adjustment, depending upon the processes (e.g., affirmation, conflict)
or instrumental/psychological properties (e.g., stress, support) that children are exposed to
in these relationships. Third, we assess empirical support for the premise that the effects of
children’s interpersonal behaviors on school adjustment are mediated through (or moder-
ated by) the relationships they form with classmates and teachers. Finally, we review evi-
dence from experimental studies in which one or more of the targeted relational variables
has been manipulated, and consider the implications of these findings for intervention and
prevention programs.
Children’s Social Behaviors, Peer Relationships, and School

Adjustment
Conceptually, a central premise within the proposed child-by-environment model is that

children’s adjustment is partly determined by the interface of children’s interpersonal
behaviors and the surrounding social/school environment (see Ladd, 1996). When applied
to peer relations research, a corollary that follows from this model is that children’s behavior
in classrooms affects the nature of the relationships they develop with classmates and teachers.
Are children’s behaviors linked with their relationships in the school context?
Most of the child behaviors that have been examined as correlates or antecedents of class-
room relationships can be grouped into three categories, termed antisocial behaviors (e.g.,
aggression), prosocial behaviors (e.g., cooperative interaction patterns), and asocial behaviors.
Investigators have often worked from the premise that antisocial behaviors create high
social costs for their interaction partners, and deprive peers of sought-after psychological
benefits (e.g. reliable alliance, social support). In contrast, prosocial actions seldom create
interpersonal costs and often benefit partners. Children prone to asocial behavior are likely
to burden their partners by being unskillful and failing to maintain interactions.
In mapping the relational context of schools, researchers have distinguished between
children’s dyadic relationships (i.e., friendships, teacher–child relationships; Birch & Ladd,
1996) and group-level constructs such as peer acceptance (see Bukowski & Hoza, 1989).
Unlike friendship, peer acceptance is typically defined as how much a child is liked versus
disliked by members of his or her classroom peer group. Peer victimization refers to chil-
dren who are frequently the recipients of peers’ aggressive behaviors (see Kochenderfer &
Ladd, 1996).
Because longitudinal investigations provide the strongest support for the proposition
that children’s behaviors affect their relationships, special attention is given to this form of
research in the sections that follow. These sections are organized by relationships to con-
sider how different forms of child behavior may be linked with each type of relationship.
Peer acceptance. The behavioral correlates of peer acceptance have received considerable
research attention, and a common finding is that aggressive behaviors antecede peer-group
rejection (e.g. Coie & Kupersmidt, 1983; Dodge, 1983; Ladd, Price, & Hart, 1988). Re-
cent studies have revealed that some forms of aggression, such as instrumental aggression
in boys, predict peer rejection better than others (Coie, Dodge, Terry, & Wright, 1991).
Although more common among girls, relational forms of aggression (i.e., attempts to dam-
age another’s relationships; Crick, 1996), along with confrontive forms of aggression, pre-
dict peer rejection for both boys and girls. These findings support the inference that aggressive
behaviors antecede children’s acceptance by classmates (although, see Hymel, Wagner, &
Butler, 1990), and suggest that there may be gender differences in how aggression is ex-
pressed.
In contrast, prosocial behaviors have been shown to antecede peer-group acceptance
(Coie & Kupersmidt, 1983, Dodge, 1983; Ladd et al., 1988). Coie and Kupersmidt (1983)
found that boys who asked questions and make positive comments became better liked by
peers, and Ladd et al. (1988) found that preschoolers who played cooperatively with peers
gained in peer acceptance over a school year.
At present, evidence for the premise that asocial behavior leads to peer rejection appears
age-dependent. During early childhood, investigators tend to find that withdrawn chil-
dren are not rejected by peers (e.g., Ladd & Burgess, 1999). By middle childhood, how-
ever, it is more common for investigators to find that asocial behavior is linked with peer
rejection, possibly because older classmates tend to judge such behavior as deviant (e.g.,
Rubin, LeMare, & Lollis, 1990). Other findings suggest that withdrawn children are prone
to peer neglect (i.e., receive few liking or disliking nominations from peers) rather than
peer rejection (e.g., Dodge, 1983), and early peer isolation has been associated with low
peer acceptance in both early and later grade levels (Hymel, Rubin, Rowden, & LeMare,
1990).
In sum, substantial evidence corroborates the premise that children’s interpersonal
behaviors have a bearing on the status they achieve in peer groups. In general, findings
support the inference that children’s behaviors play an important role in shaping relation-
ship formation, but may have less effect on peer’s sentiments once such reputations are
formed (see Hymel, Wagner, & Butler, 1990).
Friendship. As was the case for peer acceptance, evidence indicates that children’s aggres-
sive behavior is inversely related to friendship. Both confrontive and relational forms of
aggression have been linked to problematic friendships in boys and girls (Grotpeter &
Crick, 1996), and aggressive children appear to have difficulty maintaining their friend-
ships (Parker & Seal, 1996). In contrast, Gottman (1983) found that prosocial skills, such
as maintaining connected discourse and managing conflicts adaptively, forecasted chil-
dren’s success at friendship formation. Similarly, Howes (1988) found that toddlers with
cooperative play styles were more likely to maintain their friendships, and Berndt and Das
(1987) reported that prosocial behavior predicted whether fourth-graders would maintain
versus lose friendships over a school year. The relation between asocial behavior and friend-
ship is less clear, although Ladd and Burgess (1999) found that withdrawn children did
not differ significantly from either normative or aggressive counterparts in the number of
mutual friendships they possessed from kindergarten through second grade. Such findings
may be attributable to Rubin and his colleague’s (Rubin et al., 1990) contention that
asocial activity is normative at younger ages, and not seen as deviant by peers.
Thus, compared to research on peer-group acceptance, less is known about the links
between child behaviors and friendship. However, existing evidence is generally consistent
with hypotheses about the costs and benefits of aggressive versus prosocial behaviors on
relationship formation and maintenance.
Peer victimization. Some investigators have described bully–victim interactions as a form

of relationship because it often involves the same partners and persists over time (see Pierce
& Cohen, 1985). Findings point to two distinct subtypes of victims – a passive or
nonaggressive type, comprising the majority of victimized children, and a provocative or
aggressive type (Olweus, 1994; Perry, Kusel, & Perry, 1988). Schwartz, Dodge, and Coie
(1993) found that, compared to a matched nonvictimized aggressive group, boys who
became passive victims exhibited a submissive and incompetent interaction style and be-
came progressively more withdrawn over time. In a study of third through seventh graders,
Egan and Perry (1998) found that physical weakness, internalizing problems, and poor
social skills all predicted later victimization, especially for children with low self-esteem.
Thus, early evidence supports the notion that children’s aggressive and passive behavior,
and deficiencies in their social skills, are associated with peer victimization. As of yet, how-
ever, longitudinal studies are rare, and the evidence that has accumulated on the linkage
between child behavior and peer victimization is primarily of a cross-sectional, correla-
tional nature.
Teacher–child relationships. Although teacher–child relationships are part of the social

ecology of school environments, they have received less attention than children’s relation-
ships with classmates. Findings suggest that young children’s behaviors in school may af-
fect not only their ties with peers, but also with teachers.
Research on this relationship has been guided by attachment theory, either explicitly
(e.g., Howes & Hamilton, 1992; Howes, Hamilton, & Matheson, 1994) or implicitly
(e.g., Pianta & Steinberg, 1992). Greater attention has been focused on the correlates of
teacher–child relationships than on its antecedents. Early findings (Pianta & Steinberg,
1992) indicated that disruptive child behavior and internalizing/anxious problems corre-
lated negatively with the quality of teacher–child relationships. In a prospective longitudi-
nal study, Birch and Ladd (1998) found that children’s antisocial behavior in kindergarten
was negatively related to teacher–child closeness and positively related to teacher–child
conflict and dependency in first grade. Children’s prosocial behaviors correlated positively
with their concurrent teacher–child relationships, but were not uniquely predictive of later
relationship quality.
In sum, although extant evidence reflects on a limited range of behaviors, relationship
features, and developmental periods, it is consistent with the premise that the behaviors
children bring to school affect the nature and quality of the relationships they form in this
setting. With few exceptions, aggressive and antisocial behaviors have been linked with
negative relationship properties, and prosocial behaviors have been linked with positive
relationship features. These findings, and especially those for antisocial behaviors, appear
to generalize across the types and features of relationships children form at school, includ-
ing those they have with classmates and teachers. We now turn to the second of the premises
embodied in the child by environment model, and consider whether there is evidence to
support the contention that children’s relationships in school affect their adjustment in
this context.
Are children’s relationships in the school context associated with their

adjustment in this setting?
It has long been assumed that children’s adjustment is affected by their relationships with
key socializers (see Ladd, 1999), but investigators have only recently investigated this as-
sumption in the school context. Thus far, research has been guided by the premise that
children’s relationships with classmates and teachers immerse them in interactions (e.g.,
giving and receiving assistance) that confer specific “provisions” on the participants (e.g., a
sense of worth, trust; or their opposites). Because relationships bring different processes to
bear upon children and confer different provisions, they vary in adaptive significance for
school-related demands (Furman & Robbins, 1985; Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman,
1997). In the next three sections, we consider evidence pertaining to the adaptive value of
classroom peer acceptance, friendships, and teacher–child relationships.
Peer acceptance. A growing corpus of findings links peer acceptance with indicators of
later school adjustment. In a critical analysis of this literature, Parker and Asher (1987)
found that low peer acceptance was a significant correlate of later school adjustment. Re-
cently, investigators have begun to test hypotheses about the role of peer acceptance on
emerging forms of school maladjustment. Early peer rejection – at school entry – has been
shown to predict problems such as negative school attitudes, school avoidance, and un-
derachievement during the first year of schooling (Ladd, 1990). Later, in the elementary
years, peer acceptance has been linked with loneliness (Parker & Asher, 1993), peer inter-
action difficulties, lower emotional well-being, and academic deficits (Ladd, et al., 1997;
Vandell & Hembree 1994). In other studies, researchers have attempted to distinguish the
contributions of peer acceptance from those of other relationships. Ladd and colleagues
(Ladd et al., 1997; Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999) found that, even after controlling for other
forms of peer and teacher–child relationships, peer rejection predicted children’s participa-
tion in the classroom which, in turn, was linked to later achievement. In a similar study,
Buhs and Ladd (2001) found that children’s peer acceptance at school entry predicted
changes in classroom participation which, in turn, predicted later academic and emotional
adjustment. In general, these results support the premise that peer acceptance promotes
social inclusion which, in turn, yields provisions (e.g., sense of belongingness) that en-
hance interpersonal and scholastic adjustment.
Friendship. In research on classroom friendships, investigators have often measured chil-

dren’s participation in a close friendship, the number of mutual friends they have in their
classrooms, the duration of these relationships, and features that reflect the quality of a
friendship (see Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1996). There is growing evidence link-
ing one or more of these facets of friendship to children’s school adjustment.
As children enter school, those who have prior friendships and tend to develop new ones
are more likely to form favorable school perceptions and do better academically than peers
with fewer friends (Ladd, 1990). The processes that typify friends’ interactions have also
been linked to children’s school adjustment. Young children, especially boys who report
conflict within their friendships, have been shown to have adjustment difficulties, includ-
ing lower levels of classroom engagement and participation (Ladd et al., 1996). Ladd et al.
also found that when children saw their friendships as offering high levels of validation
(support) and aid (assistance) they tended to perceive classrooms as supportive interper-
sonal environments. Conversely, Parker and Asher (1993) found that third- through fifth-
grade children whose friendships lacked supportive features tended to be lonely in school.
Although less well researched, evidence suggests that friendships may not always contrib-
ute positively to school adjustment. Berndt, Hawkins, and Jiao (1999), for example, found
that fighting and disruptiveness tended to increase if adolescents had stable friendships
with peers who exhibited the same problems. While far from being conclusive or exhaus-
tive, these studies suggest that, in addition to peer-group acceptance, the features of chil-
dren’s friendships (e.g., participation, interactional processes, stability, etc.) are potential
antecedents of school adjustment across a wide range of ages.
Teacher–child relationships. Research on the links between teacher–child relationships

and children’s school adjustment has been limited in scope and depth, and constructed
largely from an attachment or relationship features perspective. Pianta and Steinberg (1992)
found that, among kindergarten children who were at risk for retention, those with posi-
tive teacher–child relationships were more likely to advance to first grade and those with
conflictual relationships were more often retained. In a longitudinal study, Birch and Ladd
(1998) found that kindergartners with conflictual or dependent teacher–child relation-
ships were more likely to develop later adjustment problems, such as delayed academic
performance, lower classroom participation, and negative school attitudes. Ladd et al. (1999)
also found that qualities of the teacher–child relationship predicted later classroom partici-
pation and, indirectly, academic achievement. While these findings have yet to be repli-
cated with older samples and varying demographic groups, available evidence implicates
the teacher–child relationship as a potential antecedent of children’s school adjustment.
Victimization. A link between peer victimization and school maladjustment has been
found in a number of investigations. As illustrations, Boivin, Hymel, and Bukowski (1995)
found that grade-schoolers who experienced gains in victimization over a year tended to
report higher levels of loneliness. Similarly, at school entrance, higher levels of peer vic-
timization predicted increases in loneliness and school avoidance (Kochenderfer & Ladd,
1996; Ladd et al., 1997), and these difficulties were pronounced for children who were
chronically maltreated. These longitudinal findings are corroborated by cross-sectional
evidence gathered with diverse age groups around the world. Victims, for example, are
more likely than nonvictims to report negative feelings and attitudes toward school and
classroom tasks (Boivin & Hymel, 1997; Boulton & Underwood, 1992). Although fur-
ther investigation is needed, especially across age groups and gender, the bulk of extant
evidence conforms to the hypothesis that victimization is a determinant of school-related
difficulties.
Do relationships in school mediate the association between children’s behavior

and school adjustment?
In recent years, researchers have begun to evaluate more complex models than the bivariate
ones described above. This progression in thinking is illustrated in Figure 20.1 where
classroom behaviors are seen as affecting classroom relationships which, in turn, yield
affordances or constraints that impact children’s school adjustment. Moreover, reliance on
multivariate statistical tools, such as structural equation modeling (SEM), has allowed re-
searchers to conduct more comprehensive tests of alternative paths of influence, including
hypothesized direct and/or mediated effects.
Boivin and Hymel (1997) were among the first to examine mediated linkages from
children’s behavior through peer relationships to adjustment. In a cross-sectional study
with 8 to 10 year olds, these investigators found that children’s withdrawn and aggressive
behavior correlated positively with peer rejection and peer victimization which, in turn,
correlated negatively with school loneliness and social dissatisfaction. Ladd et al. (1999)
examined a similar set of premises longitudinally with kindergartners and found that even
after controlling for demographics/entry factors, there were significant paths from
kindergartners’ classroom behaviors to both positive and negative features of their teacher
and peer relationships, and from these relationships to children’s classroom participation
and achievement. Also obtained were significant indirect paths that were consistent with
the hypothesis that the effects of children’s behaviors on their scholastic performance were
transmitted through features of their classroom relationships.
Data from these investigations imply that there is a need to broaden the scope of re-
search on the interpersonal antecedents of school adjustment to include multiple aspects of
the classroom social environment. Also, because there is growing support for the proposi-
tion that children’s interpersonal lives in the classroom contribute to their school adjust-
ment, it may be prudent for researchers to experiment with methods that might improve
children’s interpersonal skills and relationships in this setting. In the sections that follow,
evidence relevant to this objective is considered.
Intervention and Prevention Research: Is it Possible to Improve

Children’s Social Behavior and Relationships in School?
In view of the foregoing findings, it might be argued that children who are not adjusting to
school may benefit from learning social skills, becoming accepted by classmates, develop-
ing high-quality friendships, and forming close ties with their teachers. Yet, research aimed
at improving children’s school adjustment is rare because investigators have tended to
focus primarily on changing children’s behavior (e.g., social skills training) without con-
sidering how skill acquisition might affect their success in school. In the balance of this
chapter, we consider how experimental interventions could permit tests of hypotheses about
the linkages between social skills, classroom relationships, and school adjustment, and
whether existing evidence suggests that such manipulations are effective for these pur-
poses.
Interventions to promote social skills or reduce antisocial behaviors
Efforts to promote social competence and improve children’s relationships with classmates
have a long history. Investigators first used simple procedures such as presenting children
with models of prosocial behaviors or arranging for them to receive contingent reinforce-
ment for naturally occurring prosocial behaviors during the school day (see Asher, Renshaw,
& Hymel, 1982). As theories implicating social cognition as the basis for competent behavior
emerged and received empirical support, investigators began to create interventions to
foster social knowledge and problem-solving abilities (e.g., Gesten et al., 1982; Spivak &
Shure, 1974). The latest genesis of interventions is more complex and includes compo-
nents based on social cognitive, motivational, emotional, behavioral, and external rein-
forcement principles.
Interventions based on one or more of these principles have been used to promote social
skills and to reduce antisocial behaviors (Gresham, 1985; Ladd & Mize, 1983; Lochman,
White, & Wayland, 1991). Many of the programs built upon social cognitive principles
are based on the premise that incompetent social behavior is the result of distortions or
deficits in social cognitive processes and knowledge (e.g., see Crick & Dodge, 1994; Ladd
& Crick, 1989). Evidence that such programs are effective has begun to accrue. An anger-
coping program created by Lochman and colleagues (Lochman, Burch, Curry, & Lampron,
1984; Lochman & Lenhart, 1993) reduced hostile behavior, especially in aggressive males
between the ages of 9 and 22, by teaching perspective taking, anger recognition, and social
problem-solving skills. Similarly, attribution retraining programs (see Hudley & Graham,
1993) appear to reduce boys’ hostile attributions about peers’ intentions and reduce anti-
social behaviors.
Other successful interventions have been based on the hypothesis that, in addition to
changing children’s thinking, it is necessary to help children translate interpersonal knowl-
edge into skilled behavior within the context of peer interactions. Coaching programs, as
developed within cognitive-social learning theory (see Ladd & Mize, 1983), use instruc-
tion (e.g., verbal discussions, modeling), rehearsal, and performance feedback to enhance
children’s understanding of social principles as well as to facilitate skill acquisition and
performance. Evaluations show coaching to be relatively effective at promoting many types
of skills with children of differing ages (see Asher, Parker, & Walker, 1996).
Interventions to promote peer relationships
Another aim of experimental interventions has been to improve children’s peer relationships
(e.g., peer acceptance), and to determine whether changes in relationships stem from skills
that children learn during the intervention. In a survey of skill-training interventions, Asher
et al. (1996) found that 10 of 14 programs had produced gains in peer acceptance at post-
test and/or follow-up. In several studies, the interventions yielded gains in both skill acquisi-
tion and peer acceptance (e.g., Bierman, 1986; Bierman, Miller, & Stabb, 1987; Csapo,
1983; Gresham & Nagle, 1980; Ladd, 1981). However, mixed effects have also been re-
ported. In some cases, investigators have found improvements in interpersonal skills but not
peer acceptance whereas, in other cases, gains in peer acceptance have been documented in
the absence of skill enhancement (see Coie & Koeppl, 1990). These findings underscore the
need to examine possible moderators of skill acquisition, design artifacts that might account
for improvements in peer acceptance, and processes that affect relationship change.
In contrast, few interventions have been developed to help children form or improve
friendships. Typically, children have been taught “general” play or conversational skills as
a means of improving peer acceptance. These skills may be relevant to friendship, but
success at friendship formation and maintenance may require other, specialized skills such
as reciprocity, support, and other ways of being responsive toward friends (see Asher et al.,
1996). Although a few investigators have included “friendship-making skills” in the train-
ing curriculum (Gresham & Nagle, 1980; Vaughn & Lancelotta, 1990), friendship has
rarely been assessed as an intervention criterion. Exceptions include Oden and Asher (1977)
and Gresham and Nagle (1980), who included a best friendship nomination measure in
their assessments, but found no evidence of change. Gresham and Nagle (1980), however,
did find that children who received general skills training improved on an unlimited friend-
ship nomination measure, suggesting that these children became better acquaintances with
classmates (Coie & Koeppl, 1990).
Perhaps the closest approximation of a friendship intervention was conducted by Murphy
and Schneider (1994) with fifth graders. Participants chose two same-sex peers with whom
“they would like to become better friends” and were coached by adults to communicate
liking in their interactions with these peers. Compared to wait-listed controls, the investi-
gators found that trained children received higher liking scores from their “friends” and, in
turn, “friends” reported higher liking scores for the trained children as compared to con-
trols. Unfortunately, several limitations interfere with interpretation of the results. For
example, children were selected based on peer acceptance rather than friendship criteria,
and their prior relationships with training partners was not assessed or controlled. Thus, it
remains unclear whether this procedure enhanced the formation of new friendships, im-
proved the quality of existing friendships, or increased level of liking felt between two
acquaintances. Clearly, there is a need for intervention research in which friendship skills
are taught and friendship is used as a criterion for both selection and improvement.
Interventions aimed at reducing peer victimization suffer from many of the same limita-
tions as programs designed to promote friendship. We know of no interventions for which
children have been selected based on assessments of bullying or exposure to peer victimiza-
tion. Although skills such as coping with teasing have been included in some interventions
(e.g., Pepler, King, & Byrd, 1991; Schneider, 1991), researchers seldom specified or evalu-
ated this component of the training. Programs developed to reduce aggression may curtail
bullying, but these interventions have usually targeted reactive rather than the proactive
forms of aggression that are often associated with bullying (Atlas & Pepler, 1998; Coie,
Underwood, & Lochman, 1991; Olweus, 1997). Larger, environmental interventions,
such as those conducted by Olweus (1994, 1997), appear to reduce bullying at a school-
wide level, but it is not clear that such programs empower victims or enable them to cope
with the effects of peer abuse.
To summarize, the results of experimental interventions provide qualified support for
the hypothesis that children can learn skills that improve peer relationships or curtail rela-
tionship difficulties. Particularly promising are results indicating that interventions can
effect changes in children’s interpersonal skills as well as in their acceptance by classroom
peers. Far less progress is evident, however, in the development of programs that can assist
children in other domains, such as friendship or bully–victim relations.
Interventions to enhance school adjustment
Few, if any, intervention programs have been formulated with the explicit aim of enhanc-
ing children’s school adjustment. However, investigators who have included school adjust-
ment measures in their assessments sometimes find that interpersonal interventions facili-
tate children’s school performance. Lochman (1985) found that aggressive boys who par-
ticipated in an anger control program became more task-focused, and Sarason and Sarason
(1981) reported that social problem-solving and self-presentation training increased chil-
dren’s school attendance and decreased disciplinary problems. However, whether improve-
ments in school adjustment were attributable to gains in social skills, better classroom
relationships, or both, remains unclear. Investigations are needed to determine whether
programs designed to enhance social skills and relationships help children adapt to school,
and what types of adjustment difficulties respond to this form of treatment. In subsequent
sections, we consider whether principles derived from the existing interventions might be
adapted for these purposes.
Participant selection. Those who have developed interventions recognize that children
experience peer-relationship difficulties for a variety of reasons. Thus, broad selection cri-
teria (e.g., low peer acceptance) tend to identify rather heterogeneous types of children,
not all of whom are likely to benefit from a particular type of training. To reduce this
heterogeneity, some investigators have narrowed their selection criteria to include only
those children who have both relational problems (e.g., low peer acceptance) and related
skill deficiencies (e.g., Bierman & Furman, 1984; Bierman et al., 1987; Ladd, 1981; Mize
& Ladd, 1990). Others have selected children who manifest specific behavioral problems
(e.g., aggressive, withdrawn) and then train skills that are often deficient in children who
have these behavioral styles. In general, results show that targeting specific skill deficits
enhances the efficacy of interpersonal interventions. For example, Bienert and Schneider
(1995) gave aggressive and withdrawn sixth graders deficit-specific training (e.g., aggres-
sive children were trained to reduce hostile acts) or crossover training (e.g., aggressive chil-
dren were trained in skills best suited for withdrawn children). Results showed that, although
crossover training was beneficial, larger gains were achieved when there was isomorphism
between children’s deficits and the trained skills.
To enhance school adjustment, researchers could intervene with children who manifest
interpersonal deficits as well as school adjustment problems. If some children undera-
chieve because they alienate potential collaborators (e.g., classmates and teachers), a skill-
based intervention might yield interpersonal gains (better skills and relationships) that
mediate improvements in achievement (e.g., through enhanced peer collaboration).
Adapting training content and assessment. To achieve the aim of enhancing classroom
relationships as a means of promoting school adjustment, it may be possible to modify
existing intervention curricula to include training specific to forming positive relationships
with classmates and teachers and, thus, test the premise that better relationships enhance
school adjustment. Alternatively, researchers could augment curricula by including other
interpersonal skills that are directly related to facets of children’s school adjustment (e.g.,
peer collaboration within learning activities).
Other pathways of influence warrant examination as well, including indirect and medi-
ated effects of skill learning on school adjustment. For example, children who acquire
better social problem-solving skills may generalize these skills to academic tasks, and im-
proved skills for peer interaction may foster school adjustment through enhanced self-
esteem or generalized self-efficacy beliefs. Also, skills that may be more directly related to
children’s school adjustment may produce indirect effects through enhanced social rela-
tionships. Academic tutoring has been shown to increase peer acceptance (Coie & Krehbiel,
1984), and the reduction of disruptive behavior may generate greater positive regard from
peers and teachers. Thus, there may be more to learn about the consequences of helping
children develop more adaptive classroom relationships.
Program length. A common assumption is that intervention effects are magnified by in-
creasing the number of training sessions (Csapo, 1983; Lochman, 1985). However, prag-
matic concerns often dictate against this, and little is known about whether simple repetition
of the training curriculum/procedures versus extensions/elaborations of a specialized na-
ture (e.g., using later sessions to promote skill generalization) maximize training outcomes.
An alternative is to train children until they reach a performance standard (Csapo, 1983),
which has the advantage of ensuring skill mastery. However, this may be more difficult
when relationships are designated as intervention criteria. Unlike changes in skilled behavior,
which can be observed, indicators of relationship development are less obvious and, there-
fore, difficult to define and operationalize. Also, repeated relationship assessments are likely
to be time consuming, invasive, and subject to reactivity biases. When interventions in-
clude skills and relationships as criteria, investigators face the added burden of determining
how interventions should proceed when children’s skills meet performance standards but
features of their relationships have not. Despite these problems, the benefits of mastery
standards may outweigh the limitations. Training to criterion serves as a validation check
on the experimental manipulation, and evidence that children’s relationships have reached
a standard is a precondition for establishing that relationship changes are responsible for
gains in school adjustment.
Intervention evaluation. Linking intervention processes with outcome criteria has become
an important part of program evaluation in recent years. In addition to examining change
on outcome criteria, investigators have been encouraged to assess the change-producing
components of interventions (Hops, 1983; Kendall & Braswell, 1985). As an illustration,
Bierman and Furman (1984) conducted an intervention with fifth and sixth graders but
failed to detect links between trained conversational skills and children’s peer acceptance.
Further analyses of individual sessions (Bierman, 1986) revealed that children’s conversa-
tion skills began to correlate with positive peer responses between the sixth and tenth
sessions, and these improvements correlated with gains in peer acceptance at follow-up.
Careful analyses of changes in skills and relationships will be needed to discern the process
by which social competence programs may affect school adjustment.
A number of child characteristics appear to moderate the effectiveness of intervention
programs, including initial levels of problem behaviors (Lochman, Lampron, Burch, &
Curry, 1985), behavioral style (Schneider, 1992), and children’s attributions about social
successes and failures (Kendall et al., 1991). Similarly, contextual attributes may moderate
whether improvements in interpersonal skills and social relationships lead to better school
adjustment. Factors such as teacher beliefs, classroom climate, and academic tracking, or
family values, may influence whether improvements in classroom skills or relationships
translate into higher levels of school participation and achievement.
In general, it can be argued that evaluations of interventions intended to improve school

adjustment should include evidence that children have mastered targeted interpersonal
skills, significantly improved their relationships with peers and/or teachers, and become
better adapted to the school environment. Ideally, such evidence would be gathered with
multisource/multimethod assessments (e.g., self, peer, teacher, observational indices) to
control problems with shared method variance and establish convergence on observed
treatment gains.
Developmental concerns. There is no clear consensus about when it is best to intervene in

children’s lives. On the one hand, researchers have shown that problematic peer relation-
ships can influence school adjustment as early as kindergarten (Ladd, 1990; Ladd et al.,
1999). Also, it has been argued that younger children may be more willing to participate in
interventions, less concerned about why they have been selected, and more facile at chang-
ing behavior patterns (Lochman, 1990). In addition, younger children may be less likely to
belong to peer groups that support deviance or attempt to subvert behavioral or reputational
change (Forehand & Long, 1991).
On the other hand, skills learned at younger ages may not be well suited for the chal-
lenges children face at later ages (Bierman & Montimy, 1993), and younger children may
not have the competence to profit from certain types of intervention procedures (Weisz,
1997). Furthermore, it may be beneficial to conduct interventions after children have
shown a stable pattern of poor school adjustment. Most likely, even though such proce-
dures may be time consuming and costly, intense treatment at early ages followed by con-
tinuous “booster treatments” may be the best way to help children at risk for adjustment
difficulties (see Lochman, 1990).
Conclusions and Future Directions
Toward an integrated model of the effects of peer relationships on school

adjustment
The evidence reviewed in this chapter was largely consistent with our initial premises about
the links between children’s behavior, classroom relationships, and school adjustment.
The proposition that children’s behavior plays a causal role in the formation and mainte-
nance of multiple relationships within school broadens our conception of classrooms as
complex social ecologies within which children construct a multifaceted relational web. As
children navigate the classroom environment, it appears likely that their interactions si-
multaneously affect multiple types of relationships, including peer relations at the dyadic
and group levels, and teacher–child relationships.
It also appears that children’s classroom relationships have different features that may
make different contributions to school adjustment. Teacher–child relationships tend to be
“vertical” in the sense that they afford children less power or control over their interaction
partner, whereas peer friendships tend to be more “horizontal” or equitable in this respect.
Consistent with this implication are findings indicating that children’s relationships with
classmates (e.g., friendship, bully–victim, peer-group relations) are differentially linked

with various school adjustment criteria (see Ladd et al., 1997, 1999). There is growing
evidence to suggest that peer relationships are more directly associated with children’s
motivational beliefs or emotional adjustment (Boivin & Hymel, 1997; Buhs & Ladd,
2001), whereas teacher–child relationships are more closely tied to achievement (Ladd et
al., 1999). In the peer domain, peer-group acceptance more than friendships has emerged
as a stronger predictor of children’s participation in classroom activities (see Ladd et al.,
1999), an aspect of school adaptation that requires involvement with others, and is highly
predictive of scholastic achievement.
These findings also illustrate the importance of longitudinal designs and the inclusion
of multiple behavioral, relational, and adjustment constructs within the same investiga-
tion. In addition to establishing the temporal precedence of predictors and criteria, such
designs allow investigators to tease apart the independent (or overlapping) contributions
of differing social behaviors to relationship development, and the potential contributions
of differing relationships to various facets of children’s school adjustment.
Unfortunately, we still know very little about possible gender differences in the links
between children’s behavior, relationships, and adjustment in the school context. Also, the
temporal and causal linkages implied in the proposed model are in need of further elabora-
tion. It is conceivable that children’s relationships shape the nature of their interpersonal
behaviors, rather than the converse (see Parker & Seal, 1996), and school adjustment prob-
lems may alter children’s classroom relationships.
Because children’s interpersonal skills and relationships are dynamic entities,

their associations with school adjustment may change with development
Evidence from correlational and experimental studies supports the premises examined in
this review, but much of it comes from investigations with limited temporal purviews,
such as the transition to grade school or middle school. Thus, most of these findings illu-
minate processes that occur in specific developmental periods, but fail to indicate how
these linkages may change over the course of children’s development. Consider the possi-
bility that children’s social needs, skills, and relationships change in form and sophistica-
tion as they grow older. To illustrate, the skills that are required to make and keep a friend
appear to become more complex and subtle as children grow older (e.g., see Parker & Seal,
1996). Likewise, relationship processes and the provisions they yield are likely to change as
children mature, potentially altering their adaptive value. Thus, relationships built around
earlier needs and challenges may not supply the provisions children need to adapt to new
circumstances. As conditions change, it may be necessary for children to alter their social
lives by cultivating new skills and relationships that are more closely associated with envi-
ronmental demands.
At present, there is a need for both theory and evidence to guide our understanding of
developmental progressions in the linkages between children’s social skills, peer and teacher–
child relationships, and their school adjustment. Toward these ends, child-by-environ-
ment models (see Coie et al., 1993) could be elaborated to include descriptive information
about the nature of children’s interpersonal skills, relationships, and classroom environ-
ments (e.g., normative patterns) at different ages, and to generate predictions about how
these constructs are interrelated over the course of development.
The extant database could be expanded by gathering correlational and experimental
evidence. For example, correlational studies could be conducted to determine whether
shifts in environmental demands are accompanied by changes in children’s interpersonal
skills and relationships, or vice versa. In addition to helping children escape from debilitat-
ing forms of relationship (e.g., peer rejection, victimization), experimental studies could be
used to ascertain whether children’s skills and relationships can be altered so as to provide
adaptive resources for age-related environmental tasks, and whether children can be en-
couraged to develop enduring, multipurpose relationships that are likely to meet their
needs over changing environments or developmental periods.
Developing a tripartite model of social competence programs
Until recently, the value of intervention programs has often been justified in terms of
potential long-term benefits that may accrue from improved social skills or relationships in
childhood, including freedom from later-life dysfunctions such as adult criminality, school
failure, and depression (see Parker & Asher, 1987; Kupersmidt, Coie, & Dodge, 1990).
This emphasis may have discouraged investigators from gathering evidence on more im-
mediate indicators of children’s well-being, including children’s perceptions, emotions,
and performance in the school environment. Researchers may want to shift their assess-
ment paradigms so as to learn more about their effects on early emerging dysfunction or
evolving trajectories as well as distal indicators of adjustment.
The premises and corroborating evidence reviewed in this chapter lend support to the
goal of developing tripartite intervention models – that is, programs that enable children
to advance in three areas: social competencies (e.g., behavioral skills, social cognitive skills),
social relationships (e.g., peer acceptance, friendship, teacher–child relationships), and school
adjustment (e.g., academic achievement, loneliness, participation). Interventions that in-
corporate these objectives may not only promote short-term benefits, such as helping chil-
dren adapt to the immediate demands of school, but also prevent current difficulties from
escalating into reified or cumulative patterns of maladjustment.
Intervention research also advances our understanding of the process by which chil-
dren’s interpersonal skills, social relationships, and school adjustment are interrelated. In-
vestigators often cite findings from intervention studies as evidence that changes in children’s
interpersonal behaviors influence the way peers regard them. Yet, little is known about
how changes in children’s behavioral competencies are perceived by peers, or how peers’
conceptions of children’s social reputations are altered (see Hymel et al., 1990). Much is
known about how improvements in behavior are linked to peer acceptance, but the influ-
ence of behavioral changes on other relationships, such as friendships and victimization,
have not been examined. As larger, integrated models of the interface between social skills,
relationships, and adjustment are created, interventions will be useful for examining the
process by which skills and relationships affect adjustment. As investigators test more com-
plex, integrated models, it may be possible to design more effective interventions and add
to our knowledge about the interface between children’s interpersonal and academic worlds.
The task of determining whether existing intervention models are adequate for facilitat-
ing children’s social behaviors and relationships remains unfinished. Undeniably, advances
have been made in our understanding of how to help children learn specific social skills.
These advances include recognizing the importance of direct instruction, identification of
specific deficits/difficulties, promotion of skills in multiple domains, assessment of the
processes underlying behavior and relationship change, and explication of the moderators
and mediators of skill acquisition. However, despite improvements in intervention design,
curriculum, and evaluation, the current evidence lacks both breadth and depth. This is, in
part, reflected in the fact that investigators have limited the focus of their interventions
almost entirely to promoting peer acceptance, failed to examine many factors that may
influence the effectiveness of interventions (e.g., participants’ age, motivation, and gen-
der), and conducted very little research on the utility of particular intervention compo-
nents (e.g., providing feedback, including nontarget peers).
Clearly, more research is needed to evaluate and refine the effectiveness of interventions
that are designed to aid children with peer relationship difficulties. The trend, however,
has been to incorporate social competence training programs into larger efforts to amelio-
rate the difficulties of children who are at risk for psychopathology (e.g., externalizing
problems; e.g., Conduct Problems Prevention Group, 1999; Dishion, Andrews, Kavanagh,
& Soberman, 1996). These comprehensive programs may be well suited to helping chil-
dren overcome diverse environmental constraints that may cause early psychopathology.
However, it is important that researchers continue to develop a technology that is capable
of improving children’s interpersonal skills and classroom relationships, and utilize these
experimental manipulations as a means of understanding how children’s skills and rela-
tionships affect their adjustment in major socialization contexts such as school.
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Understanding Young Children’s Pretend Play 417
Part VII
Play
Children’s play is an important part of children’s life, taking up a considerable percentage

of their time and interest. While it has not always garnered an equivalent interest from
developmental researchers, there has now emerged considerable research literature in chil-
dren’s pretend play, and, more recently, in rough-and-tumble play.
Artin Göncü, Michelle B Patt, and Emily Kouba review much of the literature on pre-
tend play. They focus especially on transitions into and out of pretence, for example, via
the use of metacommunication and framing, and the kinds of symbolic transformations
involved. Age and sex differences are carefully addressed. Social class and cultural differ-
ences in the expression of pretend play are fully explored (cf. also Chapter 4 on anthropo-
logical perspectives). The authors refer more briefly to the literature on what may be the
cognitive functions of pretend play in development, an aspect which is covered more in a
chapter by Angeline Lillard on “Pretend play and cognitive development” in the compan-
ion Blackwell Handbook of Cognitive Development.
Unlike pretend play, rough-and-tumble play shows more continuities with animal play.
It is more characteristic of middle childhood, and it is less well liked by adults, especially
teachers! Anthony D. Pellegrini describes the nature and developmental trajectory of rough-
and-tumble play. He also devotes considerable space to the likely functions of R&T (as it
is often abbreviated), which are probably more social than cognitive. Pellegrini argues that
the sex differences, similarity to real fighting, and developmental trajectory of R&T sup-
port a function linked primarily to assessment and assertion of dominance. The sex differ-
ences in R&T and role of hormones are also considered in the chapter on sex differences
(Chapter 7).
418 Artin Göncü, Michelle B. Patt, & Emily Kouba
21
Understanding Young Children’s Pretend

Play in Context
Artin Göncü, Michelle B. Patt, and Emily Kouba
The discipline of developmental psychology has been ambivalent in its embracing of the
study of children’s pretend play. This is evident in the inconsistent recognition given to it.
The 1983 edition of the Handbook of Child Psychology included a review on the descrip-
tion, correlates, and possible developmental consequences of pretend play (Rubin, Fein, &
Vandenberg, 1983). However, significant conceptual and methodological advances made
in the study of pretend play did not receive coverage in the 1998 edition of the Handbook.
The Society for Research in Child Development previously included the word “play” as a
review panel descriptor in its call for papers, but not in the call for the 2001 conference.
The values that underlie this inconsistent practice remain unavailable to us. However, play
continues to be a major activity of many children in the world, and researchers continue to
publish about it in developmental journals. We therefore welcome the opportunity to
organize the knowledge that has emerged since 1983 in the study of pretend play.
The publications on pretend play since 1983 reveal an enormous amount of research
effort. Some untangle the cognitive, communicative, and affective developmental processes
in pretend play (e.g., Bretherton, 1984; Göncü & Kessel, 1984; Howes, Unger, & Matheson,
1992; Power, 2000; Sawyer, 1997; Singer & Singer, 1990; Stambak & Sinclair, 1993; Sutton-
Smith, 1996). Others forcefully bring to our attention that occurrence and frequency of
pretend play can best be understood by taking into account the gender, social class, and
cultural as well as developmental context of children (e.g., Goldman, 1998; Göncü, 1999;
Göncü was supported by the Spencer Foundation during the writing of this chapter. We acknowledge
Anna Beth-Doyle, Jo Ann Farver, and Suzanne Gaskins for comments on an earlier version. Portions of
this chapter were presented at the Ankara University Center for Research on Child Culture meeting,
“Changing childhood in the world and in Turkey,” October, 2000, Ankara, Turkey.
Haight & Miller, 1993; Lancy, 1996; Liss, 1983; Roopnarine, Johnson, & Hooper, 1994).
Yet more illustrate the developmental and educational significance of pretend play and dis-
cuss ways to promote it (e.g., Göncü & Klein, 2001; Roskos & Christie, 2000).
Here we bring together findings on the pretend play of preschool children, 3 to 6 years
of age, covering only research in which children were observed as they engaged in pretend
play. Studies conducted before 1983 or with children older or younger than preschool age
will be referenced only if they shed a particular historical or developmental light. The
review focuses on developmental, gender, social class, and cultural differences.
Defining Pretend Play
In the Western world, most adults consider pretend play as a valuable activity with devel-
opmental and educational significance, and a commonly accepted definition of pretend
play emphasizes this. Pretend play is a pleasurable and intrinsically motivated activity in
which participants transform the meaning of objects, identities, situations, and time. How-
ever, advances of the last two decades call for an expansion of this definition. Pretend play
is an activity framed by metacommunicative messages and it embodies representation of
emotionally significant experiences. In what follows, we describe the development of pre-
tend play in the Western world on the basis of this expansive definition. We present re-
search findings on the communicative, transformational, and affective dimensions of pretend
play and then move onto the discussion of gender and class and cultural differences in
pretend play.
Developmental Context of Pretend Play
Communication
The majority of studies on the development of social pretend play use a combination of
Parten’s (1932) categories of social participation and Smilansky’s (1968) categories of cog-
nitive play (Rubin et al., 1983). Parten’s play categories include solitary play, parallel play,
associative play, and cooperative play. Smilansky’s categories are functional, constructive,
and dramatic or pretend play. Of interest are age differences in the frequency with which
categories of social participation and pretend play jointly occur. Consistent with Parten’s
and Smilansky’s expectations, preschool-age children spend a good deal of their play time
engaging in cooperative-dramatic play whose frequency increases with age (Howes &
Matheson, 1992; Pellegrini & Perlmutter, 1989). Findings on solitary and parallel pretend
play are less clear, since the frequencies of these categories of play do not change in a
predictable pattern with age (Power, 2000).
Recent attempts to understand the emergence of cooperation in social pretend play and
to explicate the inconsistency of results on solitary and parallel play lead to three important
insights regarding Parten’s categories. First, nonsocial play categories may occur as a result
of children’s preference rather than their inability to engage in social pretend play. Thus,
without additional contextual information, the causes of children’s play performance can-
not be interpreted either as a result of their choice or ability to engage in certain play forms.
Second, Parten’s categories reveal information about the interactional context of play.
However, these categories do not allow us to examine how children negotiate their interac-
tion with one another to construct social play activities. For instance, coding children’s
play as cooperative indicates the presence of a mutually acceptable plan but such coding
leaves open the investigation of how children express and negotiate their ideas with one
another regarding having a mutually acceptable plan. Third, Parten’s methodology calls
for observation of children for a brief period of time. This enables us to categorize the
social play of older children accurately, but brief interactive sequences of younger chil-
dren’s social play may be overlooked when we use her categories to describe the predomi-
nant play kind in a given observation scan (Fein, Moorin, & Enslein, 1982). In a related
vein, unless the relationship between social and solitary play states is taken into account
children may appear to engage in solitary play when such solitariness is actually precipi-
tated by an ongoing social play (McLoyd, Warren, & Thomas, 1984).
Much research effort has been devoted to the understanding of the processes by which
children make transitions to and from social pretend play and how they maintain it. This
led developmental psychologists to draw from anthropology, sociology, and sociolinguis-
tic approaches to children’s play. Following Bateson (1955) and Goffman (1974), signifi-
cant advances have been made in our understanding of the development of how children
exchange and negotiate metacommunicative messages that their actions should be inter-
preted at the representational level rather than at face value. Also, although we did not have
a guiding developmental theory two decades ago, a series of theories on the development of
children’s play communication have emerged (Corsaro, 1985, Göncü, 1993a; Sawyer, 1997).
Research on the framing of social pretend play has addressed two main concerns: first,
the development of metacommunication on the basis of molecular units such as utter-
ances, actions, or time sampling; second, using molar units of analyses, and being con-
cerned with event representations.
Among the first group, Howes and her collaborators (Howes, 1985, 1987, 1988; Howes
& Matheson, 1992; Howes, Unger, & Matheson, 1992; Howes, Unger, & Seidner, 1989)
showed that development of pretend play follows a predictable pattern from infancy to
preschool years. A combination of longitudinal and cross-sectional studies revealed that
children’s complex social pretend play, including adoption of reciprocal and complemen-
tary roles such as doctor–patient role play framed by metacommunicative messages, emerges
around 3 years of age, reflecting children’s developing ability to understand and expand
one another’s intentions.
McLoyd and her collaborators (McLoyd, Thomas, & Warren, 1984; McLoyd, Warren,
& Thomas, 1984) examined preschoolers’ pretend play between 3.5 and 5 years. One
purpose of this work was to explore the distribution of solitary, dyadic, and triadic states of
pretend play and the role of metacommunication in the initiation and maintenance of
different forms of social pretend play. Older children were more likely than younger chil-
dren to engage in interactive forms of pretend play. Also, older children used explicit
metacommunication in maintaining their play.
Doyle and her collaborators (Doyle & Connolly, 1989; Doyle, Doehring, Tessier, de
Lorimier, & Shapiro, 1992) examined the transitions to and from social pretend play and its
coordination between 4 and 6 years. The most notable finding was that metacommunication
in the form of negotiations occurred in conjunction with enactments serving to maintain
social pretend play rather than to initiate it. Also, the proportion of time devoted to pretend
play did not change from 4 to 6 years although 4 year olds spent more time coordinating
their activity than 6 year olds (de Lorimier, Doyle, & Tessier, 1995).
Göncü (1993a, 1993b; Göncü & Kessel, 1984, 1988) examined the initiation, mainte-
nance, and termination of social pretend play in the play of 3 and 4.5 year olds. The
purpose here was to explore the distribution of different kinds of metacommunicative
statements at these two age levels and also to explore their conversational function and
complexity. The distribution of invitations, plans, transformations and their acceptances
or rejections by the partners as well as termination statements included the focus of re-
search. Consistent with McLoyd and Doyle’s findings, Göncü also found that children at
both age levels used metacommunication in maintaining their pretend play rather than in
initiating or terminating it. There were no age differences in the frequency of
metacommunicative utterances (also see Black, 1992). However, older children were more
likely to establish connections between their own and their partners’ pretend play ideas.
Also, older children were more likely than younger children to express two or more ideas in
the same metacommunicative utterance than younger children.
Sawyer (1997) provides the most extensive analyses of 3- to 5-year-old preschool chil-
dren’s construction of social pretend play. Data collected over an 8-month period in a
preschool classroom present a complex picture of children’s use of metacommunicative
messages in ranges varying from implicit to explicit and from about-play to in-play. Con-
sistent with previous qualitative work on children’s play actions (Giffen, 1984), Sawyer’s
correlational analyses showed that children at all ages were likely to use all kinds of mes-
sages in negotiating their play frames. However, older children were more likely than younger
children to be explicit in negotiating their pretend play frames.
The second line of research addressed developmental differences in event representa-
tions and the psychological significance of the events represented in pretend play, using
molar units of analyses such as texts (Schwartzman, 1978), action plans (Garvey & Berndt,
1975), or scripts (Nelson & Seidman, 1984) rather than isolated utterances or units of
actions. These findings show that children begin to represent events before 3 years of age
(cf., Fein, 1981). However, between 3 and 5 years of age, children’s pretend scripts be-
come elaborate (de Lorimier et al., 1995; Garvey & Berndt, 1975; Miller & Garvey, 1984;
Nelson & Seidman, 1984; Sachs, Goldman, & Chaille, 1984). Also, there is increasing
evidence that social pretend play is an expression of events of affective and cultural signifi-
cance, and such significance can be captured through semiotic analyses (Ariel, 1992; Göncü,
1993a, 1993b; Sawyer, 1996). We return to this issue below in greater detail.
To sum up, the research findings indicate that 3 years of age mark the beginning of
shared pretend play (cf., Stambak & Sinclair, 1993). The use of explicit metacommunicative
messages increases with age (cf., Lloyd & Goodwin, 1995). Children use
metacommunication to maintain their play interaction more than to initiate or terminate
it, and to establish coherence and continuity in social pretend play. Finally, there are in-
creases with age in the expansiveness of event representations. These findings should be
extended in future work to examine whether or how children’s age, events represented in
play, and their use of play communication are related to one another. Addressing this
question will enable us to describe developmental patterns in children’s play performance
in an integral fashion as well as help us identify the variability across children’s play per-
formances.
Symbolic representation
The most extensively studied feature of pretend play is symbolic representation. Pioneered
by Fein’s (1975) transformational analysis of pretending, considerable effort was made to
understand the development of symbolic representation during infancy. The wealth of
knowledge acquired in this arena is documented in several reviews (Fein, 1981; Power,
2000; Rubin et al., 1983). However, research on the development of symbolic representa-
tion during the preschool years did not receive as much attention. Recent work has tackled
three related questions.
The first was whether or not there are increases with age in the degree of symbolic
representations expressed in play. Research addressing this revealed findings consistent
with previous ones, that from 3 to 6 years of age social pretend play increases in quantity
(Cole & LaVoie, 1985; Connolly & Doyle, 1984) and in complexity (Göncü & Kessel,
1988).
The second question addressed was whether or not there are developmental differences
in the mode of transformation, that is, the means by which the signified is represented in
pretend play through a signifier. Following the work of Matthews (1977), the mode of
transformation in the study of symbolic representation with preschoolers has been catego-
rized as material or ideational. The material mode of transformation refers to the use of an
actual object as the signifier. The ideational mode of transformation refers to use of ideas as
the signifier without use of objects.
The claim of developmental theories (Piaget, 1962; Vygotksy, 1978) that the material
mode of transformations decreases and ideational mode of transformations increases with
age generated a considerable amount of research. Both Piaget and Vygotksy believed that
infants and toddlers are not able to separate meaning from the concrete environment.
Therefore, infants’ symbolic transformations are not detached from the physical world.
However, with the emergence of semiotic function during preschool years, children be-
come able to use the ideational mode of transformations.
Cole and LaVoie (1985) examined age differences in children’s play transformations in
a study of 2 to 6 year olds. Basically, the results were in the expected direction; children’s
use of material transformations decreased and the ideational transformations increased
with age. Consistent with these findings, some scholars reported increases with age in the
amount of ideational mode of transformations from 5 to 6 years (Doyle, Ceshin, Tessier,
& Doehring, 1991; Wall, Pickert, & Gibson, 1990). However, Göncü and Kessel (1984,
1988) and Werebe and Baudonniere (1991) did not find significant differences between 3
and 4.5 year olds in the amount of ideational mode of transformations.
The third question on symbolic transformations was motivated by the thesis that young
children’s play symbols emerge from their own daily experiences (Piaget, 1962). It was
plausible to expect that with increasing age children’s symbolic representations would ex-
tend from events directly experienced by children to those in which they do not directly
participate. For example, it is likely that a toddler will pretend to feed her doll in the
adopted role of a mother, whereas a preschool child can adopt the role of a “witch,” a role
not directly experienced in real life. In support of this, McLoyd, Warren, and Thomas
(1984) reported that children’s transformations become increasingly distant from their
daily experiences from 3.5 to 5 years.
To sum up, with certain exceptions, research indicates that preschoolers’ play transfor-
mations become increasingly ideational with age. Absence of age differences remains
inexplicable due to procedural and sample differences across studies. One profitable way
to extend research on symbolic transformations is to examine age differences separately
in particular modes of transformations. In work where this kind of analytical strategy was
followed, age differences appeared consistently in role play that became increasingly fre-
quent and complex with age (Cole & LaVoie, 1985; McLoyd, Warren, & Thomas,
1984; Wall et al., 1990). A second important issue to address is whether or not develop-
mental differences in transformations appear in the quality of the way in which transfor-
mations are expressed. For example, older children may adopt a role and elaborate it in a
complex sequence of events when younger children may merely enact the role in isolated
sequences of actions. Finally, it would be invaluable to determine if transformations are
determined by children’s ability or by their choice. It may well be that children prefer
material modes of transformations despite their ability to use ideational modes of trans-
formations.
Representation of affect
An aspect of social pretend play receiving increasing research attention during the last
decade is that pretend play is an activity of affective significance. This interest emerged
from developmental theories stating that pretend play regulates the inner affective life of
children. Vygotksy (1978) claimed that children pretend in order to fulfill unrealizable
tendencies of real life, and Piaget (1962) and Erickson (1972) stated that children pretend
in order to gain mastery over emotionally significant experiences.
Motivated by these theories, researchers have begun to explore the types of affect repre-
sented in pretend play and the development of shared representation. Some studies sought
to establish whether or not there is an identifiable relation between children’s day-to-day
experiences and their play representations. For example, Corsaro (1983) observed that a 3-
year-old girl tried to recreate her actual experience of viewing her baby brother on a televi-
sion screen in her pretend play with her peers. Field and Reite (1984) reported that 2 to
5-year-old first-born children pretended that their mothers and newly born siblings were
in traffic accidents, expressing their envy, aggression, and anxiety about having siblings.
Heath (1983) reported that a 22-month-old child recreated in her play the conversation
she had with Heath about having ice cream.
A second set of work has begun to explore the kind of affect being represented in chil-
dren’s play. Some studies explored the relations between children’s interpersonal relation-
ships within and outside of pretend play, and illustrated that children’s roles and relationships
in pretend play are reflections of their relationships in the community in which they live.
Schwartzman (1978) illustrated that the pretend interactions of a kindergarten girl re-
flected her dominance that she routinely exercised over her peers. Ariel (1992) presented a
detailed analysis of two girls’ pretend play interactions at ages 4.5 and 5.5 years, illustrating
that the girls used pretend play as a way of structuring and regulating their relationship.
Another group of studies also acknowledged the role of pretend play as an interpretive
activity. However, interpretation in this case emphasized working through experiences of
emotional significance to individual children rather than regulating interpersonal relation-
ships with the play partners. Drawing from psychoanalytic theory, Fein (1989) proposed
the first systematic theory and illustrative data on the kinds of issues children work through
in their pretend play. According to Fein (1989), children work through five issues that she
conceptualized in five bipolar scales: connectedness (i.e., attachment vs. separation); physi-
cal well-being (i.e., health vs. body harm);, empowerment (i.e., mastery vs. helplessness);
social regulation (i.e., support for social rules vs. defiance); and respect for or aggression
against the material world. In her sample of 4- to 5-year-old middle-class children the most
frequently expressed issues were connectedness, empowerment, and physical well-being.
De Lorimier et al. (1995), using the scheme developed by Fein, added that the expression
of psychosocial issues was facilitated as the pretend play communication increased in its
coordination. However, the possible developmental changes in these issues and their sig-
nificance remain to be addressed in future research.
The third set of work provides a theoretical framework for the examination of how
representation of affect becomes a shared endeavor in pretend play. Göncü (1993a) argued
that with the advent of metacommunicative and transformational competence, children
become able to evoke potential scripts for their pretend play around 3 years of age. These
proposals are symbolizations of emotionally significant experiences of individual players. A
belief among players that they are all familiar with the pretend proposal leads them to
engage in negotiations with the purpose of constructing shared pretend play. Agreed-upon
proposals get elaborated both within the context of a given activity and with age. From 3 to
5 years of age, children’s pretend scripts and the affect represented in them become in-
creasingly varied and elaborate.
To sum up, research on early childhood reflects the daily lives of Western children.
Since most children between the ages of 3 and 6 attend school, and are encouraged to
engage in play interactions with their peers, most research focused on social pretend play
with peers in preschools rather than play at home or in other settings. Also, possibly re-
flecting the Western world’s emphasis on verbal communication, most research focused
on children’s development of verbal rather than nonverbal behaviors. Research using quan-
titative analyses of actions and utterances, revealed age differences in children’s symbolic
transformations and metacommunication.
Gender Context of Pretend Play
Research on the relationship between pretend play and children’s gender has traditionally
focused on choice of toys and materials and the themes around which pretense is organized
(cf., Huston, 1983; Liss, 1983; and Rubin et al., 1983). Current research on gender differ-
ences, however, focuses on the interaction between the participants as well as the relation
between characteristics of the play environment and gender.
There is no theory that guides the study of gender differences in pretend play. Work on
gender segregation provides a general framework for understanding differences between
boys’ and girls’ play (Leaper, 1994; Maccoby, 1990). By examining why preschool chil-
dren choose to interact in same-sex groupings and the dynamics of those groupings, re-
search on gender segregation brought to our attention the significance of participation and
communication in pretend play as a dimension of gender comparison. Below, we first
discuss the research findings that emerged in this area and then move on to gender differ-
ences in symbolic representations.
Gender differences in participation
Findings on participation in pretend play by preschool age boys and girls have been incon-
sistent. Some studies with 4- to 6-year-old children revealed that girls engaged in pretend
play more than boys. These findings were obtained in semistructured and laboratory set-
tings where the play materials were selected or peer partners were assigned by the research-
ers (Lindsey, Mize, & Pettit, 1997; Wall et al., 1990; Werebe & Baudonniere, 1991) and
during naturalistic observations in children’s classrooms (Jones & Glenn, 1991; Weinberger
& Starkey, 1994). However, several other researchers found no gender differences in the
amount of pretend play in naturalistic classroom settings (Connolly, Doyle, & Ceschin,
1983; Pellegrini & Perlmutter, 1989) and in engaging in an assigned pretend task with
siblings at home (Howe, Petrakos, & Rinaldi, 1998) or found that boys pretend more than
girls in a play room (Doyle et al., 1991). No clear explanation is possible for the inconsist-
ent findings. However, since the studies did not utilize identical methodologies, aspects of
the research design or characteristics of the play settings may have resulted in different
findings.
Several researchers addressed how features of play context may be responsible for gender
differences in pretend play, reporting inconsistent results. Pellegrini and Perlmutter (1989)
found that pretend play for both boys and girls occurred most frequently in the classroom
area that contained dramatic play props. In contrast, Howe, Moller, Chambers, and Petrakos
(1993) reported that 2 to 5-year-old girls preferred to play in traditional housekeeping
centers (e.g., dolls, kitchen, dressing up), while boys preferred novel centers (e.g., pirate
ship and hospital). Dodge and Frost (1986) examined play behavior of 5-year-old children
in a playroom containing materials for a home, store, and office, finding that while the
girls played with all the materials, the boys played mostly in the store, and avoided the
more stereotypically feminine home area.
Lloyd and colleagues (Duveen & Lloyd, 1988; Lloyd, Duveen, & Smith, 1988; Lloyd
& Smith, 1985) examined whether the specific play materials themselves influenced rates
of play during observations of 2- to 4-year old children. In these studies, children were
provided with a selection of stereotypically masculine (e.g., trucks and hammers) and
stereotypically feminine (e.g., dolls and kitchen toys) materials. Lloyd and colleagues found
that for girls, feminine materials were more likely to elicit pretense than were masculine
materials, but that there appeared to be no differences for boys.
Neppl and Murray (1997) examined whether or not gender differences in pretend play
occur when boys and girls are assigned to play with a masculine toy (pirate ship with
figures) and a feminine toy (dollhouse with dolls) rather than playing with toys of their
own choosing. Inconsistent with the findings of Lloyd and colleagues, Neppl and Murray
reported that both girls and boys in 4 and 5-year-old same- and mixed-sex groups were
most likely to engage in pretend play when using toys appropriate for their own gender.
In general, the differences in findings seem to indicate that the design of the play envi-
ronment, availability of the play materials, and the agency in toy choice seem to be respon-
sible for gender differences observed in participation in pretend play. However, this
interpretation remains to be substantiated in future theoretical and empirical work.
Gender differences in interpersonal communication
Gender differences in the communication of pretend play has received increased attention.
The two areas addressed are gender differences in use of language forms, and in broader
aspects of social interaction such as the complexity, length, and style of children’s interac-
tions during play. Sheldon (1992, 1996) examined negotiation strategies of 3 to 5-year-old
girl triads. Sheldon identified mitigation (i.e., modifying one’s expression to avoid creating
offense) as a predominant characteristic of girls’ play discourse. Sheldon stated that girls’
use of mitigation was similar to those observed of adult females.
Other researchers have found patterns that are not consistent with those of Sheldon.
Lloyd and Goodwin (1993) performed naturalistic observations of 4-year-old children
playing in their preschool classrooms, finding that overall girls used more directives than
boys. However DeHart (1996) failed to note any gender difference when observing 3- and
4-year-old children in home settings, each playing with a sibling whose age was within 2
years of the child’s age; the pattern of gender differences in use of mitigation usually re-
ported for peer interactions was not evident in these interactions. These findings suggest
that contextual characteristics of the play setting influence children’s interactions during
play.
Other researchers focusing on contextual characteristics of play have suggested that dif-
ferences in verbal communication between boys and girls are a function of combination of
gender and contextual variables rather than gender itself. Ausch (1994) presented the same
and mixed gender dyads with similar masculine and feminine toys and examined their
verbal interactions, finding that girls expressed higher levels of confrontational speech when
playing with an army themed play set than with a dollhouse, while the level of boys’ con-
frontational speech did not differ with the play materials, suggesting that, at least for girls,
characteristics of the play materials may elicit particular interactional styles. Comparing
children playing in both mixed- and same-sex dyads, Duveen and Lloyd (1988) found no
gender difference in analysis of children’s pretend scripts, and found that differences in
mean length of utterance were not related to the gender of the speaker, but to the gender of
the play partner. These inconsistent findings suggest that a combination of gender and
varying social contexts may influence children’s discourse during play.
The group of studies concerning interactions found that girls’ interactions were gener-
ally more sophisticated than boys, in that girls’ play was longer, more complex, and had
more of a social orientation. Black (1989, 1992) observed that girls had a higher level of
coherent discourse and used a style of turn taking in which turns were related to each other
interactionally and topically and they suggested topics and roles to others in play. Other
research reported similar findings, such as girls engaging in longer episodes of dyadic inter-
action (Benenson, Apostoleris, & Parnass, 1997), and in more cooperative pretense groups
(Neppl & Murray, 1997) than boys. Boys’ play was characterized by egocentric speech and
rejection of others’ ideas (Black, 1992). In general, these findings reflect the gender differ-
ences in children’s social interaction that have been found both in play and nonplay set-
tings (cf., Huston, 1983).
Gender differences in symbolic representation
Inconsistent results were obtained in research that examined gender differences in material
and ideational fantasy. Some studies reported that boys engaged in material fantasy play
more than girls (Cole & LaVoie, 1985; Jones & Glenn, 1991) whereas others reported the
opposite (Wall et al., 1990). Moreover, in some research girls engaged in different forms of
ideational fantasy more than boys (Göncü & Kessel, 1988; Jones & Glenn, 1991) whereas
in others no differences were observed between boys and girls (Cole & LaVoie, 1985).
One particular area of inquiry has been gender differences in role adoption. Again, some
studies reported that girls adopted pretend roles with significantly greater frequency than
boys (Doyle et al., 1991; Jones & Glenn, 1991; McLoyd, Warren, & Thomas, 1984; Wall
et al., 1990) while others did not find a gender difference in role play (Cole & LaVoie,
1985; Göncü & Kessel, 1988).
Gender differences have also been examined in the types of roles that boys and girls
enact. McLoyd, Warren, and Thomas (1984) examined the distribution of domestic (e.g.,
mother), occupational (e.g., doctor), fantastic (e.g., Superman) and peripheral roles (i.e.,
roles that are represented only in terms of actions without explicit identification such as
driving). Girls took almost only domestic roles whereas the distribution of different kinds
of roles was more even with boys. These findings are consistent with those of Wall et al.
(1990) and Connolly et al. (1983) who found that girls often enacted familial roles while
boys often enacted character roles.
Some studies examined gender differences in role play in relation to the play objects
available for children. Black (1989) found gender differences in the enactment of themes,
particularly that girls generated themes elicited by props more than did boys, while boys
were more likely to generate themes unrelated to props. Wall et al. (1990) reported that
girls incorporated easily animated objects (e.g., horses) more frequently than not easily
animated objects (e.g., blocks). The opposite pattern was true for boys.
Finally, consistent with emerging interest in gender differences in the communication
of pretending, some researchers began to examine the relation between gender and role
play by means of discourse analyses. For example, Sawyer (1996) found that girls used a
communicative style of “direct voicing,” in which each player acted out a role different
from the roles of partners, while boys tended to collectively perform a single play role.
In summary, the existing findings suggest that gender differences may emerge as a func-
tion of various contextual features such as the type of play materials, setting, and gender of
play partners. However, this interpretation derives from the inconsistency of results rather
than the systematic examination of gender within its context. Therefore, future research
should address the role of context in the emergence of gender differences.
An additional concern is the lack of naturalistic studies in this area. The majority of the
studies involved some sort of intervention or structure imposed by the researcher, such as
selection of play materials, and assignment to play partners or groups. Thus, these findings
may not reflect play behavior occurring in naturalistic setting without intervention, where
children have a wide range of choices, and decide play themes and choose toys independ-
ently.
Social Class and Cultural Context of Pretend Play
The work that examined the class and cultural differences in children’s pretend play emerged
from a concern that children from low-income and non-Western communities may have
been misunderstood in the developmental literature. McLoyd’s (1982) and Schwartzman’s
(1978) reviews on class and cultural differences indicated that the studies on class and
cultural differences were flawed on methodological grounds. The conclusion that low-
income and non-Western children do not play as imaginatively as their middle-income or
Western counterparts should be re-examined.
Taking care of the methodological problems alone to properly address class and cultural
differences may not be sufficient. Understanding the presence or absence of pretend play
requires understanding the economical structure of children’s communities and the sig-
nificance attributed to pretend play. The variations across communities in pretend play
can be the result of variations in adults’ and children’s workload and values about pretend
play rather than children’s ability to engage in it (Göncü, 1999).
The prevailing belief in this approach is that play is one of the childhood activities that
socialize children into their communities’ existing system of myths and meanings (Brougere,
2000; Clark, 1995; Goldman, 1998). In order to draw conclusions about children’s play
behavior, we need to understand the larger community context in which pretend play is
embedded. As a result, many scholars have adopted an emic approach to understand the
opportunities afforded for children’s pretend play and its occurrence. This meant going
beyond Western theory and research tools. Extensive interviews and observations were con-
ducted to identify unique local definitions, significance, and occurrence of pretend play.
The role of the community structure and adult values as they relate to the occurrence of
pretend play has been examined in a number of studies. Below, we first describe the play of
children in non-Western village communities, and then move on to the description of
children from Western and non-Western urban communities.
Pretend play in village communities
That adults’ values about pretend play are closely related to their level of schooling, income
level, and sources of income has been shown in a study of toddlers (Göncü, Mistry, &
Mosier, 2000). Caregivers in peasant communities in Rajastan, India and San Pedro, Gua-
temala, considered adult–child pretend play as either inappropriate for adults or a waste of
time due to their workload. Children in these communities engaged in play activities with
other children in mixed-age groupings. In contrast, middle to upper middle income par-
ents with numbers of years of schooling in Salt Lake City, USA, and Ankara, Turkey,
valued pretend play and pretended with their children, engaging in various forms of
verbalizations.
Gaskins (1999) provided an ethnography of Mayan children’s activities in a village in
the Yucatan. Gaskins stated that three principles of cultural engagement guide the rare
manifestation of pretend play in this village. These are the primacy of adult work, impor-
tance of parental beliefs about nature and child development, and the independence of
child motivation. Based on her observations of 1- to 5-year-old children, Gaskins reported
that pretend play occurred rarely in the lives of Mayan children from 1 to 5 years of age.
Gaskins states that this is due to the fact that work life occupies a major portion of Mayan
adults who do not consider pretend play as a valuable activity of childhood. Also, children
themselves are expected to contribute to the work life of the family. Therefore, the caregivers
do not make time provisions for pretend play. However, because of their respect for the
independence of children’s motivation, when children engage in pretend play on their
own, parents tolerate this activity. Thus, Gaskins concludes that the relative infrequency of
pretend play and its occurrence in the company of other children in this Mayan village is
not an indication of children’s deficiency to engage in symbolic activity. Rather, it is a
consequence of the lack of opportunity and the insignificance attributed to pretend play.
Lancy (1996) illustrated that Kpelle adults in a farming village in Liberia do not serve as
children’s teachers or make specific efforts to engage in pretend play with their children.
However, children from 4 to 11 years pretend in what Lancy calls the “motherground,” a
village plaza where children can be easily monitored by the adults. Children’s pretend play
themes are less varied than their Western counterparts and consist of themes of daily life
such as pretending to be a blacksmith or a rice farmer.
Goldman (1998) noted that adults did not participate in the social pretend play of
children during observations of 4- to 11-year-old Huli children’s play in the Southern
Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Working in a community where adults are
subsistence farmers, Goldman stated that through adult activity and adult–child interac-
tions such as metaphors, rhyming, motherese, and proverbs, adults presented themselves
as pretend role models to the children. Goldman’s naturalistic observations described the
communicative and metacommunicative processes by which Huli children constructed
pretend play frames and roles just like their Western counterparts. In addition, Goldman
observed that Huli children used pretend play as an interpretative activity in which they
practiced their understanding of the particular symbols of Huli myth such as “ogre” and
“trickster.”
Martini (1994) described the play activities of 13 children in the island of “Ua Pou,”
Marquesas Islands. Children varied in age from 2 to 5 in this stable play group. In the
valley where the research took place, men fish and women do house work. Consistent with
the studies cited above, Martini also reported that adults did not participate in children’s
play activity. The observations revealed that children engaged in social pretend play occa-
sionally. Children’s pretend play scripts were simple, and repetitious across different play
occasions and across different players. According to Martini, keeping pretend simple and
repetitious is the result of children’s desire not to create situations of conflict and negotia-
tions and to maintain the harmony and hierarchy established in the peer group in their
pretend activities.
Bloch (1989) in her description of 2- to 6-year-old children’s activities in a village in
Senegal noted that Senegalese children engaged in different kinds of play including pre-
tend play as much as their U.S. counterparts. Children’s playgrounds were populated by
people of different ages but children’s play partners were other children rather than adults.
Senegalese adults supported children’s play but due to their workload they did not engage
in play with their children.
In summary, these findings support the expectation that pretend play occurs in the lives
of non-Western village children. In village communities where adult workload is over-
whelming children serve as play partners for one another.
Pretend play in urban communities
Most work in urban communities was conducted in the United States and such work
described the play of middle- to upper-class children. For example, Haight and Miller
(1993) examined the development of pretend play of affluent children from European-
American households. The data were collected at children’s homes from 12 to 48 months
of age. The mothers were the primary caregivers and did not work outside of their homes.
They had at least college education, and reported that pretend play is an important activity
in the development and education of their children. The mothers provided space and toys
for children’s play. Pretend play occurred mostly with objects, reflecting this community’s
value about material possessions. Children’s play was not limited to their playrooms; they
played in the living rooms and in the kitchens.
Consistent with Dunn’s (1988) work with middle-class mothers and infants in Eng-
land, Haight and Miller’s findings showed that mothers contributed greatly to the mainte-
nance of pretend play during infancy by asking probing questions and elaborating children’s
initiations. In addition, in this U.S. community, mothers enthusiastically initiated pretend
play at 12 months when half of the children in the sample were not even pretending. After
24 months, mothers and children shared initiations. However, children played with their
peers equally as much at 48 months as they did with their mothers. Also, children’s pre-
tend play episodes with the peers were the most sustained.
Haight (1999) and her collaborators (Haight, Wang, Fung, Williams, & Mintz, 1999)
examined similarities and differences in the play of middle-class Irish-American and Chi-
nese children from 2.5 to 4 years of age. Interviews with parents revealed that parents in
both communities considered pretend play as an important activity that contributes to
children’s development and socialization. Consistent with their reports, parents in both
communities engaged in pretend play with their children. However, the way in which
parents played with their children differed across the two communities, reflecting the dif-
ferences in the value they attributed to pretend play. Chinese caregivers considered pre-
tend play as a medium of teaching children culturally accepted forms of conduct, and to
do so they adopted a didactic approach and demanded mature behavior from their chil-
dren, emphasizing social routines in their play. In contrast, Irish-American parents took a
“child-centered” approach of meeting their children’s needs and supporting their interests,
engaging in fantasy play with their children. Irish-American children initiated play with
their parents and played with other children more than the Chinese children.
Farver (1999) and her collaborators examined differences in the play of middle-class
Korean- and European-American preschool children. Farver, Kim, and Lee’s (1995) inter-
views with mothers revealed that European-American mothers thought of play as a learn-
ing experience whereas Korean-American mothers considered play as primarily amusement
for children. Their observations indicated that European-American children engaged in
social pretend play more than the Korean-American children. In a follow-up study, Farver
and Shin (1997) illustrated that the differences in the frequency of social pretend play
between the two cultural groups was not due to differences in the ability of children to
engage in pretend. Rather, the opportunities provided by children’s cultures resulted in the
differences in their pretend play. Korean-American children grow up in home and school
environments that encourage structured academic work, whereas the European-American
children grow up in environments that consider pretend play as an educational opportu-
nity. Thus, European-American children engaged in pretend play more than their Korean-
American counterparts during free play but in a controlled experimental setting the
differences in the amount of play between the two communities disappeared.
Farver and Shin (1997) also showed that the European-American and Korean-Ameri-
can children differ in their communication of social pretend play. Children in each com-
munity communicate with one another in ways that are consistent with their communities’
values. Consistent with U.S. values about independence and individualistic orientation
towards self, and previous findings (e.g., Garvey, 1990; Göncü & Kessel, 1984), the Euro-
pean-American children were direct and explicit in expressing themselves with their part-
ners. In contrast, Korean-American children’s communication reflected their values about
interdependence and collective orientation towards self as evidenced in their description of
the partners’ actions, tag questions, polite requests, and lesser degree of rejection of their
partners’ ideas than the European-American preschoolers.
Efforts to compare the play of children from different income levels have been rare.
Doyle et al. (1991) reported social class differences and concluded that class differences are
likely due to cultural rather than cognitive differences associated with income. Tudge,
Hogan, Lee, Tammeveski, Meltsas, Kulakova, Snezhkova, & Putnam (1999) examined
the distribution of play, work, academic lesson, and conversation activities in day-to-day
living of preschool age children with working- and middle-class children in Greensboro
(USA), Obninsk (Russia), Tartu (Estonia), and Suwon (Korea). These authors’ definition
of play included different kinds of play. Therefore, no particular conclusions can be drawn
with regard to pretend play. However, it is noteworthy that the most frequently occurring
activity was play in all of the communities.
Unfortunately, hardly any effort has been made to describe the play of low-income
children since McLoyd’s (1982) review. There have been only few efforts to describe the
play of low-income African-American (McLoyd et al., 1984; Weinberger & Starkey, 1994)
and Puerto-Rican children (Soto & Negron, 1994). These studies provided evidence that
low-income children of color also engage in pretend play like their middle-income and
European-American counterparts. This information is a valuable contribution to the
literature. However, it is limited in that our knowledge of low-income children of color is

determined by observational devices developed on the basis of middle-class children’s play.
A fuller understanding of low-income children’s play is possible when we examine these
children’s activities from their own cultures’ points of view. Adopting such an emic ap-
proach, Göncü, Tuermer, Jain, and Johnson (1999) reported that low-income European-
American, African-American, and Turkish children engage in forms of pretend play such
as teasing that have not been observed either conceptually or empirically in the play of
middle-class children.
Conclusions
The work of the last two decades on pretend play of preschool children has resulted in
important conceptual and empirical advances. Pretend play is a universal activity of child-
hood with its own definitive features involving symbolic representation of experiences and
affect framed by metacommunication. However, variations in pretend play occur as a func-
tion of children’s social class and cultural background as well as their age and gender.
Inquiry into these variations indicate that we need to understand the extent of play oppor-
tunities afforded to children before we make judgments about children’s ability to engage
in pretend play, and make decisions about the need for interventions.
Our efforts to understand variations, especially class and cultural variations, will be
productive if we integrate the priorities of Western and cross-cultural research traditions.
Western research on play considered largely the microstructures of pretend play (e.g., pre-
tend roles) whereas cross-cultural research on play considered largely the macrostructure of
play (e.g., cultural patterns of belief and practice.) If Westerners work on how Western
children’s culture relates to the internal structure of children’s pretend play, and cross-
cultural researchers explore in more depth how the environment of play shapes the par-
ticular experiences of individual children’s play, we will be able to better understand cultural
variations in children’s pretend play and their sources. We need to conduct research that
will simultaneously recognize the cultural structure and the individual instantiation and
use␣ of play in all children.
Two tasks qualify as the appropriate beginning points for the immediate future inquiry:
The first relates to the most definitive feature of pretend play. We need to explore cultural
variations in how children differentiate pretend activity from nonpretend activity. West-
ern experimental research on children’s understanding of pretense and their theory of mind
shed some empirical light on this issue (e.g., Harris & Kavanaugh, 1993; Lillard, 1996;
Woolley, 1997). However, how children’s culture and language guide their differentiation
of pretend activities from those that are not pretend and how children communicate their
differentiations remain unknown.
A second task is to address the contribution of pretend play to children’s development
and education. Relations have been reported between pretend play and language (Cole &
LaVoie, 1985), literacy skills (Roskos & Christie, 2000), story recall (Pellegrini, 1984),
and social and affective skills (Connolly & Doyle, 1984; de Lorimier et al., 1995; Doyle &
Connolly, 1989; Howes, 1988; Howes & Matheson, 1992; Maguire & Dunn, 1997).
However, it is important to expand examination of these relations to include children’s

social class, ethnic, and cultural background in an integral fashion so that we have fuller
information about whether or how these significant relations exist in different communi-
ties.
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438 Anthony D. Pellegrini
22
Rough-and-Tumble Play from Childhood

through Adolescence: Development and
Possible Functions
In this chapter I will first define a specific form of play, rough-and-tumble (R&T) play,
describe how it develops across the life span, and make some inferences about its possible
functions.
Defining R&T
Behavioral, consequential, structural, and ecological dimensions
Often R&T is confused with aggression because at some levels they resemble each other.
Upon close inspection, however, they are clearly different. In this section I will briefly
explicate those differences. Categories of behavior, like aggression and R&T, can be de-
fined along the following dimensions: individual behaviors, consequences, structure, ecol-
ogy, and developmental trajectories.
Behaviors. Beginning with individual behaviors, numerous factor analytic studies have
differentiated R&T and aggression behaviorally (e.g., Blurton Jones, 1972) in the follow-
ing reliable ways. The assumption here is that behaviors with similar meaning will co-
Work on this chapter was supported by grants from the W T Grant Foundation and the Spencer Founda-
tion. I acknowledge the comments of Peter Smith on an earlier draft.
R&T: Development and Function 439
occur and form a meaningful category. R&T is typically composed of: run, chase, flee,
wrestle, open hand hit. Aggression is typified by: closed hand hits, shoves, pushes, and
kicks. Also a quite simple, yet reliable, way in which R&T and aggression differ is in terms
of expression of affect. Generally, smiles (or a play face) accompany R&T while frowns, or
crying, accompany aggression.
Consequences. Classes of behavior can also be differentiated in terms of consequences, or

those behaviors immediately following the target behaviors R&T and aggression. As in the
case of co-occurring behaviors we assume that behaviors which follow a focal behavior
systematically are related to that antecedent in a meaningful way. In many cases we can
make assumptions about the meaning, or function of an antecedent behavior based on its
consequence. For example, when R&T bouts end, children often stay together and begin
cooperative social games (Pellegrini, 1988). Aggression, on the other hand, often leads to
one of the participants trying to separate from the other (McGrew, 1972). Thus, R&T
may have peer affiliative functions whereas aggression does not.
Structure. The structure of R&T is also different from aggression. By structure I mean
the roles that typify each class of behaviors. In R&T youngsters alternate roles, such as
chaser and chasee. In some cases, stronger or bigger players “self-handicap” so as to sustain
play. For example, an older child may pretend to fall as he is trying escape from a pursuer,
thus enabling the younger child to “capture” him. Self-handicapping enables children of
different levels of strength and physical prowess to play together. Role alternation is a
hallmark of other forms of play, such as dramatic play where children often change, or
negotiate, roles repeatedly in the course of an episode. Role alternation seems to play an
important part in children’s social perspective taking; taking different play roles, both in
fantasy (Garvey, 1990) and R&T (Pellegrini, 1993), enables children to take different
perspectives. Aggression, on the other hand, is typified by unilateral roles: Aggressors don’t
switch roles with their victims.
Ecology. Ecologically, R&T tends to occur in spacious areas, such as the outdoors (Smith
& Connolly, 1980), and on those parts of playgrounds with soft, grassy surfaces (Pellegrini,
1989b). That R&T is physically vigorous and involves running, falling, and wrestling
means that it is more likely to occur in areas supportive of this sort of behavior, compared
to more confined areas.
Aggression does not, however, vary according to playground location (Pellegrini, 1989a);
it is equally likely to occur anywhere. Among preschoolers, where toys are present, however,
aggression is likely to result from children’s disputes over objects (Smith & Connolly, 1980).
These differences are empirically verified to the extent that for most children R&T and
aggression are not significantly intercorrelated (Blurton Jones, 1972; Fry, 1987; Pellegrini,
1988). Further, aggression and R&T appear to be under the control of different neural
and endocrinological systems (Meaney, Stewart, & Beatty, 1985). Additionally, these dif-
ferences have been observed cross-culturally; for example, among foraging bushmen (Konner,
1972), indigenous Mexican people (Fry, 1987), and in India (Roopnarine, Hooper,
Ahmeduzzaman, & Pollack, 1993). As we will see in the next section, R&T leads children
into a very positive developmental trajectory; this is not the case for aggression.
The Developmental Trajectory of R&T
The distinction between R&T and aggression is further evidenced by the fact that each has
a different developmental trajectory. R&T, like other forms of play (Fagen, 1981), follows
an inverted-U developmental curve. Pellegrini and Smith (1998) propose that R&T is the
end point on the developmental continuum of physical play which begins with rhythmic
stereotypies (which peaks in infancy), moves into exercise play (which peaks during the
preschool period), and finally into R&T. Unlike these other forms of physical play, R&T,
by definition, has a social dimension.
The earliest cases of R&T are observed between young children and their parents. This
is a form of play in which father and sons typically engage (e.g., Parke, Cassidy, Burks,
Carson, & Boyum, 1992) and by 4 years of age, it accounts for about 4% of all parent–
child behavior (Jacklin, DiPietro, & Maccoby, 1984).
R&T with peers accounts for about 5% of the free play of preschoolers, increases to 10–
17% of the play of elementary school children, and declines in middle school to about 5%
(Humphreys & Smith, 1984). These figures probably underestimate time spent in R&T,
given the bias toward the documenting fantasy play during childhood. That is, in many
cases, especially for preschool boys, fantasy and R&T co-occur (Pellegrini & Perlmutter,
1987), and end up being counted as fantasy, not R&T. Clearly more observational work is
needed where R&T is examined more carefully in relation to fantasy play.
Sex differences
Males of most primate species engage in R&T more frequently than females (Fagen, 1981;
Smith, 1982). This is a very robust finding in the animal and child development literature,
being observed cross-culturally in the latter (Pellegrini & Smith, 1998). Differences in
initiations of and responses to R&T overtures are crucial in understanding these differ-
ences. Males tend to show higher rates of initiations and females higher rates of withdraw-
als (Meaney et al., 1985). The higher withdrawal rates by females may be due to
corresponding differences in response to tactile stimulation of the sort characterizing R&T
(Meaney et al., 1985). These differences, in turn, help explain the segregation of boys’ and
girls’ play groups throughout childhood (Maccoby, 1998).
Sex differences in R&T are probably the result of both hormonal and socialization events
(Maccoby, 1998), where endogenous and exogenous androgens affect neural organization
and behavior. Normal exposure to androgens during fetal development predisposes boys
toward physical activity and R&T. Socialization interacts with hormonal events to rein-
force these difference (Maccoby, 1998). Starting in infancy, fathers spend more time with
sons, compared to daughters (Parke & Suomi, 1981), and when with their sons, may
engage in physically vigorous forms of play, including R&T (Carson, Burks, & Parke,
1993; MacDonald & Parke, 1986). Further, girls, compared to boys, are more closely
supervised by adults (Fagot, 1994) and they are likely to discourage rough forms of play
(Maccoby, 1998).
Individual differences
In most cases R&T does not co-occur with or escalate to aggression (Pellegrini, 1988).
Further, young children and adults from a variety of nations (e.g., United States, UK,
Italy) are able to reliably distinguish R&T from aggression (Costabile et al., 1991; Pellegrini,
1989b). However, there are individual differences in the expression and perception of
R&T. Primary school boys who are sociometrically rejected (i.e., they are disliked by more
of their peers than they are liked) and physically aggressive tend to engage in R&T at rates
similar to boys of average popularity. The R&T for this first class of boys, however, co-
occurs with aggression. That is, rates of aggression and R&T are significantly intercorrelated
(Pellegrini, 1988). This may be due to the fact that the R&T of these boys “escalates” into
aggression; that is, when an R&T bout ends, aggression follows in one case out of five
(Pellegrini, 1988). Further, rejected boys, relative to popular boys, are less accurate in
differentiating R&T from aggression (Pellegrini, 1989b). Boys who are aggressive and
sociometrically rejected in the primary grades, retain their status as they move into adoles-
cence. In adolescence, however, these boys engage in a particularly rough form of R&T
and tend to use R&T to bully their peers (Pellegrini, 1994). While rates of R&T decline
markedly for most adolescent boys the R&T of rejected boys remains relatively high and
continues to relate to aggression (Pellegrini, 1994).
Children’s R&T “escalates” into aggression for at least three different reasons. First, for
most children the transition from R&T to aggression may be an “honest mistake” (Fagen,
1981). Mistakes occur, such as one child slipping or accidentally hitting too hard, and can
be judged by looking at the expression on the face of the initiator at the instant of the
“mistake.” A look of surprise probably indicates an accident.
Second, youngsters can exploit the playful tenor of R&T in a more Machiavellian way,
by turning R&T into aggressive exploitation; for example, they could hit too hard or not
change role. Youngsters may apologize for their “mistakes” when in fact they were inten-
tional. These youngsters seem to deliberately exploit R&T in this way as a way in which to
publicly exhibit their dominance over a peer. The occurrence of this sort of behavior in the
presence of a crowd or in the presence of high status peers may indicate exploitation. We
have also found that when new social groups are forming, youngsters whose dominance
status is rising use this strategy with higher ranking individuals, as a way to move up the
hierarchy. Youngsters whose status is falling use it only with lower status individuals
(Pellegrini, 1995b). In these sorts of cases, individuals are socially sophisticated in their use
of aggression; their use of these strategies is related to their ability to take others’ points of
view (Pellegrini, 1995a).
Third, there are other youngsters whose R&T moves into aggression because they are
overly emotional, cannot control themselves, and who might be interpreted as deficient in
their interpretation of ambiguous, provocative social information. When presented with
R&T, they interpret it as aggressive and respond accordingly.
Functions of R&T
Function is defined, for the purposes of this chapter, in terms of “beneficial consequences”
(Hinde, 1980). These consequences can be either immediate or deferred. The dominant
view, for much of this century (Groos, 1901), has been that play has deferred benefits; that
is, play has been considered practice for adulthood. During the period of extended child-
hood, children engage in play to learn and practice those skills necessary to be functioning
adult members of society. This view is reflected in both Piaget’s (1962) and Vygotsky’s
(1978) theories of play. This assumption is related to the long-held emphasis among child
developmentalists on the importance of early experience and developmental continuity.
Bateson’s (1976) metaphor for the deferred benefit view of play is “scaffolding”; play func-
tions in skill assembly and then is disassembled when the skill is mastered.
Alternatively, play may be viewed not as an incomplete or imperfect version of adult
behavior, but as having immediate benefits during childhood. This “metamorphic” (Bateson,
1976) view posits that play and its consequences are unique to the niche of childhood and
that later benefits are not necessary for its explanation. This view is consistent with recent
discussions of benefits suggesting that play occurs at specific periods during which devel-
opment may be modified (Byers & Walker, 1995). Accordingly, the previously discussed
age distribution of R&T may be useful in evaluating functional hypotheses.
Social functions of R&T
The distinct functional significance of R&T is suggested by two arguments. The first is the
relative and peak frequencies with which it is observed during childhood. R&T peaks
during the middle childhood period, when it accounts for about 10% of free-play behavior;
it then declines in adolescence, accounting for less than 5%. This peak period co-occurs
with the time during which peer relations are becoming increasingly important in chil-
dren’s lives (Waters & Sroufe, 1983), thus, and as will be discussed below, R&T may be
related to learning skills important for peer relations.
The second is an argument by design. R&T is a distinctive form of behavior. It is super-
ficially similar to real fighting; however, it is different in many respects and should be
regarded as a separate construct. I review here evidence relating R&T to social skills, fight-
ing skills, and to dominance functions.
R&T and social skills. An important dimension of social skill is the ability to encode and
decode social signals. Successful encoding and decoding of messages, such as “This is play,”
is necessary if play is to be initiated and maintained (e.g., Bekoff, 1995). Behaviors that
send the message “This is play” are typically exaggerated, compared to more functional
counterparts; for example, play fighting, compared to real fighting, might be characterized
by open mouth, hunched shoulders and rhythmic movement of the hands.
Research by Parke and colleagues indicates that the ability to encode and decode play
signals can originate in socially vigorous play between parents (primarily fathers) and their
children (primarily sons), beginning in infancy and continuing throughout childhood (Parke
et al., 1992). They found the amount of time spent in vigorous play bouts to be positively
related to preschool children’s ability to decode emotional expressions. Further, children’s
expression of emotional states was also related positively to bout length. Involvement in
R&T with peers, expressed in terms of proportion of total behavioral output, has also been
found to relate to primary school children’s ability to decode play signals (Pellegrini, 1988).
It may thus be the case that parent–child play provides the groundwork for children’s
ability to encode and decode emotions, with this ability later being used in physical activity
play with peers.
However, there are difficulties with this hypothesis. First, these correlational studies do
not establish cause and effect; it is equally plausible that the causal relationship is such that
(for example) those children less able to encode/decode emotions are less willing to engage
in R&T. Second, and more conclusively, these hypotheses are inconsistent with observed
sex differences; encoding and decoding of emotions should be just as important for girls as
for boys, and they certainly are no worse at it than boys. Yet, the sex difference in R&T is
a well-established finding.
R&T and fighting skills. The most traditional view in the animal and human literature
(e.g., Smith, 1982) is that R&T functions to provide safe practice for fighting (and possi-
bly, hunting) skills which will be useful in later life. This hypothesis would be consistent
with the strong sex difference observed, if one assumes that fighting (and hunting) skills
were and are more characteristically male activities (Boulton & Smith, 1992). It does not
predict the age curve for R&T, since “safe” practice for such skills might be especially
important in adolescence (when in fact R&T declines). Also, there is little or no direct
evidence linking R&T to fighting or hunting skills, in either the animal or human litera-
ture (Martin & Caro, 1985). Finally, this hypothesis does not predict the age changes in
“cheating” observed in human R&T. Thus, while I do not dismiss this argument – indeed,
I suspect it may be a phylogenetically prior function with some remaining relevance for
younger children – I review here the argument for dominance functions of R&T, which
have not received the same attention but which may yield new insights in the case of
human R&T (Pellegrini & Smith, 1998).
R&T and dominance relationships. Dominance is defined as a dyadic, affiliative relation-

ship between individuals, not in terms of one’s aggressiveness (Hinde, 1980), though physi-
cally aggressive behaviors are often used in the service of dominance. Aggression and affiliative
behaviors are correlated with individual’s dominance status during childhood (Strayer &
Noel, 1986) and adolescence (Pellegrini & Bartini, 2001). Further, dominance hierarchies
are generally unique to specific groups and ecologies, the implication being that individu-
als might have different dominance status in different groups and ecologies (Strayer, 1980).
Although explicable in terms of advantage to dominant individuals, dominance hierar-
chies also mediate group members’ access to valued resources and reduce intragroup ag-
gression in many situations (Strayer, 1980). Thus dominance hierarchies benefit individuals
(in terms of access to resources and minimized aggression) and the group (in terms of
group affiliation).
I postulate that R&T may serve a social function in peer groups, for boys especially, by
assisting in the establishing and maintaining of social leadership or dominance relation-
ships. The idea that R&T is related to establishing and maintaining dominance status is
consistent with arguments from design. Males often use quasi-agonistic displays (e.g., soft
or no contact kicks and punches, light pushes) in the service of dominance. Very similar
behaviors are also displayed in R&T, but these behaviors are embedded in a nonserious
context: Kicks and punches don’t make contact and if they do they are soft; players are
smiling; and they often handicap themselves (e.g., let the player on the bottom of a pile get
on top).
Symons (1978) was critical of the hypothesis that R&T is related to dominance because
of the findings in primate (and child) research on R&T that self-handicapping occurs:
Blows are not forceful, and individuals take turns to gain or cede the upper position in
wrestling. However, subsequent findings counter this argument in two ways that I review
in more detail below. First, children can often evaluate the strength of others from R&T
bouts, despite self-handicapping and restraint. Second, in some youngsters (and especially
by adolescence), it now appears that subtle or not so subtle forms of “cheating” may occur,
demonstrating clearly to opponents and to onlookers, that one participant is in fact stronger
(Smith & Boulton, 1990).
This argument is also consistent with the sex differences in R&T. Children establish
and maintain dominance in different ways. Girls primarily use verbal, rather than physical,
means to gain and keep resources (Charlesworth & Dzur, 1987). Boys, on the other hand,
utilize a variety of skills, some of which are related to physical prowess, to regulate access to
resources: for example, struggling over access to a toy. Fighting skills, or toughness, when
used in conjunction with more affiliative skills is an important dimension of boys’ peer-
group status and popularity (Pellegrini & Bartini, 2001). It may be the case that dominant
individuals reconcile (e.g., shake hands, offer gifts, etc.) after their aggressive acts as a way
in which to maintain group harmony (deWaal, 1985). Additionally, leaders may use ag-
gression to stop fights or to help their allies (Strayer & Noel, 1986).
Age trends in R&T also are consistent with this position, if we consider that the imme-
diate preadolescent period is one in which it is important to establish peer-group domi-
nance. At this age, youngsters experience rapid change in body size along with changes in
environment, as they move from primary to secondary school. Thus, R&T, along with
other agonistic and affiliative strategies is used by boys to establish dominance (Pellegrini
& Bartini, 2001).
Observational and interview evidence suggest that R&T may be involved in dominance
in two ways, each of which are age related. The first is indirect; R&T may provide a way of
assessing the strength of others, so as to decide one’s strategy vis-à-vis dominance competi-
tion – a form of “ritualized aggression,” which leads to real fighting in only certain circum-
stances. Similarly, children’s R&T occurs in symmetrical groups, or children of similar
dominance status, and many children say they can determine their own as well as peers’
strength from these encounters (Smith, Hunter, Carvalho, & Costabile, 1992). Also with
children, R&T occurs between friends (Humphreys & Smith, 1987; Smith & Lewis, 1985)
and in groups of 3 to 4 children (Pellegrini, 1993) and this indicates that it is a safe and
relatively visible venue to test and exhibit physical strength. That R&T occurs in sym-
metrical groups and that children can determine peers’ strength from these encounters
suggests that it can be used in this first, indirect way, to assess strength and prepare for
dominance encounters, through the primary school period.
The second way in which R&T may provide the context for establishing or maintaining
dominance is more direct. A participant may use an R&T bout to get their partner in a
position where they can actually display their superior strength, or assert dominance, for
example, by pinning or intimidating a playmate. Indeed, the participant doing this may
have lulled their partner into a false sense of security by using the predominantly playful
nature of R&T, or have used the self-handicapping and reversal criteria of R&T to get
themselves into a “winning” position. Thus, this could be called a “cheating” use of R&T
for dominance purposes and was discussed above.
So far as preadolescent children are concerned R&T is not correlated with peer-nomi-
nated dominance in that it occurs with partners of similar dominance status (Humphreys
& Smith, 1987; Pellegrini, 1993). In most cases, R&T is not exploited for immediate
aggressive ends (Pellegrini, 1988). This suggests that R&T may not often be used to estab-
lish dominance in this second way, directly, before adolescence.
While R&T and actual fighting remain separate for most children during the primary
school years, there are cases, especially involving sociometrically rejected children (Pellegrini,
1988), where R&T and fighting are linked. The ethnographic record provides illustra-
tions. Sluckin’s (1981) in-depth study of British 5- to 9-year-old children’s behavior and
perceptions of their lives in the school playground provides examples of R&T being used
to deceive and manipulate peers. Similarly, the work of Oswald and colleagues (1987) in
Germany with children aged 6- to 10-years-of-age found instances of hurtfulness in the
play of the older children in this age range.
However a clearly different picture emerges in early adolescence. Neill (1976) was the
first to suggest that adolescent boys’ R&T might be used to establish dominance. His
factor analytic study of boys’ playground behavior found that R&T and aggression often
co-occurred. Neill stated that R&T might be a “means of asserting or maintaining domi-
nance; once a weaker boy has registered distress the bond can be maintained by the fight
taking a more playful form, but if he does not do so at the start of the fight, the stronger
boy may increase the intensity of the fight until he does” (p. 219). This age change in the
function of R&T received some support from Humphreys and Smith (1987). They found
that at 11 years, but not at 7 and 9 years, dominance was a factor in partner choice in
R&T. When the younger children engaged in R&T they did so in symmetrical groups, or
with peers of similar dominance status; for the older children, dominant youngsters initi-
ated R&T with less dominant youngsters, or in asymmetrical groups. This finding would
be consistent with stronger children using R&T to exhibit dominance with weaker chil-
dren.
Results from a study by Pellegrini (1995b) throw further light on this age trend. In a
longitudinal study of adolescent boys, he found that asymmetrical choices for R&T were
observed during the first year of middle school, but not the second. He also found that
during the first year of middle school boys’ R&T was correlated with peer-nominated
dominance. (Only with sociometrically rejected boys, not popular or average boys, did
R&T lead to and relate to aggression, however.) During the second year of middle school
R&T continued to relate to dominance status but it did not lead or relate to aggression.
These results suggest that R&T is used to establish dominance in early adolescence; and
that once established, hierarchies reduce aggression and R&T declines.
In summary, I suggest that the primary function of R&T through the primary years is to
provide a way in which boys assess strength of others for dominance purposes; possibly
additional to providing practice in fighting skills, for which, however, little direct evidence
exists. There is good evidence that in early adolescence (and perhaps earlier for rejected
children) R&T functions to actually establish dominance status in boys’ peer groups. The
contemporaneous correlations between R&T and dominance and R&T and popularity
for adolescent boys suggest that R&T is only one behavioral strategy used by boys to gain
and maintain status. Finally, I suggest that any benefits for emotional encoding, decoding,
or regulation are incidental benefits of R&T, achievable in other ways, rather than func-
tions.
Suggestions for Future Research
As noted above, the study of children’s R&T has been limited. Most studies of preschoolers’
play, following Piagetian theory, have been concerned primarily with pretend play while
less attention is given to functional and constructive play. Given the co-occurrence of
R&T and pretend play and the theoretical bias toward studying pretend play, it may have
been the case that the occurrence of R& T during the preschool period has been under-
reported.
Future research should re-evaluate the place of R&T during the preschool period by
considering its pretend and nonpretend dimensions, as well as the play-fighting and chase
dimensions. The distinction between chase and play fighting is important for a number of
reasons. First, most young children enjoy chasing and fewer, mostly boys, enjoy play fight-
ing (Smith et al., 1992). Second, chasing and play fighting, at least for older children, are
statistically independent of each other and have different consequences: play fighting re-
lates to dominance status while chase does not (Pellegrini, 1995b).
Along similar lines, to what degree do play fighting and chasing lead to aggression dur-
ing the preschool period? That play fighting leads to aggression for sociometrically rejected
children during the primary and middle school periods (Pellegrini, 1988, 1994) suggests
that the R&T of aggressive/rejected preschoolers might also lead to aggression.
We also need to know the ways in which physically vigorous behavior is used by boys to
establish and maintain social leadership in their peer groups. I hypothesize that R&T would
be an important predictor of peer leadership, including dominance, especially as they enter
new social institutions, such as a new school. From this view, socially competent children
may use a variety of agonistic and cooperative strategies to get their way with peers (Vaughn,
1999). Children, however, should not cheat repeatedly at R&T. Where cheating does
occur it should be in the presence of a crowd (who can witness the result of cheating). It
may be the case that boys initially cheat at R&T by inflicting pain and thereby gaining
public notice of their “toughness,” then apologize (under the guise of an “honest mistake”)
and resume another form of play or social interaction. Alternatively, honest mistakes, rather
than cheating, may be “punctuated” by subsequent play signals to reinforce the playful
intent (Bekoff, 1995).
Differences in sociometric status also may interact in interesting ways with dominance
functions of R&T. It appears that sociometrically rejected children are most likely to “cheat”
in R&T, and use R&T in overly aggressive ways: By contrast, popular children may be
dominant but do not “cheat” so frequently or obviously in their R&T (Boulton & Smith,
1990; Pellegrini, 1988, 1995a). It may be that children are employing different strategies
of seeking power. Popular children may do so by demonstrating leadership in ways which
may occasionally involve physical strength; rejected children may do so by using R&T and
aggression to demonstrate physical dominance over others. If so, R&T may function as
one optional strategy for seeking social dominance.
Social skills learned during peer play might include the abilities to detect “cheating” and
to regulate physically vigorous play and R&T. Ability to detect cheating could be meas-
ured by children’s responses to filmed play and aggressive bouts or by observing their
responses to instances of cheating. For instance, in response to cheating, targets should
terminate the bout and also turn away from the cheater. Direct observation of aggression
would be very difficult to collect given their relative infrequency, thus hypothetical situa-
tions may be more practical. Use of video and playback procedures (for both participants
and nonparticipants) may be useful here.
Lastly, sex differences are important to consider. Researchers should trace the develop-
mental trajectories of boys and girls from infancy through adolescence, observing directly
the extent to which children have opportunities for R&T with parents and for play with
peers and large motor toys. These observations should be made in conjunction with meas-
ures of children’s sensitivity to tactile stimulation, for example, do boys and girls respond
differently to R&T initiations?
While differential responses to physical stimulation should be related to sex differences
in the preference for physical contact play (Meaney et al., 1985), it also may be the case
that there are individual differences, associated with factors such as congenital adrenal
hyperplasia (CAH) within each sex. Longitudinal observations should be made of CAH
and non-CAH girls’ and boys’ sensitivity to tactile stimulation as well as their R&T with
parents and then peers. Early observations of tactile sensitivity and subsequent play with
parents should provide information on the specific and interactive contributions of each
factor to children’s engagement in R&T with peers.
Testing functional hypotheses with cost-benefit analyses
In this chapter I made functional inferences based on the co-occurrence between physical
activity play and beneficial consequences in social organization status and social skills. Play
may occur at specific ages, which may be sensitive periods in development, and conse-
quently, play may affect these skills.
A complementary approach to the study of function, cost-benefit analyses, has been
applied to animal play with results generally supporting the theory (e.g., Martin & Caro,
1985). From an evolutionary perspective, costs associated with play should have corre-
sponding benefits for the individuals of the species in which the play behavior is typically
observed. If this were not the case, play would not have been naturally selected for and
maintained across the generations. The animal play data generally support the correspond-
ence between costs of play and accrued benefits (Fagen, 1981).
Costs associated with physical activity play can be expressed in terms of time spent
playing, calories, or energy expended, during play, or in terms of survivorship where death
or injury occurs as a result of play (Martin & Caro, 1985). High costs should be associated
with high benefits and low costs could be associated with either high or low benefits.
Benefits for play need not be absolutely high but merely greater than associated costs.
Application of a cost-benefit analysis to children’s play would be useful on a number of
fronts. First, we should empirically test the wide-held assumption that play during child-
hood is costly; that is, that play consumes a substantial portion of children’s time and
energy budgets. Second, a description of the time and energy expenditure on physical
activity play across childhood would complement the information provided in this review
and that provided by Pellegrini and Smith (1998). Functional hypotheses could be evalu-
ated by relating different measures of cost to measures of motor training, cognitive per-
formance, and social organization status and skills during childhood and into adulthood.
A necessary first step, however, involves documenting costs associated with physical activ-
ity play.
Costs can be documented by measuring the caloric expenditure during play, relative to
resting states, across the day (Pellegrini, Horvat, & Huberty, 1998). Documenting play
metabolic rate (PMR) involves taking direct measures of energy expenditure, for example,
using heart rate monitors and accelerometers, during children’s play and during resting
states, or resting metabolic rate (RMR). In this way the cost of play, beyond the cost of
maintaining a resting state can be gauged. Additionally, these mechanical recording device
should be used to document the average daily metabolic rate (ADMR); estimates of ADMR
range from 1.5 to 3.0 times RMR (Martin, 1982). Next, the amount of time during the
day spent in play (tp) should be estimated. This can be accomplished by having children or
adults recording in diaries the time spent in play. Alternatively, spot sampling can be uti-
lized, where researchers call the homes of children during the day and ask caregivers to
report on children’s activities. Martin suggest that .05 is a “realistic” estimate of time spent
in play across the day. The caloric cost of play can then be derived from the following
formula, suggested by Martin (1982): ECP= tp(PMR –RMR/ADMR).
This sort of analysis has been applied extensively to animals’ play (see Martin & Caro,
1985 for a summary) with the results suggesting that physical activity play accounts for
5%–10% of total energy costs. Given this rather low level of cost, we most reasonably
would search for immediate, not deferred, benefits in the domains of physical and social
skills.
This method to establish the value, or function, of R&T in childhood and adolescence
is rather indirect. A more direct method of assessing function is to simply ask youngsters
about the meaning and function of R&T. This can be accomplished with questionnaires
which ask them questions about R&T in general, or by showing them filmed R&T and
aggressive bouts and then asking them questions about those bouts. Variants of both of
these procedures have been used widely.
Smith and colleagues have developed and used questionnaire procedures with children
in the UK and Italy (Costabile et al., 1991; Smith et al., 1992). Children were asked a
series of questions about their perceptions of R&T and aggression; for example, the fre-
quency with which they engage in R&T, the identity of their partners in R&T, and their
reasons for engaging in R&T. These studies, like the behavioral studies discussed above,
clearly show that children differentiate R&T from aggression and can give reasons sup-
porting their judgments. Generally, children say they engage in R&T, not surprisingly,
because it is fun.
The videotape methodology that has been used takes two forms. The more common
variant of this procedure has children viewing videotapes of the R&T and aggression of
unfamiliar children. Children clearly differentiate R&T from aggression and can give nu-
merous reasons for doing so (Pellegrini, 1989a,b). However, individual differences also
crop up here. Rejected children, compared to popular children, are neither very accurate in
their discriminations nor do they give as many reasons for their decisions. This difference
may be due to the social information-processing deficit described by Dodge (e.g., Dodge
& Frame, 1982). Briefly, this argument suggests that rejected children simply do not proc-
ess ambiguous, provocative interaction (like R&T) accurately. When they see an ambigu-
ous/provocative event (that can be either playful or aggressive) they tend to attribute
aggressive intent to it; thus, R&T is seen as aggression.
An explanation for rejected children’s poor performance on these discrimination tasks
posits that these children, as general “problem children” in school, take on a negative
stance when they are being interviewed. As a way in which to project this negative image to
the interviewer they label R&T bouts as aggressive (thus the aggressive bias) and minimally
comply to requests to give reasons for their responses (thus the low number of attributes
given to differentiate R&T from aggression). In short, their responses may have been a way
of expressing defiance/noncompliance to an adult in school.
This purposeful, rather than deficient, explanation is consistent with other research show-
ing that rejected boys are also very purposeful in their choice of R&T partners. For a
particularly rough variant of R&T, but not other forms of social interaction, rejected boys
(who are also considered to be “tough” by their peers) initiate interaction with boys who
are weaker than they; these targets are also considered “victims” by their peers. These R&T
bouts typically escalate into aggression at a greater than chance probability (Pellegrini,
1994). Thus, “tough” boys may use R&T as a pretext for victimizing less dominant boys.
This conclusion is consistent with the view that some aggressive children (bullies) are very
good at inferring what their peers are thinking (Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999).
Another, less commonly used videotape method involves showing children (and their
teachers) aggressive and R&T bouts in which they and their classmates were participants
(Smith, Smees, Pellegrini, & Menesini, 1993). We showed films to children (individually,
not together) who participated in these films on the same day as the bouts and again two
weeks later. We also showed the films to the classmates and teachers of these children at the
same intervals. We reckoned that asking children to comment on bouts in which they
actually participated would provide more direct insight into the meaning of these events.
Further, by asking both teachers and children to comment on the events we could contrast
their interpretations of the same events. We originally thought that teachers’ interpreta-
tions would have been inaccurate and at odds with children’s, as found by Schafer and
Smith (1996).
We found that participants’ agreed with each other on the meaning of the event (i.e.,
whether it was R&T or aggression); this agreement was stable across a 2-week period. To
our surprise, however, nonparticipating peers and teachers’ agreed with each other, but
their interpretations were significantly different from participants.
Participant status, however, may be a proxy for something else. It may be the case that
these participants are also friends and have a different sort of relationship than do
nonparticipants. We know, for example, that friends tend to engage in R&T with each
other, more than with peers who are not friends (Humphreys & Smith, 1987). We also
know that friends have a more accurate understanding of each other than do nonfriends
(Hartup, 1996). Thus, in our study it may be that our R&T participants agreed with each
because they were friends.
These results have very clear implications for both research and educational policy. Re-
searchers should clearly make provision for the differing interpretations of ambiguous provo-
cation events, like R&T, when they interview children. From a policy perspective, these
results suggest that in order to understand certain forms of behavior, like aggression and
R&T, teachers and school administrators should interview participants and their friends,
and not rely on what bystanders say.
Conclusions
I have outlined the ways in which one form of play, R&T, differs from aggression. As part
of this exposition I reviewed evidence showing that R&T and aggression had very different
developmental histories and, consequentially, had very different impacts on children’s so-
cial cognitive status. R&T is quite “normal” and actually a “good” form of play for young
children, particularly boys. It may be the case that engaging in R&T affords opportunity
to practice encoding and decoding social information. Further, the role alternation charac-
teristic of R&T may be an important component in perspective taking. These skills, learned
and practiced in R&T during childhood, are then utilized in other forms of reciprocal
social interaction, such as cooperative games, during adolescence.
An interesting developmental shift occurs in adolescence. R&T no longer has positive
implications for social cognitive development. During this period, R&T is used primarily
in the service of social dominance. Thus, this is an interesting case of a set of behaviors
serving different functions for different youngsters (i.e., rejected vs. popular) at different
periods (i.e., childhood vs. adolescence).
Another important conclusion to be drawn from this work is that not all children seem
to need this specific form of play to develop. R&T is a particularly male phenomenon and
many boys seem to use it in the service of their social cognitive development. That girls
(and some boys) generally do not engage in R&T but also develop into well-functioning
social beings is illustrative. Girls use other strategies to become socially competent. That
girls engage in social pretence play at high rates, compared to boys, suggests that this form
of play, not R&T, is important for their social cognitive development. In short, not all
children must travel the same developmental path to competence. Children often take
different paths to the same developmental outcome. This sort of behavioral flexibility seems
crucial in light of the fact that human children, as a species, are reared in a variety of
conditions. In order to flourish in these different niches, children must adopt different
strategies. Play has been proffered as one way in which individuals gain this flexibility
(Sutton-Smith, 1997). Thus, educators should beware of advice of one “royal road” to
anything: There are numerous roads.
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Prosocial and Helping Behavior 455
Part VIII
Helping and Moral Reasoning
Recent research has focused on understanding different dimensions of social competence

and their unique contributions to psychosocial adjustment (e.g., Chen, Li, Li., Li, & Liu,
2000). In that vein, how children develop altruistic and moral patterns of social behavior has
been the subject of conceptual and empirical scrutiny for several decades. The first two
chapters synthesize the literature in these areas and chart directions for promising new devel-
opments in our understanding of the nature and implications of altruistic and moral con-
structs. The third chapter helps us step back and consider how societies are characterized by
collections of different social, gender, occupational, political, ethnic, and religious groups.
Children glean many of their values that can be translated into more or less altruistic and
moral behaviors from these societal institutions that are connected to their immediate set-
tings such as family, neighborhood, and school environments (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).
Joan Grusec, Maayan Davidov, and Leah Lundell focus on prosocial behavior (e.g.,
helping, sharing, comforting). Although children often engage in behaviors that are ben-
eficial to others at a personal cost, caring actions can also stem from self-serving motivations.
Grusec and her colleagues examine the phenomenon of prosocial behavior by first delin-
eating the term from altruism. Prosocial behavior may have a variety of motivations while
altruistic behavior only comes at some cost to the donor. Having settled that issue, the
authors move on to synthesizing the literature on biological underpinnings of prosocial
behavior. Empathetic concern is then elaborated as a motivator for prosocial behavior,
followed by a careful review of the literature on how parents can promote the internaliza-
tion of values with specific attention paid to the interaction of nature and nurture. Peers
and siblings also play a role. How prosocial behavior increases with age, as well as sex
differences in prosocial behavior are explicated. Grusec and colleagues also delineate how
prosocial behavior is enacted depending on children’s perceived abilities to help and the
nature of the situation (e.g., helping someone who is liked rather than disliked). Their
chapter concludes with a review of literature on linkages involving social class and culture
in the development of prosocial behavior.
456 Joan
Helping
E. Grusec,
and Moral
Maayan
Reasoning
Davidov, & Leah Lundell
Regarding moral development, Charles Helwig and Elliot Turiel begin their chapter by
briefly explaining how several disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, psychol-
ogy, and sociology have each brought different perspectives to this area of inquiry. The
theories of Piaget and Kohlberg are overviewed and then followed by more recent perspec-
tives that separate the moral domain (issues of harm, fairness, and rights) from the social
conventional domain (e.g., organizational rules for dress and etiquette). Research indicates
that very young children are able to distinguish these domains, but do so in increasingly
complex ways over the course of early and middle childhood. How children’s actions are
actually influenced by their judgments in these domains has been a fruitful field of study.
The authors present convincing evidence that how children approach behavioral situations
is related to domains of judgment. Of particular interest is the section on culture and social
development. How do moral and social conventions vary across Eastern and Western soci-
eties? How do religious beliefs affect moral judgments in different cultural settings? These
and other issues concerning how children develop concepts of autonomy, rights, and de-
mocracy in the context of culture are addressed in illuminating ways.
The discussion of cultural influences by Helwig and Turiel provides a meaningful tran-
sition to the final chapter. Martyn Barrett and Eithne Buchanan-Barrow treat readers to a
discussion of children’s understanding of society. As noted earlier, the way children oper-
ate in society is based, in part, on their understanding of societal rules and conventions.
Barrett and Buchanan-Barrow examine the most significant societal institutions that touch
children beyond the family. How children come to understand the social organization of
schools, economics, social class, politics, law, ethnic groups, and nationalities are carefully
explicated from a developmental perspective across the early and middle childhood years.
In so doing, the authors draw heavily upon Piagetian perspectives when providing stage-
based descriptions of children’s understandings of societal phenomenon.
References
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competence: Common and unique contributions to social, academic, and psychological ad-
justment. Developmental Psychology, 36, 302–314.
23
Prosocial and Helping Behavior
Joan E. Grusec, Maayan Davidov, and Leah Lundell
Most people believe they should not harm others. However, beliefs about the extent to
which they should engage in actions that will benefit others, particularly if that action is
costly to themselves, are less certain. The ambiguity that surrounds helping others, then, is
one reason that its study is so interesting. Presumably, parents want to raise children who
are caring and concerned, and who will go out of their way to assist others whenever they
can. Moreover, children who help others tend to have positive relationships and interac-
tions with their peers (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998), and people who were prosocial as chil-
dren are less likely to be antisocial as adults (Hamalaimen & Pulkiinen, 1995). Balanced
against these positive outcomes, however, is the fact that help is not always wanted by
potential recipients, as well as the possibility that too much devotion to others can be
harmful to the self, for example, excessive concern for others may place children at risk for
depression (Zahn-Waxler, Cole, & Barrett, 1991). Moreover, agents of socialization ap-
pear to have mixed reactions when children show concern for others. Prosocial behavior is
often not praised by parents or teachers (Caplan & Hay, 1989; Grusec, 1991) and parents
claim they do not encourage it in young children (Rheingold, 1982). It should be noted,
however, that ambivalence about prosocial behavior is more characteristic of Anglo-American
cultures where social responsibility is less duty-based than in cultures such as the Hindu
Indian, where prosocial concern is deemed to be as important as ensuring the achievement
of justice (Miller & Bersoff, 1992).
Not all acts that are beneficial to others, of course, have a personal cost. Children can
engage in caring actions for self-serving reasons, including gaining a feeling of mastery over
the environment, facilitating social interactions, in hope of praise, or in anticipation of
future reciprocity. Even caring behavior that is motivated by feelings of empathic arousal
can be seen as self-serving if its goal is reduction of the helper’s uncomfortable emotional
state. The term “prosocial behavior” is used to deal with the fact that it is often difficult to
know exactly which of the diverse motivations underlying helpful actions is operating in a
458 Joan E. Grusec, Maayan Davidov, & Leah Lundell
given situation. Thus prosocial behavior is defined as any voluntary, intentional action
that produces a positive or beneficial outcome for the recipient regardless of whether that
action is costly to the donor, neutral in its impact, or beneficial. In this sense it is distin-
guished from “altruism” which clearly implies that assistance to others came at some cost
to the donor.
Actions included in the category of prosocial behavior have been helping, sharing, con-
sideration, concern, and defending. Thus we know a considerable amount about their
development and socialization. Greener and Crick (1999), however, recently have pointed
out that these behaviors have been somewhat arbitrarily selected by researchers. They asked
children aged 8 to 11 years what boys and girls do when they want to be nice to people.
The children’s responses fell into categories having little overlap with those usually stud-
ied. For them, being nice to others included using humor, being friends (e.g., asking about
them), avoiding being mean, including them in the play group, ending a conflict, sharing
or caring, hanging around with them, and trusting them (e.g., telling them secrets). The
most frequently cited exemplars of being nice were, in order, being friends, inclusion in
the group, and sharing/caring. Traditionally studied prosocial behaviors – sharing or car-
ing – were deemed more appropriate for peers of the opposite sex, while group inclusion or
relationship-centered activities were emphasized more for peers of the same sex. Clearly
then, although sharing and caring are salient to children, the most frequently cited in-
stances of nice behavior are not part of the usual definition of prosocial behavior. The
reader should keep this limitation in mind in considering the material discussed in this
chapter.
Already noted is the fact that prosocial behaviors may have a variety of motivations.
Two have been of primary interest to researchers. Each, although not satisfying fully the
criteria for altruism, that is, behavior that is costly, still has to do with internally-governed
behavior. This focus is a reflection of the fact that developmental psychologists who study
socialization, although recognizing that much behavior is controlled by the external envi-
ronment, have tended to look ultimately for conditions that would promote long-lasting
acceptance of standards that occurs even when external reward and punishment contin-
gencies are not operative. The first source of internally-governed motivation has to do with
feelings of empathy or sympathy that are generated in response to another person’s need
state and that may promote attempts to modify that state. The second has to do with
adherence to a norm because it seems to have been self-generated. Each of these will be
discussed below.
Chapter Overview
The core of this chapter deals with the origins of children’s prosocial responding in biol-
ogy, its relation to empathy, and its promotion through socialization experiences, includ-
ing the impact of peers and siblings. After a brief discussion of sex differences in prosocial
responding and its situational determinants we turn to a consideration of prosocial action
in the broader social class and cultural context and what discoveries here mean for a more
complete understanding of the topic.
Biological Underpinnings of Prosocial Behavior
Evolutionary theorists have addressed the role of biological factors in the development of
prosocial behavior, focusing specifically on altruism, or prosocial behavior involving self-
sacrifice. The very notion of altruism seems at odds with traditional evolutionary approaches,
which stress survival of the fittest and self-preservation strategies. Nevertheless, contempo-
rary sociobiological theories have tried to account for altruism in evolutionary terms, as-
serting a distinct survival advantage in helping others.
Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the evolution of altruism. Wynne-
Edwards (1962), for example, suggests that natural selection operates at the group level.
For a group to survive, individuals must act in ways that help the group as a whole, even if
this limits their personal gain. Other models are based on selection operating at the indi-
vidual level. For example, Hamilton (1964) proposes that genetic fitness depends not only
on the survival of individuals’ genes but also on those of their genetic relatives. Kin selec-
tion can explain altruism in that acts are selected that have the potential to help those who
share the same genes survive, even at the risk of endangering the self, with altruism more
likely the closer the relationship between donor and recipient. A third explanatory mecha-
nism is Trivers’ (1971) notion of reciprocal altruism whereby individuals help others be-
cause of the expectation that this will ultimately benefit and enhance their own survival:
What drives altruism is the self-serving belief that the beneficiary of the altruistic act will
one day reciprocate a similar act.
Evolutionary perspectives point to the universal potential for prosocial behavior. How-
ever, there are also individual differences in the innate capacity for prosocial responding.
Studies comparing the concordance patterns of adult monozygotic and dyzygotic twins
(e.g., Rushton, Fulker, Neale, Nias, & Eysenck, 1986) indicate that approximately 50% of
the variance on scales of altruism, empathy, and nurturance can be attributed to genetic
influence. Zahn-Waxler, Robinson, and Emde (1992) have reported evidence for the her-
itability of prosocial acts and empathic concern at 14 and 20 months, although much less
than the 50% obtained in twin studies with adults. One explanation for the increasing
hereditary influence with age involves the concept of niche picking, or the tendency to
select environments that fit with genetic tendencies. Young children’s environments are
more likely to be selected for them by adults, but as they grow older, they become increas-
ingly more active in choosing their own.
If the tendency to behave prosocially is inherited, what is it that one inherits? One
possibility is biologically based temperamental characteristics that are related to empathy.
Thus temperamental differences in emotionality and emotion regulation have been impli-
cated in differential empathic and subsequent prosocial responding in children (see Eisenberg
& Fabes, 1998). In general, children who are well regulated and low in impulsivity and,
accordingly, who are emotionally positive tend to be more prosocial. The relation between
negative emotionality, empathy, and prosocial behavior is more complicated and may de-
pend on the intensity and type of negative emotions (e.g., anger or sadness). Further,
emotionality may interact with regulation in different ways to affect the incidence of prosocial
responding. For example, the tendency to experience negative emotions like sadness or
anxiety may be associated with empathic responding for individuals who are well regulated
with respect to their emotions but not for those who become overwhelmed by such emo-
tions (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000).
Clearly, the capacity for prosocial behavior is founded in biology. But prosocial behavior
is also strongly influenced by different socialization experiences and, necessarily, the inter-
action of these experiences with biological givens. We shall turn to a discussion of these
experiences, but first we discuss empathy, one of the sources of internally-governed moti-
vation described above, and a source that has received detailed attention.
Empathy and Prosocial Behavior
Empathic concern is an important motivator of prosocial behavior. Both empathy – re-

sponding to another’s distress with a similar emotion – and sympathy – responding to
another’s distress with feelings of sadness or concern – are vicarious affective responses that
can be experienced in the face of another person’s emotion or situation. These uncomfort-
able responses lead individuals to take even costly action in order to alleviate the other
person’s need. Although empathy and sympathy are not identical, researchers generally
have not distinguished between them.
Early studies examining empathy and prosocial behavior in children failed to show a
consistent relationship between the two (Underwood & Moore, 1982). Recent methodo-
logical and conceptual advances, however, have enabled researchers to demonstrate a link-
age. With respect to methodological advances, early measures involved children reporting
their own feelings in response to stories depicting a child experiencing distress (e.g., Feshbach
& Roe, 1968). These stories, however, were probably too short to evoke sufficient affect in
the child, and the procedure may have created strong demand characteristics to respond in
a socially desirable manner. When physiological arousal and facial expression are used to
infer empathy, however, the relation with prosocial behavior becomes more compelling
(Eisenberg & Miller, 1987). A conceptual advance that led to clearer understanding of the
relation between empathy and prosocial behavior involves the distinction between differ-
ent kinds of vicarious emotional responses. In particular, Batson and his colleagues (see
Batson, 1991) have suggested that empathy and sympathy need to be differentiated from
personal distress. The former are other-focused emotional reactions whereas the latter is a
self-focused response involving such negative emotions as anxiety and feelings of distur-
bance. While both can lead to prosocial actions, empathy is more likely to do so, given that
the primary goal of the individual experiencing it is to increase the other’s welfare. In
contrast, in the case of personal distress, the individual’s primary goal is to relieve his or her
own discomfort. In the latter case prosocial behavior occurs only if it is the most cost-
effective way of reducing the individual’s own distress. If other less costly means exist, for
example, escaping from the distress-provoking situation, those alternatives will be pre-
ferred and prosocial behavior will not occur.
Considerable research with adults has supported the importance of this distinction
(Batson, 1991). Researchers have also obtained similar findings with children (see Eisenberg
& Fabes, 1998). In these studies, children typically watch a short film depicting other
individuals in a state of distress or need, and their emotional reactions to the film are
measured. To distinguish empathy from personal distress children are asked to indicate
how they feel by rating adjectives, pointing at line drawings depicting feelings, or simply
verbalizing how they feel. Facial expression during the film is also used to make the distinc-
tion, with expressions of anxiety and distress indicating personal distress and concerned
attention indicating empathy. As well, physiological indices are employed, with heart rate
deceleration a marker of other-oriented sympathetic responding and heart rate accelera-
tion and skin conductance reactivity corresponding to a self-focused distress reaction. Fol-
lowing assessment of vicarious emotional reactions, children are given the opportunity to
help others at some cost to themselves by, for example, giving up their recess time in the
near future to help gather homework materials for injured children, or putting crayons
into small boxes for hospitalized children instead of playing with attractive toys. The situ-
ation is also structured so that they have the opportunity to escape the emotion-inducing
situation, and they are made aware of the fact that no one will know if they have behaved
prosocially because the opportunity to do so occurs in private. Overall, a consistent pattern
of results has emerged from these studies. In general, the more empathy and sympathy
children exhibit in reaction to another’s distress, as indicated by self-report and facial and
physiological indices, the more they tend to behave prosocially by helping others in need.
In contrast, when children respond to another’s distress by demonstrating self-focused
personal distress, they tend to exhibit less prosocial behavior.
Determinants of empathy and personal distress
Several child characteristics affect emotional responsiveness to the distress of others. One is
the ability to take the perspective of others: Chalmers and Townsend (1990), for example,
have demonstrated that training in perspective taking increased the self-reported empathy
level of maladjusted girls. Temperament, as noted earlier, also plays a role in empathic
responding. Children prone to intense and frequent negative emotions tend to exhibit less
sympathy and often more personal distress. As well as children who can effectively regulate
emotional reactions exhibit more sympathetic responding and sometimes less personal
distress than those who have more difficulty with self-regulation (see Eisenberg, Wentzel,
& Harris, 1998). Thus it appears that the ability to maintain an optimal level of arousal in
response to another’s distress is conducive to high empathy and relatively low personal
distress, whereas becoming overly aroused leads to high personal distress and low empathy.
Finally, the effects of parental characteristics and childrearing practices have been linked to
empathic responding. Mothers who are empathic and high on perspective taking and who
respond sensitively to their children’s needs for comfort have children who are highly
empathic (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1992; Tromsdorff, 1991). Indeed, these maternal charac-
teristics are the hallmark of secure mother–child attachment, with secure attachment asso-
ciated with greater empathic responding to peers (Kestenbaum, Farber, & Sroufe, 1989)
and with more sympathy and fewer distress reactions in response to mothers’ enactments
of negative emotions (Denham, 1994). With respect to childrearing practices, the use of
induction or directing children to consider how their behavior has affected others has also
been linked to more child empathy and, consequently, more prosocial behavior (Krevans
& Gibbs, 1996).
Of course, the various factors described above may be related to or interact with, one
another, although research to date has not focused on such relations. Some possibilities
with respect to such interaction, for example, temperament and experience, are discussed
in the following section.
Socializing Prosocial Behavior
Promoting internalization of values
Socialization researchers have tried to identify actions by agents of socialization (primarily

parents) that will encourage children to adopt a caring orientation that seems to come
from within, to be self-generated, or is internalized. Grusec and Goodnow (1994) have
suggested that effective internalization of values involves two steps: 1) children’s accurate
perception of the socialization agent’s (usually the parent’s) message and 2) acceptance of
that message. The first step is accomplished through clear, frequent, and consistent expres-
sion of a value in a way that matches the cognitive capacity of the child. The second step is
facilitated by three sets of variables. The first set involves the child seeing a value as accept-
able or appropriate, that is, parental demands seem reasonable, arguments made to sup-
port a position are believable, and the intervention is matched appropriately to the child’s
temperament and mood state. Parents whose children tend to become aroused in response
to other people’s expressed emotion, for example, might want to favor arguments for
prosocial behavior that focus on the distress of others (cf. Kochanska, 1997a, who has
demonstrated an interaction between children’s temperament and their responsiveness to
reasoning). Grusec, Dix, and Mills (1983) have reported that Anglo-European parents
rarely punish children for a failure to share or help: Punishment in this context, then,
should be viewed by the child as unfair and would therefore be less likely to promote
internalization. The second set of variables affecting acceptance has to do with motivation
to accept the message. Facilitating this are such variables as empathic arousal, desire to
please the parent, and minimal threats to autonomy. Finally, the child must feel that the
action is guided by a norm that has been self-generated.
Relationship variables. How do parents achieve acceptance of the value of concern for
others? One way involves the parent–child relationship. There are at least three aspects of
the relationship that have been considered by researchers. First, parents who are warm,
that is, who nurture their children and provide noncontingent approval have children who
display increased prosocial behavior, although the relation is not always evident (Eisenberg
& Fabes, 1998), possibly under conditions where the child has not accurately perceived
the prosocial value. Presumably, warm parents increase their children’s self-esteem and
thereby make them more inclined to assist others (Hoffman, 1970). As well, children may
wish to please parents who are nurturant and loving by adopting their values. Second,
children who are securely attached have parents who are protective and sensitive to their
distress and emotional needs. Not surprisingly, then, they have been shown to be more
sympathetic as preschoolers (Waters, Hay, & Richters, 1986) and to display more concern
for others at the age of 5 years (Kestenbaum, Farber, & Sroufe, 1989). Finally, parents who
are responsive to the reasonable demands and requests of their children have children who
are, in turn, more compliant to the requests of their parents (Parpal & Maccoby, 1985)
and who score higher on tests of internalization of parental values (Kochanska, 1997b). In
this atmosphere of mutual reciprocity child and parent develop shared goals, with the child
positively oriented to compliance with the parent’s demands.
Parenting practices: Reasoning, modeling, character attributions, and routines. A second set
of socialization variables moves beyond features of the relationship and focuses on parenting
practices. Hoffman (1970), for example, argued for the superiority of reasoning, particu-
larly other-oriented reasoning, in promoting prosocial behavior: Reasoning avoids the hos-
tility and oppositional behavior aroused by strong punitive or power assertive interventions
used alone (Hart, DeWolf, Wozniak & Burts, 1992), and it promotes the child’s empathic
capacity. As noted earlier, Krevans and Gibbs (1996) have reported that reasoning that
orients children to the impact of their actions on others is associated with prosocial behavior,
with empathy playing a mediating role. Other parenting practices include modeling of
prosocial actions. Thus children exposed to adults (parents and strangers) who display
prosocial behavior are more inclined to be prosocial themselves (Grusec & Lytton, 1988).
Character attributions, that is, applying trait labels, as in telling children that they are kind
and helpful people, are also effective (Grusec & Redler, 1980). Such labeling (which is
effective for 7–8 year olds, but not for 5–6 year olds) presumably leads children to find
explanations for their positive behavior in themselves rather than in features of the external
environment, and thereby to attribute their actions to a self-generated value. Everyday
routines provide another source of internalized values: When socialization agents involve
children in activities as a part of the natural course of everyday living strong habits develop,
with no feeling of external coercion. Accordingly, in an attempt to evaluate the effective-
ness of household work as a way of teaching children a sense of social responsibility, Grusec,
Goodnow, and Cohen (1997) found that children who routinely did work around the
house that involved benefits to other family members showed greater evidence of general
concern for others and prosocial action than those who worked only in response to paren-
tal request or who helped with tasks that were of benefit only to themselves. Thus it seems
that practice in assisting others that has become routinized may lead to habits of engaging
in helpfulness toward others.
Parenting style. Parenting style also has a role to play in the development of prosocial
behavior. Children of parents who are authoritative, that is, firmly controlling but sensi-
tive and responsive to their children’s needs, are more prosocial in the home (e.g., Robinson,
Zahn-Waxler, & Emde, 1994), at school (e.g., Krevans & Gibbs, 1996), and in a labora-
tory setting (e.g., Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996). In a recent longitudinal study (Hast-
ings, Zahn-Waxler, Robinson, Usher, & Bridges, 2000) mothers’ authoritativeness did
not predict children’s prosocial behavior at the time of its measurement, but did predict it
2 years later, both at home and at school, even when the child’s initial level of concern for
others was held constant. Thus the suggestion that authoritative parenting causes prosocial
action, rather than the reverse, is further strengthened.
Peers and siblings as socializers
The reciprocal and relatively egalitarian nature of peer and sibling relationships enables, if
not compels, the consideration of another’s thoughts and feelings. Accordingly, peers and
siblings provide, in addition to parents, a source of influence on prosocial development as
children learn to respond emotionally to and help each other. Interactions among children
provide prosocial opportunities that differ in nature from those that arise from adult–child
interactions (Zahn-Waxler, Ianotti, & Chapman, 1982). For example, children are more
likely to witness another child (vs. an adult) in distress because a child’s distress is often
more salient, and thus they will have more opportunities to practice comforting behaviors
with peers. Also, children are often in situations that dictate mutual sharing, for example,
of toys. Finally, in interactions with adults, children are more likely to be the recipients of
aid whereas, in interactions with children, they are equally likely to give and to receive aid.
Further, the motivations underlying children’s prosocial behavior may differ depending
on whether they are interacting with children or adults. For example, young children cite
more authority- or punishment-related reasons for complying with an adult’s requests,
whereas they are more likely to comply with a peer’s requests for relational reasons such as
friendship (Eisenberg, Lundy, Shell, & Roth, 1985). Consequently, the peer context may
be particularly conducive to the learning of other-oriented rather than compliance-ori-
ented prosocial responding.
Experiences with siblings are important in promoting prosocial behavior in part because
of differences in age between siblings. Older siblings have more opportunities to practice
prosocial behaviors and younger siblings can learn from the behaviors of their older sib-
lings (Brody, Stoneman, MacKinnon, & MacKinnon, 1985; Dunn & Munn, 1986).
Whiting and Whiting (1973) have noted the greater frequency of prosocial behavior in
cultures where children are assigned the responsibility of taking care of infants. Perhaps, by
taking care of younger infants, children learn greater sensitivity to what others are feeling
and, further, how to respond to those needs. As well, sibling caregiving is positively related
to mature cognitive and emotional perspective-taking skills (Garner, Jones, & Palmer,
1994; Stewart & Marvin, 1984), which contribute to effective and appropriate responding
to the distress and needs of younger children. Although the direction of the relationship is
unclear (that is, does caregiving promote perspective taking or are children with these skills
more likely to care for younger children?) it is plausible that sibling caregiving is an impor-
tant contributor to the development of perspective taking and thus prosocial responding.
The importance of age heterogeneity is further emphasized in Bizman, Yinon, Mivtzari,
and Shavit’s (1978) finding that children in age-heterogeneous kindergartens display more
prosocial behaviors than those in age-homogeneous kindergartens. Age-homogeneous kin-
dergartens, in contrast, lead to more competitive environments in which children might
not be as inclined to help each other.
The Development of Prosocial Behavior
Even toddlers are capable of substantial displays of concern for others (Zahn-Waxler, Radke-
Yarrow, Wagner, & Chapman, 1992). Indeed, the precursors of empathic responding
appear midway through the first year of life as babies cry when they hear others cry – a
primitive form of empathy. During the second year of life, as they acquire a concept of
person permanence, perceptual role-taking abilities, and a sense of personal identity, young
children begin to try to comfort both peers and adults who appear upset (Hay, 1979) and
forms of cooperation such as attempts to help with household work emerge (Rheingold,
1982). At this time children also begin to display the precursors of conscience or internali-
zation, with a developing awareness of rules and standards (Kagan, 1981) and an increas-
ing capacity to regulate their own behavior (Kopp, 1982).
A meta-analysis reported by Eisenberg and Fabes (1998) found that, overall, prosocial
behavior increases in each age period (infancy, preschool, childhood, and adolescence),
although the magnitude of effect sizes depends on a variety of variables including the type
of prosocial behavior under investigation, method of data collection, and target of behavior.
Nevertheless, although the capacity for prosocial responding may well increase with age, it
is clear that children also need to learn a great deal about issues around the appropriateness
of its expression. There is a large social psychological literature indicating that help is not
always appropriate under all circumstances (e.g., Fisher, Nadler, & Witcher-Alagna, 1982):
It threatens the recipient’s self-esteem, induces internal attributions for failure (Gross,
Wallston, & Piliavin, 1979), and leads to feelings of indebtedness (Greenberg & Shapiro,
1971). Help given to strangers is particularly likely to raise issues of indebtedness and
concern about repayment, whereas that given to family members is not (Clark, 1983).
These complexities, along with the need not to engage in too much self-sacrifice, provide a
challenging learning experience that has yet to receive a great deal of attention in the devel-
opmental literature.
Sex Differences in Prosocial Behavior
Although girls are commonly believed to be more prosocial than boys the evidence is in
fact equivocal (Radke-Yarrow, Zahn-Waxler, & Chapman, 1983). Eisenberg and Fabes
(1998) describe a meta-analysis that found modest sex differences favoring girls. However,
these differences appeared to depend on the type of prosocial behavior studied, the meth-
odology employed, and the target of behavior. For example, girls were more likely to be
kind or considerate, but not more inclined to share, comfort, or help. Also, girls were more
likely to be prosocial when the measure consisted of self or other reports as opposed to
direct observation, possibly a reflection of the stereotypes individuals have about how boys
and girls should behave rather than reflecting how they actually do behave. Finally, sex
differences in favor of girls were more likely when prosocial behavior was directed toward
an adult than toward another child, perhaps an indication of greater compliance with
adults on the part of girls than boys. Fabes and Eisenberg also reviewed sex differences in
empathy and found that girls tended to be more empathic than boys. However, once
again, these differences were more pronounced in self-report studies than in observational
studies, not appearing when physiological and other, more subtle, measures of empathy
were employed.
Some sex differences, however, may be more than artifacts of measurement. Grusec
(1987), for example, found that both mothers and fathers rated acts of self-sacrifice, such
as donating money to starving children, as more important for girls than boys as well as
rated themselves as more pleased when their daughters, rather than their sons, engaged in
such actions. Parents also reported that they were more likely to praise girls for self-sacrifice
and to criticize or discourage boys for the same actions. These findings support the possi-
bility of differential socialization pressures for boys and girls at least in some areas of prosocial
behavior.
Situational Determinants of Prosocial Behavior
Prosocial behavior also depends on a number of characteristics of the helping context. One
of these is perceived ability to help. Peterson (1983) found that children whose level of
competence was enhanced by training in required helping skills and who were assigned
specific responsibility for helping responded by helping more. This finding is comple-
mented by Midlarsky and Hannah’s (1985) report that young children, when asked why
they had not helped in an emergency situation, reported that they were not sure what to do
and feared disapproval. In contrast, adolescents’ reasons for not helping reflected concern
that the recipient might feel embarrassed or hurt. Related to competence is having an
understanding of the need to help. For example, Pearl (1985) found that 4 year olds were
more inclined to help in problem situations when both the distress level of the recipient
and the cause of distress were made explicit, whereas helping among the older children did
not depend on the explicitness of the cues. Thus young children need unambiguous cues
that the situation requires intervention and that they have the ability to intervene in ways
relevant to the cause of the distress. Children are also more likely to help those who are
important in their lives and who they like (e.g., Costin & Jones, 1992), those who are
younger and therefore more dependent (Midlarsky & Hannah, 1985), and those they
believe do not have control over their own misfortune (Barnett & McMinimy, 1988).
A situational determinant of helping that has received considerable attention is the ac-
tor’s temporary mood state. Being in a good mood seems to foster prosocial responding in
children of all ages, as well as adults (Cialdini, Kenrick, & Baumann, 1982; Isen, 1970;
Moore, Underwood, & Rosenhan, 1973). Many explanations have been proposed for this
relationship but each to some extent implicates priming processes. A good mood increases
the likelihood that other positive thoughts and associations will be generated in response to
subsequent events. As a result, individuals in a good mood will view a prosocial opportu-
nity more favorably than those in a neutral or negative mood and will be more inclined to
offer assistance (Carlson, Charlin, & Miller, 1988). Findings with respect to negative moods
and prosocial behavior are not as consistent and may depend on the age of the helper, with
negative moods inhibiting helping in younger children (e.g., Moore et al., 1973) but pro-
moting it in older children (Cialdini et al., 1982). Cialdini et al. suggested that this devel-
opmental change results from increasing experiences with adult approval for prosocial
behavior which leads these acts to be experienced as secondarily reinforcing. Thus their
performance becomes a source of self-gratification and thereby capable of producing a self-
generated improvement in mood that can be used to relieve states of sadness. Young chil-
dren, without this kind of experience, cannot use prosocial action as a way of producing a
positive mood. Alternatively, Rosenhan (e.g., Rosenhan, Salovey, Karylowski, & Hargis,
1981) has argued that negative mood enhances helping when the focus of the negative
mood is on another person but inhibits it when attention is on the self. He suggests older
children and adults have learned to focus their sad thoughts on others which, in turn,
arouses empathy and prosocial action. Younger children, on the other hand, may be more
inclined to focus sad thoughts on themselves, leading them to be more self-preoccupied
and thus less likely to help others.
Prosocial Behavior in its Social Context
Already noted is the fact that most of the research on prosocial development has been
conducted in a middle-class, Anglo-European context. In this final section we turn to what
is known about it in other social class and cultural contexts. Such attention broadens knowl-
edge of the different cultural manifestations of prosocial action. As well, it allows revision
and expansion of the ways it can be conceived of in the middle-class, Anglo-European
context about which most is known and from where most of our theory has come.
Social class differences
Studies of social class differences in prosocial behavior have provided mixed findings. Some
find that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more prosocial than those
from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Others find they are less prosocial, and yet oth-
ers that there are no differences (see Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). The answer to this com-
plexity no doubt lies, as it seems to with other similar complexities in the area, in a
consideration of type of prosocial behavior under examination and the processes by which
each is socialized, rather than in children’s overall prosocial inclinations. For example,
children growing up in different classes have different opportunities to help and act
prosocially. Thus Call, Mortimer, and Shanahan (1995) found that adolescents from lower
income families reported spending more time helping with household chores and taking
care of other family members compared to adolescents from higher income families (where
such tasks may be done in large part by hired help). In contrast, adolescents from higher
income families reported more opportunity to help others in their job setting than did
adolescents from lower income families, perhaps due to differences in their job environ-
ments or in their attitudes towards their job.
Children are also exposed to different social norms as a function of social class. Class-
linked factors such as parents’ occupation and sharing and helping arrangements within
the family likely convey different norms regarding prosocial behavior, which may in turn
be reflected in children’s behavior with others. For example, middle-class children shared
more candies with peers when they thought their identity would be known to the recipient
than in an anonymous condition, while lower-class children either did the opposite or
made no differentiation (Dreman & Greenbaum, 1973; Gupta, 1982). This suggests that
middle-class children rely more on a norm of social exchange, as opposed to lower class
children’s greater reliance on norms of communal sharing and mutual aid, characteristics
which probably stem from their different experiences at home and in the community.
Cultural differences
The most systematic examination of cultural differences in prosocial behavior has been
undertaken by Whiting and Whiting (1973, 1975), whose work we have already men-
tioned. Observing children between 3 and 11 years of age in six different countries, Whit-
ing and Whiting found that those from Kenya, Mexico, and the Philippines displayed
more nurturant behavior (e.g., offering help or support and making responsible sugges-
tions to others) than did those from Okinawa, India, or the United States. The factor that
most strongly accounted for these differences in prosocial behavior was assignment of chores
to children, particularly the care of infants. Responsibility for chores also explained some
of the differences in prosocial behavior observed among the children within each culture.
These findings emphasize – now in a cross-cultural context – the importance of everyday
routines or practice in the promotion of concern for others (see above). The findings also
underline how different aspects of the socioeconomic organization of a culture can limit or
expand the opportunities its children have to acquire particular social behaviors. Specifi-
cally, the more prosocial cultures were also those in which conditions were such that wom-
en’s overall workload and contribution to the family’s economy were greater, and hence
women delegated more responsibility to their children in these cultures (thus providing
them with more opportunities to practice prosocial behavior). Interestingly, Whiting and
Whiting also studied friendly sociable behavior which, as noted earlier, is closer to the way
children rather than researchers have defined prosocial behavior. Here the pattern of rela-
tions was different from that found for nurturant behavior, with American children more
friendly and Kenyan children less friendly, and with cultures having an independent nu-
clear family as the modal household structure associated with greater sociability. Thus
another feature of cultural organization is highlighted as having an impact on one form or
aspect of concern for others.
Socioeconomic organization is frequently associated with differential emphasis of val-
ues, and we turn now to a consideration of such emphasis and its impact on differences in
prosocial action across cultures.
Cultural values
Cultures that value prosocial behavior, such as those where the help of family members is
essential for the family’s subsistence, would be expected, of course, to instill higher levels of
prosocial tendencies in their children. In other cultures, however, prosocial behavior may
contradict other values that receive even greater emphasis. For example, cultures that place
great value on personal success may encourage self-enhancing tendencies such as competi-
tiveness and the pursuit of personal academic achievement, because such behaviors can
enhance the child’s likelihood of future social success. Such a focus on self-enhancement is
at least somewhat inconsistent with a focus on helping others (Schwartz, 1994). However,
as we shall argue below, the most important difference between cultures in this respect may
not lie in the degree to which they each value prosocial behavior, but rather in how they
each define it and socialize it.
Individualism and collectivism. A value dimension that has attracted much research inter-
est is that of individualism versus collectivism. In individualist cultures individuals are seen
as independent and autonomous, and their actions as determined by their own inner
motivations and dispositions. In collectivist cultures individuals are seen as part of a closely
knit social network in which they are interconnected entities, and where their identity is
derived from participation in the group and fulfillment of social roles. Individualist cul-
tures (loosely linked to Western countries) value assertion, self-expression, and self-actuali-
zation. Collectivist cultures (loosely linked to Asian, African, and Latin American countries)
value propriety, fitting in, and harmonious relationships with others (Markus & Kitayama,
1991).
Given this emphasis on harmony and relatedness in collectivist cultures, some research-
ers have hypothesized that children reared in those cultures would show less aggression and
more prosocial behavior compared to children reared in individualist cultures. In general,
research has supported the contention regarding aggression (Zahn-Waxler, Friedman, Cole,
Mizuta, & Hiruma, 1996). However, the evidence to date has been less persuasive with
respect to predictions about prosocial behavior. Although Stevenson (1991) reported greater
sharing, comforting, and helping among kindergartners in Japan and Taiwan compared to
the United States, the differences were small, and the incidence of prosocial behavior was
high in all three cultures. Trommsdorff (1995) found equal levels of empathy and prosocial
behavior among Japanese and German 5-year-old girls in their responses to a distressed
adult and Zahn-Waxler et al., (1996) report that American preschoolers enacted the same
amount of, and in some contexts more, prosocial themes in response to hypothetical social
dilemmas compared to Japanese preschoolers. Part of the difficulty here may be that there
is heterogeneity of values in any culture, which is possibly greater in some than others.
Thus, while Japan may be more likely to be cited as a collectivist culture, it may not be a
strong exemplar of the construct.
It is also possible that cultural values reveal themselves not in total amount of prosocial
behavior but in other of its aspects, such as which type of prosocial behavior is most valued.
Members of individualist cultures seem to evaluate unsolicited or spontaneous prosocial
behavior more highly than that which is reciprocal or solicited, while individuals with a
collectivist orientation (Hindus and Israelis of Middle-Eastern descent) think equally highly
of, or even prefer, reciprocal or solicited prosocial behavior (Jacobsen, 1983; Miller &
Bersoff, 1994). These studies suggest cultural differences, then, in conceptions of what
constitutes desirable prosocial behavior, with reciprocity and responsiveness to other’s needs
judged more positively in a culture more strongly characterized by interdependence and
compliance with social roles than one more strongly characterized by autonomy and feel-
ings of self-generation.
Different conceptions of what constitutes desirable prosocial behavior are also reflected
in cultural differences in socialization. Rather than focusing on techniques that facilitate
feelings of self-generation, cultures favoring interdependence and reciprocity emphasize
social structure and one’s role in it (Schwartz, 1994). Thus authoritative parenting is rela-
tively uncommon among Japanese mothers, with parenting more likely to be either indul-
gent or strict (Power, Kobayashi-Winata, & Kelly, 1992). Similarly, Stevenson (1991)
reports that Japanese and Chinese parents promote interdependence by forming strong
affectional bonds with their young children, and making firm demands for adherence to
social norms when they grow older. Reliance on the formation of strong parent–child
bonds and later strong demands for prosocial behavior may be a better approach for teach-
ing reciprocity and responsiveness than is an approach that emphasizes autonomy and
choice.
Different conceptions of prosocial behavior and differences in socialization are reflected
in the nature of attributions made for prosocial behavior. Miller (1984) found that al-
though 8- and 11-year-old American and Hindu children do not differ in the kinds of
explanations they provide for prosocial (as well as deviant) acts, by the time they reach
adulthood Americans make more references to the actor’s dispositions (e.g. personality
traits) and fewer references to the context (e.g. the actor’s social role) compared to Hindu
individuals. Again, this suggests that Americans learn to view prosocial behaviors as ema-
nating from inner motives and dispositions, whereas Hindus are socialized to view prosocial
behavior as stemming from the social context. There is no reason to think that attributions
to personality traits are more likely to promote positive behavior than are attributions to
social role demands. Indeed, each should probably be seen as fitting with the particular
context in which it occurs. And, as noted above, different socialization practices are re-
quired in order to achieve the particular outcome stressed by the culture. One is left to
wonder, however, given the increasing inclusion in Western culture of so many people
from cultures where autonomy is not so central, whether current emphases on autonomy
and self-generation may need to be replaced. Thus, the growing heterogeneity of Western
culture challenges researchers to rethink some very basic theoretical issues in the study of
socialization.
Conclusion
In this survey we have attempted to demonstrate that, although much is known about
children’s prosocial behavior, much remains to be learned. It is evident that the multifac-
eted nature of the construct has led to confusions and vagueness that can only be resolved
with greater care in identification of the kind of prosocial action under consideration. As
well, increasing information about the meaning and the antecedents of prosocial behavior
in a variety of cultural contexts requires questioning of some of the most basic concepts of
socialization theory. We have come a considerable distance in our understanding of con-
cern for others, but we still have some distance to go.
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Children’s Social and Moral Reasoning 475
24
Children’s Social and Moral Reasoning
Charles C. Helwig and Elliot Turiel
Introduction
The study of morality has been approached from different perspectives within several dis-
ciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. In psychology,
proponents of the major theoretical approaches have attempted to explain the acquisition
or development of morality. Behavioristic and social learning theorists have proposed that
moral development entails a process of acquiring behaviors (Skinner, 1971) or internaliz-
ing the standards and values of society so that they are maintained without the necessity of
external surveillance (Aronfreed, 1968). Psychoanalytic theorists, too, have presumed that
morality comes from the incorporation of societal standards (Freud, 1930). In the psycho-
analytic account the process of moral development, as well as the maintenance of morality,
is full of conflict and tension for individuals. This is because in acquiring society’s moral
standards the individual must control strongly felt instinctual drives and needs (through
the formation of what Freud referred to as a superego). The emotion of guilt operates so as
to maintain control over instincts.
An alternative view on moral development, keeping with a long line of philosophical
analyses from Aristotle to Kant and to modern versions (e.g., those of Dworkin, 1977;
Gewirth, 1978; Rawls, 1971), is that it involves the construction of judgments about wel-
fare, justice, and rights through children’s social interactions. Extensive study of children’s
moral judgments dates back to the work of Jean Piaget (1932). Piaget’s research was ex-
tended a number of years later by Lawrence Kohlberg (1981), who was instrumental in
drawing attention to the importance of processes of judgment in the moral realm (as well
Preparation of this chapter was supported by a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada to Charles C. Helwig.
476 Charles C. Helwig & Elliot Turiel
as in stimulating renewed interest in Piaget’s research on moral development). Taken to-

gether, the research of Piaget and Kohlberg went far in demonstrating that children do not
solely accommodate to societal standards or comply with rules and parental or other social
expectations. Rather, children attempt to understand social relationships, and in the proc-
ess construct judgments about right and wrong, about how people should act towards each
other.
There is now substantial evidence demonstrating that children form systematic judg-
ments about right and wrong, in the moral sense, that are central to their actions, social
interactions, and development. Piaget and Kohlberg each also described a sequence for the
development of moral judgments in which concepts of justice and rights are not con-
structed until late childhood or adolescence. Research on a variety of aspects of children’s
social and moral judgments conducted over the past two decades has shown, however, that
young children begin to develop moral judgments, distinct from other types or domains of
social judgments. After a brief overview of the ways Piaget and Kohlberg characterized
children’s moral judgments, we consider the research on how children form moral judg-
ments that differ from their judgments about the domains of societal convention and
personal jurisdiction. We also consider issues raised by this “domain” approach for devel-
opment and culture.
The Development of Social and Moral Judgments
The moral thinking of young children was described by both Piaget and Kohlberg as con-
crete and oriented toward punishment, respect for authority, and the maintenance of ex-
isting social rules and laws. Piaget (1932) described moral development as moving from an
orientation characterized by heteronomy, or a strong respect for adult authority and rules,
to an autonomous morality in later childhood in which rules are understood as social
constructions formulated in social relations of cooperation among peers. According to
Piaget, the young child views social rules as fixed and unalterable, and conceptualizes moral
obligation in terms of strict adherence to the rules or commands of adult authorities. A
morality based on adult constraint gives way in later childhood to a morality based on
mutual respect, or cooperation. This progression is facilitated by the older child’s cognitive
development from egocentrism to perspectivism, and by a corresponding shift in the child’s
social relations from one-way relations of adult constraint to reciprocal relations of mutual
respect among peers.
Similarly, Kohlberg (1981) characterized children’s moral reasoning in terms of a pun-
ishment and obedience orientation. Kohlberg believed that Piaget mischaracterized the
thinking of the young child as reflecting a reverence for rules; Kohlberg, rather, saw young
children’s moral thinking as expressing an expedient concern with obedience to authority
in order to avoid punishment. Nonetheless, Kohlberg likewise saw the young child as
prone to take the perspective of authority in moral judgments and to exhibit a focus on the
concrete consequences of moral acts and disobedience. Based on analyses of children’s
reasoning about moral dilemmas, Kohlberg described moral development as moving through
a series of stages, in which morality is defined first in terms of punishment or obedience to
authority, through a conventional level in which individuals take the perspective of the
legal system and uphold existing laws (a “law and order” orientation), and finally, in adult-
hood, a principled level may be reached where individuals develop truly moral abstract
principles of justice and rights (an orientation reached only by a minority of adults).
These propositions yield a portrait of young children’s moral reasoning as oriented to-
ward authority and characterized by rigid adherence to and respect for, existing social
rules, norms, and customs. A substantially different picture of children’s moral judgments
has emerged from research that examined directly whether children make distinctions be-
tween different kinds of social rules and acts. It is a portrait in which children distinguish
among social rules in accordance with different domains of social reasoning, and in which
they possess conceptions of autonomy, rights, and democracy which sometimes lead them
to take a critical perspective on the dictates of authorities and existing social systems. Even
young children possess moral concepts that are independent of authority or existing social
sanctions or rules, and their moral judgments are sensitive to both the content of social rules
and the context of their application.
Researchers working within what has come to be known as the “domain approach” have
proposed that children’s thinking is organized from an early age into the domains of moral-
ity and social convention (Turiel, 1983). The moral domain pertains to issues of harm, fair-
ness, and rights. The social conventional domain comprises behavioral uniformities that serve
to coordinate social interactions in social systems (e.g., the organizational rules of the class-
room, or uniformities involving matters like dress, etiquette, or titles). Research with chil-
dren of a variety of ages has shown that they discriminate between moral and social
conventional events and reason about them differently (see Turiel, 1998, for a review). Two
types of assessments have been employed in the research on children’s domain distinctions.
The first, termed criterion judgments, pertains to the criteria used in making judgments of
acts or rules associated with each domain. Criterion judgments include judgments of the
generalizability, universality, rule-contingency, and alterability of prohibitions regarding the
act. Judgments of moral transgressions (e.g., hitting, stealing) have been found to be
generalizable (i.e., wrong across social contexts), non-rule-contingent (i.e., wrong even if
there were no rule against it), and rules that pertain to moral acts are seen as unalterable. In
contrast, social conventional transgressions (e.g., calling a teacher by his/her first name, eat-
ing with one’s fingers) are seen as relative to the social context, contingent on the existence of
an explicit social rule, and rules regarding social conventions are seen as alterable by author-
ity or social consensus. For example, children judge it acceptable to call a teacher by his or
her first name in a school in which there was no rule or social uniformity prohibiting it, and
existing rules prohibiting the behavior were seen as alterable if the relevant authorities ap-
proved. In contrast, hitting is judged as wrong even if a teacher permitted it, and rules about
hitting were not seen as alterable by the commands of those holding authority.
The second type of assessment in the research on morality and convention is children’s
reasons or justifications for the judgments they make. Reasoning in the moral domain is
characterized by references to issues of harm, fairness, and rights. Reasoning in the social
conventional domain is characterized by references to rules, authority, social customs, and
the coordination of social behavior. The different reasons given by children for moral and
social conventional transgressions correspond to their criterion judgments and help ac-
count for their differential judgments of generalizability and rule contingency. Because
moral events entail acts with intrinsic consequences of harm or unfairness, children’s judg-
ments of these acts are independent of social conventional aspects of the social system,
such as authority or the presence of explicit social rules. In contrast, social conventions
derive their meaning from being embedded within an existing social system with pre-
scribed rules and roles, social hierarchies, or shared symbolic meanings that may be specific
to the group. Accordingly, the meaning of a social convention may change along with
social agreement or the commands of recognized authorities, and conventions may vary
across social systems and across time and place. It has been proposed that different social
interactions are associated with each of the domains, by which children construct different
types of social judgments (Turiel, 1998). For example, when faced with a moral transgres-
sion (e.g., one child pushes another off a swing), children may consider the direct conse-
quences of the act, and arrive at the conclusion that the act is wrong (Turiel, 1983). However,
when observing a violation of social convention (e.g., a child calls a teacher by her first
name) with no intrinsic consequences of harm or unfairness, children must infer the wrong-
ness of the behavior from features extrinsic to the event. If others (e.g., adult authorities)
react to the event as a rule transgression or as part of authority jurisdiction, children will
see the act as a violation of social convention.
A large number of studies have yielded evidence that children distinguish morality from
convention on these dimensions (see Turiel, 1998, for a review). As a means of conveying
how young children make this distinction, we present an example of responses given by a
5-year-old boy. The boy’s responses come from a study (Weston & Turiel, 1980) in which
children from 5 to 11 years of age were presented with hypothetical stories of preschools in
which certain actions are permitted. In one story children are allowed to be without clothes
on warm days (a conventional issue). In a second story children are allowed to hit each
other (a moral issue). Prior to the presentation of these hypothetical stories, the children
had judged both acts as wrong. The first interview excerpt begins with the boy’s responses
to the question of whether it is alright for a school to allow hitting and the second with his
responses as to whether it is alright to allow children to remove their clothes (the excerpts
come from Turiel, 1983, p. 62):
No, it is not okay. (WHY NOT?) Because this is like making other people unhappy. You can
hurt them that way. It hurts other people, hurting is not good. (MARK GOES TO PARK
SCHOOL. TODAY IN SCHOOL HE WANTS TO SWING BUT HE FINDS THAT
ALL THE SWINGS ARE BEING USED BY OTHER CHILDREN. SO HE DECIDES
TO HIT ONE OF THE CHILDREN AND TAKE THE SWING. IS IT OKAY FOR
MARK TO DO THAT?) No. Because he is hurting someone else.
Yes, because that is the rule. (WHY CAN THEY HAVE THAT RULE?) If that’s what the
boss wants to do, he can do that. (HOW COME?) Because he’s the boss, he is in charge of the
school (BOB GOES TO GROVE SCHOOL. THIS IS A WARM DAY AT GROVE
SCHOOL. HE HAS BEEN RUNNING IN THE PLAY AREA OUTSIDE AND HE IS
HOT SO HE DECIDES TO TAKE OFF HIS CLOTHES. IS IT OKAY FOR BOB TO
DO THAT?) Yes, if he wants to he can because it’s the rule.
For this child all rules are not alike and the type of act involved is evaluated in relation to
the jurisdiction of the person in authority. With regard to removing one’s clothes, the
justification of the act and the school policy are based on rules and authority. Although the
principal is the “boss and in charge” of the school, it matters in one case but not in the
other. This boy’s responses provide an example of the general findings of the study (Weston
& Turiel, 1980). The majority of children at all ages responded in similar fashion, distin-
guishing between moral and conventional issues regarding rules and authority.
Research on very young children’s ability to distinguish morality and social convention
suggests that judgments of these events undergo important development during the pre-
school years. A set of studies have examined criterion judgments with children from 2 years
to 5 years (e.g., Smetana, 1981, 1985; Smetana & Braeges, 1990). Children appear to
reliably distinguish basic or prototypical moral and social conventional events by about 4
or 5 years, although not at 2 years. Between these ages, children distinguish the events on
some criteria, but not others. For example, during the third year, children apply judgments
of generalizability to distinguish moral events from social conventions (with moral events
more likely to be judged wrong across social contexts than social conventions). By the end
of the third year, they also judge moral transgressions to be independent of rules or author-
ity (Smetana & Braeges, 1990).
Although young children appear to begin to construct a domain of moral judgment by
the end of the third year of life, complications in acquiring reliable justification data from
very young children have made it difficult to determine the basis of their judgments of
generalizability or rule contingency. One possibility, consistent with the domain perspec-
tive, is that young children abstract out harm from moral events and use these emerging
concepts of harm to guide their moral judgments. Another possibility, however, is that
young children may be simply responding to adult patterns of punishment or sanctions
(e.g., hitting is punished by adults, therefore it is wrong) rather than using features of
actions such as harm in making these judgments. Because moral actions have consequences
of harm or unfairness, it is difficult to address this question with normal moral acts such as
hitting used in these studies. However, a procedure devised in a study by Zelazo, Helwig,
and Lau (1996) gets around this problem. In the study, children were given examples of
unusual or “noncanonical” moral events to make judgments about. For example, children
were given the fanciful example of an unusual animal, from a far away place, that feels
good when it is hit but is hurt when petted. This noncanonical example was contrasted
with the “normal” case of an animal that is hurt when hit and that likes to be petted. In the
study, 3–5 year olds were asked to judge the actions of agents with harmful or beneficent
intentions who performed the actions of hitting or petting on each of these animals. It was
found that 3 year olds judged it wrong to inflict harm on either animal, even in the
noncanonical case when the action involved petting. Children’s moral judgments were not
based on a simple association between hitting and punishment, but on an understanding
of the harm believed to underlie acts in both normal and noncanonical instances. Three
year olds also have been shown to make similar judgments about acts of psychological
harm (Helwig, Zelazo, & Wilson, 2001). These results suggest that children develop con-
cepts of harm by 3 years, which they may use to distinguish moral acts from other kinds of
social events.
Children also have been found to distinguish morality from authority and legal rules,
and to adopt a critical perspective on authority, especially when it conflicts with the de-
mands of morality (Damon, 1977; Laupa, Turiel, & Cowan, 1995). For example, Damon
(1977) found that young children do not accept as legitimate parental commands to en-
gage in acts which violate moral rules, such as commands to steal or to cause harm to
another person. Other research explored children’s judgments and reasoning about the
attributes that give legitimacy to authority, and how children account for the type of act
commanded (see Laupa, Turiel, & Cowan, 1995). When reasoning about acts entailing
theft or physical harm to persons, 4–6-year-old children give priority to the act itself,
rather than the status of the person in a position of authority. For example, commands for
children to stop fighting were seen as legitimate whether or not they came from adults or
children holding positions of authority. Children also judged commands from a peer (with
or without a position of authority in a school) to stop fighting as more legitimate than
conflicting commands from an adult authority, such as a teacher. However, with regard to
other acts, such as turn taking or interpretations of game rules, children do give priority to
adult authority over children or other adults who are not in positions of authority. Chil-
dren’s judgments of obedience in these cases are based on the attributes possessed by au-
thorities, such as their social position in a school or their superior knowledge and experience.
Children’s reasoning about authority is not based on unilateral respect or an unexamined
acceptance of authority injunctions; rather, even young children make subtle discriminations
taking into account the type of command given and the attributes that lend legitimacy to
individuals in positions of authority.
Children also take a critical perspective on rules and laws when they conflict with the
demands of morality – as demonstrated by a recent study (Helwig & Jasiobedzka, 2001).
In this study, children (6–11 years) were presented with hypothetical examples of a variety
of laws, including socially beneficial laws (e.g., traffic laws or vaccination laws) and laws
that involved injustice (e.g., laws discriminating against individuals on the basis of age,
income, or eye color). Children were asked to evaluate each law, to judge if it would be
legitimate for governments to pass the law, and to judge if it was acceptable to violate the
law. In general, children evaluated the socially beneficial laws as more acceptable and le-
gitimate than the unjust laws. Consistent with their law evaluations, children at all ages
judged the violation of unjust laws to be more acceptable than the violation of socially
beneficial laws. In fact, the majority of children in the youngest age group (6 year olds)
judged violations of unjust laws, but not socially beneficial laws, to be acceptable. These
findings reveal that even young children consider the content of law and are sensitive to
features of laws such as their potential to lead to injustice or harm in making judgments of
obedience and law violation.
The Development of Social Thought and Action Most of the studies considered thus far
examined children’s judgments regarding different aspects of morality and social conven-
tion. This leaves open the question of whether children’s actions are related to, or influ-
enced by, their judgments. Within the perspective we have presented it is, indeed, proposed
that thought and action are closely related to each other (Piaget, 1932). This does not
mean that we can simply predict what people will do from what they say they would do.
There are many reasons people may not be able to predict their own actions, including that
they cannot necessarily foresee the variety of issues that may come up in particular contexts
(Ross & Nisbett, 1991; Turiel & Smetana, 1984). The proposition instead is that people’s
judgments influence how they approach situations calling for actions, and that actions, in
turn, influence the development of their judgments. One feature of this proposition is that
children’s social interactions influence the development of judgments. A second is that
children’s judgments are important in how they frame events they experience, and that the
different domains of judgments have a bearing on this process.
A number of studies have examined children’s social interactions around moral and
social conventional events, with children ranging from 2–3 years of age to late childhood,
in a variety of contexts such as the home, the school, and the playground. The research has
shown that children’s social interactions are varied and differentiated according to do-
mains of reasoning (e.g., Much & Shweder, 1978; Nucci & Nucci, 1982a, 1982b; Nucci
& Turiel, 1978). Specifically, it has been found that children’s responses to moral trans-
gressions (e.g., when one child hits another, fails to share, or takes another child’s objects)
revolve around communications about the act’s effects on others, and attention to the
perspectives, needs, and expectations of others. By an early age, children are aware of, and
focus on, the consequences of moral actions, including pain and injury and the emotions
felt by others. Most of the observational studies have found that young children do not
respond as frequently to conventional violations as to moral transgressions. However, adults
do respond to violations of social conventions, and their communications generally focus
on issues of disorder, the importance of maintaining rules, and obedience to authority,
rather than on harmful consequences or the perspectives of others. These findings suggest
that the types of events that children experience, as well as the communications they re-
ceive or generate during social interactions are distinguished in ways predicted by the do-
mains of social reasoning. The results of these studies are consistent with the proposition
that children’s domain distinctions are based on early social experiences.
Other research supports the proposition that there is a correspondence between the
domains of judgment and how children approach behavioral situations (Turiel, 2000). In
this study, observations were made in elementary and junior high schools of spontaneously
occurring social interactions entailing moral events (e.g., hitting, fighting, sharing, taking
another’s goods) and conventional events (e.g., lining up for activities, sitting in assigned
seats). Observations were also made of events that combined moral and conventional com-
ponents (e.g., rules, practices, or authority dictates that entail unfair treatment). Shortly
after an event was observed, participants were interviewed to ascertain how they perceived
the situations and how they evaluated and judged various aspects of the events. About a
month later, the same participants were administered an interview about hypothetical situ-
ations describing transgressions comparable to the observed events (a total of 311 partici-
pants were administered the two interviews).
The findings on judgments about the hypothetical situations provide a comparison with
judgments about the events experienced by the children. As expected, most of the children
reasoned about the moral and conventional transgressions depicted in the hypothetical
situations in accordance with their domain classification. It was also found that in the
events that involved a mixture of components, children were able to separate the moral
and conventional components and judge in different ways about each. For the actual events,
the majority of children at each age judged that the moral acts would be wrong even if no
rule existed, whereas a minority judged that the conventional acts would be wrong under
those circumstances. Similarly, a majority judged that evaluations of moral acts were not
based on authority expectations, whereas a minority did so for the conventional acts. The
findings on justifications provide further evidence that participants were making domain
distinctions with regard to the actual events as well. The justifications for the moral evalu-
ations and judgments were mainly based on welfare and justice, and justifications for con-
ventional events were based mainly on tradition, authority, and personal choice. The
participants also judged each component of the mixed events differently, reasoning about
one on the basis of welfare and justice and the other on the basis of tradition, authority,
and social coordination.
Culture and Social Development
The research we have reviewed demonstrates that starting at a young age children form
different domains of social judgment. Children make moral judgments based on issues of
harm, fairness, and rights, and differentiate morality from social conventions, punishment,
and explicit rules. Children do not appear to go through a period of rigid adherence to
social rules, and unilateral respect for adult authority, but often adopt a critical perspective
in evaluating and judging the legitimacy of rules and authority.
Most of the research discussed thus far was conducted in North America – in Western
cultures. It may be, therefore, that the types of judgments found in this research reflect a
particular cultural orientation. Our view is that the development of judgments about mo-
rality and social conventions stem not from a particular cultural orientation but from chil-
dren’s experiences with others and their ways of making sense of those experiences. It has
been argued by some, however, that the distinction between morality and convention
stems from a Western cultural construction connected to a general orientation to persons
and society (Shweder, Mahapatra, & Miller, 1987). That view is based on the proposition
that cultures can be divided, more or less, on their orientations to individualism or collec-
tivism (Triandis, 1996). Western cultures are oriented to the idea of persons as autono-
mous human agents who are free to belong or not to belong to social systems and groups.
Social relationships in Western societies are seen as derivative and arising out of consent
and contract between these autonomous individuals. This leads to the idea of convention-
ality – that some obligations are determined by social contracts or arrangements that in-
dividuals willingly enter into. The morality of Western societies can be characterized as
rights-based, or one concerned with protecting and fostering the rights of individuals to
pursue their activities free from unnecessary external influence.
In collectivistic cultures the person is seen as part of a social network of interdependence
and morality is based on duties and maintenance of the social order. Moral duties include
what are seen as consensus-based conventions in Western cultures. Shweder et al. (1987)
conducted research in India, where supposedly the concept of the self as an autonomous,
bounded individual existing free from society but living in society is an alien notion. They
proposed that Indians would be likely to treat as moral certain events that Americans would
view as conventional or up to the individual’s choice, such as matters relating to diet, cloth-
ing, and other cultural or religious customs. They conducted a study with Orthodox Hindus
(both Brahmans, or upper-class temple priests, and untouchables) from a provincial town in
India, as well as with American middle- and upper-middle-class individuals. Participants
were presented with a large number of items describing violations of practices and norms.
Some were of the type that we would define as moral and conventional. A number of the
items they used pertained to content often identified in Western cultures with convention,
such as food and dress. These items, however, were also tied to religious practices. Examples
of this type are violations of prohibitions against a widow eating fish or wearing bright
clothing, or a son eating chicken and getting a haircut the day after his father’s death. It was
found that although a number of the moral items were judged in similar ways by Indians and
Americans, some of the “conventional” ones were judged differently by the two groups.
Items like the ones just described pertaining to food and clothing were judged by Indians as
serious transgressions and it was thought that the practices were not alterable.
The conclusions drawn by Shweder et al. (1987) about these findings – that what Ameri-
cans might treat as conventional is treated by Indians as moral – fails to account for a
significant aspect of what goes into people’s application of their moral judgments. We are
referring to their assumptions about reality. As shown by a re-analysis of the items (Turiel,
Killen, & Helwig, 1987), assumptions about the “reality” of an after-life and the effects of
earthly actions on unobservable entities, such as the soul of a deceased husband, father, or
ancestors entered into their moral judgments. As an example, it is believed that if a son
were to get a haircut and eat chicken the day after his father’s death the father would fail to
receive salvation. Although the beliefs about reality varied across cultures (Americans did
not believe these practices to result in these kinds of consequences), the moral concern
with avoiding inflicting harmful consequences on others appears to be shared. The events
interpreted by Shweder et al. (1987) as inherently conventional appear to have been trans-
formed into moral events (having harmful consequences for others) by virtue of the spe-
cific beliefs brought to them by Indians. This example shows the importance of considering
such beliefs (termed informational or “factual assumptions” in subsequent research on this
topic, see Wainryb, 1991) in studying the application of moral judgments.
Other research has confirmed that the moral and social conventional domains are dis-
tinguished in India and other cultures. For example, Miller and Bersoff (1992) found that
children and adults in India reasoned about school dress codes as social conventions, see-
ing them as alterable and relative across social contexts, whereas theft was reasoned about
as a moral event in the same manner as in the West. It has been found that children and
adults in several cultures distinguish morality and social convention, including Indonesia
(Carey & Ford, 1983), Nigeria (Hollos, Leis, & Turiel, 1986), Korea (Song, Smetana, &
Kim, 1987), Zambia (Zimba, 1994), and Brazil (Nucci, Camino & Sapiro, 1996). More-
over, research in India (Neff, 2001) and in other presumably collectivistic cultures (Wainryb
& Turiel, 1994) has shown that persons are often conceptualized as autonomous agents.
In particular, people in positions of dominance in the social hierarchy (e.g., as based on
social caste or gender) are accorded entitlements to personal choices.
The Development of Concepts of Autonomy, Rights, and Democracy
The development of children’s autonomy is an area that has received much attention in
recent research. In Piaget’s (1932) classic study, autonomy was described mainly as a
feature that emerges within children’s moral reasoning in later childhood, when children
transcend heteronomy and begin to make moral judgments that are independent of au-
thority and existing social rules. As previously noted, however, even young children have
been found to distinguish morality from authority and social convention and to identify a
moral domain comprising issues of rights, welfare, and fairness. The turn away from de-
scribing moral development in terms of a general shift from heteronomy to autonomy has
led researchers to refocus their attention on children’s reasoning about their own autonomy
throughout the age span. Researchers have also taken up the question of how early emerg-
ing concepts of autonomy relate to, and inform, more sophisticated moral concepts of
individual rights and freedoms.
Research directly examining emerging concepts of autonomy has found that young chil-
dren identify a domain of personal issues, distinct from the moral and social conventional
domains, comprising matters considered to be up to the individual’s personal choice and
beyond the bounds of legitimate regulation by parents, teachers, and other authorities. For
example, American elementary school children have been found to judge issues such as
choices about friends, appearance (clothing, hairstyle), and preferences for leisure activi-
ties, as up to the child to decide (Nucci, 1981). From the age of 7 onward, participants in
Nucci’s (1981) study stated that there should not be a rule governing these matters and
that they should be up to individual choice. Recent research (Nucci & Smetana, 1996)
suggests that the personal domain emerges during the preschool years. Preschoolers (3–4
year olds) have been found to make similar judgments about age-appropriate personal
issues. Observations of parent–child interactions show that children are much more likely
to challenge parental authority over personal issues than moral or conventional issues.
Nucci (1996) provides the following example of a conflict between a parent and a child
over what a child is going to wear on the last day of nursery school:
Mother: Evan, it’s your last day of nursery school. Why don’t you wear your nursery school
sweatshirt?
Child: I don’t want to wear that one.
Mother: This is the last day of nursery school, that’s why we wear it. You want to wear that
one?
Child: Another one.
Mother: Are you going to get it or should I?
Child: I will. First I got to get a shirt.
Mother: [Goes to the child’s dresser and starts picking out shirts.] This one? This one? Do
you know which one you have in mind? You have to decide, because we have to do car pool.
Here, this is a new one.
Child: No, it’s too big.
Mother: Oh Evan, just wear one, and when you get home, you can pick whatever you want,
and I won’t even help you. [Child puts on shirt].
The example illustrates a conflict between the parent’s assertion of a dress convention
(wearing the nursery school sweatshirt on the last day of school) and the child’s assertion
that it is a matter of personal choice. The example illustrates, first, that the child challenges
adult rules when they are perceived to infringe upon the child’s sense of autonomy and
choice. Second, the adult responds by recognizing the child’s agency and autonomy and
through negotiation and compromise. Although the child ultimately complies in the im-
mediate instance, the interaction concludes with the mother offering the child autonomy
about what to wear after school is over. Nucci (1996) proposes that these kinds of conflicts
and negotiations are central to the formation of a sense of autonomy and self, a process that
begins very early in life and continues throughout childhood and into adolescence. The
negotiations and discussions provoked by these conflicts appear to be important in aiding
the child’s gradual construction of independence and self-efficacy within an expanding
personal domain.
The specific example given above certainly has a middle-class, North American “feel,” at
least in the particular content invoked and in the granting of autonomy to very young
children. Nevertheless, evidence is accumulating that the personal domain is not a specifi-
cally North American or Western cultural construction. Nucci, Camino, and Sapiro (1996)
examined the judgments of middle- and lower-class children and mothers in cities and
rural regions of Brazil. They found that children across social classes and regions differen-
tiated among personal, moral, and social conventional issues in the same way as found in
North America. However, there were social class differences in the ages at which personal
issues were identified, with middle-class children claiming areas of personal discretion at
earlier ages than lower-class children. Similarly, mothers of lower-class children and moth-
ers from rural regions were less likely to grant personal decision-making autonomy to
young children. However, by adolescence, these differences disappeared. Both mothers
and children tended to grant personal decision making autonomy to adolescents over simi-
lar issues, and gave reasons of autonomy, choice, and the development of uniqueness and
identity in justifying their judgments.
Studies of social interactions of preschoolers in Japan (e.g., Killen & Sueyoshi, 1995)
suggest that the development of autonomy is an important goal even in a culture fre-
quently described as “collectivistic” and promoting group conformity over individual
achievement and rights. Killen and Sueyoshi (1995) found that Japanese preschools were
hardly “harmonious,” as sometimes described. Instead, Japanese preschoolers were involved
in a variety of interpersonal conflicts over personal claims, the distribution of resources,
and ways of structuring games and other group activities. Teachers preferred a strategy of
allowing children to resolve most conflicts among themselves. The interventions of teach-
ers largely took the form of encouraging children to speak up for themselves and to express
their desires or to tell others why their actions were wrong. This style differs from the
approach to discipline found in many American preschools in which transgressors are sent
to “time-out”. The Japanese teaching style may be seen as fostering both children’s au-
tonomy and independence (in promoting a tendency to speak out and to assert them-
selves), along with their interdependence, by encouraging them to resolve conflicts among
themselves and thus to enhance group cohesion. Another study conducted in Japan (Yamada,
2000) found that mothers of preschoolers do allow their children areas of personal choice
in ways not unlike American mothers (Nucci & Smetana, 1996). More research in other
cultural settings is needed, to be sure, but the available research suggests that the construc-
tion of a personal domain and individual autonomy is not particular to Westerners, and
that there may even be similarities across cultures in the sorts of issues judged to be matters
of personal choice.
Basic concepts of personal autonomy and individual choice of the kind discussed so far
are likely to serve as a foundation for more abstract notions of individual freedom, such as
in concepts of civil liberties like freedom of speech and religion (Nucci, 1996). Freedom of
speech and religion are important individual and political rights, often associated with
modern democratic political systems. Until very recently, it was assumed that concepts of
civil liberties and democracy do not develop until adolescence (Gallatin, 1985). This con-
clusion was based on previous research showing that young children are unable to define
basic terms such as democracy, or that they often subordinate individual rights and freedoms
to other concerns in certain situations (e.g., in times of war, or when rights conflict with
other important social goals). However, research examining children’s reasoning about
rights and democracy has shown that these concepts have emerged by the early elementary
school years, although they are not always applied in the same way as are those of adoles-
cents or adults. For example, research investigating children’s and adolescents’ reasoning
about freedom of speech and religion (Helwig, 1995, 1997, 1998) has found that by 6
years of age, children judge restrictions of these rights by governments or other authorities
as wrong and illegitimate. Moreover, young children, as well as older children and adults,
view freedom of speech and religion as universal moral rights that should be upheld in all
countries. Younger children (6–8 year olds) link these rights mainly to concerns with en-
suring personal autonomy and individual self-expression. However, older children (8–11
year olds) and adolescents recognize broader societal, cultural, and democratic aspects to
these rights. For example, with age, freedom of speech increasingly was seen as serving
interpersonal or societal purposes, such as fostering communication or facilitating the dis-
covery of important innovations that might help to improve society, or as allowing for
minorities to express themselves through protest or other democratic means in order to
rectify social injustices. Freedom of religion was seen by older children as serving not only
individual autonomy and personal expression, but also as ensuring that group and cultural
traditions may be preserved and respected.
Developmental differences have been found not only in how young children conceptu-
alize freedom of speech and religion but also in how they apply these concepts. In one
study (Helwig, 1997), children were asked whether it would be acceptable for various
authorities (e.g., the government, a school principal, or parents) to prohibit adults or chil-
dren from talking about a forbidden topic (e.g., rock music) or practicing a religion differ-
ent from that of the authority when the authority disapproves. Consistent with their
conceptualization of these rights as grounded in simple personal choice and autonomy,
younger children tended not to draw distinctions among different authorities or agents
and to view prohibitions on freedom of speech and religion as wrong in equal measure,
whether it involved restrictions in the school, the family, or society at large, and whether or
not it involved child or adult agents. Younger children focused on personal choice and
individual wants and desires (e.g., “It should be up to them; people should be able to do
what they want”). Older children (starting at about 11 years of age), adolescents, and
adults, however, drew distinctions between children and adults and between different so-
cial contexts. For example, many older children and adults saw it as acceptable for parents
to prohibit their young (but not adult) children from practicing a religion different from
their own. They considered parents’ rights to socialize their children as they wish, and
children’s competence and ability to make choices about matters of religion. Many older
children and adults did not see children as competent to decide their own religion, and this
decision therefore should be left up to the parents. They did not, however, see it as appro-
priate for other authorities (e.g., school principals and governments) to make choices about
children’s religion, nor did they see it as appropriate for parents to decide their grown adult
children’s religion.
Research focusing on judgments of democratic and other forms of social organization
has shown that children prefer democratic over nondemocratic forms of government
(Helwig, 1998). Elementary school age children were also asked about whether it would be
appropriate for governments of both democratic and nondemocratic types to pass laws
restricting the right of a minority to criticize the government. Although at all ages children
thought that such laws would be wrong, older children were more likely to consider the
type of government in evaluating whether or not such laws were acceptable. Older chil-
dren were more likely to see such laws as acceptable if passed by a democratic government
(e.g., a representative democracy) rather than a nondemocratic government (e.g., a gov-
ernment ruled entirely by the rich). The reasoning of the older children appears to reflect
a concern with adhering to and upholding democratic procedures which they judged as
fair; younger children, by contrast, simply focused on the decision as restricting individu-
al’s personal choice, and thus they failed to draw distinctions among types of governments
or to consider how the decision was arrived at.
In a study of children’s reasoning about fair procedures for making decisions in groups
(Helwig & Kim, 1999), young children were more likely to endorse autonomous or demo-
cratic decision-making procedures such as consensus (where everyone must agree on a
decision), than decision making based on unilateral adult authority across a variety of
decisions made in the peer group, family, and school contexts. Older children, in contrast,
drew distinctions about when and for what decisions either consensus or adult authority
would be appropriate. For example, older children thought that consensus would be an
appropriate way for a class to decide on where to go for a field trip, but not for decisions
about the curriculum. Older children reasoned that teachers had more knowledge about
curriculum matters than children, and that children would be tempted to compromise
their education by choosing “easy” subjects. In contrast, a field trip was seen more as a
recreational activity by older children, and thus within the bounds of children’s personal
choice.
The findings of the research on personal choice, autonomy, and civil liberties show that
young children develop notions of personal autonomy, which they use to ground emerg-
ing concepts of political and civil rights such as freedom of speech and religion. Interest-
ingly, younger children sometimes seem to overapply their notions of personal choice and
autonomy, leading them to assert their autonomy in areas where older children or adults
often do not (e.g., as in decisions about religious membership in the family or about cur-
riculum in the school context). The findings, therefore, show a complex pattern where
children develop concepts of autonomy at an early age and become increasingly sophisti-
cated with development about the conditions under which autonomy should and should
not be asserted. In some cases, this may even lead to situations where children assert or
attempt to claim autonomy over areas where it may not be developmentally appropriate
for them to exercise it.
Conclusion
The findings of the extensive body of research we have reviewed lead to a picture of chil-
dren’s social and moral development as entailing the construction of distinct domains of
judgment through their social interactions. Children distinguish between different types
of social rules and construct domains of moral, social conventional, and personal concepts.
Children take into account the consequences of actions on others and construct concepts
of harm, fairness, and rights, which they use to evaluate individual actions, social rules, and
social systems. Neither young children’s social judgments nor their social relations can be
characterized in unitary terms as reflecting heteronomy or unilateral constraint. Rather,
children’s social judgments are heterogeneous and differentiated by domain, and their
social interactions are characterized by both relations of cooperation and conflict, with
peers and authority figures, throughout development. Accounting for the different kinds
of social interactions children experience, and the concepts they construct from these expe-
riences, is an important task for an understanding of children’s social and moral judgments
and behavior.
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Children’s Understanding of Society 491
25
Children’s Understanding of Society
Martyn Barrett and Eithne Buchanan-Barrow
Introduction
All children are born into and grow up within particular societies. Each of these societies is
a collection of individuals who share common institutions and common economic, politi-
cal, and legal structures. For the developing child, an important part of the process of
growing up is to acquire an understanding of these institutions and structures, so that by
the time adulthood is attained, he or she is able to function appropriately within this
societal framework.
In addition, all societies contain many different social groups, for example, gender groups,
occupational groups, ethnic groups, religious groups, etc. An individual member of a par-
ticular society will have multiple group affiliations. Another important task facing the
developing child is to learn about these various social groups, to establish a sense of per-
sonal identity in relationship to some of the groups which are available, and to internalize
those norms, values, representations, and practices appropriate for those social groups to
which a sense of personal belonging is established.
This chapter summarizes the research which has been conducted into the development
of children’s understanding of the institutions and economic, political, and legal systems
which characterize the society in which they live, and the development of children’s under-
standing of three large-scale social groupings that characterize most societies: social class,
ethnicity, and nationality. (For a more extended discussion of this research literature, see
Barrett & Buchanan-Barrow, in press.)
492 Martyn Barrett & Eithne Buchanan-Barrow
Children’s Understanding of the School
The school is one of the most significant societal institutions that children come into
contact with beyond the family. The school is a complex institution, with many of its
workings, structure, and power patterns invisible and unexplained to the young child, and
it presents a considerable interpretative problem. Yet, in order to operate successfully in
this system, the child must acquire an understanding of the rules, roles, and power/author-
ity relations that apply within the school.
Children’s understanding of the nursery school
Corsaro (1990) studied 3–4-year-old children’s adjustment to the system of the nursery
school. He found that children first had to acquire an understanding of the social organi-
zation of the school, particularly the adult rules. However, once this had been achieved,
children made “secondary adjustments” to their shared understanding, in particular by
adapting and circumventing the adult-imposed rules in conspiratorial relationships with
other children. As Corsaro points out, this second stage in children’s thinking, as witnessed
by their actions, reveals the existence of a peer culture, which can only be established once
children have become cognizant of the authority system of the school.
Understanding of the school in older children
Research with older children has also revealed that children recognize the social system
which legitimizes the authority of teachers. Emler, Ohana, and Moscovici (1987) looked
at children’s understanding of the institutional roles of classroom teacher and headteacher,
examining, among other areas, the power of the teachers to make or change rules. Children
as young as 7 appeared to understand that teachers’ powers, with respect to school regula-
tions, were not unlimited, and that authority was hierarchically distributed. The children’s
responses suggested that they had grasped the basic fundamentals of the teacher’s role.
Variations in the social organization of schools may result in differences in children’s
thinking in this domain. Ohana (1986) examined children’s discourse on rules and re-
sponsibilities as a function of the type of school attended. She found that the talk of chil-
dren from so-described “traditional” schools differed from that of children in “experimental”
schools, suggesting they held different understandings of such areas as authority, rule func-
tion, and the requirements made by the system on both pupils and staff.
Buchanan-Barrow and Barrett (1996, 1998a, 1998b) examined the thinking of 5–11-
year-old primary-school children about the school, probing their understanding of rules,
community, self-system interaction, and power, and the links between them. The general
picture that emerged suggested that children’s thinking begins with a simple and narrow
focus on a few central features but, as the children move up through the school, their
understanding broadens to include more complex aspects of the school system. The chil-
dren began by first grasping the role of the headteacher, and even the youngest children
understood the position and importance of the headteacher in the school system. Then,
around 7–8 years of age, the children began to acknowledge the next layer down in the
power hierarchy, that of the teachers. The oldest children suggested that parents have
influence in school matters, and also claimed an important role for children. Thus, the
oldest children understood the school as a community, in which all members, from
headteacher to pupils, had a part to play. Furthermore, the children’s developing under-
standing of each system concept was linked to others, contributing to their overall compre-
hension of the system of the school.
Conclusion
The picture that emerges in this field is one in which the school-entering child rapidly
adapts to the environment of the school, initially learning about the more salient aspects of
rules, roles, and power/authority relations. However, children’s understanding of some of
the more subtle and less visible aspects of the school may take several years to emerge.
Children’s Understanding of Economics
Money and economic transactions are omnipresent in the societies within which children
live. People carry money around in their pockets and purses; children are given pocket
money by their parents; people use their money to buy goods in shops; and adults have
jobs that consume many hours of their lives in order to earn money. Children’s under-
standing of these various phenomena has been subject to intense research in recent years.
Children’s understanding of money
Understanding of the nature of money is fundamental to all aspects of socioeconomic

understanding. Berti and Bombi (1988) examined 3–11-year-old children’s understand-
ing of money and work using Piagetian interviewing. They found that 3–4-year-old chil-
dren have little understanding of money or the origins of money. Ignorant of the link
between work and money, very young children believe money is simply obtained from
pockets or purses. Between the ages of 5 and 7, children begin to puzzle out connections,
as their opportunities to observe the monetary transactions in everyday life increase. Their
explanations now reflect this, including such sources of money as the bank, shops, and
work. By about 7, children grasp the essential connection with work, and tend to believe
that the only way to get money is by working. Finally, by about 10–11 years of age, chil-
dren understand that it is also possible to inherit money or to obtain money through
crime.
The concept of profit also begins to be properly understood by the age of 11, with
children recognizing that shopkeepers must charge their customers more than they paid to
their suppliers in order to be able to make a living and to pay their employees (Berti &
Bombi, 1988). However, comparing data from Scottish (Jahoda, 1979), English (Furth,
1980), Dutch (Jahoda, 1982), and Zimbabwean children (Jahoda, 1983), Jahoda found a
lag in European children in their grasp of the principles of trading, although the stages in
their thinking were similar. Using a role-playing situation, Jahoda found that Zimbabwean
children display an understanding of profit at around 9, two years before European chil-
dren. Zimbabwean children’s more extensive and relevant experience of trading in their
everyday lives may bring about this earlier acquisition of the concept of profit, indicating
that cultural context has a role to play in the development of economic understanding.
Children in the United States also appear to acquire an early understanding of eco-
nomic phenomena. Thompson and Siegler (2000) looked at children’s understanding of
the causal relations between supply, demand, the price of goods in shops, and the volume
of sales (e.g., if something is too expensive, then few people will buy it). They found an
understanding of these relations emerging by 7 years of age. They argue that, by this age,
the children are constructing a naïve theory of economics, which they use to explain and
predict economic phenomena.
Children’s understanding of banking
Sociocultural influences in children’s economic understanding have also been found in

studies of their comprehension of banking transactions. Examinations of children’s think-
ing about interest payments on deposits and loans show that the thinking of Scottish
(Jahoda, 1981) and New Zealand (Ng, 1985) children lags behind that of Hong Kong
children by about two years (Wong, 1989). Although there are similar stages in their devel-
oping thinking about the bank and its activities, Hong Kong children display a compre-
hension of interest as early as 9 years, as opposed to around 11 years for the other two
samples. On the other hand, Japanese (Takahashi & Hatano, 1994) and Black South
African (Bonn & Webley, 2000) children show the least mature understanding. Chil-
dren’s development in this domain must be subject to complex influences; while Black
South African children have little exposure to banks, this is not the case for Japanese chil-
dren, who are growing up in a sophisticated economic system and might be expected to
display more mature thinking.
Further evidence of the complexities of development in this area comes from a study of
the economic thinking of children from 10 countries (Denmark, Finland, France, Poland,
Israel, West Germany, Algeria, Yugoslavia, Norway, and Austria) by Leiser, Sevon, and
Levy (1990). Differences in the sophistication of the children’s thinking about banks did
not always reflect the economic standing of their country. For example, while the children
of Finland were in the most mature group, the children from the neighboring country of
Norway displayed some of the least advanced thinking. Evidently, the development of an
understanding of the concepts of banking and interest may be influenced by factors other
than the prominence of the banking sector.
Children’s understanding of social class
Children are aware of inequalities of wealth at an early age (Jahoda, 1959; Leahy, 1981)
but initially at a fairly superficial level. When asked to describe rich or poor people, Jahoda
found that 6-year-old children perceive outward differences, mentioning variations in hous-
ing, clothing, and lifestyle. Leahy also reported that children aged 6–11 tended to empha-
size “peripheral” characteristics (possessions, appearances, and behavior) as opposed to life
chances or class differences. Around 6–7, children begin to explain inequalities according
to jobs, without reference to income, but by the age of 8, children become aware of the link
between social differences and income, and relate the differences in wealth to earnings
from work (Berti & Bombi, 1988; Jahoda, 1959). Leahy (1981) also found that there was
an increase, with age, in references to the role played by earnings in inequalities of wealth.
Cross-cultural research has revealed variations in children’s thinking about social class
according to nationality (Leiser et al., 1990). A comparison of Algerian and French chil-
dren (Roland-Levy, 1990) found that the most prevalent explanation for both poverty and
wealth in Algerian children was the personal characteristics of the individual, while for
French children poverty was seen as a consequence of the socioeconomic system. Further-
more, while the French children believed that fate played more of a role in being rich than
being poor, Algerian children were more likely to attribute being poor to fate. A study of
the thinking of Black children in South Africa (Bonn, Earle, Lea, & Webley, 1999) also
found differences according to location. Rural children were more likely to say that unem-
ployment was an important cause of poverty and inequality, than children from a semi-
urban location. Additionally, rural children had a more fatalistic view of poverty, attributing
it to God almost as much as to unemployment. However, Bonn et al. found that age was
still a more important factor than social niche. While the social environment may have
affected the children’s thinking about such concepts as wealth, poverty, inequality, and
unemployment, their capacity to formulate causal links between these concepts was more
likely to be associated with age than with location.
Evidently, there are culturally based explanations for income inequalities. However, as
most research in this area has been conducted from a Piagetian perspective, age is still seen
as having the stronger impact, with cultural context playing a more peripheral role by
affecting the rate of acquisition. However, there are some findings that suggest that social
influences may have a more important part to play in children’s acquisition of concepts of
inequalities of income (Emler & Dickinson, 1985; Emler, Ohana, & Dickinson, 1990).
Emler and Dickinson (1985) found differences associated with socioeconomic class, but
notably none with age, in Scottish children’s perceptions of wage differentials. For all the
occupations under consideration, middle-class children gave higher overall estimates of
income and reported a greater spread in incomes, with a much wider division between
manual and nonmanual occupations, than working-class children. Furthermore, the ex-
planations offered by the children for wage differentials varied according to socioeconomic
class, with middle-class children expressing greater support for income inequality than
working-class children. However, while children are developing their thinking about wage
differentials, their perceptions of the size of differentials are generally inaccurate. Overall,
Dickinson and Emler (1996) argue that children from different socioeconomic backgrounds
are developing in very different social worlds, and that this results in varying beliefs about
the extent, the causes, and the justifications for economic inequalities in society.
However, a replication of Emler and Dickinson’s study with West German children
(Burgard, Cheyne, & Jahoda, 1989) failed to find substantial class differences in the chil-
dren’s thinking, while conversely finding differences associated with age. It may be that
there is a greater awareness of class differences amongst Scottish children than amongst
German children. Or it may be that class differences partly reflect the greater availability of
relevant information to middle-class children, thus allowing them to report a more accu-
rate, rather than a more biased, understanding (Jahoda, 1981).
Children as economic actors
Research has examined children’s behavior as consumers, investigating their purchasing

and saving strategies. Children aged 6–10, tested on their skills as consumers, gave reason-
able estimates of the prices of such items as a pencil or a hamburger, and had some under-
standing of the need to judge prices in terms of the value of the item (Pliner, Freedman,
Abramovitch, & Darke, 1996). Other studies have examined children’s behavior in play
economies using tokens; while very young children have little concept of the value of
saving, between the ages of 6–12, children do develop more complex strategies (Sonuga-
Barke & Webley, 1993; Webley, Levine, & Lewis, 1991). By about the age of 9, children
understand that savings can be used for future expenditure and that savings and expendi-
ture are not separate activities. The 12 year olds displayed an even better grasp of the flows
of funds over the course of the study; not only did they save more, but they also used a
greater range of strategies to achieve their goals (Webley et al., 1991).
Children may develop good financial strategies from their parents’ approach to money.
Observations of children’s behavior in a make-believe shop revealed that children who are
in receipt of regular pocket-money from their parents demonstrate more mature spending
strategies than children who were given money unconditionally by their parents
(Abramovitch, Freedman, & Pliner, 1991). Abramovitch et al. suggest that the parents
who pay their children regular allowances are teaching their children to be responsible with
money and that this contributes to their spending behavior.
Conclusion
Much of the research into children’s economic socialization has been conducted from a
Piagetian perspective, proposing that children’s thinking develops according to a universal
series of stages which themselves are grounded in the Piagetian stages of development
(Berti & Bombi, 1988; Furth, 1980). This approach has drawn criticism because its em-
phasis on the universality of stages in children’s thinking has resulted in the underrating of
social and cultural differences (Emler & Dickinson, 1985; Emler, Ohana, & Dickinson,
1990). However, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the evidence
actually suggests that the development of economic thinking proceeds through the child
drawing upon both personal economic experience (e.g., dealing with pocket money, expe-
rience in trading) and socially provided information (which may be available, e.g., from
discourse with parents). As both economic experience and the social provision of informa-
tion varies according to sociocultural context, it is perhaps inevitable that the child’s un-
derstanding of economic institutions and phenomena will exhibit sociocultural variation.
Children’s Political Understanding
While children’s economic understanding has been extensively researched, children’s un-
derstanding of politics has been a neglected topic in recent years. This may be partly due to
the difficulty in finding a productive research perspective. Extensive research in the 1960s
and 1970s from within a political socialization perspective, which was favored by political
scientists, failed to elucidate developmental mechanisms and processes. Subsequent re-
search from a Piagetian perspective again drew criticism for its emphasis on universality at
the expense of contextual variation. However, there are indications that a more productive
line of research may be possible using the naïve theory approach as a conceptual frame-
work.
Content of children’s political understanding
Some studies have examined children’s political thinking by probing their knowledge of
specific political institutions and events through open-ended interviewing. Connell (1971)
investigated the political understanding of children and adolescents from a Piagetian per-
spective. Under the age of 7, children revealed intuitive thinking, in which political and
nonpolitical issues were undifferentiated. From 7–10, children demonstrated primitive re-
alism, in which they began to be aware of areas of political interest. Over the age of 10, the
construction of political order, children began to show a clearer sense of the tasks of govern-
ment and to see political power as hierarchically and institutionally structured. However,
even the older children still lacked much specific understanding. Moore, Lare, and Wagner
(1985) also used a Piagetian approach to investigate political understanding of children
from kindergarten to fourth grade. They found an increase in the content of children’s
thinking over these years, but with girls less knowledgeable than boys. Coles (1986) inter-
viewed children in a variety of countries to ascertain their views of political situations in
their respective countries. However, while these studies produced a wealth of detail about
young children’s knowledge of specific political institutions and events, they revealed little
of the meanings underlying the children’s responses, nor did they reveal much about the
influences involved in their formation.
Children’s political concepts
In order to examine more fundamental aspects of children’s political cognition, Berti

(1988) examined the political concepts of 6–15-year-old children. She investigated their
understanding of a hypothetical island-society, focusing on such concepts as power, con-

flict, laws, and community. Using open-ended interviewing, Berti found that the chil-
dren’s responses were grouped into four main areas: (1) collective needs; (2) conflicts; (3)
political organization; and (4) laws. The youngest children (under 8) were generally oblivi-
ous of conflicts, of the need for organization, or of the function of laws. Children aged 8–
9, after some prompting, mentioned chiefs who would govern by some sort of orders. Children
aged 10–11 demonstrated a major advance on the younger children and referred spontane-
ously to collective needs and political organization. By about 12–13, children volunteered
that the whole community was responsible for law making in some sense.
Children’s understanding of the state
In an examination of the concept of the state, Berti (1994) investigated children’s under-
standing of such concepts as state, democracy, law, and dominion, together with a series of
public offices and functions, through open-ended interviewing. Children aged 8–9 re-
ported a very simple and loose organization of people, which were under the authority of
the chief, but they had little understanding of current political events, nor did they have
any sense of a hierarchy of authority beyond the chief. By the age of 10–11, Berti argues
that children have some naïve theory of politics. Children now spontaneously offered the
word state when talking about Yugoslavia, and they also described Europe as a community
of states. Furthermore, they displayed a basic grasp of a power hierarchy. However, Berti
suggests that their political knowledge was not particularly well organized or accessible, as
they still occasionally reverted to less mature responses. Berti postulates that a shift occurs
in children’s political thinking around the ages of 9–10, as they move from seeing power as
generally concentrated in one individual to comprehending that political power is usually
hierarchically organized.
Children’s understanding of community
Buchanan-Barrow (2000) examined children’s understanding of a hypothetical commu-

nity, using multiple-choice and card-sorting methods to avoid the potential problem of
underestimating children’s knowledge by relying on their verbal reports. Children aged 5–
11 years were given a simple description of the political system of an imaginary island.
They then chose a decision maker for each of a series of problems for the islanders. The
youngest children tended to choose the highest authority, namely the island Prime Minis-
ter, to deal with most of the problems, even the more parochial ones. This supports the
view that children develop the concept of the chief at an early age, as other studies have
suggested (Berti, 1988, 1994; Connell, 1971). However, with age, children began to in-
volve more and lower levels of the hierarchy of authority, spreading the decision-making
process to include others, echoing Berti’s shift (1994). Finally, the oldest children dis-
played a belief that all members of the community should be involved in decision making,
which would appear to be similar to the views of the oldest children in Berti’s earlier study
(1988) that all should be involved in law making.
Conclusion
The shift in recent years from the focus on children’s political knowledge to investiga-
tions of their political concepts (Berti, 1988, 1994; Buchanan-Barrow, 2000) has opened
up the possibility of a more fruitful perspective for examining children’s political cogni-
tion, that of the naïve theory approach (Wellman & Gelman, 1998). These studies suggest
that children construct a naïve theory of politics, as they attempt to make sense of systems
of power or authority. Children’s thinking begins with a simple and narrow focus on the
role of a powerful individual, a chief, or prime minister, exercising absolute power from the
highest point in the system. With age, children develop an understanding of the hierar-
chies of power, as they become cognizant of the parts played at lower levels in the system.
Finally, as older children acquire a sense of the community as a whole, their thinking
displays a basic grasp of a consent to government, as they propose that all members of a
community should be involved in its organization. This “top-down” acquisition of politi-
cal system understanding echoes children’s developing thinking about the school (see above).
Children’s Understanding of the Law
Although some findings about children’s legal understanding emerge from the studies into
children’s political cognition, specific research focused on the legal domain has been a
fairly recent phenomenon. Interest has been prompted by the increasing levels of partici-
pation by children in legal investigations, either as victims in cases of neglect or abuse, or as
witnesses to crimes. Research has begun to examine children’s perceptions of the legal
system, as their legal knowledge may be linked to the effectiveness of their testimony.
Children’s legal concepts
Several studies have investigated children’s legal concepts. For example, Flin, Stevenson,
and Davies (1989) investigated Scottish children’s legal vocabulary and knowledge of court
proceedings. Children, aged 6–10, responded to 20 common legal terms (e.g., a law, oath,
evidence, trial), including some legal roles (e.g., policeman, judge, lawyer, witness). Overall,
children under the age of 10 did not appear to be well informed about the legal system,
while the youngest children were only reasonably familiar with four of the terms (police-
man, rule, promise, and truth). Under the age of 8, there was also considerable negativity
about the possibility of attending court, which was perhaps prompted by a generally held
belief in the younger children that courts were for “bad” people. Similar findings were
obtained by Saywitz (1989) and Warren-Leubecker, Tate, Hinton, and Ozbek (1989),
who looked at legal understanding in American children aged up to 14 years old. These
studies concur in finding considerable limitations in children’s understanding of legal con-
cepts below the age of 10.
Children’s legal reasoning
Two studies have examined children’s legal reasoning, using scenarios. Peterson-Badali,
Abramovitch, and Duda (1997) examined 7–12-year-old Canadian children’s reasoning
about plea bargaining. They found that the majority of children’s plea choices were con-
gruent with legal criteria rather than with morality, suggesting that children do have some
understanding of the relationship between important legal variables (such as evidence) and
plea decisions. However, the younger children (under 10) were generally unable to give an
explicit account for their plea choices. In another study by Berti and Ugolini (1998), Ital-
ian children (aged 6–14) responded to a crime scenario. They found younger children to
be largely ignorant of legal matters. However, there was a major shift around the age of 11,
when children demonstrated a more precise knowledge of the court and the role of the
judicial system within the wider state system.
Television as a source of children’s knowledge of the law
As very few children have direct personal experience of the legal system, one possible source
of children’s knowledge about the law is television. Children aged 3–7 years old may watch
up to 2 hours per week of programs related to crime and legal activities (Huston, Wright,
Rice, Kerkman, & St. Peters, 1990), and Saywitz (1989) found that extensive watching of
TV programs influences children’s legal conceptions. Durkin and his colleagues have con-
ducted a series of studies examining children’s understanding of televised crime and police
programs (Durkin & Howarth, 1997; Low & Durkin, 1997). Using both spontaneous
script generation and picture sequencing of police stories with children aged 5–13, they
found that while younger children’s thinking was generally limited to the crime and chase
scenes, older children’s thinking encompassed much more complexity, often including
formal legal processes. Younger children also had difficulty differentiating between their
own perspective on an event and that of a TV witness, who had not seen the crime com-
mitted, suggesting that children might fail to comprehend the problems and limitations
with witness testimony in real life. If TV crime and police programs do provide children
with their earliest source of legal knowledge, then it is possible that the nonveridical nature
of many TV representations could lead children to misunderstand real-life legal processes.
Conclusion
Children’s understanding of the law shows considerable developmental change over the
course of middle childhood, with the age of 10–11 appearing to be a significant watershed
in their understanding. The role that television may play in fostering children’s legal un-
derstanding serves to re-emphasize a more general point about children’s societal under-
standing: That in knowledge domains in which children have little first-hand personal
experience, much of their knowledge may instead be derived from indirect sources such as
television, parents or peers.
Children’s Understanding of Ethnic Groups
Nowadays, the societies within which children live are rarely homogeneous in terms of
their ethnic composition. Instead, most societies contain individuals from a number of
different ethnic groups. These ethnic groups may identify themselves, or be identified by
others, by all sorts of different criteria or characteristics, including country of origin, reli-
gion, culture, language, skin color, etc. The cognitive task facing the child in mastering
this system of ethnic categorization is considerable. Investigations into children’s under-
standing of ethnic groups have tended to focus upon three aspects of the developmental
process: the development of ethnic awareness; the development of ethnic self-identifica-
tion; and the development of ethnic attitudes.
The development of ethnic awareness
One method frequently used to study children’s ethnic awareness is to show the child
pictures or dolls representing people from different ethnic groups, and to ask the child to
point to, for example, the White person, the Black person, etc. This method has revealed
that even some 3 years olds can identify the ethnicity of Black and White pictures or dolls;
amongst 4–5 year olds, 75% of children can identify Black and White ethnicity; and amongst
6–7 year olds, the figure is usually 90% or higher (Clark & Clark, 1947; Williams &
Morland, 1976). These figures are typically obtained when the targets are White and Black,
and are exhibited by both White and Black children. Other studies have found that White
and Chinese-American children acquire the ability to identify Chinese people between 5
and 7 years of age (Fox & Jordan, 1973); White and Native-American children’s ability to
identify Native-American people continues to develop up to 9 years of age (Rosenthal,
1974); while White and Hispanic-American children’s ability to identify Hispanic people
continues improving up to 9 or 10 years of age (Rice, Ruiz, & Padilla, 1974).
One problem with these studies is that they only show that children can identify people
from different ethnic categories when asked to do so by an experimenter; they do not show
whether children spontaneously use these ethnic categories in their own social judgments.
Consequently, other methods have been used to see whether children do spontaneously
employ ethnic categories. Yee and Brown (1988) presented 3–9-year-old children with
pictures of people who differed according to their ethnicity, gender, and age, and asked the
children to group them. They found that by 5 years of age, ethnicity was used spontane-
ously to group the pictures by a third of the children, while by 7 years of age, ethnicity was
used by two thirds of them. Davey (1983), who tested 7–10 years olds using a similar
method, also found that ethnicity was used spontaneously more frequently than either
gender or socioeconomic status.
The development of ethnic self-identification
The standard method used to study ethnic self-identification has again been to show chil-
dren either pictures or dolls representing people from different ethnic groups, and in this
case to ask the child to point to the one which most closely resembles him or her. This
method has revealed that, from 3–4 years of age onwards, White children identify with the
White person or doll 75% of the time, rising to almost 100% by 6–7 years (Aboud, 1977;
Williams & Morland, 1976).
However, a more complicated picture has been found with Black children. Some Black
children identify with the Black doll or picture from about 3–4 years of age. However, a
large proportion of 3–4-year-old Black children tend to identify with the White person or
doll rather than with the Black one. Indeed, in one widely cited study, Clark and Clark
(1947) found that over 60% of the 3-year-old Black children identified with a White doll
rather a Black one; by 7 years of age, this figure had dropped to 13%. Comparable findings
have been obtained with Black children in many other studies (see Aboud, 1988, for a
detailed review). Similar trends have been found to occur with Chinese American (Fox &
Jordan, 1973) and Hispanic children (Rice et al., 1974): In both cases, half of the children
identified with the White person at 4–5 years of age, with identification with the ingroup
figure only rising to over 80% by about 7 years of age. Thus, it would appear that majority
and minority group children may differ in the development of their ethnic self-identifica-
tion. Nevertheless, it should be noted that by about 7 years of age, most ethnic minority
children do exhibit identification with their own ethnic group.
The development of ethnic attitudes
Children’s ethnic attitudes have also been studied using pictures or dolls. However, in this
case, the children are asked which one they like the best/least. As far as White majority
group children are concerned, they display a consistent preference for the White pictures
or dolls from the age of 3–4 years onwards, a preference which often grows in strength
between 4 and 7 years of age (Aboud, 1980; Asher & Allen, 1969).
However, once again, a more complicated picture arises in the case of Black minority
group children. Firstly, in some of the studies which were conducted before the end of the
1960s, it was found that many young Black children preferred the White dolls or pictures
over the Black ones (Asher & Allen, 1969; Clark & Clark, 1947). Furthermore, this pref-
erence for the ethnic outgroup was found to peak at about 6–7 years of age, before declin-
ing and turning into a pro-Black bias instead. Nevertheless, even in these early studies, not
all young Black children were found to exhibit this outgroup preference (Aboud, 1988;
Banks, 1976). However, the picture has changed dramatically since the late 1960s. The
positive bias toward the majority White outgroup seems to have disappeared in 4–7-year-
old Black children in more recent years, with Black children now showing an ingroup bias
which is equivalent to that shown by White majority group children (Aboud, 1980; Hraba
& Grant, 1970; Vaughan, 1978). In order to explain this change in the pattern of Black
children’s identity development, Brown (1995) draws attention to the fact that, during the
1960s, Black consciousness political movements appeared in countries such as America

and Britain, and these helped to foster a much more positive sense of minority ingroup
pride amongst Black people. Brown argues that this more positive group image is probably
the source of this change which occurred to the pattern of Black children’s ethnic identity
development in the late 1960s. So, the current picture is one in which both White major-
ity and Black minority children’s positive bias toward their own ingroup strengthens be-
tween 4 and 7 years of age.
As far as attitudes toward ethnic outgroups are concerned, these tend to be the inverse of
attitudes to the ingroup. Thus, as positive ingroup bias becomes more pronounced be-
tween 4 and 7 years of age, negative prejudice against outgroups also becomes more pro-
nounced. A peak in negative prejudice against ethnic outgroups occurs at about 7 years of
age. After this, there is typically a decline in both positive feelings about the ingroup and
negative feelings about outgroups up until about 11 or 12 years of age (Aboud, 1980,
1988).
Using an adjective attribution task in order to study this latter development trend, Doyle,
Beaudet, and Aboud (1988) found that, between 6 and 12 years of age, children shift away
from assigning mainly positive attributes to the ingroup and mainly negative attributes to
the outgroup at 6 years of age, to assigning both positive and negative attributes to both
the ingroup and the outgroup by 12 years of age. Similar developmental trends in the
attribution of positive and negative traits to ethnic ingroups and outgroups have been
found by Takriti, Buchanan-Barrow, and Barrett (2000) in a study of 5–11-year-old Chris-
tian and Muslim children. Thus, the decline in children’s prejudice toward ethnic outgroups
across the middle years of childhood seems to be associated with the increasing acknowl-
edgement that the members of all ethnic groups can exhibit both good and bad character-
istics.
Numerous studies have been conducted into the possible sources of children’s ethnic
attitudes, with parents and peers being the two main sources that have been examined.
These studies are reviewed in detail by Aboud (1988) and Aboud and Doyle (1996). The
overall picture which emerges is that, while some studies have found positive correlations
between the attitudes of children and those modeled by the socialization agents in their
environment (e.g., Branch & Newcombe, 1986), many other studies have failed to find
any relationship at all (e.g., Aboud & Doyle, 1996; Davey, 1983; Katz, 1976). In the light
of these findings, Aboud and Doyle (1996) conclude that children’s ethnic attitudes are
not strongly related to either their parents’ or their friends’ attitudes, and that the wide-
spread assumption that children learn their ethnic attitudes from significant socialization
agents is not substantiated by the research.
Conclusion
Children’s understanding of, and feelings about, ethnic groups show considerable change
between 3 and 12 years of age, with 6–7 years of age appearing to be an important transi-
tional age in the child’s development. Because children’s ethnic attitudes do not appear to
be derived from those which are modeled by either their parents or peers, Aboud (1988)
has argued that the development of ethnic attitudes is driven by cognitive-developmental
changes rather than by social influences. She postulates that it is changes to the way in
which the child is able to conceptualize large-scale social groups which drive the develop-
mental changes in the child’s attitudes to ethnic ingroups and outgroups between 3 and 12
years of age, with the onset of concrete operational understanding at 6–7 years of age being
the reason why this age is a watershed in the development of children’s ethnic attitudes.
However, this Piagetian explanation is unconvincing in the light of findings that there is
no significant correlation between the development of ethnic attitudes and the develop-
ment of concrete operations (Doyle & Aboud, 1995), that children are in fact able to
exhibit concrete operational abilities in many contexts well before 6–7 years of age
(Donaldson, 1978), and that historically the pattern of minority children’s ethnic identity
development exhibited a significant change in the late 1960s (Brown, 1995), a change
which cannot be explained on the basis of Aboud’s cognitive-developmental theory. Con-
sequently, this is a domain of development that still stands in need of an appropriate
theoretical explanation.
The bulk of the research in this field has focused upon children’s judgments concerning
those ethnic groups which are distinguished in terms of their physical characteristics such
as skin color and physiognomy. Very little research has been conducted into children’s
awareness of, ability to differentiate between, and attitudes toward, those ethnic groups
which are differentiated in terms of their culture, religion, and/or language. Exceptions to
this are the studies by Doyle et al. (1988), who studied children’s judgments of French-
speaking versus English-speaking people, and Takriti et al. (2000), who studied children’s
judgments of Christian versus Muslim people living in England.
Children’s Understanding of Nationality and National Groups
In addition to social class and ethnicity, the societies within which children live today are
also structured in terms of nationality. Because the entire land surface of the world, apart
from Antarctica, has now been divided up into nation-states, all children nowadays are
born within the borders of a particular nation-state, and they have to live their lives in a
world which is characterized by the existence of many different national groups. This sec-
tion describes the research that has been conducted into children’s knowledge of, and
attitudes to, national groups.
Children’s knowledge of their own country and national group
Many studies investigating children’s knowledge of their own country and national group
have used open-ended interviewing. These studies have shown that, up until about 5 years
of age, children often have little knowledge of their own country or national group, and
may even be unable to state the name of their own country (Piaget & Weil, 1951). How-
ever, from about 5 onwards, children are able to provide the name of their own country,
and are able to classify themselves as members of their own national group (Barrett, 2001).
Knowledge of emblems such as the national flag, national anthem, national landscapes,
national buildings, and salient historical figures also develops from about 5 years of age
onwards (Jahoda, 1963b).
Children’s geographical knowledge of their own country develops over subsequent years,
but this knowledge is error-prone until at least early adolescence (Barrett, 1996; Jahoda,
1963a; Piaget & Weil, 1951). For example, Jahoda (1963a) investigated 6–11-year-old
Glaswegian children’s knowledge of Scotland. He found that nearly all of the 6 year olds
were familiar with the word Scotland, but most of the children had a poor understanding
of what this word referred to, many of them believing that it was the name of another town
or a place outside Glasgow. And even at 10 or 11 years of age, some of the children were
still exhibiting these kinds of confusions. Knowledge of national geography correlates with
children’s degree of identification with their national group (Barrett & Whennell, 1998);
thus, in the case of English children, the more geographical knowledge about England and
the UK that these children possess, the more English they feel. The causality in this corre-
lational relationship remains unclear, however.
In a study of the attributes which 5–11-year-old children ascribe to the members of
their own national group, Barrett, Wilson, and Lyons (1999) found that the younger chil-
dren were more likely than the older ones to ascribe only positive attributes to their own
national group, with older children being more likely to assign a mixture of both positive
and negative attributes to the group. Thus, as the children got older, their perceptions of
their own national group became less positive overall.
Children’s feelings about their own country and national group
Several studies have investigated how children feel about their own country and national
group. Adjective attribution tasks or simple rating scales have typically been used and have
yielded a mixed set of findings. Some studies found that children do not have a systematic
preference for their own country or for members of their own national group until 7 years
of age or even later (e.g., Middleton, Tajfel, & Johnson, 1970; Piaget & Weil, 1951).
Other studies have suggested that there is a systematic preference for the child’s own coun-
try from at least 5–6 years of age (e.g., Barrett, 2001; Bennett, Lyons, Sani, & Barrett,
1998; Lambert & Klineberg, 1967). Furthermore, ingroup favoritism is not a universal
phenomenon. In particular, children who are members of a negatively evaluated group
may not develop a systematic preference for their own group, a finding obtained with both
Scottish and non-European Israeli-Jewish children at a time when these two groups were
generally perceived to be of a relatively low social and economic status in Britain and Israel,
respectively (Tajfel, Jahoda, Nemeth, Rim, & Johnson, 1972).
The importance which children attribute to their national identity, as well as their de-
gree of identification with their national group, increase between 5–6 and 11–12 years of
age. However, these general age trends are exhibited to a different extent by children living
in different countries, in different regions of the same country, or in different sociolinguis-
tic groups within the same community, apparently as a function of the specific sociocul-
tural situation in which they are growing up (Barrett, in press; Barrett, Riazanova, &
Volovikova, 2001).
Children’s knowledge of other countries and national groups
Children’s ability to name other countries is also very poor before about 5 years of age, and
young children have great difficulty in understanding the concept of a foreign country
(Piaget & Weil, 1951). Knowledge about other countries begins to develop from about 5,
although even at 10 or 11, some children still have very poor geographical knowledge of
other countries (Barrett & Farroni, 1996; Jahoda, 1962).
This growth of geographical knowledge is accompanied by the acquisition and elabora-
tion of stereotypes of the people who live in other countries (Barrett & Short, 1992; Lam-
bert & Klineberg, 1967; Piaget & Weil, 1951). The amount of individual variation which
is acknowledged to exist around these national stereotypes increases between 5 and 11
years of age (Barrett et al., 1999). Thus, older children are more willing than younger
children to admit that there is much variability amongst the people who belong to differ-
ent national groups.
Children’s feelings about other countries and national groups
Children sometimes acquire strong feelings about particular groups of foreign people be-
fore they have acquired any concrete knowledge about those groups (Barrett & Short,
1992; Johnson, Middleton, & Tajfel, 1970). In addition, although many children do seem
to acquire a systematic preference for their own country and nationality over other coun-
tries and nationalities from about 6–7 years of age, it is clear from many studies that chil-
dren can feel very positively indeed about some national outgroups (Barrett & Short, 1992;
Johnson et al., 1970; Lambert & Klineberg, 1967; Middleton et al., 1970).
The relative order of preference for other countries, once it is established (perhaps at 5
or 6 years of age), remains fairly stable and consistent across the remaining childhood years
(Barrett & Short, 1992; Johnson et al., 1970). However, the overall degree of liking for all
national outgroups tends to increase between 5 and 10 years of age, while after 10 years of
age, this general increase in positive regard for other national groups usually levels out
(Lambert & Klineberg, 1967).
Conclusion
The overall picture which emerges in this domain is that there is considerable learning
about national groups from 5 years of age onwards. From 5 onwards, strong attitudes and
affective biases toward the national ingroup and national outgroups are formed. However,
even by early adolescence, children still have a great deal more to learn about nations and
national groups.
Piaget and Weil (1951) originally proposed that children’s thoughts and feelings in this
area are determined by their current stage of cognitive development, but Jahoda (1964)
showed that this account was inadequate, with many children violating Piaget’s proposed
developmental-stage sequence. Since that time, much of the research in this field has been
descriptive rather than theoretically driven (e.g., Lambert & Klineberg, 1967; Tajfel et al.,
1970). More recently, there have been attempts to apply social identity theory and self-
categorization theory to children’s development in this domain (e.g., Barrett et al., 1999;
Bennett et al., 1998), but these attempts have shown that these theories may not be appli-
cable in this context. The naïve theory approach to children’s cognitive development
(Wellman & Gelman, 1998) has recently been considered as an alternative possible frame-
work for conceptualizing children’s development in this domain (Penny, Barrett, & Ly-
ons, 2001), but at the time of writing, the detailed implications of this framework for this
domain have not yet been established.
Conclusions
This chapter has reviewed the research literature on children’s understanding of society. As
we have seen, a substantial proportion of this literature is Piagetian in orientation. Thus,
many studies have relied upon open-ended interviewing to gather data, and stage-based
descriptions of the development of children’s understanding have been put forward, often
with the tacit (and sometimes explicit) assumption that the stage sequence is universal, and
that influences from the child’s sociocultural context are minimal and can only either
accelerate or decelerate the rate at which the child progresses through the sequence of
stages. In addition, it is often assumed that development proceeds through the child re-
flecting upon his or her own personal experience, actively constructing his or her own
explanations of the observed phenomena using his or her current cognitive capacities and
skills.
However, the child does not always have first-hand personal experience of the phenom-
ena or institutions in societal domains (e.g., of teachers’ decision making in schools, of
profit generation in shops and banks, of procedures in courts of law), and so the child’s
own personal experience cannot always function as the source of the child’s knowledge.
Instead, children are heavily reliant upon indirect and socially mediated sources of infor-
mation for learning about many societal phenomena, with television, parent and peer dis-
course, and the school curriculum probably being the most important sources of information
(Barrett & Buchanan-Barrow, in press). It is for this reason that children’s understanding
in many different societal domains exhibits variation as a function of the child’s sociocul-
tural context (e.g., the school domain, Ohana, 1986; the economic domain, Jahoda, 1983,
Leiser et al., 1990; the ethnic domain, Brown, 1995; and the nationality domain, Barrett
et al., 2001).
In addition to this increasing acknowledgement of sociocultural variation in the devel-
opment of children’s societal thinking, a second shift which is currently taking place in this
field of research is the introduction of the naïve theory approach to children’s cognitive
development (Barrett & Buchanan-Barrow, in press; Wellman & Gelman, 1998). Accord-
ing to this approach, during the course of development, children construct naïve theories
to explain phenomena in particular domains. These theories are specialized for particular
types of conceptual content; provide cause-and-effect explanations of the phenomena in
that domain; involve hypothetical constructs of unobservable factors or processes; and are
subject to change during the course of development. Moreover, these naïve theories are
often implicit rather than explicit. Thus, children may not always be able to consciously
access and verbalize these theories. As a consequence, Piagetian verbal interviewing is likely
to underestimate children’s reasoning. Instead, in order to reveal the structure of the child’s
thinking, the child must be presented with scenarios or stories in which variables are ma-
nipulated and about which the child has to make a predictive judgment. In several societal
domains, researchers are now beginning to use this alternative to the Piagetian approach
(e.g., Thompson & Siegler, 2000, in the economic domain; Berti, 1988, and Buchanan-
Barrow, 2000, in the political domain; and Penny et al., 2001, in the nationality domain),
and it seems likely that further advances in this field will emerge from the broader applica-
tion of this post-Piagetian theoretical and methodological approach to the study of chil-
dren’s thinking about society.
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Cooperation and Competition 513
Part IX
Cooperation, Competition, Aggression, and

Bullying
Although, as discussed in the previous section, children can often be helpful and engage in
prosocial behavior, so also they can engage in aggressive and bullying behaviors. In fact,
cooperative and competitive behaviors can be intimately interwoven. Jacques Richard,
Ada Fonzi, Franca Tani, Fulvio Tassi, Giovanni Tomada, and Barry Schneider discuss the
possible definitions of both cooperation and competition, and ways in which they can be
measured or assessed in childhood. They then overview our knowledge of the developmen-
tal origins of, and changes in, these behaviors. Culture is an important influence; Anglo-
American children have often been found to be more competitive than other cultural groups.
Gender is another important factor. The authors then relate the cooperation/competition
construct to developmental outcomes such as performance, motivation, and quality of
peer relationships.
There is a very substantial literature on aggressive behavior, reviewed by Marion
Underwood. The title of her chapter refers to two very salient issues in the current litera-
ture: sex differences and types of aggression. Physical (and to some extent verbal) forms of
aggression have long been recognized, and also a prevailing gender difference with boys
showing more physical aggression. While this finding is not denied by more recent re-
search, the definition of aggression has come to be expanded, to include more subtle forms
of intent to harm others. These other forms have been described as indirect, relational, or
social aggression, and social exclusion is an important example. Girls, certainly relative to
physical aggression and perhaps absolutely, do experience these latter forms more than
boys. Underwood carefully picks her way through these issues, and the evidence for devel-
opmental changes. She also reviews a body of research suggesting that both physical ag-
gression, and indirect/relational/social aggression, have negative developmental outcomes.
She notes some discordant findings and views here, however; and in adolescence too, there
is evidence for some adaptive features of aggression which have been ignored in much
research until recently (e.g., Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariepy, 1988; Pellegrini
& Bartini, 2001).
514 Jacques
Cooperation,
F. Richard
Competition,
et al. Aggression, and Bullying
Bullying refers to a subset of aggressive behavior – in which a more powerful person or

persons repeatedly attack a weaker. As with aggression generally, bullying can take various
forms, which have different age and sex profiles. Ken Rigby surveys the research on bully-
ing in childhood, which has grown greatly in volume over the last 10–15 years. He consid-
ers the various approaches to studying bullying, and gives examples of both qualitative and
quantitative studies. The structural features of bullying, including motivations of the per-
petrators, reactions or coping strategies of the victims, and attitudes of the peer group
generally, are given detailed consideration. As Rigby indicates, the research is helping to
inform school-based interventions to try to reduce this form of behavior, which if contin-
ued for long periods can be very damaging to the victims and the school climate generally.
References
Cairns, R. B., Cairns, B. D., Neckerman, H. J., Gest, S. D., & Gariepy, J. L. (1988). Social net-
works and aggressive behavior: Peer support or peer rejection? Developmental Psychology, 24,
815–823.
Pellegrini, A. D., & Bartini, M. (2001). A longitudinal study of bullying, victimization, and peer
affiliation during the transition from primary school to middle school. American Educational
Research Journal, 37, 699–726.
26
Cooperation and Competition
Jacques F. Richard, Ada Fonzi, Franca Tani, Fulvio Tassi,

Giovanna Tomada, and Barry H. Schneider
Definitions of Competition and Cooperation
In much of the social-psychological and educational literature, competition is viewed as

something harmful that can lead to negative consequences for children’s psychosocial de-
velopment, whereas cooperation is described as competent social behavior that entails many
positive consequences (e.g., Foster, 1984). In spite of this common view, children from
many cultures are continually encouraged to be competitive in various domains such as
school and sports. Many individuals consider competition an important and healthy ele-
ment in children’s development (Roberts, 1992). One possible explanation of such con-
trasting positions is that there are as many different definitions of competition and
cooperation as there are opinions regarding their effects on children.
Competition and cooperation can refer to characteristics of social situations or to the
psychological states of the participants in them (Van Avermaet, 1996). For example, a
competitive or cooperative structure can be imposed on children playing with a ball. In
one instance, there may be strict rules and one child may be required to try to achieve a
specific outcome at the expense of another child, as in a tennis match. In another instance,
children may be expected to work together to try to reach a common result, as in two
children throwing a ball to one another during baseball practice with the aim of developing
their throwing skills. The first situation would be described as a competitive situation and
the second as cooperative. However, the children involved in the activities may or may not
adopt the goals, attitudes, and behaviors that correspond to the apparent external demands
of the situation. For example, one of the children in the supposedly cooperative situation
(i.e., baseball practice) may try to throw the ball harder than his or her partner in an
attempt to be perceived as a better player by the coach. In this example, even though the
516 Jacques F. Richard et al.
child was participating in an activity that should elicit cooperative behaviors, his or her
goals and behaviors were competitive. To complicate things even further, most situations
involving social interactions are not as clearly defined as competitive or cooperative, and
many may in fact contain elements of competition and cooperation. Perhaps for these
reasons, Smith (1996, p. 81) describes competition and cooperation as “often interwoven
in intricate ways in their behavioral expression.”
Some definitions of competition and cooperation refer to the characteristics of social
situations. For instance, Van Avermaet (1996) suggested that the extent to which the out-
comes of a specific activity are the same for participants A and B vary along a continuum,
ranging from complete positive correspondence, which leads to cooperation (i.e., if par-
ticipant A performs an action that produces a specific result, participant B will obtain the
same result) to total negative correspondence, which leads to competition (i.e., if partici-
pant A performs an action that brings about a specific result, participant B loses the oppor-
tunity to obtain the same result). Most activities would be situated somewhere along the
continuum between total competition and total cooperation.
Charlesworth (1996) and other proponents of evolutionary biology propose a definition of
competition and cooperation that is based on resource allocation. These researchers perceive
competition as a strategy adopted to gain a limited resource in which several participants are
interested, whereas they view cooperation as a collaborative effort with another to gain a
shared resource. Cooperation is even described at times as one possible competitive tactic
used to obtain valuable physical, social, or informational resources (Charlesworth, 1996).
Thus, the presence of competition or cooperation would be determined by the consequences
of social behavior on the allocation of resources. In other words, if two individuals agree to
cooperate in order to gain resources, it may be inferred that competition has actually taken
place if the resources are not obtained equally by both individuals. For example, two coworkers
might decide to cooperate on a common project, but each because of his or her own indi-
vidual desire of being promoted. If only one of the two receives a promotion, Charlesworth
(1996) would argue, their “cooperation” actually constituted a competitive strategy.
Conversely, an example of a definition of competition and cooperation that refers to the
psychological state of the participants is one that is based on the goals of the participants in
social interaction. There is competition when the goals are incompatible and mutually
exclusive, and there is cooperation when the goals are compatible and interdependent (Butt,
1987). However, according to some researchers, the idea that all participants cannot reach
the same outcomes or accomplish the same goals in a situation may not constitute an
adequate definition of competition (e.g., Roberts, 1992). Indeed, in some situations in-
volving competition, the attainment of specific goals by one of the participants does not
necessarily prevent the others from attaining some of these goals. In a spelling bee, for
instance, Child A might achieve the goals of winning the contest, speaking in front of an
audience, and gaining self-confidence, and at the same time, Child B might also attain the
goals of speaking in front of an audience and gaining self-confidence. Consequently, Roberts
(1992, p. 185) describes competition as “an evaluative system of normative social compari-
son in which being competent is important.”
All of the definitions presented above are based on a unidimensional concept of compe-
tition. This unidimensional view may explain why some people perceive competition as
either totally healthy or totally unhealthy. Tassi and Schneider (1997) propose a multidi-
mensional definition of competition according to which it is possible to compete for dif-

ferent reasons, which lead to different consequences. They distinguish between other-refer-
enced competition (i.e., competing in order to be proven superior to others) and task-oriented
competition (i.e., competing in order to do well at something). Others have also adopted
this multidimensional view of competition. For instance, Griffin-Pierson (1990) makes a
distinction between interpersonal competition, which she portrays as a desire to do better
than others or win, and goal competition, which she describes as an endeavor to achieve
excellence. Similarly, Ryckman, Libby, van den Borne, Gold, and Lindner (1997) define
two types of competitive attitudes: People who exhibit a personal development competitive
attitude generally try to improve their skills regardless of the outcome, whereas those who
manifest a hypercompetitive attitude usually possess a strong desire to achieve a specific
outcome regardless of the necessary means required. These multidimensional models as-
sume that some form of competition can exist without the desire to outperform another
person or obtain a greater share of resources than someone else. Some classic theorists,
however, would not use the term “competition” in that way. As Kohn (1992, p. 6) puts it:
“Competition is fundamentally an interactive word, like kissing, and it stretches the term
beyond usefulness to speak of competing with oneself.” Furthermore, according to Sherif
(1976), it is possible to compete against a socially shared standard (e.g., trying to run 100
meters faster than the national record), but comparing with oneself (e.g., trying to run 100
meters faster than your previous best) does not constitute competition because there is no
social comparison involved.
Methodological Issues in the Study of Cooperation and Competition
Researchers have devised methodologies that either: (a) manipulate the competitive or
cooperative nature of specific situations in order to study their effects on children’s behaviors;
or (b) measure children’s individual preferences for competitive or cooperative interaction.
There are at least two commonly used methods to manipulate the competitive or coopera-
tive nature of children’s games or tasks. The first technique consists of using competitive,
cooperative, or individualistic instructions when explaining the objective of the task (e.g.,
Butler, 1990; Schmidt, Ollendick, & Stanowicz, 1988). For example, Butler (1990, p.
203) gave the following competitive instructions to half the participants in her study: “Try
and make the best copy of this drawing. Try and make the best copy in your group. I shall
collect your copies to judge who made the best copy,” and the following individualistic
instructions to the other half: “Try to copy the drawing as closely as you can. I am collect-
ing all the pictures that children copy with stickers.”
Another strategy for controlling the competitive or cooperative nature of the activity
consists of using cooperative, competitive, or individualistic reward structures (e.g., Hom,
Berger, Duncan, Miller, & Blevin, 1994; Newcomb, Brady, & Hartup, 1979). In their
study of the effects of reward on intrinsic motivation, Hom et al. (1994) informed children
in the cooperative group that the amount of candy they would each receive depended on
their team’s performance, whereas children in the individualistic group were told that the
reward was linked only to their own individual performances.
Children’s preferences for cooperative or competitive interaction have been assessed

mainly with dyadic games, forced-choice resource allocation measures, and questionnaires.
Madsen, Kagan, and colleagues pioneered the use of dyadic games (e.g., Kagan & Madsen,
1971; Madsen, 1971) and forced-choice resource allocation measures (e.g., Kagan & Knight,
1979) in their cross-cultural studies of children’s competition and cooperation. The mar-
ble-pull game (Madsen, 1971) is the earliest of the dyadic games, and most of the other
games are structured according to the same general principles. In the marble-pull game, a
plastic cup is placed over a marble on a table. Two strings are attached to each side of the
cup. If both children pull on their strings in opposite directions at the same time, the cup
separates in two pieces and the marble is released. When this happens, no one collects the
marble. If one child pulls toward his or her side and the other releases the string, the cup
does not separate and the first child can capture the marble. The game is played over
repetitive trials and the marbles obtained by each child are later exchanged for prizes. The
only way marbles can be obtained equally is if children cooperate by taking turns.
In forced-choice measures of resource allocation, children are asked to choose between
different possible allocations of tokens. The distribution of tokens can either favor them-
selves, another peer, or neither. Choices favoring oneself are considered competitive, whereas
selections privileging another peer, or neither, are considered cooperative. Tokens are also
later exchanged for prizes. Dyadic games and resource-allocation measures enable researchers
to directly observe children’s cooperative/competitive behaviors and preferences. How-
ever, this is often done in laboratory settings in the presence of examiners and may not
necessarily present an accurate picture of children’s behaviors in naturalistic settings with
their peers.
Because of this, some researchers assess children’s competitive or cooperative prefer-
ences by self-report questionnaires (e.g., Engelhard & Monsaas, 1989), and by peer or
teacher ratings of competitive and/or cooperative behaviors (e.g., Kerns & Barth, 1995;
Tassi & Schneider, 1997). Although self-reports and ratings may offer greater insights into
the day-to-day competitive and cooperative behaviors of children with their peers, they do
not permit direct observation on the part of the researchers who must rely on the accuracy
of the informant. Tassi and Schneider (1997) argue that peer ratings, compared to self-
reports, may provide more accurate data on children’s competitive and cooperative behaviors.
In spite of their respective limitations, all of those innovative methodologies have as-
sisted researchers in studying the relationships between competition/cooperation in chil-
dren’s behaviors and various relevant variables. The rest of the chapter is devoted to the
presumed origins and possible outcomes of children’s cooperation and competition.
The Origins of Competition and Cooperation in Children’s Behaviors
In this section, we review studies that trace the emergence of competitive and cooperative
behaviors in children’s interaction.
First manifestations of competitive and cooperative behaviors
According to Piaget (1950), cooperation emerges during the later stages of children’s moral
development, whereas Vygotsky (1978) maintained that cooperation appears earlier. Their
theories have prompted developmental researchers to investigate preschoolers’ peer inter-
action. Verba (1994) observed 1- to 4-year-old children who were engaged in spontaneous
joint activity with objects during free play. Verba reported many examples of early coop-
eration and competition, such as “putting forward ideas that they tried to have their part-
ner adopt, pooling their creative efforts in an atmosphere of good will, taking conflicting
stands, and attempting to resolve disagreement (p. 277).”
Reports of early peer cooperation are also found elsewhere. Garnier and Latour (1994)
observed 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children during free play. They assessed gregariousness, or
the formation of subgroups; the nature of play, ranging from no cooperation to high coop-
eration; and, the degree of interdependence between the members of the subgroups. No
differences were found between age groups for all three dimensions of cooperation. There
was evidence of cooperation in all age groups which, according to the authors, suggests
that cooperation emerges well before the later stages of childhood social development.
There may be important mediating variables that affect the emergence of cooperation in
young children. Cauley and Tyler (1989) reported a significant association between
preschoolers’ self-concepts and their cooperative behaviors as assessed by teacher evalua-
tions and direct observations. Preschoolers with more positive self-concepts were more
cooperative than peers with less positive self-concepts. A group of Italian researchers stud-
ied the contributions of several intra-individual and contextual factors in promoting coop-
erative behavior in preschoolers and school-age children. Several processes were found to
contribute: capacity for symbolic play, an internal sense of security, and school environ-
ments that promote autonomous resolution of conflict with peers. Dogmatism in moth-
ers’ child rearing was negatively associated with cooperation (Fonzi, 1991).
Individual differences in cooperative behaviors may also be related to parent–child rela-
tionships, which have been found to be associated with children’s peer relationships (e.g.,
Cohn, Patterson, & Christopoulos, 1991). Kerns and Barth (1995) investigated the asso-
ciations between early parent–child relationships (i.e., attachment) and preschool chil-
dren’s friendly-cooperative behaviors with peers. They found a positive association between
security in paternal attachment (as measured by a Q-set sorting task) and teacher ratings of
friendly-cooperative behaviors; A similar association was not obtained for maternal attach-
ment. Given the study’s cross-sectional design, the researchers were not able to identify
causal relationships between the variables. Longitudinal data would be useful in determin-
ing, for instance, the implications of early parent–child relationship qualities for subse-
quent peer cooperation and competition.
Perceived power in parent–child relationships may also be linked to cooperative or com-
petitive behaviors. A study by Bugental and Martorell (1999) showed that 6- to 10-year-
old children whose mothers and fathers perceived that they did not have more power than
their children demonstrated more verbal competition during competitive and learning
activities with their peers than children of parents with high perceived power. Verbal com-
petition was defined as “statements of self praise and friend derogation” (p. 265). Here
again, the study would have greatly benefited from a longitudinal design given the bidirec-
tional links between parent–child interactions and peer interactions.
Developmental changes
As stated earlier, social comparison is considered by many to be an inherent feature of

competition. Children younger than ages 7 to 9 years may not be able to adequately extract
information from social comparison for the purpose of self-evaluation (Ruble, 1983). Chil-
dren’s sensitivity to such information may greatly influence their decisions to pursue com-
petitive or cooperative interactions with their peers. Therefore, there are compelling reasons
to expect differences in the manifestation of competitive or cooperative behaviors as chil-
dren become older.
Research on developmental changes in the display of competitive and cooperative
behaviors has produced inconsistent findings. Some studies indicate that competitive
behaviors increase as children become older (e.g., Madsen, 1971; McClintock & Nuttin,
1969), whereas other research shows that older children are more cooperative than younger
ones (e.g., Handel, 1989; Stingle & Cook, 1985). In McClintock and Nuttin’s (1969)
study, 8-, 10-, and 12-year-old children played a dyadic game in which maximum rewards
went to children who cooperated rather than competed. Children were given neutral in-
structions that did not specify whether they should compete or cooperate. Although chil-
dren of all age groups demonstrated more competitive than cooperative behaviors, older
children manifested more competitive behaviors than younger ones. Similarly, Stingle and
Cook (1985) provided neutral instructions to 5-, 8-, and 11-year-olds who played a dyadic
game that rewarded cooperation more than competition. However, in this study, 8- and
11-year-old children showed greater cooperation than 5-year-old children. The game used
in Stingle and Cook’s (1985) study was more elaborate and seemed to demand greater
coordinated effort in order to cooperate than in the McClintock and Nuttin (1969) study.
Older children in Stingle and Cook’s (1985) study may have been more skillful in coordi-
nating their endeavors, making them appear more cooperative. In any case, further re-
search should attempt to elucidate the links between children’s ages and their competitive/
cooperative behaviors.
Although research has not yet determined whether older children are more or less com-
petitive/cooperative than younger ones, there may be developmental differences in the way
children respond to competitive or cooperative tasks. Older children have been found to
be able to adapt to competitive and cooperative tasks by changing their strategies and
behaviors according to the competitiveness of the immediate situation (Kagan & Madsen,
1971; Schmidt et al., 1988). In Kagan and Madsen’s (1971) study, 9-year-old children
competing for prizes under cooperative instructions were less competitive than age-mates
who had received individualistic instructions. In contrast, 5-year-old children’s competi-
tiveness was not influenced by the experimenter’s instructions. Similarly, Schmidt et al.’s
(1988) study showed that 11-year-old children playing a game were more competitive
under competitive instructions and more cooperative under cooperative instructions, whereas
8-year-old children’s competitiveness and cooperativeness were not affected by instruc-
tions.
Older children’s greater flexibility in the use of competitive or cooperative behaviors

may be explained partly by their greater awareness of the social comparison that is involved
in competition and their ability to evaluate their own performances more objectively. In
one study, 5-, 7-, and 10-year-old children were asked to copy drawings under either indi-
vidualistic or competitive instructions (Butler, 1990). The drawings were judged by the
children themselves and by adult judges. In the competitive condition, younger children
tended to overestimate their drawing abilities, whereas older children’s appraisals of their
own work were equivalent to those of the adult judges. This difference was not observed in
the individualistic condition, where older and younger children’s evaluations of their own
work were approximately equal to the adult ratings. Older children were more objective
than the younger ones in their social comparisons with their peers, which may explain why
this developmental effect was only observed in the competitive condition. In the individu-
alistic condition, children used the model, rather than their peers’ drawings, as their basis
for comparison.
Thus, no clear picture has yet emerged from existing research regarding developmental
differences in competitive and cooperative behaviors. However, older children seem more
adept at coordinating their cooperative or competitive behaviors in order to meet the de-
mands of the situations in which they are placed.
Culture
Given the differences that may exist between various cultures in terms of children’s social-
izing experiences and the social values that are imparted to them, cultural differences in
children’s cooperative and competitive behaviors may be expected. Most but not all cross-
cultural research on children’s cooperation and competition reports such differences.
A great number of cross-cultural studies involving Anglo-American, Mexican, and/or
Mexican-American children have been conducted by Kagan, Madsen, and their associates
(e.g., Kagan & Madsen, 1971; Kagan & Knight, 1979; Madsen, 1971). The methodology
used to assess competitive and cooperative preferences in most of those studies consisted of
a forced-choice measure of resource allocation; the participants were mostly between ages
5 and 12 years. Their studies have consistently reported more cooperative, and fewer com-
petitive, behaviors among Mexican and Mexican-American children than among their
Anglo-American counterparts. Furthermore, Mexican children were found to be more
cooperative and less competitive than Mexican-American children (Kagan & Madsen, 1971).
Thus, children from a collectivistic culture such as Mexico appear to value cooperation
more highly than Anglo-American and even Mexican-American children, both of whom
are raised in an individualistic culture that generally values competition. This is further
supported by the finding that third-generation Mexican-American children showed a greater
preference for competition than their second-generation peers (Kagan & Knight, 1979).
Cross-cultural research comparing American and Chinese children is not as conclusive.
Sparkes (1991) studied the cooperative and competitive behaviors of Chinese and Ameri-
can 3- to 5-year-old children. Pairs of same-culture children played an adaptation of Madsen’s
(1971) marble-pull game. Essentially, each player tried repeatedly to bring a round plastic
disc over to his or her side of the board using blocks attached to strings. The disc could
only be moved if both children cooperated and decided in advance to which side they
would move it. If both children pulled at the same time towards their respective sides on a
given trial, the disc would be released and no one would capture it. The disc would then be
replaced and the trial would start over. Competition was deemed to have taken place when
the children failed to bring the disc to one side on more than 5 occasions throughout 10
trials, whereas cooperation was inferred if they failed to bring the disc to one side on 5 or
fewer tries during the 10 trials. Chinese pairs of children demonstrated more competitive
behaviors than their American counterparts. This finding is unlike that of Domino (1992)
who used a different methodology with older children. In his study, 10- to 12-year-old
Chinese and American children’s competitive and cooperative preferences were measured
using a token-allocation procedure identical to the one used in the previously reported
studies by Kagan, Madsen, and their colleagues. In Domino’s (1992) experiment, Ameri-
can children gave more competitive and fewer cooperative responses than Chinese chil-
dren. These conflicting results may be an artifact of the different samples and dissimilar
methods used or may reflect a cross-cultural developmental difference given the different
ages of the children in both experiments.
In summary, most cross-cultural research on children’s competition and cooperation
compared Anglo-American children with children from other cultures. In general, Anglo-
American children were found to be more competitive, although there is at least one ex-
ception (Sparkes, 1991). Unfortunately, all of those studies were conducted in laboratory
settings using dyadic games or resource-allocation measures that, as stated previously, may
not be indicative of children’s day-to-day behaviors with their peers.
Gender differences
In most cultures, the socialization of girls differs from that of boys. This may lead to
important differences in cooperation and competition. Boys are frequently described as
more competitive and less cooperative than girls (Pepitone, 1980). Strube (1981) con-
ducted a meta-analysis on gender differences in competition across cultures. The analysis
included 95 articles published prior to 1978 with children from cultures such as Anglo-
American, Mexican/Mexican-American, African American, Israeli, Indian, and Canadian.
Results of the meta-analysis showed that boys were significantly more competitive than
girls in the Anglo-American, Indian, and Mexican/Mexican-American cultures. Conversely,
girls were more competitive than boys in the Israeli culture. Finally, no differences be-
tween boys and girls were obtained for the African-American and Canadian cultures. These
findings suggest that the common belief that boys are more competitive than girls may be
accurate for some, but not all, cultures.
Other studies have investigated gender differences in children’s strategies during coop-
eration and competition. For example, Charlesworth and Dzur (1987) observed 4- and 5-
year-old children’s behavioral strategies when placed in a situation of scarce resources (i.e.,
a cartoon viewer that could only be viewed by one child at a time). Children were divided
in groups of four same-sex peers. The cooperation of two more children was required in
order for one child to view the cartoon: one to press a button that turned on the light and
another to turn a crank that set the film in motion. This ingenious set-up permitted the
observation of children’s strategies in a situation that often produced a combination of

competitive and cooperative responses. The researchers found no differences in viewing
time between boys and girls, suggesting that both sexes were equally capable of cooperat-
ing and competing. However, boys and girls used different strategies to gain access to the
viewer: Boys used more physical strategies (e.g., pushing, grasping), whereas girls used
more verbal tactics (e.g., requesting, giving commands). In addition, boys displayed more
positive affect than girls when competing for the resource. Accordingly, LaFrenière (1999)
argued that female–female competition does exist, although it is usually different from
that of boys: It is more subtle, less overt, less physical, and not as fun for the competing
participants.
Similar studies using mixed-sex groups (e.g., LaFrenière & Charlesworth, 1987) showed
that preschool boys obtained more viewing time than girls. The authors proposed that the
more subtle, verbal strategies of girls may not be as effective with boys as with other girls,
whereas the more direct, physical strategies of boys are efficacious with both sexes. This
explanation may account for the common contention that boys usually appear more com-
petitive than girls in naturalistic settings.
In summary, gender differences in children’s competition and cooperation seem to vary
according to culture. Furthermore, the popular belief that boys are more competitive than
girls may be explained by the different strategies used by members of both sexes when
competing or cooperating for a resource, and by the presence of greater positive affect
when boys compete.
Possible Outcomes of Children’s Competition and Cooperation
Being placed in competitive versus cooperative settings, or displaying competitive versus

cooperative behaviors, may have different implications. Here we review studies that have
addressed the possible outcomes and correlates of children’s competition and cooperation.
Causal links are difficult to establish given the bidirectionality between competitive/coop-
erative behaviors and possible outcomes.
Academic, motor, and athletic performance
Franken and Brown (1995) proposed that one of the reasons people like to compete is that
it enables them to improve their performance. In his pioneer study of the effects of compe-
tition on the performance of cyclists, Triplett (1897) found that cyclists competing against
one another recorded faster times than cyclists racing against time. However, a review by
Johnson, Maruyama, Johnson, and Nelson (1974) indicated that greater achievement and
success occur in cooperative situations than in competitive or individualistic settings.
Mixed results have been found regarding the effects of competition and cooperation on
children’s academic and motor performance. Engelhard and Monsaas (1989) examined
the link between 8-, 10-, and 12-year-old children’s self-reported cooperative attitudes
and their academic performance. Their results showed that successful students were less
cooperative than unsuccessful students and generally preferred working alone. Their find-
ings are not surprising given the competitive and individualistic atmosphere that is fre-
quently found in children’s classrooms and it would be very unsubstantiated to conclude
that cooperation among children leads to poor academic performances. It is probable that
successful students in competitive school environments have learned that it is better to
work individually and are being rewarded accordingly. However, a study by Brown and
Abrams (1986) revealed that 12-year-old children taking academic tests (i.e., math and
English) under cooperative instructions performed better than those who received com-
petitive instructions. Similarly, Johnson and Johnson (1979) reported greater achievement
in some academic tasks (e.g., problem solving, knowledge acquisition) from 10-year-old
children in cooperative conditions than children in either competitive or individualistic
conditions. No significant differences were found between groups on other academic tasks
(e.g., knowledge retention).
In another study of academic performance and cooperation, Gillies and Ashman (1998)
placed 6- and 8-year-old children into groups of four (i.e., one high ability, one low ability,
and two medium ability students) for 6 weeks of either structured cooperative learning or
unstructured group learning. Children in the cooperative learning groups received instruc-
tion and training in cooperative skills and behaviors, whereas the other children did not
receive such training. Results for 8-year-olds indicated that children in the cooperative-
learning groups used more advanced cognitive and language strategies, scored higher on an
academic test, and showed greater gains in word-reading ability than children in the un-
structured learning groups. For 6-year-old children, a significant difference in favor of the
cooperative learning groups was obtained only in the use of more advanced cognitive and
language strategies. Children’s gender may be an important mediating link between com-
petition and academic performance. Johnson and Engelhard (1992) reported that 11- and
12-year-old boys with high academic achievement had a lower preference for competition,
whereas high achieving girls had a higher preference for competition.
Other studies have investigated the effect of an arbitrarily chosen competitive or non-
competitive condition on children’s motor performance. Butler (1989b) assessed the qual-
ity of 5-, 7-, and 10-year-old children’s drawings following competitive versus
noncompetitive drawing conditions. The pictures of competing children were rated as of
lower quality than those of noncompeting children at ages 7 and 10 only. No differences
in quality were observed at age 5. According to the author, the findings suggested that the
social comparison inherent to competition hindered the performance of the older children
in the study, whereas the younger children may not have been aware of, or sensitive to,
information obtained by social comparison. Newcomb et al. (1979) paired 6- and 9-year-
old children for a block-tower building task. Half of the children were exposed to coopera-
tive and competitive reward systems, whereas the other half was exposed to cooperative
and individualistic reward systems. Results showed that performance (i.e., number of suc-
cessful towers and number of blocks positioned on successful towers) was greater during
the cooperative condition. Hom et al. (1994) observed 10-year-old children solving block
puzzles under either a cooperative reward structure (i.e., rewards were dependent on the
team performance) or an individualistic reward structure (i.e., rewards were based on indi-
vidual performance). Results showed that children from the cooperative condition solved
the puzzles significantly faster than children from the individualistic condition. Conversely,
in one study with 10-year-old children, no motor performance differences were obtained
for competitive versus noncompetitive task instructions during a cardhouse building activ-
ity (Shwalb, Shwalb, & Murata, 1991).
The discrepant findings reported above may result from differences in the nature of the
activities in which children took part. Competition and cooperation may have dissimilar
effects on children’s performance depending, for example, on the degree of difficulty of the
task. In support of this hypothesis, Lambert (1989) conducted a study in which 9- to 12-
year-old children participated in physical activities of varying levels of difficulty. In the
easier activity, children tried to throw darts as accurately as possible toward a specific tar-
get. The more difficult activity consisted of a long jump in which children tried to jump as
far as they could from a slightly elevated platform. For both activities, children were first
placed in a noncompetitive environment (stage 1) followed by a competitive one (stage 2).
The dependent variable consisted of the increase of athletic performance between stages 1
and 2. Children’s self-reported anxiety level was measured prior to their participation in
the activities. Results indicated that children who had reported higher anxiety levels showed
a greater increase in performance on the easier activity than children who had indicated
lower anxiety levels. However, for the more difficult task, children who had reported lower
anxiety levels had greater performance increases than children with higher levels of anxiety.
Thus, competition seems to have different implications for children’s athletic performance
depending on task difficulty and on children’s psychological characteristics.
Motivation
According to Deci and Ryan’s (1985) cognitive evaluation theory, individuals with higher
levels of intrinsic motivation for a specific activity possess greater feelings of competence
and self-determination, and generally participate in the activity because they find it to be
enjoyable and stimulating. Conversely, their theory posits that individuals who are extrin-
sically motivated have an external locus of causality for their participation in the activity
and an elevated sense of incompetence.
Data from existing research on the implications of cooperation and competition for
children’s motivation have suggested that cooperation is generally associated with higher
levels of intrinsic motivation, whereas higher levels of extrinsic motivation are often related
to competition. In Hom et al.’s (1994) study (see previous section), children who solved
block puzzles under the cooperative reward structure showed greater post-task intrinsic
motivation than children from the individualistic reward structure condition. Intrinsic
motivation was defined operationally as the amount of time children spent playing with
the blocks in a period during which they were free to choose from various activities. In a
similar study, Butler (1989a) observed the intrinsic motivation of preschool, 7-, and 10-
year-old children following competitive and noncompetitive art activities (i.e., competi-
tive vs. individualistic instructions). Intrinsic motivation was also defined as the time spent
performing the activity during free time. Results showed that 10-year-old children dis-
played greater intrinsic motivation following the noncompetitive art activities than after
the competitive ones. However, no significant differences between groups were observed
for the younger children. Once again, the author argues that young children (i.e., before
the age of 7) may not have fully attained the capacity to compare their abilities with others
and thus their intrinsic interest in the activity would be less affected by a competitive
setting.
The competitive or cooperative orientation of children’s school programs may also af-
fect their motivation. Benninga et al. (1991) assessed, using self-report measures, 7- to 10-
year-old children’s motivation for prosocial acts and for academic work using self-report
measures. Children from academic programs that encouraged competition reported higher
extrinsic and lower intrinsic prosocial motivation than children from academic programs
that advocated cooperative learning. However, no differences in academic motivation were
found between children from the two types of programs.
Theory and research suggest that children prefer to undertake challenging situations
when attempting to show mastery over their environments (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1985).
Consequently, children’s preference for situations of competition or cooperation may be
influenced by the opportunity provided to demonstrate mastery in challenging tasks. Handel
(1989) observed the cooperative responses of 5- to 12-year-old children during a marble-
pull dyadic game that produced maximum rewards to children who cooperated; competi-
tive responses in the game always led to few or no rewards. All of the children participated
in a simple version of the game (i.e., no challenges were available for children who cooper-
ated) and a complex version of the game (i.e., even the cooperative responses were chal-
lenging for the children). Results showed that children displayed significantly more
cooperative responses during the complex game than during the simple game.
Thus, existing research shows that cooperation seems to foster children’s intrinsic moti-
vation, whereas competition may undermine it, especially with older children. Further-
more, children are more likely to cooperate when given the opportunity to demonstrate
competence by cooperating in challenging tasks.
Peer relationships
As stated earlier, many theorists and researchers view cooperation as a joint effort to gain
shared resources, whereas they consider competition as an attempt to gain limited resources
at the expense of others. Consequently, peer relationships could potentially be enhanced
by cooperation and disrupted by competition. In Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, and Sherif’s
(1961) extensive study, 11- and 12-year-old boys taking part in summer camps were di-
vided into two groups and observed during intense, intergroup competitive and coopera-
tive conditions. They observed strong negative interpersonal behaviors (e.g., verbal insults,
destruction of property) between the two groups during the competitive conditions and
reduction of those negative behaviors during subsequent cooperative conditions. How-
ever, the negative interpersonal behaviors were especially observed directly following the
competitive conditions, during which time experimenters deliberately triggered hostile
feelings by setting up situations that frustrated the groups. Nevertheless, their study was
instrumental in showing that children’s social behaviors can be influenced by competitive
and cooperative situations.
Although competitiveness may be related to peer dislike, some studies examining the
associations between competition and sociometric status have suggested that this may not
always be the case. Defining competition as a multidimensional construct, Tassi and Sch-
neider (1997) measured 8-year-old children’s competitive orientations using peer inform-
ant measures. Popular children scored significantly higher on task-oriented competition
(i.e., competing in order to do well at something) than average children who, in turn,
scored significantly higher than rejected children. Conversely, unpopular rejected children
scored significantly higher on other-referenced competition (i.e., competing in order to be
proven superior to others) than average or popular children. Similar results were also ob-
tained using teacher ratings of competition in a more recent study (Tassi, Schneider, &
Richard, 2001). Thus, competition seems to lead to peer rejection only when children try
to outdo others when they compete. Here again, gender effects may be important media-
tors. Steinkamp (1990) reported the relation between preschoolers’ competitiveness as rated
by teachers and the children’s friendship nominations and sociometric status. Boys gave
higher sociometric ratings to highly competitive girls, whereas girls gave higher ratings to
less competitive boys. No connection between competitiveness and social status emerged
for same-sex sociometric nominations.
Some data suggest that participating in cooperative activities can decrease the negative
social behaviors manifested by low-accepted and aggressive boys during peer interaction.
For example, popular and unpopular (Gelb & Jacobson, 1988) or popular and aggressive
(Tryon & Keane, 1991) 9-year-old boys were observed while attempting to join two other
children already engaged in competitive or cooperative play. Results of the study by Gelb
and Jacobson (1988) showed that the unpopular children were more likely than the popu-
lar participants to break rules, disrupt play, and appeal to authority, but only during com-
petitive play. During cooperative play, the unpopular children demonstrated fewer of those
negative social behaviors and were more accepted by their peers. In the study by Tryon and
Keane (1991), popular children were accepted more readily than aggressive children dur-
ing competitive play. Popular children also used more socially oriented interventions (e.g.,
showing agreement or pleasure with one of the group members) than aggressive children
when approaching the dyad at play. Differences between groups were much smaller during
cooperative play.
Results from Gelb and Jacobson’s (1988) study presented in the preceding paragraph
suggested that cooperation can have beneficial effects for peer acceptance. This has also
been demonstrated elsewhere. Anderson’s (1985) study revealed that 10- to 15- year-old
learning-disabled boys favorably identified as classmates whom they liked a greater number
of their peers following participation in cooperative-learning activities than before the co-
operative situation was set up. In a study by Smith, Boulton, and Cowie (1993), 8- and 9-
year-old children participated for one year in either cooperative-learning groups in the
classroom or traditional-teaching groups. Although no significant differences were ob-
served between the cooperative-learning and the traditional-teaching groups in terms of
changes in children’s sociometric status, an increase in children’s “liking” ratings was noted
following participation in the cooperative-learning groups. Thus, participating in coopera-
tive activities may not lead to immediate changes in children’s peer status (i.e., a “rejected”
child will probably not become “average” or “popular” following cooperation), but may
have a more gradual effect on general acceptance among peers. One of the reasons that
acceptance may be higher following cooperation is that children seem to manifest more
prosocial behaviors, such as asking for and giving reciprocal help, when cooperating
(Garaigordobil, Maganto, & Etxeberria, 1996), and more aggressive behaviors when com-
peting (Bay-Hinitz, Peterson, & Quilitch, 1994).
Dorsch and Keane (1994) suggested that competition may have different effects on
children’s social behaviors depending on their feelings of success during the activity. In
their study, peer-rejected and -accepted 8-year-old children played competitive or coop-
erative computer games with or against a fictitious other child (i.e., each child was told that
his or her computer was connected to another machine on which a child of the same age
was playing). After failure on competitive games, socially rejected children reported more
aggressive social strategies than socially accepted children. A difference in social strategies
between the two groups in the Dorsch and Keane (1994) study was not observed following
success in competitive games, nor following success or failure in cooperative games. Thus,
the negative effects of competition on children’s social behaviors were only witnessed fol-
lowing failure on the game.
Competition for resources by friends may have destructive consequences for the equity
of the relationship, considered by many (e.g., Walster, Walster, & Berscheid, 1978) as an
essential characteristic of friendship. Sullivan (1953) proposed that competition between
friends may impede intimacy and lead to a break-up in the relationship.
Janosz and LaFrenière (1991) organized a competitive contest that resulted in a winner
and a loser within dyads of preschool friends and nonfriends. Following that contest, dyads
were placed in situations of limited resources where only one toy was available for the two
members of the dyad. No differences in competitive or cooperative behaviors used to ac-
quire the toy were found between winners and losers of the previous contest. However,
dyads of friends demonstrated more cooperative and less competitive behaviors than dyads
of nonfriends. Furthermore, winners in friendship dyads were more willing to offer the toy
to their partner during subsequent play than winners in nonfriendship dyads. In another
study of social interactions in situations of limited resources, Werebe and Baudonnière
(1988) observed the play activity of same-sex triads of preschool children consisting of two
friends and one familiar peer. The triads were placed in a toy-filled room containing two
sets of every type of toy or object. Competition was defined as attempts by one child to
acquire an object from another child. Although friends were no more or less competitive
than nonfriends, children made significantly more offers to give an object to their friends
than to the nonfriends, suggesting a greater desire for cooperation with the friends.
Despite the consistent finding of greater cooperation and less competition between friends
than between nonfriends, some competitive children may have many friends. In Steinkamp’s
(1990) study, reported on the previous page, preschool children perceived as highly com-
petitive by their teachers were named as friends by their classmates more than low-com-
petitive children. One possible explanation for this finding is that children may compete
differently with friends than with nonfriends. There is some empirical evidence of this. For
example, Fonzi, Schneider, Tani, and Tomada (1997) observed dyads of 8-year-old friends
and nonfriends engaged in a car-race competition with clear prestated rules. During the
competition, dyads of friends showed greater positive affect and greater adherence to the
rules than did dyads of nonfriends.
Ideas for New Research
In many studies reviewed in this chapter, researchers investigated global and diametrical
distinctions between competitive and cooperative behaviors. Although such research pro-
vided important data, the results of some studies suggest that it may be useful to examine
in greater detail the processes by which children compete or cooperate. For example, dif-
ferences in the processes involved in competitive behavior are reported between girls and
boys (Charlesworth & Dzur, 1987); popular and unpopular children (Tassi & Schneider,
1997); and, friends and nonfriends (Fonzi et al., 1997). As part of this focus on process,
the goals and motivations involved in competition and cooperation, as embodied in the
multidimensional models discussed earlier, need to be examined.
More research is also needed on the mediating role of personal variables (e.g., cognitive,
social, emotional) in the emergence and maintenance of competitive and cooperative
behaviors. Among the few studies in which such potential mediators have been investi-
gated, findings include greater cooperation in children who show high cognitive flexibility
(Bonino & Cattelino, 1999), lower empathy in highly competitive boys (Barnett, Matthews,
& Howard, 1979), and greater achievement in competitive situations by children with an
internal locus of control (Nowicki, 1982). Further advances in understanding the possible
origins and outcomes of children’s competition and cooperation will likely stem from
process-oriented research tracing the interplay among cognitive, social, and other personal
variables that are linked to competitive and cooperative behaviors.
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Aggression among Girls and Boys 533
27
Sticks and Stones and Social Exclusion:

Aggression among Girls and Boys
Marion K. Underwood
Sometimes kids do mean things to other kids, like make faces at them, or not let them be part of
their group, or gossip about them. Has anything like this ever happened to you?
“I started hanging with another girl, they didn’t like her, they said, “We won’t be your
friend anymore if you hang with her.” (12-year-old girl)
“We were playing a game and some boys got angry and kicked some of us out of the
group.” (12-year-old boy)
“My best friend and I got in a argument and she just ignored me.” (12-year-old girl)
“One boy spread rumors about me…because I had ruined his reputation.” (12-year-old
boy)
Other times kids do mean things to each other like push them, or hit them, or trip them. Has
anything like this ever happened to you?
“Three boys called me a rat and harassed me and hit me with a broom.” (12-year-old girl)
“Two girls just walked up and pulled my hair.” (11-year-old girl)
“Two days ago my best friend said ‘Do my homework,’ and I said, ‘No,’ and he grabbed
me by the neck and choked me.” (12-year-old boy)
“I was sitting on the bus one day and a boy just came up a hit me for no reason.” (12-year-
old boy)
from Paquette and Underwood, 1999
Preparation of this chapter was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the
Timberlawn Psychiatric Research Foundation. Thanks to Julie Paquette for sharing the examples of vic-
timization experiences at the opening of this chapter. Correspondence may be addressed to Marion K.
Underwood, School of Human Development, The University of Texas at Dallas, PO Box 830688, M/S
GR41, Richardson, TX, 75083. The address for electronic mail is [email protected].
534 Marion K. Underwood
As these examples of victims’ experiences illustrate, children who behave aggressively threaten
their peers, disrupt their classrooms, and frustrate parents and teachers who must try to
cope with their behavior. Besides being aversive, aggression has been shown to be a fairly
stable individual characteristic after about age 10 (Olweus, 1977). Aggressive behavior is
related to concurrent peer rejection (Coie & Kupersmidt, 1983), and to academic prob-
lems and depressed mood (Capaldi, 1991). Aggression in childhood predicts a number of
serious outcomes in later life: school dropout and delinquency (Kupersmidt & Coie, 1990;
Parker & Asher, 1987), early sexual activity (Capaldi, Crosby, & Stoolmiller, 1996), ado-
lescent motherhood (Serbin et al., 1998; Underwood, Kupersmidt, & Coie, 1996), and
occupational and marital instability during adulthood (Caspi, Elder, & Bem, 1987).
For all of these reasons, a large body of research has addressed the developmental origins
of aggression (see Coie & Dodge, 1998, for an overview), as well has how to intervene to
reduce and to even prevent aggressive behavior (Conduct Problems Prevention Group,
1992; Kazdin, 1987). This chapter will highlight current research on aggression in chil-
dren during the preschool (ages 3–5), early school (ages 5–7), and elementary years (ages
5–11), with special attention to gender, culture, and methods for defining and measuring
aggression.
Definitions and Subtypes of Aggressive Behavior
Researchers have long struggled with how to define aggressive behavior. Although over
200 definitions of aggression can be found in the psychological literature, most of these
share two important features: (a) the behavior is intended to harm the target; and (b) the
victim perceives that he or she has been hurt (Harré & Lamb, 1983). Although most
previous researchers have interpreted harm to mean physical injury, recently, investigators
have suggested that behaviors that hurt others’ friendships or social status might also fit
these criteria for aggression (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Galen & Underwood, 1997).
Other than the general criteria of intent to harm and perceived harm, it has been diffi-
cult to specify invariant properties of all aggressive behaviors. In part to cope with contra-
dictory research findings and to describe more precisely the behaviors under study,
investigators have proposed numerous different subtypes of aggression (even an incom-
plete list is too long to repeat here, see Underwood, Galen, & Paquette, 2001). Of all the
subtypes proposed, the distinction between reactive and proactive aggression has been par-
ticularly useful in that these subtypes seem linked to different developmental antecedents
and consequences, as will be discussed in detail later. Reactive aggression is angry and
retaliatory, and proactive aggression is dominant aggressive behavior deployed to achieve
specific goals. Because one important focus of this chapter is gender, this discussion will
also highlight research on subtypes thought to correspond to boys’ and girls’ aggression:
physical versus indirect/relational/social aggression.
Researchers generally agree that boys engage in physical fighting more than girls do (see
Coie & Dodge, 1998; Knight, Fabes, & Higgins, 1996), but recently, investigators have
argued that defining aggression only as physical harm leaves out more subtle forms of
hurtful behaviors that might be more frequent and meaningful among girls. Lagerspetz,
Bjorkqvist, and Peltonen (1988) suggested that girls engage in more indirect aggression,
which they defined as “a noxious behavior in which the target person is attacked not physi-
cally or directly through verbal intimidation but in a more circuitous way, through social
manipulation” (Kaukianinen et al., 1999, p. 83). In 1989, Cairns et al. proposed that girls
engage in social aggression, described as “the manipulation of group acceptance through
alienation, ostracism, or character defamation” (p. 323). Galen and Underwood (1997)
urged expanding this definition, writing, “Social aggression is directed toward damaging
another’s self-esteem, social status, or both, and may take such direct forms as verbal rejec-
tion, negative facial expressions or body movements, or more direct forms such as slander-
ous rumors or social exclusion” (p. 589). In 1995, Crick and Grotpeter introduced a
construct called relational aggression, which they described as “harming others through
the purposeful manipulation and damage of their peer relationships” (p. 711).
Because there is considerable overlap among indirect and social and relational aggres-
sion and experts disagree as to which construct is most valid, in this chapter, these forms of
behavior will be referred to as indirect/relational/social aggression. For each developmental
period examined, this chapter will highlight current research on the frequency, functions,
and correlates of physical and indirect/relational/social aggression.
The Preschool Years
Physical aggression
Anyone observing children in a preschool classroom would likely see fairly high rates of
anger and physical aggression, particularly concerning struggles over objects (Fabes &
Eisenberg, 1992). Research suggests that approximately 13% of 3 year olds fight with
peers and have tantrums (Crowther, Bond, & Rolf, 1981; Earls, 1980). According to moth-
ers’ diaries, physical aggression seems to be highest for 2 year olds, then decreases with age
as verbal aggression increases (Goodenough, 1931).
Preschool boys engage in physical aggression more than preschool girls do (Maccoby &
Jacklin, 1980), and this difference is evident across different socioeconomic groups
(Baumrind, 1971) and cultures (Whiting & Whiting, 1975). In addition to the obvious
possibility of biological contributions to gender differences, preschool boys may engage in
physical aggression more than girls may for several reasons. Boys become involved in more
conflicts (Smith & Green, 1974), boys tend to respond to angry provocation by venting
and resistance (Fabes & Eisenberg, 1992), and boys’ aggression is more likely than girls’
fighting to result in resistance and to elicit like responses from peers, which contributes to
the persistence of the aggressive behavior (Fagot & Hagan, 1985). Clearly, even preschool
children are influenced by gender stereotypes that make physical aggression more accept-
able for males. When preschool children learn to reliably label gender, boys’ aggression
with peers does not change but girls’ aggression drops dramatically (Fagot, Leinbach, &
Hagan, 1986).
During the preschool years, high rates of physical aggression are associated with sev-
eral types of factors. Individual differences in aggressive behavior likely have a genetic
component (Gottesman & Goldsmith, 1994), and may be related to temperamental quali-
ties such as fussiness and inability to be soothed (Bates, Maslin, & Frankel, 1985). High
levels of aggression in preschool children have been shown to be related to punitive and
inconsistent discipline by parents (Campbell, Breaux, Ewing, & Szumowski, 1986) and to
particular types of coercive family processes (Patterson, 1982). Patterson (1982) proposed
that when parents are overwhelmed by the stresses of poverty or marital discord or simply
the demands of parenting challenging children, they become unable to respond sensitively
and positively to desired behaviors, and they become inconsistent in their responses to
negative behavior. A coercive cycle develops in which stressed parents attempt to set limits
or discipline children, these children respond with increasingly noncompliant, negative
behavior, and weary parents give in to such behavior, which reinforces the child’s extreme
noncompliance and increases its future likelihood. Preschool children may also learn to
behave aggressively from their siblings (Dunn & Kendrick, 1982), and from exposure to
media violence (see Huston & Wright, 1998, for an overview). Interestingly, research on
nonparental child care suggests that poor quality day care may be associated with high rates
of aggressive behavior with peers for preschool children (Lamb, 1998).
During the preschool period, physical aggression likely declines for several reasons. Chil-
dren become better able to use language to communicate their needs, and better able to
delay gratification. Peers begin to communicate to one another that physical aggression is
not acceptable, and dominance hierarchies develop that serve to regulate ongoing social
interaction (Strayer & Trudel, 1984). In addition, children become better able to inter-
nally regulate emotions, more empathic, and higher on ego-control (see Coie & Dodge,
1998, for a discussion of these developmental changes). Given that during this period
physical aggression decreases and verbal aggression increases, it is interesting to speculate
whether the above factors might actually contribute to the development of indirect/rela-
tional/social aggression.
Indirect/relational/social aggression
Researchers have only begun to investigate indirect/relational/social aggression among pre-

school children. To date, very little normative information is available about the rates of
these behaviors in preschool classrooms.
In one of the first investigations of relational aggression in young children, Crick, Casas,
and Mosher (1997) developed peer nomination and teacher ratings scales to assess rela-
tional aggression in 3–5-year-old children. Relational aggression items included “tells a
peer that he or she won’t play with that peer or be that peer’s friend unless he or she does
what this child asks” and “when mad at a peer, this child keeps that peer from being in the
play group” (p. 581).
The results indicated that teacher reports showed a moderate relation between relational
and overt aggression for both girls (r = .73) and boys (r = .76), whereas peer nominations
suggested a weaker relationship (r = .37 and .36 for girls and boys, respectively). Teachers
reported that girls were higher than boys on relational aggression and boys were higher
than girls on physical aggression, but the peer nominations showed no gender differences
for either form of aggression. The results indicated that the relation between relational
aggression and psychological adjustment was complex and depended on the gender of the
children and the source of the information. For boys, peer nominations of relational ag-
gression were related to peer rejection, but also to peer acceptance as rated by teachers. For
girls, relational aggression was related only to peer rejection.
Using similar definitions of aggression, McNeilly-Choque, Hart, Robinson, Nelson,
and Olsen (1996) obtained data from multiple informants on 4–5-year-old children’s physi-
cal aggression, verbal relational aggression, and nonverbal relational aggression. For rela-
tional aggression, gender differences depended on the source of the information. Playground
observations indicated that girls were more relationally aggressive than boys were, but peer
nominations did not show gender differences. Teachers rated girls as higher than boys on
verbal relational aggression, but there were no gender differences for nonverbal relational
aggression. McNeilly-Choque et al. (1996) found that not all of the preschool children
observed engaged in relational aggression: 65% showed no relational aggression, 17% rarely
were relationally aggressive, 10% were moderately relationally aggressive, and 7% of chil-
dren showed high rates of relational aggression. Interestingly, the correlations among the
playground observations, teacher ratings, and peer nominations were quite low for rela-
tional aggression, suggesting either that children exhibit these behaviors differently in dif-
ferent social contexts, or that these behaviors are difficult to observe or rate accurately.
Researchers have also just begun to investigate biological factors that may relate to indi-
rect/relational/social aggression in young children. Preschool children who are rated by
teachers as high on relational aggression show more dramatic elevations in cortisol levels
over the course of a day in daycare settings (Dettling, Gunnar, & Donzella, 1999). It also
seems sensible that engaging in both relational and overt aggression may be associated with
physical characteristics such as body size and physical attractiveness, although research to
date has not explored these issues.
Family characteristics may also be related to indirect/relational/social aggression during
the preschool years. In a comparison of preschool children in a Head Start and a univer-
sity-based preschool, McNeilly-Choque et al. (1996) found that teachers rated higher SES
children as more relationally aggressive. They suggested that this might be due to higher
SES parents using more sophisticated, person-centered forms of socialization, which their
children might mimic in hurting others, or to more modeling of snobbishness in affluent
homes. McNeilly-Choque et al. (1996) noted that that much more research is needed to
confirm these speculations, but little research since has explored the relation between fam-
ily SES and indirect/relational/social aggression.
In a study of preschool children and families in Russia, Hart et al. (1998) examined
whether parenting styles were related to relational aggression (assessed by teaching ratings
on items similar to those of Crick et al., 1997). Interestingly, teachers did not report gen-
der differences on relational or on overt aggression. The results indicated that for boys,
maternal and paternal responsiveness were related to lower levels of relational aggression.
For girls, maternal coercion was related to higher rates of relational aggression. Additional
research with other samples is needed to determine the generalizability of these results, but
the relations between parenting and relational aggression are intriguing as suggestions of
some early origins of this behavior.
The Early School Years
Although early theorists did not label the 5–7 age range as a distinct developmental period,
more contemporary researchers have recognized that great developmental advances take
place during this period (Sameroff & Haith, 1996). At least in United States culture, this
age range includes the transition to organized schooling, which might pose special chal-
lenges for children prone to aggression.
Physical aggression
Research suggests that the overall frequency of physical aggression continues to decrease
during this age range, although this decline may be largely due to the highly aggressive
subgroup becoming less extreme (Ladd & Burgess, 1999). Just as during the preschool
years, more highly aggressive children are boys.
During the early school years, individual differences in physical aggression seem related
to family factors (SES and parenting) and to how children process social information.
Across age ranges, levels of aggression are higher in lower SES groups (see Coie & Dodge,
1998, for a discussion of the complex reasons for this phenomenon). For a kindergarten
sample, lower SES predicted higher levels of initial aggression, but lower SES was not
related to greater increases in aggression from kindergarten to third grade (McFadyen-
Ketchum, Bates, Dodge, & Pettit, 1996).
In this same study, observed maternal coercion and nonaffection were positively related
to higher parent ratings of aggression just prior to kindergarten. Maternal coercion and
nonaffection predicted increases in aggressive behavior from kindergarten through third
grade for boys, but predicted decreases in aggression for girls. McFadyen-Ketchum et al.
(1996) interpreted the boys’ findings as supporting Patterson’s (1982) coercion model,
and suggested that because girls are more sensitive and compliant to adult demands, ma-
ternal coercion might be more effective in squelching their aggressive behavior. Although
this theory awaits empirical confirmation, this result suggests that aggressive boys and girls
might respond differently to parental negativity.
Specific types of discipline practices are associated with high levels of physical aggression
in this age range. Strassberg, Dodge, Pettit, and Bates. (1994) compared the levels of reac-
tive aggression, proactive aggression, and bullying in the kindergarten children of parents
who used no physical discipline, spanking, or violent punishment. The results showed that
the highest levels of aggression were associated with parental use of violent discipline, but
important differences between the spanking and nonspanking groups were also apparent.
Children of mothers who used spanking were observed at school to be higher on reactive
and total aggression than children of mothers who used no physical discipline. Children of
fathers who used spanking were higher on reactive aggression than those of fathers who
used no physical discipline (for boys only, the spanking group was higher than the non-use
group on bullying and total aggression). The overall pattern of these results strongly sug-
gests that spanking is associated with high levels of aggression as observed at school. This
finding is particularly important given that 90% of parents in the United States report
spanking their children (Straus & Gelles, 1986), presumably because they believe that
spanking will reduce misbehavior (Holden & Zambarano, 1992).
However, the relation between physical discipline and behavior problems may not be
the same for different ethnic groups. For a sample of children followed from kindergarten
through third grade, maternal reports of using physical discipline were moderately related
to teacher and peer reports of externalizing behaviors for European-American children,
but not for African-American children (Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1996).
Further research is necessary to understand exactly how physical discipline relates to a
broad array of parenting behaviors for different ethnic groups, and how particular constel-
lations of family characteristics and parenting behaviors predict aggression.
Perhaps as a result of harsh parenting practices or early stressful events or reinforcement
experiences, children who are highly aggressive tend to make particular types of errors in
processing social information (Dodge, 1990; Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1990). Crick and
Dodge (1994) proposed that children come to social interactions with a database of past
experiences and biologically determined abilities, but then process social cues in a series of
six steps: encoding, interpretation, goal clarification, response generation, response evalu-
ation, and enactment. A large body of research has demonstrated that how children proc-
ess information at each of these steps relates to social adjustment in important ways, perhaps
especially to aggression. A comprehensive summary of social information-processing re-
search is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Crick & Dodge, 1994, for an integrative and
thorough review). In short, particular types of aggressive children tend to show specific
deficits in social information processing. Children who are high on reactive aggression
tend to overattribute hostility in the face of ambiguous cues, and this hostile attribution
bias is related to experiencing harsh parental discipline (Dodge, 1990; Weiss, Dodge, Bates,
& Pettit, 1992). Children who are high on proactive aggression view the likely outcomes
of aggressive behaviors as more positive than other children (Crick & Ladd, 1990), which
Dodge (1990) suggested may be due to early experiences of being rewarded for physical
aggression.
Children who engage in high rates of aggression during the early school years develop
serious difficulties in their relationships with their peers and their teachers. The relation
between aggression and peer status depends in part on the particular type of aggressive
behavior. For a sample of 5–6 year olds, Price and Dodge (1989) found that observed rates
of reactive aggression were associated with peer rejection as measured by teacher ratings,
whereas engaging in proactive aggression was related to positive peer status in this age
range. In their comparisons of the relationship trajectories of aggressive, withdrawn, and
aggressive-withdrawn children, Ladd and Burgess (1999) found that children in the ag-
gressive and the comorbid groups were consistently higher on peer rejection during grades
K–2, and had more conflicts with their teachers. Children who were both aggressive and
withdrawn reported more loneliness and less social satisfaction than other groups. To-
gether, the weight of the evidence strongly suggests that aggression during the early school
years is associated with social and psychological problems.
Research to date has not investigated the forms and possible developmental consequences
of indirect/relational/social aggression during the early school years. Experts agree that
during this period, physical aggression declines as verbal aggression increases (see Coie &
Dodge, 1998). Bjorkqvist (1994) proposed that as children become more verbally skilled
and sophisticated in their social understanding, they become more likely to hurt each other
by indirect means, particularly because these more subtle behaviors are less likely to be
punished by adults. It seems sensible to expect that predicted increases in indirect/rela-
tional/social aggression might be apparent as early as 5–7 years of age. Also during these
years, children are experiencing the massive changes in their social ecology as they begin
school, as well as moving toward middle childhood, a developmental period in which
fitting in with the same-gender peer group is of paramount importance (Gottman &
Mettetal, 1986). Empirical research is needed to determine whether indirect/relational/
social aggression increases during the early school years, differs for boys and girls, takes
both proactive and reactive forms, and is associated with social and academic adjustment.
Middle Childhood
During the later elementary years, children strongly value being accepted by same-sex peer
groups and work very hard to maintain emotional control (Gottman & Mettetal, 1986).
Children become masters of dissemblance as they learn to cope with conflicting cultural
messages about expressing emotions: be honest, but hide your negative feelings if you want
people to like you (Saarni & von Salisch, 1993). For these reasons, many children who
continue to engage in high rates of aggression during this developmental period are seen as
increasingly deviant and disordered.
Physical aggression
Most children become less physically aggressive during the elementary years, but a small
number of children continue to start fights (Loeber & Hay, 1993), and at least for boys,
engaging in aggression behavior after age 10 is a highly stable trait, as stable as intelligence
(Olweus, 1977). Boys continue to be more physically aggressive than girls during this age
range (Knight et al., 1996; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974, 1980).
As mentioned at the opening of this chapter, engaging in physical aggression during
middle childhood is associated with poor adjustment in several ways. Although not all
aggressive children are socially rejected by peers, about half are (French, 1988). Reactive
aggression continues to be strongly associated with peer dislike, and even proactive aggres-
sion becomes more strongly associated with rejection in older age groups (Dodge & Coie,
1987). For a sample of sixth-grade boys, aggression was shown to be associated with aca-
demic problems and depressed mood (Capaldi, 1991), and for a sample of third- to sixth-
grade boys, peer nominations of overt aggression were associated with boys’ self-reports of
depression (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995).
Interestingly, physical aggression seems related to maladjustment across cultures. In a
series of studies conducted in China, physical aggression has been shown to be related to
school and social problems (Chen, Rubin, & Li, B., 1995; Chen, Rubin, & Li D., 1997;
Chen, Rubin, & Li, Z., 1995). However, in one longitudinal study, there was an unex-
pected gender difference in the relation between aggressive-disruptive behavior and social
adjustment (Chen, Rubin, Li, & Li, 1999). For boys, aggression at ages 8–10 was nega-
tively related to social adjustment 4 years later, but for girls, aggression at ages 8–10 posi-
tively predicted social adjustment. The authors explained this finding by pointing out that
aggression in girls is less stable, perceived as more deviant, and might take more subtle
forms than those that were captured by the measures of physical aggression used here.
Future research is needed to explore the fascinating possibility that some types of aggres-
sion may be positively related to adjustment for girls in some cultural contexts.
Engaging in high rates of physical aggression during middle childhood appears to be
related to some of the same factors as for earlier developmental periods: coming from a low
SES family, experiencing harsh discipline, being involved in coercive cycles with parents,
and errors in social information processing. In addition, another factor that may strongly
influence aggression during the elementary years is exposure to media violence (see Huston
& Wright, 1998, for a review of this large and fascinating literature). Meta-analyses com-
bining the findings of the most well-done studies show that the effects of television vio-
lence account for about 10% of the variance in children’s physical aggression (Wood,
Wong, & Chachere, 1991). Some evidence indicates that highly aggressive children are
more attracted to violent television (Huesmann & Miller, 1994), which suggests that physi-
cally aggressive children who are already at risk for school and social problems might have
all of these difficulties exacerbated by more exposure to this widely available environmen-
tal agent.
Most of the research on indirect/relational/social aggression has been conducted with chil-
dren in the later elementary grades. Hurting others by indirect means such as social exclu-
sion may be particularly powerful during this developmental period in which children
strongly value acceptance by the same-gender peer group (Gottman & Mettetal, 1986).
Children may seek to hurt each other by damaging what their same-gender groups most
value (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995): for boys, physical dominance and for girls, social rela-
tionships. Some have even gone as far as to argue that indirect/relational/social aggression
in females serves similar functions as physical aggression for males, and that if you consider
both indirect/relational and physical aggression, girls are as aggressive as boys are (Bjorkqvist,
1994; Crick et al., 1999).
As intriguing as these theories are, evidence is mixed as to whether there are clear gender
differences in indirect/relational/social aggression, and patterns of gender differences seem
to depend on the type of measure used. Using peer nomination measures, some studies
find clear gender differences for indirect aggression in Scandinavian samples (Lagerspetz et
al., 1988) and for relational aggression in Midwestern U.S. samples (Crick, 1996, 1997;
Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). However, other studies of U.S. samples using peer nomination
items similar to Crick’s find no gender differences (e.g., Rys & Bear, 1997), or show that
boys are rated higher than girls are on relational aggression (Henington, Hughes, Cavell,
& Thompson, 1998). In a study with Italian children, peer reports indicated that boys
were higher on relational aggression than girls were (Tomada & Schneider, 1997). Find-
ings from studies using self-report measures are similarly inconsistent. In one study, boys
reported engaging in more relational aggression than girls did (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995).
Another investigation showed that girls and boys report experiencing similar rates of social
aggression (Paquette & Underwood, 1997). Given the lack of consistent findings for gen-
der differences in indirect/relational/social aggression, it seems important to refrain from
referring to these behaviors as “female aggression.” Although it is likely true that girls
engage in relational aggression more than physical aggression, it does not necessarily follow
that girls engage in more relational aggression than boys do.
A growing body of evidence suggests that engaging in relational aggression is negatively
related to social-psychological adjustment, both concurrently and in short-term longitudinal
studies. Children rated by peers as relationally aggressive are disliked by peers, and relationally
aggressive girls report greater loneliness and less social satisfaction (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995).
For girls, peer ratings of relational aggression predict social rejection 6 months later (Crick,
1996). It is important to note that in both of these studies, relational aggression was related
to maladjustment over and above physical aggression (i.e., the predictive relation remained
even when levels of physical aggression were statistically controlled).
Given that the above studies all used peer nomination measures of relational aggression,
it seems important to consider the possibility that the relation between indirect/relational/
social aggression and maladjustment may also depend on the methods used. In a study
using peer narrative measures, Xie, Swift, Cairns, and Cairns (2000) found that social
aggression in childhood was unrelated to negative outcomes in adolescence.
One study suggests that the aggressive children at most risk for maladjustment are those
who engage in gender non-normative forms of aggression: relationally aggressive boys and
physically aggressive girls (Crick, 1997). Teachers rated relationally aggressive boys as more
maladjusted than relationally aggressive girls, nonrelationally aggressive girls, and
nonrelationally aggressive boys. Teachers reported more maladjustment for overtly aggres-
sive girls than for overtly aggressive boys, nonovertly aggressive boys, and nonovertly ag-
gressive girls. These results suggest that the more rare and understudied groups, relationally
aggressive boys and overtly aggressive girls, may be perceived as most deviant and perhaps
at risk for subsequent psychopathology.
Taken together, the evidence that engaging in indirect/relational/social aggression is re-
lated to social-psychological maladjustment makes it imperative that we learn more about
the developmental origins of these behaviors. Future research is needed to explore whether
higher SES children engage in more relational aggression as McNeilly-Choque et al. (1996)
found for preschoolers, and whether particular types of parenting behaviors result in children
becoming high on relational aggression. Some evidence suggests that just as for physical
aggression, children high on relational aggression may show particular deficits in social infor-
mation processing. Crick (1995) found that children high on relational aggression were more
likely to misattribute hostile intent in scenarios describing relational provocation.
In addition, fully understanding the relation between indirect/relational/social aggres-

sion and psychological adjustment will require basic, developmental research to assess
whether engaging in these behaviors is indeed rare and related to psychopathology, or
more normative and frequent. Interestingly, some studies have suggested that indirect/
relational/social aggression may be related to positive social qualities, such as social intelli-
gence (Kaukiainen et al., 1999) and may serve positive developmental functions such as
maintaining one’s sense of belonging (Paquette & Underwood, 1999) and protecting the
integrity of social groups (Leckie, 1999).
Challenges and Future Directions
As rich and interesting as the very large research literature on aggression in childhood
has become, important questions remain (see Underwood, Galen, & Paquette, 2001, for
a more complete discussion of methodological challenges). One set of questions con-
cerns the fact that aggressive behavior and how it is perceived depends heavily on the
social context. To make matters even more complicated, context can have several levels
of meaning, such as culture, physical setting, genders or ages or social roles of partici-
pants in the interaction, the activity in which they are engaged, and the immediate events
leading up to the aggressive event. The few available studies suggest that all of these
types of contexts may influence aggressive behavior. In addition to the studies cited
above on aggression in different cultures, research suggests that even boys rated by teachers
as externalizers only fight in response to particular provocations (such as being teased or
threatened, Wright, Zakriski, & Drinkwater, 1999). Particular group dynamics affect
rates of physical aggression in experimental play groups (DeRosier, Cillessen, Coie, &
Dodge, 1994), and much of the aggression in experimental play groups is exhibited by
mutually aggressive dyads who make more hostile attributions about each other’s behaviors
(Coie et al., 1999).
A second daunting set of challenges is that clarifying the role of context for all forms
of aggression will require additional observational research. As many investigators have
noted, actually observing aggressive behavior is difficult, especially among older chil-
dren, because they refrain from aggressing when they know they are being observed
(Coie & Dodge, 1998). Crick and Grotpeter (1995) have argued that observing rela-
tional aggression is very difficult not only because the behaviors are subtle and difficult
to detect, but also because relational aggression takes place in complex sequences over
time, and understanding these requires detailed knowledge of all of the participants.
Despite these obstacles, Galen and Underwood (1997) have shown that social aggres-
sion can be reliably elicited and observed for a small number of girls’ laboratory play
sessions. Pepler and Craig (1995) reported that reliable coding of indirect aggression was
possible using remote audiovisual recording, for which children wear remote micro-
phones and their playground behavior is videotaped from afar using cameras with zoom
lenses. Using laboratory methods and new technologies will do much to clarify gender
differences, developmental antecedents and consequences of engaging in physical as well
as indirect/relational/social aggression.
Finally, additional research is needed on the long-term developmental trajectories of all

forms of aggression. A sizable body of research on physical aggression has formed the basis
for a developmental model of conduct disorder and a comprehensive prevention program
(Conduct Problems Prevention Group, 1992), and this model should serve as a type of
standard for research efforts to better understand indirect/relational/social aggression. What
are the early developmental origins of indirect/relational/social aggression, how do these
behaviors continue to be expressed as children enter adolescence and adulthood, and how
do they relate to adjustment in later life? The best answers to these questions might require
that researchers move beyond the conceptual frameworks used by researchers studying
physical aggression. It might be especially important to consider that indirect/relational/
social aggression may be more qualities of groups than individuals, that these behaviors
may occur across more settings because they are so rarely punished, and that these behaviors
are more covert and could take place over more extended time scales than physical aggres-
sion. Future research should explore whether continuing to engage in indirect/relational/
social aggression into adolescence and adulthood is associated with difficulties with work
colleagues, problems in romantic relationships, and ineffective parenting.
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Bullying in Childhood 549
28
Bullying in Childhood
Ken Rigby
Introduction
Bullying among children has long been acknowledged as commonplace, especially in school
settings, as is evident from accounts of bullying among English school boys by Thomas
Hughes (1857) in Tom Brown’s Schooldays. In many respects the situation at school for
many children has not changed over the last 150 years (see Rigby, 1997a). What has changed,
however, is the degree of attention being paid to the issue of school bullying, both in the
press and in educational and research journals.
The impetus for the upsurge in interest in bullying came through the work of the Swed-
ish psychologist, Dan Olweus, beginning in the 1970s. His work, originally focusing on
the nature and prevalence of bullying between schoolboys in Scandinavia, stimulated simi-
lar research elsewhere, in the 1980s in Britain and other parts of Europe, then more widely
in Australia and North America. It is now evident from the recently published book on
national perspectives on bullying (Smith et al., 1999), that bullying among children, both
boys and girls, is an issue of worldwide interest.
Over the last 10 years data has been steadily accumulating about bullying across age
groups from early childhood to late adolescence. In this review I examine the prevalence
nature and effects of bullying as experienced by children under 12 years of age, principally
in school settings.
The problem of definition
As is common in new areas of study, there has been, and continues to be, a diversity of
views as to how bullying can most usefully be defined. An early formulation focused only
on the desire or intention of the bully to hurt another person; for example, one popular
550 Ken Rigby
definition was “the wilful, conscious desire to hurt another and put him/her under stress”
(Tattum & Tattum, 1992). This definition, however, proved unsatisfactory to more
behaviorally inclined researchers such as Olweus (1993) who saw bullying as essentially
“negative” behavior, not merely a desire to hurt which may or may not be expressed. It also
became clear that “bullying” needed to be distinguished from aggression in general. Hence,
more recently, writers in this area have generally emphasized that bullying can only occur
when there is imbalance of power between aggressor and victim (Farrington, 1993; Olweus,
1993; Rigby, 1996; Smith & Sharp 1994). There is still some dispute as to whether one
should limit the term “bullying” to a sequence of negative actions, that is, repeated aggres-
sion, as Olweus has suggested, or to accept (as in common usage) that the term can some-
times be used to describe a one-off experience, as Randall (1996) has argued.
Smith and Sharp (1994) have provided what is arguably the most comprehensive and
parsimonious definition of bullying as “the systematic abuse of power.” By including the
term “abuse” in the definition, one is forced to consider what in a given situation is the
proper or appropriate use of power. This would appear to depend upon prevailing norms
and cultural mores and these may differ from place to place and from time to time. A
school prefect in a nineteenth-century English boarding school could chastise his fag for
not cleaning his boots without being accused of bullying him. Not so today. A degree of
cultural relativity must be accepted in examinations of what constitutes bullying.
Methods of Investigation
Self-report questionnaire
This is by far the most commonly used method for investigating the prevalence of bullying
and other aspects of the phenomenon. Probably the most frequently used instrument of
this kind is that developed by Olweus and subsequently modified for an English language
version (Smith & Sharp, 1994). Another widely used self-report questionnaire is the Peer
Relations Questionnaire or PRQ (Rigby & Slee, 1993a), which has been used with over
40,000 schoolchildren in Australasia and in other English-speaking countries.
These and similar questionnaires typically provide a definition of bullying with illustra-
tions in terms easily understood by children. Versions have been developed which are
mainly pictorial and suitable (with teacher assistance) for children in the early years of
primary school (Smith & Levan, 1995: given in Sharp, 1999). It is typically emphasized
that a power imbalance is an essential part of the definition; for example, by asserting that
“it is not bullying when students of the same strength or power have the occasional fight or
quarrel.” In order to maximize reliability, such questionnaires are answered anonymously.
The question is sometimes raised as to whether student respondents are apt to confuse
bullying (in which there is an imbalance of power) with aggression generally. This may
sometimes occur, despite the emphasis provided, but it is notable that when students are
asked to make drawings to illustrate bullying they typically depict a smaller figure being
attacked by a larger person or group of persons (see Rigby, 1996).
A further problem is that bullying is frequently construed by children (and others, too!)
as physical in nature. It is therefore necessary to provide examples of other, psychological

forms of bullying, such as that conveyed through verbal abuse and exclusion. Self-report
questionnaires typically enable respondents to indicate which of the various means of bul-
lying have been applied to them over a stipulated time period and how often.
The peer nomination method
This approach involves respondents identifying students in their class who are involved in
bully/victim interactions. It has been used in a variety of studies (e.g., Perry, Kusel, &
Perry, 1988; Rigby & Slee, 1999). It has the important advantage of drawing upon the
judgments of a number of students who have been able to observe their peers over a period
of time. Where a high consensus emerges that a student is acting as a “bully” or a “victim”
(in ways that are specified) it can be taken that the information is reliable. A problem with
this approach is that it is seen by some educational and research bodies as unethical, on the
grounds that respondents may be placed in an invidious position in reporting negatively
upon their peers. Nevertheless, the approach is widely used, and may be justified as long as
respondents are given the option of not making judgments of their peers’ behavior if they
dislike doing so. A further related issue concerns the use to which such data might be put.
It is wise to make it clear that the results would be available in confidence to the researchers
only and not accessible by school authorities.
Interviews
Interviewing children about bullying is sometimes undertaken, for example, in studies by

Rigby and Slee (1990) and Williams, Chambers, Logan, and Robinson (1996). This op-
tion has some advantages. One can ensure, through further clarification, that the respond-
ent understands the question being asked (as opposed to misreading or misinterpreting a
written question); one can assess the extent to which the respondent is genuinely and
sincerely engaged in the exercise; and, most important of all, one can obtain information
from children who could not read a written questionnaire. The difficulty remains, how-
ever, that respondents may be loath to provide information about themselves when it
reflects on them being aggressive (and culpable), or victimized by others (and thereby
reveals weaknesses they would like to hide).
Teacher reports
A convenient way of obtaining data in children’s bullying behavior is to ask class teachers
to rate the behavior of each child (see Crick, Casas, & Mosher, 1997). For children in
primary schools in which teachers see a great deal of children in their class this is a viable
option. Where there are several teachers who have observed a child’s behavior, inter-rater
reliability can be usefully assessed. In secondary schools in which students are normally
taught by a wide range of instructors, data from teacher assessments of behavior are far less
552 Ken Rigby
reliable. Further, we know that most bullying takes place not in the classroom where the
teacher can often see it, but rather at recess or on the way to and from school when the
teacher is not present. This approach should therefore be confined to obtaining informa-
tion about younger children under relatively close supervision from teachers and in cir-
cumstances when other approaches, for example, the anonymous questionnaire, are not
practicable.
Phone-ins
A further source of data on bullying in childhood comes from records of children’s calls to
public services that provide opportunities for children to share their problems with a
counselor and receive brief counseling or advice. Kids Help Line in Australia provides one
such service (see http://203.37.145.243/INFO7/contents.htm). Although data collected
in this way is extensive (some 6,000 children phoned in about bullying in 1999) this
method inevitably elicits calls predominantly from older children who are more able to use
the service.
Direct observational methods
This approach has a strong appeal because it circumvents the problem of obtaining socially
desirable verbal responses to (possibly) misunderstood questions. It can also be carried out
in a naturalistic setting, for instance in school playgrounds at recess times. It may neverthe-
less be difficult to observe the behavior of interest unobtrusively, especially at close quar-
ters. To some extent, this difficulty may be overcome by making use of video and audio
recordings, as was undertaken in observations of bullying behavior between Canadian pri-
mary school children (Craig & Pepler, 1995; Pepler & Craig, 1995). This involved setting
up a video camera overlooking the playground. During filming each child in the study
wore a small remote microphone and pocket-sized transmitter. The remote microphone
picked up not only the “target’s” speech but also that of those around him or her. The
children were instructed to play as they normally did during lunch and recess.
This method has provided much data in a form that can be carefully and minutely
coded and interpreted at a later stage. However, one must still reckon with the artificiality
of children having to carry recording devices in the knowledge that what they say and do
could be accessed by researchers. Also this research method may be considered by some
ethical bodies as too intrusive. Its chief value appears to lie in enabling researchers to iden-
tify a range of bullying behaviors in a naturalistic setting, and more especially how children
respond (or more often fail to respond) to bullying episodes that are taking place around
them.
Bullying in Early Childhood
Bullying behavior can often be observed between very young children, for example be-
tween siblings in a family context. This is distinct from “conflict” which may arise over a
struggle for possession of a prized toy and cease when the issue of ownership has been
resolved. When an older and more powerful child persistently seeks to hurt a weaker sib-
ling, this can legitimately be called bullying. Yet systematic studies of such behavior in the
family context are notably lacking and for an examination of bullying in early childhood
we must turn to studies conducted in preschool and kindergarten settings. Even here,
compared with studies undertaken in primary and secondary schools, there have been
relatively few systematic inquiries. To some extent this may be due to the difficulties of
obtaining reliable data from the self-reports of the young children, especially through the
use of questionnaires, which constitute the most widely used method of generating data on
bullying and are more appropriately answered by older, more literate children. For younger
children alternative and time-consuming methods are needed, such as one-to-one inter-
views with children and with teachers, and the use of direct observational methods.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research may be illustrated by a study based mainly upon direct observations of
children’s interpersonal behavior undertaken at four early childhood centers in Canberra,
Australia in 1994 (Main, 1999). Some 98 hours of nonparticipant observation focused on
the behavior of infants (6 weeks to 18 months), toddlers (18 months to 3 years) and
preschoolers (3 years to 5 years). In addition 20 hours of semistructured interviews were
conducted with 17 staff members of the selected child care organizations. Main reported
that in all the subgroups (infants, toddlers, and preschoolers) a relatively few children were
responsible for initiating aggressive actions which included pushing, biting, and hitting.
Altogether 1,441 violent incidents were observed. In many cases a clear imbalance of power
was apparent. For example:
Tom is running around poking many children. He has a texta lid on his finger, and smiles as
he pokes the children hard with it. He comes over to the observer and pokes her with his
finger and says, “Do you want to see my powerful finger?” (The Observer responds that she is
not interested because he had poked her with it.) He runs off and continues to poke children
with it. A little later, when the children have moved inside, he grabs Rob and pushes his face
hard into a pillow and holds him down. Rob is very distressed. A member of staff suggests
that Tom does some hammering. Tom replies, “No! I don’t have to!”
Main suggests that in general the children’s aggressive behavior could not be explained
as deriving from an “inability to share,” and that the support that many early childhood
educators give to the “principles of free play” with minimal intervention from teachers
actually encourages bullying behavior in young children (see also Davies, 1997).
In many cases the motivation for acts of bullying appeared to be “for fun.”
554 Ken Rigby
A preschool boy throws a sandpit spade at a toddler girl as she comes out of the toddler’s
room. He misses and laughs with the other boys sitting with him. Then he grabs a sandpit
spade from her and hits her hard on the body with it.
Not uncommonly, the observed behavior included a variety of bullying acts: aggressive
gestures, physical attack, and verbal abuse.
Jim (a preschool boy) goes over to the corner where Sal is playing with a group of girls on a
pile of pillows. He growls at them, putting his face very close to theirs and grimacing. They
scream and grab the pillows around them. Jim tells them to share the pillows. He then lies
down on the pillows and the girls say “We had them first.” Jim does not respond and the girls
move away, going back only to retrieve their shoes. Jim then moves from the pillows and gets
a piece of string. He grabs Sybi and puts the string around her neck, pulling it around her
neck. Sybi cries. A member of staff comes over and tells him to play with Ian. He turns to Sybi
and says “Cry baby.” Jim then goes over to Melanie and, smiling, pulls her hair.
Although this research does not provide detailed statistical data on the incidence of
bullying among preschool children, it clearly demonstrates its nature and prevalence.
Quantitative research
Much quantitative research has focused upon students who are frequently the targets of
aggression from peers, but are not necessarily being bullied in the sense of being victimized
by those more powerful than themselves. They may simply be more often involved in
fights or quarrels. Hence results from studies that do not make a distinction between bul-
lying (where there is an imbalance of power) and peer aggression (where no such imbal-
ance may be present) arguably need to be differentiated.
A study of peer victimization in early childhood that fits into the broader category of
peer aggression is that of Kochenderfer and Ladd (1996). They interviewed 200 students
attending kindergarten (105 males and 95 females) at the beginning of their school year.
The mean age of these children was 5.5 years. They were asked to say whether any of the
children in their class had done any of the following things to them, and, if so, how often
another student had: (i) picked on them; (ii) hit them; (iii) said mean things to them; (iv)
said bad things about them to other kids at school. Responses were scored as 1 “never”, 2
“sometimes”, and 3 “a lot”. The internal consistency of this measure (alpha = .74), suggests
that children at this age who were repeatedly targeted tended to be treated negatively in a
number of different ways. In short, there appears to be support for the generality of their
concept of peer victimization.
Taking the view that a victimized child is one who is repeatedly treated badly, the crite-
rion for identifying “victims” was scoring above the midpoint on the scale. Some 20.5%
were identified in this way. The authors claim a significant level of agreement between
children identified as victims in this way and the judgments of teachers based upon direct
observations. Further, they claim that this estimate of the extent of peer victimization in
U.S. kindergartens is, in fact, not very different from that reported by Olweus (1993) for
Norwegian second-grade students among whom some 17% reported being victims of school
bullying. Here, then, is a suggestion that the “victimized” children in the study by
Kochenderfer and Ladd are in the same category as those reported as being bullied in the
sense employed by Olweus.
Kochenderfer and Ladd also examined the question of whether at this age children iden-
tified as victims continued to be victims of peer aggression. They report that there were
some 8% of respondents who were identified as victims on the basis of self-reports 6 months
later. This suggests that a small minority of children had over this period continued to be
“victims.” Almost twice as many initial victims no longer met the criterion of repeatedly
victimized.
Somewhat similar research with young children has been conducted in a series of studies
by Crick and others. Again these authors did not differentiate between “peer aggression”
and “bullying.” However, they have examined an aspect of aggression of interest to re-
search into bullying, one generally seen as prevalent more especially among senior stu-
dents, namely, relational aggression. In a study by Crick, Casas, and Mosher (1997) with
children (N = 65) between 3 to 5 years, it was reported that relational kinds of bullying
were evident among boys and girls, but more commonly among girls, and could be differ-
entiated from other forms of aggressive behavior. To identify different kinds of aggressive
behavior teachers were asked to rate children in their class according to how often they
acted in various aggressive ways with their peers. Ways assumed to be “relational” in-
cluded: (i) tells others not to play with or be a peer’s friend; (ii) tries to get others to dislike
a peer; and (iii) when mad at a peer, keeps that peer away from being in the peer group.
Analysis confirmed that ratings on these and similar items were loaded on a different factor
from that associated with verbal and physical overt forms of aggression. At the same time,
scale scores based on “relational” items correlated highly (r = >.7) with scale scores for
other nonrelational items, suggesting that children whose aggression is expressed in a rela-
tional manner tend to be aggressive in other ways. Similar findings were reported using
data derived from peer ratings.
In a further study by Crick, Casas, and Ku (1999) a focus was on children in the same
age range who were continually victimized by others. Again teacher ratings constituted the
main method of acquiring relevant data. For example, teachers were asked to identify
children who “get pushed and shoved” (overt victimization) and those who “get left out
when someone is mad with him/her” (relational victimization). Again, using factor analy-
ses, the researchers were able to show that being victimized relationally could be differen-
tiated from overt forms. Crick et al. also provided results that suggest that being victimized
at this age is relatively stable over a 1-month interval. For relational bullying the test–retest
correlation was moderately high (r = .63); for physical victimization, lower but still signifi-
cant (r = .37). This appears to conflict with the finding reported by Kochenderfer and
Ladd who reported low levels of stability for peer victimization. These differences may be
due to Kochenderfer and Ladd using children’s self-report data as opposed to teacher rat-
ings, and assessing stability over a 6-month period rather than over 1 month.
In the study by Crick et al. (1999) it was also possible to examine the correlations
between acting aggressively and being victimized by peers. Correlations between physical
aggressiveness and being physically victimized were moderately strong: .65 for boys and
.65 for girls. Corresponding correlations for relational aggression and victimization were
.45 and .58. These results appear to be at variance with results obtained from research in
556 Ken Rigby
which bullying behavior (implying an imbalance of power) has been specifically studied.
For example, Rigby and Slee (1993b) reported correlations for older students between
reliable scales assessing bullying others and being victimized by others that were not sig-
nificantly different from zero. It is possible that among very young students the more
severely victimized children do tend to engage more in aggressive behavior toward others,
as the correlations provided by Crick et al. suggest, and that with increasing maturity they
become more submissive. However, a more likely explanation for the differences lies in the
different ways in which being victimized or being an aggressor is conceptualized; that is, as
occurring in situations in which one party cannot defend itself adequately due to a power
imbalance (the bullying situation), or as occurring whenever there is peer aggression more
generally. Until studies are conducted which clearly differentiate between bullying and
peer aggression more generally this important question will not be resolved.
Bullying in Later Childhood
Estimates of the incidence and nature of bullying and related attitudes can be assessed
more reliably by questionnaire among older students. Further, the bulk of research with
older children has been based upon a conceptualization of bullying that identifies bullying
as occurring only where there is an imbalance of power.
Peer victimization
There is general agreement that the incidence of reported victimization declines with age.
This appears to be the case from the earliest years of school to the end of secondary school-
ing. The decline is evident in the period between 8 and 11 years, as illustrated in the data
(see Table 28.1) for a large sample of Australian schoolchildren (N = 3440). These data
were collected over a 4-year period using the PRQ (Rigby & Slee, 1993a). The criterion
for “being bullied” was reporting being bullied at least once a week during the current year
of schooling.
Evidence for the near ubiquity of this trend among children between the ages of 7 and
11 is included in a paper by Smith, Madsen, and Moody (1999). They cite figures from
Table 28.1 Percentages of Students Reporting being Bullied Weekly in Australian Schools (Ns
range from 176 to 803)
Ages in years
8 9 10 11
Boys 48.0 30.7 24.3 22.5

Girls 33.3 32.9 26.1 20.8
large-scale studies undertaken by Olweus (1993) in Norway and in Sweden; by Whitney and
Smith (1993) in England; by Rigby (1996, 1997c) in Australia; and by O’Moore, Kirkham,
and Smith (1997) in Ireland. In each case for both boys and girls a steady decline is evident
over these years. This is despite the fact that somewhat different criteria were used by the
researchers to define “being bullied”; for instance, Olweus has used, on occasions, “now and
then”; Rigby, “at least once a week.” However, in one American study which obtained data
using peer nominations, no evidence of a decline in peer victimization was found for chil-
dren between the ages of 8 and 12 years (Perry, Kusel, & Perry, 1988).
Below the age of 8 years the PRQ and similar questionnaires have limited value as a
means of assessing the incidence of peer victimization. Smith, Madsen, and Moody (1999)
have argued it is likely that bullying may be conceived in a somewhat different way accord-
ing to the maturity of the respondent, and results for groups varying widely in age may not
be strictly comparable. It is possible that 8 year olds see bullying in a somewhat different
way from 11 year olds. Further research is needed to address this possibility.
The content of peer victimization
In assessing the incidence of peer victimization some studies have sought to examine spe-
cific kinds of aggressive acts to which victims in different age groups may be subjected.
Typically, studies have differentiated between being a victim of physical, verbal, and rela-
tional aggression. Results using the PRQ in Australia include measures using such indices.
Their relative frequency according to age and gender groups is given in Table 28.2. For
each of the indices of victimization there is over the age range of 8 to 11 a trend towards a
lower incidence of occurrence. The proportions of students reporting being victimized to
not being victimized for each of the ways of being victimized and for each sex group differ
significantly (p < .05 by chi square).
Table 28.2 Percentages of Students Reporting Peer Victimization of Different Kinds (Ns range
from 172 to 765)
Ages in years
8 9 10 11
Being called hurtful names

Boys 65.1 58.5 53.8 51.8
Girls 58.2 61.9 53.2 53.0
Being left out of things
Boys 54.3 45.1 37.7 33.9
Girls 58.2 52.2 50.5 45.3
Being hit or kicked
Boys 66.7 54.1 43.0 34.0
Girls 43.4 39.9 29.5 22.9
558 Ken Rigby
Table 28.3 Percentages of Students Reporting Bullying Others More Than “Once or Twice”
During the Year (Ns range from 176 to 803)
Ages in years
8 9 10 11
Boys
As an individual 13.6 11.3 10.5 10.0
As a group member 12.5 12.2 9.3 9.7
Girls
As an individual 3.0 5.8 6.3 6.5
As a group member 2.5 4.9 4.1 4.5
Perpetrators of Bullying
Among children between 8 and 11 years there is little evidence of a change in the tendency
to bully others. The figures for Australian students completing the PRQ (given in Table
28.3) indicate that within groups of boys and also within groups of girls the proportions of
self-reported bullies, both individually and in groups do not change from year to year. This
finding is consistent with research reported elsewhere (e.g., Olweus, 1993).
The differences between the proportions of students in the different age groups are
small and nonsignificant (for each of the comparisons by chi square, p > .05). From this it
would appear that the tendency to engage in bullying others is relatively stable between the
ages of 8 to 11 years, whether perpetrated by individuals or as members of a group; and as
a boy or as a girl.
Reactions to Being Bullied
Little attention has been paid to how students react emotionally to being bullied. In a
study with Australian students, again using the PRQ, respondents were asked to say how
they generally reacted to being bullied by another student. Results are given in Table 28.4
for those students who admitted that they had been bullied at least once at school, that is,
approximately 50% of students of each sex.
Among boys the proportions of kinds of reactions differed significantly according to age
group (chi square 29.6, p < .001). The percentages of boys claiming that they were “not
bothered” by it increased steadily from 33.1% at 8 years to 52.3% at 11 years. Somewhat
similar results have been reported for English school children who with increasing age were
less likely to cry when they were bullied and more likely to ignore the bullying (Smith &
Shu, 2000). We may speculate as to whether the bullying experienced by boys at age 8 is
more severe than that at age 11; or alternatively whether boys become more resilient (or
Table 28.4 Percentages of Students Reporting Having Reacted to Bullying in Different Ways
(Ns range from 146 to 587)
Ages in years
8 9 10 11
Boys
Not bothered 33.1 40.9 44.1 52.3
Angry 34.7 39.3 36.3 29.8
Sad 32.0 19.8 19.6 17.8
Girls
Not bothered 30.8 31.3 30.0 33.7
Angry 19.2 23.0 20.9 26.1
Sad 50.0 47.7 49.1 40.2
perhaps more prone to adopt a macho attitude) with increasing years. Among girls, age
proved to be unrelated to reaction tendencies (chi square 8.6, p > .05).
Numerous studies have recently been carried out on the effects of bullying on the well-
being and health of children. Most of these are correlational in design, and establish that
primary school children who are frequently victimized are more likely to have low self-
esteem (Boulton & Smith, 1994; Mynard & Joseph, 1997) and to suffer psychological
distress such as depression (Slee, 1995) and not sleeping well, headaches, and bed-wetting
(Williams, Chambers, Logan, & Robinson, 1996). In addition, several longitudinal stud-
ies have established that peer victimization commonly leads to a loss in self-esteem (Egan
& Perry, 1998) and social maladjustment, as indicated by increased loneliness and absen-
teeism from school (Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1997).
Reported Reasons for Bullying
According to Boulton and Underwood (1992), the most common reason given by chil-
dren is that victims provoke bullying, a view more frequently expressed by bullies. An
Australian study canvassed seven possible reasons (derived from prior discussions with
children in this age group) that students might give if they did bully a peer. Respondents
could answer “yes” or “no” in relation to each proposed reason. Approximately 16% of
respondents omitted to respond to one or more of these questions. Responses of children
aged 8 to 11 years who did answer are given in Table 28.5.
The order of frequency of endorsing reasons was similar for boys and girls. (There is one
exception – boys placed “for fun” higher than did girls; girls placed “because others were
doing it” higher.) In endorsing the main two reasons, it appears that respondents were (as
in the earlier study by Boulton & Underwood) looking for justification and perhaps choosing
560 Ken Rigby
Table 28.5 Percentages of Students Between the Ages of 8 and 11 Years Indicating That if They
Bullied Someone it Would be for Specified Reasons (Ns range from 1535 to 1770)
Reason Boys Girls
Because they annoyed me 68.2 60.7

To get even 64.0 46.0
For fun 16.0 10.0
Because others were doing it 14.0 13.3
Because they were wimps 11.3 7.0
To show how tough one is 11.3 7.0
To get things or money from them 6.1 4.2
the least socially undesirable options. At the same time, substantial numbers of respond-
ents acknowledged they could bully others for fun, because others were doing so, because
they saw some peers as deserving to be bullied because they were “wimps,” and in order to
impress others with their toughness. Relatively few saw bullying as a means they might
employ for extortionary purposes. Significant age trends (p < .001) for both boys and girls
were evident for two of the reasons: with increasing age students were more inclined to
justify their bullying along the lines that “they had annoyed me” and “to get even.”
Attitudes to Victims of Bullying
Attitudes to victims were examined by Rigby and Slee (1991), using a reliable 20-item
scale (alpha = .78) assessing provictim attitude. Sample items were: “It’s a good thing to
help children who can’t defend themselves” and “I wouldn’t be friends with kids who let
themselves be pushed around” (reverse scored). Scores for 314 boys and 353 girls between
the ages of 8 and 15 indicated that most students were generally supportive of victims: for
example, some 80.9% agreed with the statement: “I like it when someone stands up for
kids who are bullied.” This result showing a clear majority support for victims was subse-
quently replicated in England with final year primary school children of around 11 years
(Randall, 1995). In the Australian study for both boys and girls there was a significant
decline in support for victims between 8 and 11 years. Consistent with this finding in Italy,
Fonzi et al. (1999) have reported a trend toward less help being given by peers to victims
up until middle school, which begins in Italy at age 11. These results are in some ways
counter-intuitive. One might expect that with an increase in the capacity for empathy with
increasing maturity (see Damon, 1983) support for victims would gradually increase rather
than decrease.
Another index relating to children’s attitudes to bullying is that of a readiness to talk
with other students about the issue. The Australian study included this question: “Would
you be interested in talking about the problem of bullying at school with other students to
see what can be done about stopping it?”. The results provide a contrast between the
Table 28.6 Percentages of Students Responding According to their Interest in Talking with
Others about Stopping Bullying (Ns range from 174 to 770)
Ages in years
8 9 10 11
Boys
In favor 51.7 47.2 43.3 34.2
Unsure 32.2 31.9 36.2 40.9
Against 16.1 20.9 20.5 24.9
Girls
In favor 50.3 51.4 51.8 49.5
Unsure 39.6 39.0 37.4 37.8
Against 10.2 9.6 10.8 12.7
readiness to talk about bullying among the younger students in primary school and the
older ones at secondary school. For instance, among 8 year olds some 51.7% of boys and
50.3% of girls wanted to talk; among 15 year olds the corresponding figures were 21.6%
and 33.3%. Results for the age range 8–11 years are given in Table 28.6.
The trend towards fewer students being in favor of, and more being against, talking
about bullying in class is evident for boys (chi square was 30.3, p < .001). Among girls the
proportions for the three responses to the question are not significantly different (chi square
= 2.7, p > .05). It would seem that although at no stage are more than 25% of boys or girls
against talking about it in class, there is an increasing reluctance among boys in particular
to engage in such talking. This result parallels the finding that there is a lessening of sup-
port for victims over this period, again notably among boys, and may in fact reflect a
growing lack of sympathy with the plight of victims, and possible apprehension about
what talk about bullying may reveal about themselves.
Transition from Primary to Secondary School
Changes in the prevalence of peer victimization may be affected not only by increasing age,
but also by changes in the nature of the schooling. For example, children in some countries
and in some localities transfer around the age of 11 or 12 years from a primary school
where they are among the oldest children in the school to a secondary school where they
are among the youngest. Because younger children are more vulnerable to attack one would
expect the incidence of reported victimization to rise after entering the school catering for
predominantly older students. This is what was found in Australian schools (Rigby, 1997b).
In an analysis of students attending coeducational schools only, the reported incidence of
weekly victimization was traced for Australian students attending Year 4 to Year 12 (ap-
proximately 8 to 16 years). Analyses were conducted separately for students who transfer
562 Ken Rigby
Table 28.7 Percentages of Students Reporting being Bullied Weekly According to Year of
Schooling (Ns range from 40 to 1025)
Year of schooling
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Students starting Year 7

Boys 31.3 30.6 17.4 28.0 25.1 22.3 14.9 12.1 4.6
Girls 36.4 21.2 18.2 23.1 19.6 14.6 11.2 8.4 6.9
Students starting Year 8
Boys 30.0 22.4 23.3 17.0 24.9 23.5 15.1 9.7 3.1
Girls 28.0 21.1 17.9 9.8 19.6 11.4 10.2 5.4 3.4
Note. Students starting secondary school in Year 7 were drawn from 4 primary and 18 secondary
schools; those starting in Year 8 were drawn from 14 primary and 17 secondary schools.
to secondary school in Year 7 (in the States of Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, and
Australian Capital Territory) and for those who transfer in Year 8 (in the States of South
Australia, Queensland, Western Australia, and Northern Territory). Rates of reported vic-
timization are given in Table 28.7.
These results indicate that reported victimization in coeducational primary schools
declines gradually between Years 4 to 6 in States in which the students are normally
transferred to a secondary school for their Year 7 schooling, and then increases before
reducing again in later years. For students in other States where transfer to secondary
school occurs in Year 8, the decline in the incidence of reported peer victimization con-
tinues for another year, before rising when these students enter secondary school, again
decreasing later.
What is clear from these data is that in the Australian context the level of reported
victimization around the ages of 11 and 12 years is dependent in part on whether the
student has entered secondary school. If the incidence of victimization were determined
only by chronological age one would expect a simple linear trend, not increases in peer
victimization when a child changed schools. Clearly in accounting for peer victimization at
a given age one must take into account social situation and organizational structure.
Gender Differences
Studies of gender differences in overall peer victimization have produced mixed results.
Data for children under the age of 12 years from England (Whitney & Smith, 1993), the
United States (Perry, Kusel, & Perry, 1988) and Australia (see Table 28.1), suggest that
there is little or no sex difference between the extent of peer victimization. On the other
hand, in some countries, for example, Norway (Olweus, 1993), Portugal (Almeida, 1999),
and Germany (Losel & Bliesener, 1999), significantly higher levels of peer victimization
have been reported for boys.
The similarities in overall victimization may mask differences in the kinds of bullying to
which boys and girls are subjected. Table 28.2 shows that among Australian children for
each of the age groups boys are more likely to be the targets of physical bullying, while girls
are more likely to report “being left out of things,” which is one of the relational forms of
bullying that researchers such as Crick et al. (1997) have reported as occurring more often
to girls, even at preschool age.
Whilst boys and girls under 12 appear to be victimized by peers equally often, there have
been numerous reports that boys are more likely than girls to engage in bullying behavior
(see Olweus, 1993; Rigby, 1998; Whitney & Smith, 1993). Table 28.3 shows that whilst
boys and girls seem equally likely to bully in groups as to bully individually, the percent-
ages of boys reporting bullying others as group members and as individuals is approxi-
mately twice as great as for girls. In part this may be explained by noting that boys bully
members of the opposite sex far more than girls do (Rigby, 1998). It may also be the case
that boys tend to see the practice of bullying others in a more positive light than girls do,
and are more likely to want to report doing so. Although data bearing on this matter derive
from responses to anonymous questionnaires, they may still be affected by considerations
of social desirability, which influence boys and girls differently.
Less well researched are the reactions of boys and girls to being bullied at school. In
general, girls report being “bothered” more by it. From Table 28.4, among 11 year olds
who had been bullied some 52.3% reported that they were “not bothered” by it, compared
with 33.7% of girls. When children are bothered, girls are more likely than boys to say they
felt “sad”; boys are more likely to say they felt “angry.” It is noteworthy that the tendency
among boys to report not being bothered increases with age, arguably because they are
being more and more socialized into a culture that expects boys to be tough, “macho,” and
to deny hurt. Among girls the data suggest that there is no such tendency.
A further difference relates to attitudes toward bullying and also to normative influences
on children to engage in bullying others. Significant differences between boys and girls in
the age range of 9–10 years have been reported indicating that girls were: (i) more support-
ive of victims; (ii) less probully; (iii) pressured to bully less by significant others, namely
close friends, mother, father, or teachers; and (iv) believed they were less able to bully than
boys. Girls also were more likely to report that they would feel “ashamed of themselves” if
they bullied someone (Rigby, 1997c). Not surprisingly (see Table 28.6) girls were more
interested than boys in talking in groups to discover a way to stop bullying.
Nevertheless the reasons boys and girls give for bullying (if they were to bully) are re-
markably similar in relative importance. For both sexes the “revenge motive” appears to be
paramount (see Table 28.5), and although it is socially more desirable to give such a reason
than to admit to extortion or a desire to upset “a wimp,” it is striking that both boys and
girls tend to justify their bullying behavior in similar ways – or, alternatively, provide
similar rationalizations for what they are doing. The gender difference in the ranking of
“bullying for fun,” with boys seeing bullying more often as a source of enjoyment, may
reflect a more insensitive view of bullying on the part of boys.
564 Ken Rigby
Race and Ethnicity
Sometimes children are victimized because they are racially or ethnically different from the
majority of other students. Those of non-White ethnic origin in one study conducted in
England were found to have experienced more racist name-calling than other children of
the same age and gender (Boulton, 1995). However, in that study, “bullying in general”
was also reported as taking place predominantly between members of the same racial group
(British Asian or British non-Asian). A report from Germany indicated that children of
non-German extraction were no more likely to be targeted as victims of peer bullying than
others (Losel & Bliesener, 1999). Evidence of ethnic group members attracting greater
than average overall bullying has been provided by the Kids Help Line in Australia who
claim that calls from children of ethnic background on matters of bullying are some 30%
greater than others. However, in an Australian study by Rigby (unpublished) utilizing data
from the PRQ, quite different results were found. Some 891 children (25% of all respond-
ents in this age group) reported that their family was of ethnic origin other than White
Australian. Among these “ethnic” students, 29.2% of boys and 27.2% of girls reported
that they had been bullied at school at least once a week. This was only slightly
(nonsignificantly) more than other students. (The reported incidence of weekly victimiza-
tion of White Australian students was 26% for boys and for girls.) However, an examina-
tion of reported victimization by specific ethnic group membership did show one significant
difference. Among the 34 male Aboriginal respondents in the sample, 18 (53%) reported
being bullied weekly. This was significantly greater (p < .05) than that reported by other
students from “ethnic families”, which included children who identified their families as
Italian, Greek, Polish, and Vietnamese. Although the sample of Aboriginal children is
small and of questionable representativeness, the finding is consistent with many anecdotal
accounts of discrimination experienced by Aboriginal children from peers in Australia.
Social Class
The relationship between children’s involvement in bully/victim problems and the socio-
economic status of their parents has been studied with mixed results. In a study conducted
in schools in and around Sheffield, England, a largely industrial area, it was found that
involvement in bully/victim problems was significantly more likely to occur in schools in
relatively disadvantaged places (Whitney & Smith, 1993). In Scotland, Mellor (1999)
found that children of parents with professional and managerial jobs were less likely to be
bullied, whilst those whose parents had skilled manual jobs were more likely to be victims
and also more likely to be bullies! Research conducted in the Netherlands suggests that
bullying is more common among children from socially disadvantaged and inner city areas
(Junger-Tas, 1999). As against these findings, Olweus (1993) claimed that among boys
attending Swedish schools bullying was unrelated to social class as indicated by indices of
parent income level and length of parent education. In neither Spain nor Portugal, was
bullying found to be related to social class (Almeida, 1999; Ortega & Mora-Mechan, 1999).
Thus, whether social class is a factor in bullying among children appears to vary between
countries. Given what has been reported about the parenting styles of parents of different
social classes (Newson & Newson, 1976), with lower-class parents being more inclined to
use – and arguably model – physical violence, it seems possible that the mode of bullying,
rather than the totality of bullying, may be worth examining as a variable in future studies.
The Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Bullying
There is now considerable evidence that bullying in schools can be reduced through the
use of whole-school antibullying policies and practices (Eslea & Smith, 1998; Olweus,
1993). However, apart from the report by Olweus on the national campaign to reduce
peer victimization in Norway for which a 50% reduction in bullying was claimed, the
reductions following interventions have been modest in size and not always significant.
Many methods of intervention are currently being canvassed, such as the use of peer
counseling and training in conflict resolution skills for all students; but few have been
carefully evaluated. An exception is the Method of Shared Concern (Pikas, 1989; Smith &
Sharp, 1994): a counseling approach which has been reported as largely successful in pre-
venting the repetition of bullying by perpetrators of group bullying. Further studies to
evaluate interventions are clearly needed.
Conclusions
Bullying in schools, as distinct from conflict or aggression in general between children, has
over the last 10 years become an important area of study cross-nationally. We now know
that bullying is prevalent in early childhood, is perpetrated more by boys, and tends to
reduce somewhat as children progress through primary school. It produces considerable
distress and psychological harm to the minority of children who are frequently victimized
by their peers. Verbal forms of bullying are most prevalent and equally experienced by boys
and girls; physical bullying is more commonly perpetrated and experienced by boys; rela-
tional bullying by girls. Reactions to bullying tend to differ between the sexes, with boys
being more inclined to deny its effect upon them. Motives for bullying may vary widely
and include a wish to get even, a means of amusement, acquiescence to peer pressure,
extortion, and a desire to appear tough. As well as developmental changes that can affect
the incidence of bullying for a given age group, one should recognize as factors the school
environment, the social disadvantage of families, and the ethnic mix in some communi-
ties. Interventions to reduce bullying are increasingly being developed, proposed, and im-
plemented but as yet with modest success.
566 Ken Rigby
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Social Competence in Children with Disabilities 569
Part X
Children with Special Needs
The concluding section of this Handbook is devoted to the increasingly important topic of
children with special needs. Karen Diamond reminds us that approximately 10% of the
world’s population has disabilities that can interfere with social functioning. Depending
on how disability is defined, this percentage can vary dramatically according to country or
state policies and practices (sometimes between 30–70%). No matter how the statistics are
derived, the number of children with disabilities is large. Many of these children are unable
to participate in social activities on the level of their typically developing peers.
How well do children with mild to severe disabilities adjust to the peer group? Do
certain types of classroom structures (e.g., inclusive) promote higher levels of peer interac-
tion for children with disabilities than others? How can parents, teachers, and other adults
provide supporting opportunities for social interactions? Diamond discusses these and many
other questions in the context of describing how deficits in cognitive processes (e.g., men-
tal retardation) and emotion regulation (e.g., autism) increase the probability of peer inter-
action difficulties. However, environmental factors that include adult coaching, attitudes
towards involving children with disabilities in peer interaction, and opportunities for asso-
ciating with peers can serve to mediate linkages between cognitive and emotional regula-
tion deficits and the development of social competencies. She also explains how disabilities
that do not affect cognition or emotion regulation (e.g., physical disabilities, chronic ill-
ness such as asthma or cancer, blindness) likely result in different, but lesser challenges for
peer group interaction. Future research that fosters an understanding of which social con-
text characteristics are most important for facilitating social abilities in children with dis-
abilities as well as discovering how typically developing children may benefit from interacting
with peers with disabilities are pointed to as exciting new directions for study.
Bonnie Brinton and Martin Fujiki have pioneered research in a new area of social devel-
opment research that focuses on children with specific language impairment (SLI). They
also cover profound hearing loss in their chapter. It is fitting that this volume ends with a
synthesis of their work as it takes readers to the beginning of scholarly inquiry in an area
where little was known just a few short years ago. They begin with a discussion of how
570 Children
Karen E. with
Diamond
Special Needs
profound hearing loss develops and some of the challenges that it poses for family commu-
nication and peer group interaction. The extant research literature on why profound hear-
ing loss is often associated with children not being integrated into the fabric of peer group
interaction is reviewed. From there, the authors focus on different profiles of linguistic
strengths and weaknesses that children with specific language impairments bring to social
interaction. It is estimated that 7% of children suffer from this disorder that stems from
relatively unknown causes. The research of Brinton and Fujiki clearly highlights the im-
portance of functional communication skills in socially competent behavior (see Hart,
Newell, & Olsen, in press). They have documented how some children with SLI have
difficulty entering ongoing conversations, negotiating, collaborating, and making joint
decisions. Children with SLI are also prone to be more anxious and wary with peers, and
suffer from deficits in language abilities that are detrimental to friendship formation and
maintenance functions. Future research in this area will focus on effective and efficient
ways to simultaneously facilitate language and social skill development so that children
with SLI will be better able to function in socially competent ways.
References
Hart, C. H., Newell, L. D., & Olsen, S. F. (in press). Parenting skills and social/communicative
competence in childhood. In J. O. Greene & B. R. Burleson (Eds.), Handbook of communica-
tion and social interaction skill. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
29
The Development of Social Competence in

Children with Disabilities
Karen E. Diamond
The World Health Organization estimates that 10% of the world’s population has some
type of disability that interferes with full participation in the community in which the
individual lives (WHO, 1999). However, definitions of disability are “moving targets”
that change across communities and cultures. While individuals with more severe disabili-
ties or identified syndromes are likely to be identified as disabled in many communities,
this is less often the case for those with less severe disabilities. It is not surprising to find
that children who are identified as having “mild” disabilities in Western schools are un-
likely to be identified as disabled in other groups (Harry, Rueda, & Kalyanpur, 1999).
Over the past several decades in the United States, there has been an increasing empha-
sis on including children with disabilities in activities and environments designed prima-
rily for children without disabilities. Opportunities that children with disabilities have to
participate in activities with their typically developing peers can be very different, even
within a single country. For instance, in a recent report, the proportion of elementary age
children with disabilities enrolled in regular education classes in the United States ranged
between 30–70%, with variations related to state policies and practices (U.S. Dept. of
Education, 1997). Bochner and Pieterse (1996) reported that at least half of children with
Down syndrome born in the 1970s in New South Wales, Australia, received education in
primary schools designed for typically developing children, while almost all children with
Down syndrome born during the same time period in South Wales, Great Britain, were
enrolled in self-contained special education schools.
Normalized life experiences for children with disabilities have different meanings within
The author wishes to thank Dr. William LeFurgy for his helpful comments on earlier drafts of this
chapter.
572 Karen E. Diamond
different cultures, and cultural expectations for success vary widely. Ideas of equity in
opportunity and treatment reflect distinctly Western cultural values (Harry et al., 1999).
Many families expect that a child with a significant disability will be cared for by family
members throughout his or her life. In these families, the critical issues for a child’s social
development may be quite different than for families whose goal is to have their child with
disabilities participate in school, work, and community activities.
If children are to successfully participate in school and community settings with peers,
developing age-appropriate social behaviors is an important challenge. There is consistent
evidence that children with disabilities display lower levels of social competence than typi-
cally developing peers. Peer relationship problems have been reported for children with
learning disabilities (Juvonen & Bear, 1992), communication disorders and mild mental
retardation (Guralnick, Connor, Hammond, Gottman, & Kinnish, 1996), and sensory
disabilities (Erwin, 1993), as well as for children with significant mental, physical, and
behavioral disabilities (Staub, Schwartz, Gallucci, & Peck, 1994) and chronic health prob-
lems (Wallander & Varni, 1998). For all of these children, problems with peer relation-
ships become especially evident as children’s activities become less structured (e.g., recess
or lunch at school).
Because independent living is an important value in Western societies, much of the
research on social relationships between children with disabilities and their typically devel-
oping age-mates has taken place in European countries or the United States. This research
forms the basis for this chapter. The framework for discussing social development is a
distinctly Western one. In addition, some disabilities that will be discussed in this chapter
(especially learning disabilities and mild mental retardation) are unknown in many groups.
The social stigma surrounding a child’s identification as a “slow learner” is uniquely West-
ern.
Contextual Variables
Contextual variables are related to social competence for children with disabilities. In recent
research, Guralnick and his colleagues (1996) found that preschool children with mild
disabilities displayed more frequent social interaction and higher levels of social play when
they were in a play group with typically developing children than when they participated in
a specialized group that included only children with disabilities. Bronson and her colleagues
found that preschool children with disabilities displayed clear benefits in the quality of their
social interactions with peers when they were enrolled in classrooms that were most similar
(in terms of class size, teacher:child ratio, activity choices, and with a small proportion of
children with identified disabilities) to early childhood settings designed for children with-
out disabilities. Children in more inclusive settings engaged in more and higher levels of
peer interaction and were more independent and less controlled by adults. Relationships
between classroom structure and social competence remained significant even after accounting
for the child’s intellectual abilities (Bronson, Hauser-Cram & Warfield, 1997; Hauser-
Cram, Bronson, & Upshur, 1993). Similar results have been reported for older children,
and for children with more severe disabilities (Fryxell & Kennedy, 1995).
Developmental Perspectives on Peer-Related Social Competence for

Children with Disabilities
The extent to which children with disabilities grow up to live independently (or semi-
independently) as adults depends to a considerable extent on their ability to engage in
appropriate social interactions with others. Dodge and his colleagues have suggested that
children’s social strategies are governed by underlying social-cognitive processes, including
encoding relevant social cues, interpreting these cues correctly, generating a variety of re-
sponses, evaluating each response, and enacting the selected response (Crick & Dodge,
1994; Dodge, Pettit, McClaskey, & Brown, 1986). Guralnick (1999) adapted this model
for children with disabilities, postulating that the social-cognitive skills described by Dodge
and his colleagues are built upon foundation processes of emotion regulation and shared
understanding. These foundation processes, along with social-cognitive processes, are nested
within higher order processes that “represent the over-arching social task recognition, moni-
toring, and goal maintaining (planning) features that characterize socially competent func-
tioning” (Guralnick, 1999, p. 22). Thus, foundation processes of emotion regulation and
shared understanding, social information-processing variables, and higher order processes
determine the social strategies that a child uses in an interaction. If any of these processes
are adversely affected by characteristics of the individual (e.g., cognitive deficits) or of the
environment (e.g., environmental factors that make emotion regulation more difficult),
less competent social strategies may result. Because these processes are closely linked, sig-
nificant peer interaction deficits may result when there are even relatively small discrepan-
cies from expected developmental levels (Guralnick, 1999).
Qualities of the social environment also contribute to the development of socially com-
petent behavior (Diamond & Innes, 2001; Guralnick, 1999). One would hypothesize that
children who have opportunities to practice social skills within supportive peer social net-
works are likely to demonstrate more social competence than children without these expe-
riences. An important component of supportive peer networks includes the adults who
support children’s development of age-appropriate social interaction strategies. Teachers
provide support when they arrange the physical environment to allow interactions to occur
and use child-directed learning strategies in their teaching (Staub et al., 1994). Parents of
children with and without disabilities play an important role in fostering children’s peer
social network by arranging play opportunities outside of the school classroom (e.g., Block
& Malloy, 1998; Ladd & Hart, 1992). Finally, the attitudes of others (including attitudes
of peers and adults) play a role in supporting opportunities for social interactions
(Helmstetter, Peck, & Giangreco, 1994; Okagaki, Diamond, Kontos, & Hestenes, 1998).
What does this suggest about social development of children with disabilities? First,
disabilities that are associated with deficits in cognitive processes (such as mental retarda-
tion) or emotion regulation (for example, autism) increase the likelihood that a child will
have significant difficulties in peer interaction. In addition, this model suggests that envi-
ronmental factors mediate the influence of cognitive and emotional regulation deficits on
the development of socially competent behaviors. These environmental factors include
opportunities to participate in a broad range of social networks, the role played by adults in
helping children develop appropriate social interaction strategies, and attitudes toward the
participation of children with disabilities in peer activities. Finally, this model implies that
disabilities that do not affect cognition or emotion regulation (e.g., physical disabilities or
blindness) are likely to have different, lesser impacts on children’s development of age-
appropriate social relationships.
What Do We Know about the Social Development of Children with

Disabilities?
Research in inclusive play groups has consistently demonstrated that children with dis-
abilities are included in social interactions with their peers much less than are children
without disabilities, with social play less sophisticated than that of typically developing
peers (Guralnick & Neville, 1997). Despite lower overall rates of interaction, interactions
between children with disabilities and their typically developing peers have been reported
to occur quite often in preschool and elementary school settings (Guralnick et al., 1996).
Although varying with the type of disability, the majority of children with disabilities who
participate in programs with their typically developing peers are reported to have at least
one mutual friend (Buysse, 1993). These results suggest that children with disabilities are
included in some activities with typically developing peers. At the same time, because
children with disabilities participate in social play less often and in less sophisticated ways,
their social experiences are likely to be different from those of typically developing chil-
dren. The sections that follow focus on research that has examined the social development
of children with specific types of disabilities.
Disabilities that affect cognition
Children with mild mental retardation or learning disabilities. In the United States, chil-
dren with learning problems related to low levels of school achievement without other
obvious disabilities are typically identified as having either a learning disability or mild
mental retardation. There is substantial evidence that children with learning disabilities,
mild mental retardation, and low ability are not clinically different groups. Gresham and
MacMillan (1997) argue that “blurring of these formerly distinct groups makes much of
the research on differences in social competence and affective characteristics [of children
with these disabilities] uninterpretable” (p. 403). Thus, they suggest that research on the
social skills of children with mild disabilities (i.e., students with mild mental retardation,
specific learning disabilities, and low ability) should be aggregated. This is the approach
that is taken in this chapter.
Research on the social competence of young children with mild mental retardation
conducted by Guralnick and his colleagues has used a planned play group methodology to
study the development of young children’s social relationships. Results have been consist-
ent in describing children with mild disabilities as less preferred playmates than their peers
(e.g., Guralnick et al., 1996), with peer interaction difficulties associated with deficits in
communication skills (a higher order process), as well as difficulties using appropriate in-
teraction strategies (i.e., deficits in social information processing) which may, or may not,
be related to deficits in communication and cognition (Guralnick, 1999). The importance
of communication skills for social interaction is supported in many studies in which typi-
cally developing children were more successful in their social bids than were children with
communication disorders (Guralnick et al., 1996; Hartas & Donahue, 1997).
Recently, Kravetz, Faust, Lipshitz, and Shalhav (1999) found some support for the hy-
pothesis that difficulties in interpersonal understanding contribute to social behavior prob-
lems in preadolescent children with learning disabilities. Deficits in generating alternative
solutions to social problems have been reported in studies of adolescents with learning
disabilities (e.g., Hartas & Donahue, 1997). Leffert and Siperstein (1996) found that 10–
13-year-old children with mild mental retardation were similar to typically developing
peers in accurately interpreting hostile intentions in peer conflict situations, and varying
their choice of social strategy based on the situational context. Unlike typically developing
children, children with mental retardation encoded benign intention cues with signifi-
cantly greater accuracy than they interpreted them. In the procedure used in this study,
both hostile and benign intention cues were associated with negative outcomes. The au-
thors suggest that children’s difficulties interpreting benign cues were related to underly-
ing cognitive difficulties reconciling situations in which there was a conflict between
intention (benign) and outcome (negative). Thus, mild deficits in social understanding
also appear to be related to difficulties in peer interaction with these deficits appearing as
early as preschool.
Although children with mild cognitive disabilities display significant deficits in peer
interaction, the developmental processes that underlie peer-related social competence may
be substantially similar to those described for children without disabilities. Guralnick and
Hammond (1999) found similar sequential play patterns for typically developing pre-
school children and children with disabilities that were consistent regardless of the setting
in which children were observed (inclusive class with typically developing peers or self-
contained special education class). Siperstein and Leffert (1997) found that children with
mental retardation who displayed sociable behaviors gained greater acceptance from their
peers without disabilities in inclusive settings, while children who displayed sensitive-iso-
lated behaviors were more likely to be rejected.
There is considerable evidence that preschool and elementary-age children and adoles-
cents with mild cognitive disabilities are less popular and more likely to be rejected and
neglected than their peers without disabilities when sociometric assessments are used (e.g.,
Diamond, LeFurgy, & Blass, 1993; Ochoa & Palmer, 1995; Taylor, Asher, & Williams,
1987). Results are somewhat different when the focus becomes that of mutual friendships.
Juvonen and Bear (1992) reported that third graders with learning disabilities in inclusive
elementary classes reported similar levels of mutual friendship and acceptance by class-
mates as did their classmates without disabilities, while Vaughn and Elbaum (1999) re-
ported that students with learning disabilities were similar to their classmates without
disabilities in their reports of the number and quality of their friendships. These results are
consistent with Bukowski and Hoza’s (1989) suggestion that having friends and being well
accepted are distinctly different.
Research on the social development of children with learning disabilities and mild men-
tal retardation points to the important relationship between communication skills and
social initiations with peers. Deficits in foundation processes (specifically mutual under-
standing of roles, rules, and expectations governing social behavior) and in social-cognitive
processes (especially interpreting social cues) may account for some of the delays in social
development reported for children with mild cognitive disabilities. Although children with
mild mental retardation and learning disabilities are less popular than their normally de-
veloping peers, they may be similar to children without disabilities in the number of best
friends and in the quality of their friendships.
Children with Down syndrome. As a group, children with Down syndrome show greater
expressive than receptive language delays, especially as they advance in mental age. Cogni-
tive performance is also delayed, with IQ scores often diminishing (and mental age scores
increasing) as children grow older (Rynders & Horrobin, 1990). Using the model of social
competence described earlier, one would expect to find that such deficits in cognitive and
language abilities (higher order variables) would be associated with difficulties in many
social-cognitive processes, including encoding and accurately interpreting cues, and gener-
ating and enacting social strategies. Sigman and Ruskin (1999) have reported, however,
that delays in language skills were not associated with comparable delays in nonverbal
communication or play skills for children with Down syndrome. In addition, they found
that preschool children with Down syndrome were responsive to adults’ displays of emo-
tion, and regularly initiated social interactions with adults. The frequency of early social
interactions with adults was associated with peer involvement in later childhood. Class-
room and playground observations suggested that peers accepted more than 70% of the
social play initiations of children with Down syndrome. Similarly, children with Down
syndrome accepted a significant majority (73%) of peer play initiations (Sigman & Ruskin,
1999). These results suggest that although children with Down syndrome have signifi-
cantly delayed cognitive abilities and expressive language skills, nonverbal abilities, espe-
cially social and emotional responsiveness, may play an important role in the development
of social competence.
A substantial number of children with Down syndrome are reported to have best friends,
including friends who are typically developing (Sigman & Ruskin, 1999). In a recent study
in Great Britain, Begley (1999) found that 8–16-year-old children with Down syndrome
had generally positive perceptions of their acceptance by peers, with children in main-
stream schools reporting more positive self-perceptions than children enrolled in self-con-
tained special education schools. Bochner and Pieterse (1996) reported that slightly more
than one third of the teenagers with Down syndrome they studied in New South Wales
participated in inclusive social activities with typically developing peers (e.g., Girl Guides),
while approximately half participated in a club or activity designed specifically for adoles-
cents with disabilities (e.g., Special Olympics). Many teenagers with Down syndrome also
spent much of their social lives with their families, a result that has also been reported for
adolescents with Down syndrome in the United States (Putnam, Pueschel, & Gorder-
Holman, 1988).
Greater sociableness in children with Down syndrome, compared to children of the
same mental age, is a common finding (Kasari & Hodapp, 1996). Children with Down
syndrome appear interested in others, even during infancy, and this general social respon-
siveness continues into adulthood. It has been suggested that the higher levels of social and
emotional responsiveness seen in children with Down syndrome, compared to children
with other syndromes, may lead to higher levels of social competence. Although adoles-
cents with Down syndrome appear to spend more of their leisure time alone than do their
peers without disabilities, recent research suggests that these children have positive percep-
tions of their acceptance by peers.
Children and adolescents with Down syndrome have cognitive and communication
delays that are typically associated with deficits in many of the social information-process-
ing components of socially competent behaviors. Research suggests that children with Down
syndrome may be especially adept at emotion regulation; children with Down syndrome
generally appear socially interested and responsive and show relatively few negative behaviors.
Thus, motivation to participate in social interactions, along with a “more sociable style”
(Kasari & Hodapp, 1996, p. 6) may mediate the effects of cognitive and communication
deficits on social competence.
Children with severe mental retardation and multiple disabilities. When children with se-
vere disabilities are enrolled in self-contained special education classrooms with peers who
also have severe disabilities, opportunities for peer interactions are severely limited by the
nature of each child’s disability. There is evidence, however, that significant social benefits
accrue to children with severe disabilities from their planned participation in general edu-
cation settings with classmates without disabilities (Fryxell & Kennedy, 1995). Hanline
(1993) found that preschool children with severe disabilities had numerous opportunities
for peer social interactions in an inclusive summer program, and Kennedy and his col-
leagues have reported that elementary and middle-school students with severe disabilities
who were enrolled in general education classes had more social contacts with typically
developing peers, received and provided higher levels of social support, and had larger and
more durable friendship networks than students in self-contained special education class-
rooms (Kennedy, Shukla, & Fryxell, 1997). It is important to note that the students they
observed were enrolled in schools in which inclusion efforts were planned on a building-
wide basis. Hughes and her colleagues reported different results when they observed social
behaviors of students with moderate to severe mental retardation and their typically devel-
oping peers in a high school lunchroom. (Students with disabilities participated in lunch
and nonacademic classes, but spent most of their day in special education classes.) Few
social interactions occurred over 3 months of observation. The authors suggest that a lack
of shared classroom experiences may have played an important role in limiting interactions
(Hughes et al., 1999).
For children with severe disabilities, some competencies appear more important than
others in the development of interactions with peers. Responsiveness to others and motiva-
tion to engage in interactions are positively associated with the development of social rela-
tionships for children with severe disabilities, while limitations in physical mobility, often
associated with severe mental retardation, reduce opportunities to participate in activities
with peers (Grenot-Scheyer, 1994; Strain, 1985). Interactions between children with se-
vere disabilities and their typically developing peers are usually not symmetrical: the typi-
cally developing peer often directs the interaction and/or provides assistance, while the
child with a severe disability is a more passive recipient.
Although much research on the social development of children with mental retardation
has resulted in identification of specific deficits, children with mental retardation may have
more strategy capabilities than are often identified (cf. Bray, Saarnio, & Hawk, 1994).
Many children and adolescents with mild, as well as more severe, mental retardation par-
ticipate in social relationships with peers, with some children participating in peer group
activities in ways similar to age-mates without disabilities.
Not surprisingly, the significant deficits in cognition and communication that are found
in individuals with severe disabilities are related to deficits in many of the social-cognitive
processes that underlie socially competent behavior. Children with severe disabilities who
are more responsive to peers’ initiations and motivated to engage in social interactions
demonstrate higher levels of social competence, with opportunities to participate in set-
tings with normally developing peers related to more competent social interactions for
children with severe disabilities.
Disabilities related to behavior/affect regulation
Children with autistic spectrum disorders. Children with autism and related disorders (e.g.,
Asperger syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder) show consistent, pervasive im-
pairments in social interactions and communication that are manifested in the first three
years of life (Sigman & Ruskin, 1999). Defining features of autism include social and
communicative deficits and repeated stereotyped behaviors, with the key diagnostic behaviors
those that reflect social development (Volkmar & Lord, 1998). Current estimates suggest
that autism occurs in as many as 1 in 1,000 children, with the rate of autism spectrum
disorders approaching 1% of the school age population (Kadesjö, Gillberg, & Hagberg,
1999; Sponheim & Skjeldal, 1998). Mental retardation is present in approximately 75%
of individuals with autism, with the frequency of children’s stereotyped behaviors increas-
ing with more severe retardation (Volkmar & Lord, 1998). Not surprisingly, nonretarded
autistic children display higher levels of social behavior than mentally retarded autistic
children (Lord, 1993).
Descriptions of the social development of children with autism point to deficits in the
development of basic interpersonal skills during infancy. These include failure to make eye
contact and to use gaze to regulate interaction, as well as failure to engage in early social
games, such as peek-a-boo (Volkmar, 1993). Although social skills change as children
develop, social responsivity remains a source of difficulty.
There is also evidence of deficits in emotion regulation that are related to social compe-
tence in children with autistic spectrum disorders. Yirmiya, Kasari, Sigman, and Mundy
(1989) found that children with autism showed significantly more facial expressions of
negative affect than did children of the same mental age who had mental retardation or
were typically developing. They suggested that the effect on the interactive partner may
have been significant because the negative expressions were so unexpected.
There is evidence that social deficits in autism may be associated with specific deficits
related to theory-of-mind skills, especially deficits in shared attention and understanding
of others’ intentions and desires (Phillips, Baron-Cohen, & Rutter, 1998). Just as work
with typically developing children provides evidence that children’s understanding of oth-
ers’ mental states has important implications for social development and communication
(Astington & Jenkins, 1995), so, too, does this appear to be important in the social devel-
opment of young children with autism. Children with autism appear to have most diffi-
culty with tasks that require nonverbal joint attention skills (Mundy & Crowson, 1997),
with impairments in joint attention more severe for social than nonsocial stimuli (Dawson,
Meltzoff, Osterling, Rinaldi, & Brown, 1998). Mundy and Crowson (1997) have also
suggested that children’s joint attention bids may provide a measure of motivation to com-
municate (see also Yirmiya, Pilowsky, Solomonica-Levi, & Shulman, 1999). Dawson and
her colleagues recently proposed, however, that deficits in joint attention may be a result of
a more basic failure to attend to social stimuli, with deficits in social orienting behaviors
occurring earlier in development than deficits in shared attention (Dawson et al., 1998).
Bauminger and Kasari (2000) also provide evidence that children with autism lack an
understanding of the affective components of social relationships.
Because autism is associated with significant impairments in social interaction, most
children with autism are educated in self-contained special education classrooms. These
settings provide few opportunities for social interaction. However, typically developing
peers may play important roles in facilitating social interactions for children with autism.
For example, O’Neill and Lord (as cited in Lord, 1993) reported that autistic children
with normally developing siblings were more likely to produce spontaneous peer-directed
language in their classrooms, suggesting that social experiences with siblings or peers may
play a role in preparing children for interactions in other settings. Roeyers (1996) found
that children with autism who had regular opportunities to interact with their typically
developing peers made significant gains in social skills (especially the frequency of social
initiations) when compared to matched children without this experience. Lee and Odom
(1996) found a decrease in stereotypic behaviors for two children with autism associated
with increased opportunities for social interaction with typically developing peers. When
Sigman and Ruskin (1999) observed school-age children with autism and Down syndrome
in their classrooms and on the school playground, they found that children with autism
were as likely as children with other disabilities to receive initiations from typically devel-
oping peers, but were less likely than others to accept social bids. In addition, children with
autism were significantly less likely to initiate interactions with typically developing peers
than were children with Down syndrome. In fact, nearly half of the school-age children
with autism in this study never initiated any interaction with a peer. These results are
similar to those of Lord and Magill-Evans (1995), who found that autistic children and
adolescents produced significantly fewer initiations to peers than did children with lan-
guage disorders or typically developing children.
In sum, research on the social development of children with autistic spectrum disorders
suggests that deficits in attention to faces (and, subsequently, joint attention) and orienta-
tion to social stimuli are early characteristics of children with autism. These difficulties are
thought to result from an underlying disorder in interpersonal perception and communi-
cation which interferes with the child’s ability to experience others as individuals who are
important in the social environment. Thus, in the model of social competence discussed
earlier, children with autistic spectrum disorders show deficits in foundation processes
(including both emotion regulation and social understanding) and in social information
processing which are critical for the development of socially competent behavior.
Physical and sensory disabilities
Children with chronic illness and physical disabilities. Chronic illnesses lead to regular hos-
pitalization or interfere with children’s ability to function in their typical environment.
Illnesses or physical disabilities that fall in this category include asthma, diabetes, cancer,
and hemiplegia. Epidemiological studies suggest that between 10–20% of children in
Western-developed countries have a chronic disorder, although only about 10% of chil-
dren in this group have severe conditions. While each of these illnesses or disabilities is
medically unique, their effects on children’s social experiences are similar (Wallander &
Varni, 1998).
Children with chronic disorders appear vulnerable to peer relationship problems, with
the risk increasing for illnesses or disabilities that involve the central nervous system or
motor skills (Wallander & Varni, 1998). Children with chronic illnesses may be at risk for
peer relationship difficulties because opportunities for social interaction are limited by
absenteeism from school, physical limitations, and parents’ concerns (Zbikowski & Cohen,
1998). Based on the model of social development that was described earlier, it is reasonable
to hypothesize that physical disabilities and chronic illnesses are likely to influence the
development of children’s social relationships when they interfere with opportunities to
participate in supportive peer social networks.
Asthma is the most common chronic illness of childhood in Western countries; the 1990–
1992 National Health Survey reported that 6.1% of U.S. children under 18 had asthma
(Collins, 1997). Because asthma often limits children’s physical activity, and requires long-
term use of medications and regular medical care including hospitalization, this illness pro-
vides a model for examining the role of chronic illness in the development of children’s
social competence. In a study of 8–13-year-old children, Graetz and Schute (1995) found
no significant differences in the peer relationships of children with asthma compared to
healthy peers. Children with more frequent hospitalizations, however, were perceived as
more sensitive and isolated, were less preferred as playmates, and reported themselves to be
lonelier than their peers. Zbikowski and Cohen (1998) found no significant differences on
measures of social acceptance or popularity for elementary age children with asthma when
compared with their healthy peers. Older children with asthma (10–12 year olds) were not
significantly different from their healthy age-mates on the number of mutual friendship
nominations or parent-rated measures of social competence. In contrast, parents rated younger
children with asthma (6–9 year olds) as less socially competent. Younger children with asthma
had significantly fewer mutual friendship nominations than either children without asthma
or older children with asthma. The authors suggested that differences between younger and
older children with asthma may reflect increased restrictions on social activities of younger
children. If parents of older children with asthma are more comfortable with their child’s
illness, children may have social opportunities that are similar to those of their healthy peers.
In addition, older children with asthma may have developed a variety of coping strategies
that are not available to younger children. These results are similar to those reported by Noll
and his colleagues who found few differences from healthy peers on teacher-rated measures
of social adjustment or acceptance for children with cancer or sickle cell disease (Noll, Ris,
Davies, Bukowski, & Koontz, 1992).
Reduced opportunities to participate in social activities put children with chronic illness
at greater risk for social isolation. Overall, however, the social development and compe-
tence of children with chronic illnesses does not appear to be substantially different from
that of their healthy peers. Results are more equivocal for children with physical disabili-
ties. In studies examining the social adjustment of a cohort of children with hemiplegia
enrolled in mainstream primary schools in London, Yude and Goodman (1999) found
that 9–11-year-old children with hemiplegia were less popular, more likely to be rejected,
had fewer friends, and were more often victimized than were their classmates without
disabilities (although approximately one third of the children with hemiplegia had no
apparent peer relationship difficulties). Not surprisingly, children attributed their social
difficulties to physical factors. Even when motor difficulties were mild, children with hemi-
plegia were often marginalized within the school environment. Although this type of ex-
clusion clearly put these children at risk for problems in social relationships, the most
powerful predictors of peer relationship problems when children were 9–11 years old were
teachers’ reports of conduct problems and/or hyperactivity, together with low IQ, meas-
ured soon after school entry (age 6 or 7). Yude and Goodman (1999) suggested that at
least some of the peer relationship problems faced by children with hemiplegia may be
related to significant neurological deficits that affect learning and behavior. These results
are similar to those of Zurmohle and his colleagues who found that children with spina
bifida were at increased risk for social adjustment problems. Interestingly, they found that
children with spina bifida who attended a school for children with disabilities, even though
it was “an IQ-appropriate setting” had a higher rate of social adjustment problems than
children with spina bifida who were enrolled in mainstream schools (Zurmohle, Homann,
Schroeter, Rothgerber, Hommel, & Ermert, 1998). Thus, the results of these studies sug-
gest that both child-specific factors (especially learning and behavior problems) and factors
in the social environment are related to social development and social adjustment of chil-
dren with mild physical disabilities.
Children with visual impairments. Vision impairments that are severe enough to signifi-
cantly interfere with children’s daily activities are relatively rare. Some children with visual
impairments have no useful vision while other children have partial vision but require assist-
ance with daily activities. Globally, the prevalence of severe visual impairments (the child is
legally or totally blind) is slightly less than 1 of every 1,000 children (WHO, 1999).
In the model of social competence described earlier, the ability to encode and interpret
social cues is a critical component of socially competent behavior. Many of the skills that
are essential for effectively encoding and interpreting social cues are nonverbal and are
based on the ability to observe and interpret the behaviors of others (Rosenblum, 1997).
Self-monitoring, another component of socially competent behavior, also requires encod-
ing and interpreting both verbal and nonverbal responses to one’s own behaviors (Erwin,
1993). Children who have significant visual impairments may experience difficulties in
social relationships because they are unaware of subtle social cues that provide information
about others’ feelings, and because they may not know how others respond to their own
behaviors. In addition, shared understanding of play activities, social rules, and social con-
ventions are components of socially competent behavior that can be affected by a child’s
inability to observe social interactions and play (McAlpine & Moore, 1995),
There is relatively little research on the social development of children with visual im-
pairments (Warren, 1994), in part because this is an uncommon disability and recruit-
ment of study participants is challenging. In the majority of studies that are discussed
below, substantial numbers of participants with visual impairments had additional dis-
abilities that made social interaction even more problematic.
Several studies examining the social development of children and adolescents with visual
impairments describe lower rates of social interaction with peers, more frequent interac-
tions with adults, and more participation in solitary activities than are typical for same-age
peers without disabilities (Skellenger, Rosenblum, & Jager, 1997). Children with some
useful vision (i.e., children who were visual learners) typically engaged in significantly
more interaction with peers than did children who were blind (i.e., tactile learners), al-
though rates of interaction were lower than found for children without disabilities.
In a recent study, Hatton and her colleagues found that preschool children with visual
function of 20/800 or worse performed at lower levels on personal-social tasks than chil-
dren with vision function in the range of 20/70 to 20/500 (Hatton, Bailey, Burchinal, &
Ferrell, 1997). They suggested that functional vision of 20/500 or better may be the level
necessary for making eye contact and recognizing nonverbal social cues, both of which
facilitate responsive interactions with others.
Finally, visual impairments may make it difficult for a child to participate in some ac-
tivities with peers. For example, many sports require visual skills such as throwing or hit-
ting a ball. It is hardly surprising that young children with visual impairments have reported
that their inability to participate in activities such as these interferes with the development
of social relationships with sighted peers (MacCuspie, cited in Rosenblum, 1997).
If a child’s play partner provides information about the social environment in ways that
are accessible to the child with a visual impairment (e.g., by providing verbal cues), it
makes it somewhat easier for the child to participate in the social activity (Sacks, 1992). In
order for this to occur, however, the child’s partner needs to understand the importance of
providing additional information and support. This is a task that is developmentally diffi-
cult for many children, without specific intervention from adults. Thus, it is hardly sur-
prising that typically developing children often think that it takes an extra effort to be
friends with a child with a visual impairment (MacCuspie, cited in Rosenblum, 1997).
These results suggest that children and adolescents with visual impairments are more
isolated from peer interaction, have more frequent contacts with adults, and participate in
more solitary activity than do their sighted peers. Functional vision that is sufficient for
making eye contact and recognizing nonverbal social cues appears to be associated with
higher rates of interactions with peers. Children with visual impairments whose vision is
not sufficient for recognizing nonverbal behaviors typically have deficits in encoding social
cues, as well as in monitoring their own behaviors and interpreting others’ responses to
them, that interfere with socially competent behavior.
Future directions
There is ample evidence that children with cognitive delays have social skills that are de-
layed when compared with typically developing peers. The model of social competence in
children with disabilities, described by Guralnick (1999), suggests that deficits in cognitive
skills will be associated with deficits in other areas important for social development, in-
cluding shared understanding of social situations, and encoding and responding to social
stimuli. Evidence from studies of children with autistic spectrum disorders, in particular,
points to the important role of theory-of-mind skills (including joint attention and under-
standing of others’ intentions and desires) in the development of social understanding.
The results of recent studies suggest that characteristics of the social setting, including
the availability of typically developing peers as play partners and support from adults, are
important in the development of children’s social skills. More frequent interactions, and
higher levels of social skills, have been reported for preschool, elementary school, and high
school students with disabilities when they participate in activities that include peers with-
out disabilities. Greater social benefits may result when the environment is most similar to
that found for children without disabilities. These results suggest that although children
with disabilities have delayed social skills, the development of these skills can be enhanced
for many children when they participate in activities with typically developing peers, and
are supported in their interactions by parents and teachers. Research is only beginning to
examine the role of adults and peers, as well as child and setting characteristics, in the social
development of children with disabilities.
Models of social competence, such as those proposed by Dodge and his colleagues (Crick
& Dodge, 1994; Dodge et al., 1986) and Guralnick (1999) provide a beginning point to
understand the ways in which disability interferes with children’s participation in social
settings. Research that examines specific cognitive processes, such as the work on theory-
of-mind skills in children with autism or role understanding in children with mild mental
retardation/learning disabilities, are beginning steps toward understanding the ways in
which child specific competencies affect social relationships. Understanding which charac-
teristics of the social context are important in supporting social interactions of children
with disabilities is also an important focus of research. Finally, there is evidence that typi-
cally developing children may reap benefits from interactions with peers with disabilities
(Diamond & Innes, 2001). Research that examines the ways in which these interactions
foster the development of socially desirable characteristics (such as altruism) in children
without disabilities provides an important focus for future research.
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588 Bonnie Brinton & Martin Fujiki
30
Social Development in Children with Specific

Language Impairment and Profound
Hearing Loss
Bonnie Brinton and Martin Fujiki
Steven’s Story
Steven is a 6-year-old boy. He lives in a middle-class home with his parents and two older
siblings. Shortly after he was born, neonatal hearing screening suggested Steven was at-
risk. Subsequent testing confirmed he had a bilateral, profound hearing loss. Steven was fit
with hearing aids when he was 6 months old, and has worn aids ever since. Steven’s mother
enrolled in an early intervention program soon after the diagnosis was made. This program
stressed total communication (signing combined with spoken language). Steven’s mother
began to learn sign language, but this proved more difficult for the rest of the family.
Steven met developmental milestones as expected with the exception of delayed communi-
cation skills. Although Steven learned signs quickly (he produced his first signs at 10 months),
his spoken language developed much more slowly. Last year when he began kindergarten,
psychological testing revealed that Steven’s nonverbal IQ was within normal limits.
With his hearing aids, Steven can hear loud environmental noises and can tell if people
around him are talking. He cannot discriminate speech well, however. Steven attends a
first-grade classroom that contains both hearing children and children with hearing im-
pairment. The class stresses total communication.
Steven communicates fairly well with his mother using a combination of signs, gestures,
and some spoken language. Since his speech production is largely unintelligible, he com-
municates with other family members using gestures and facial expressions. He sometimes
plays games such as basketball and chase with his older siblings and neighborhood chil-
dren, but they tend to exclude him from many activities. At school, Steven has two recip-
Children with Language Impairment 589
rocal friends in his class, both of whom also have hearing impairment. At recess and lunch,
Steven tends to congregate with other children who have hearing impairment. He prefers
interacting in dyads rather than in groups of peers.
David’s Story
David is a 6-year-old boy. He lives in a middle-class family with his parents and two older
siblings. David’s parents reported that his developmental history was quite typical except
for the fact he did not learn to talk as expected. David did not produce his first word until
he was 20 months old, and then learned new words slowly. He did not seem to understand
when his parents gave him verbal directions. By the time he was 3 years old, his parents
were concerned that he might not be able to hear, so they arranged for an audiological
evaluation. All hearing measures were within normal limits, and David’s parents pursued
additional psychological and language evaluation. Testing indicated David’s nonverbal IQ
score was within age-level expectations, but language measures revealed delays of 2 or more
years in his ability to produce and understand spoken language. David was enrolled in a
special preschool at age 4.
David’s parents find it difficult to communicate with him. They tend to ask him series
of questions, which he does not always answer. David sometimes plays games or rides bikes
with his siblings and the neighborhood children, but he is rarely invited to anyone’s house
to play and does not have any close friends.
David attends a regular first-grade class. A speech-language pathologist and a resource
teacher come into his classroom twice a week to work with him in a small group on reading
and math. David has difficulty following directions in class, responding to questions, and
joining in class discussions.
As is the case in his neighborhood, David has no reciprocal friends in his class. At recess,
he tends to wander around unoccupied or to drift from one playgroup to another. He is
usually one of the last to be chosen for class teams. When he is grouped with other children
for class assignments, he tends to watch others work rather than participate.
Language and Social Competence
Steven and David share a common challenge; they both have difficulty using language to
communicate effectively within their communities. Because of the close relationship be-
tween language and social behavior, it is likely that any disability affecting one may impact
the other. For Steven and David, there is a high probability that their language problems
will have social ramifications. It is not the case, however, that there is a simple causal
relationship between language impairment and social deficits. That is, it cannot be as-
sumed that language difficulties always lead to social problems in a predictable fashion.
Rather, language and social development are intertwined in complex ways. To understand
the social challenges and needs of children with language problems, it is first necessary to
consider the nature of specific language deficits and how they impact a child’s social inter-
actions. For example, Steven and David both have disabilities that undermine their ability
to acquire and use spoken language. Both children also have difficulty interacting with
their classmates. Although these observable outcomes are similar, the nature of each child’s
disability is unique. Steven has a sensory deficit that makes much of the spoken language
that surrounds him inaccessible. He is unable to use the mode of communication used by
his parents, family, and most of his community. It is important to note, however, that
Steven seems to be able to acquire language much more readily if it is made accessible to
him through the visual modality. He learns signs quickly when he is exposed to them in
interaction. It is fair to speculate that if Steven had been born into a family fluent in
American Sign Language (ASL), he would have acquired ASL as expected and would now
communicate freely within a signing community. David, on the other hand, has an audi-
tory system that is intact; he can hear the language around him without difficulty. He
cannot process all of the language he hears, however. David frequently does not compre-
hend enough of the words and syntactic structures that he hears to appreciate the speaker’s
intent. He struggles to formulate and produce sentences; his production is labored, diffi-
cult, and immature. David’s language impairment would be evident in almost all environ-
ments where language production and comprehension are important (e.g., the classroom).
In this chapter, we discuss two groups of children who demonstrate language problems;
those with profound hearing loss (such as Steven) and those with specific language impair-
ment (SLI) (such as David). For both we consider how language impairment has the po-
tential to disrupt social interaction with lasting consequences for affected children and
their families. As a part of each discussion we review the nature of parent–child interac-
tions and educational contexts. Both are of basic importance to social outcomes and must
be taken into account as we discuss the social competence of these groups of children.
Profound Hearing Loss
Overview
There are many degrees and types of hearing loss. The term “profound hearing loss” is
used to describe a loss exceeding 70 dB HL (Northern & Downs, 1991). Some classifica-
tion systems are more stringent, however, and specify a loss exceeding 90 dB (Clark, 1981).
Unless indicated otherwise, a profound loss is assumed to be bilateral. The term “deaf” is
sometimes used in reference to children with hearing loss so profound that it is impossible
to rely on hearing in order to acquire language (Diefendorf, 1996). A profound loss may be
present at birth (congenital) or may be acquired. Some types of profound loss are progres-
sive and become more pronounced over time. Dependable prevalence data are difficult to
obtain, however, it is often reported that approximately one child in a thousand is born
with a profound hearing loss. Data from several large prevalence studies indicate the actual
figure is somewhat lower (Mauk & Behrens, 1993).
Profound hearing loss stems from involvement of the inner ear or a combination of
inner ear and middle ear pathologies. Many causal agents can result in profound hearing
loss. For example, certain bacterial and viral diseases can attack the hearing mechanism. A
number of drugs are ototoxic, and their use can cause irreversible damage to the inner ear.
Some congenital syndromes involve malformations of the middle and/or inner ear, which
may result in profound hearing loss.
Arnos, Israel, Devnos, and Wilson (1996) note that over half of profound hearing losses
are genetic in origin. That does not mean, however, that over half of the children with
profound loss are born to parents who also have profound loss. In fact, over 90% of chil-
dren with profound hearing loss have hearing parents (Northcott, 1981). Congenital pro-
found hearing loss is usually permanent, although recent developments in both cochlear
and brainstem implants offer exciting possibilities for treatment. Cochlear implants have
enhanced the sensory systems of many children but these implants are not usually recom-
mended for children under 1 year of age. As of this writing, brainstem implants have not
yet been approved by the FDA for children under 12 years of age.
As Steven’s case illustrates, the fact that children with profound hearing loss do not learn
to produce or comprehend spoken language easily does not mean they cannot acquire
language at all. Children with profound hearing loss who are born to deaf parents may
grow up in a deaf culture rich with a language (ASL) that is accessible to them. Just as
importantly, these children belong to a deaf community that does not view profound
hearing loss as a disability but as a cultural characteristic. From this perspective, Steven has
a “handicap” only in the context of his hearing community and the value that community
places upon typical hearing. Although his current social world is largely composed of hear-
ing individuals who must make accommodations for his hearing loss, Steven may one day
affiliate with a deaf community where his hearing loss does not single him out as different
or present a barrier to interpersonal interaction, acceptance, or belonging (Maxwell,
Poeppelmeyer, & Polich, 1999). At age 6, however, Steven lives primarily in a hearing
world. His spoken language skills are limited, and his difficulty communicating is associ-
ated with social challenges.
Early parent–child interactions
It is important to qualify comments on parent–child interactions by recognizing that some

children with profound hearing loss have associated disabilities that significantly impact
development. These problems cannot help but influence parent–child interaction. For
purposes of this discussion, we focus on those children with profound hearing loss who
have relatively typical intellectual and physical abilities.
Regardless of the cause of their profound hearing loss, children who are born to hearing
parents are basically cut off from the primary medium of communication utilized by their
families – spoken language. Even with amplification these children are usually unable to
hear well enough to differentiate different speech sounds (although children with cochlear
implants may do better in this regard than children with traditional hearing aids). Thus,
even for those children like Steven whose hearing loss is not complicated by other factors,
the communicative and social environment they experience from birth is qualitatively dif-
ferent compared with that of hearing children. Early parent–child interactions may differ,
especially if the hearing loss has not been identified. Parents may interpret their child’s
failure to react to spoken input as nonresponsive and may alter or reduce their interaction
with their child (Marschark, 1993). An infant with a profound hearing loss cannot hear
her mother when out of view and cannot anticipate her return unless the mother provides
tactile or visual cues (Manfredi, 1993). The nature of early social interactions may differ
because these children do not engage in vocal play in the same way as hearing infants
(Manfredi, 1993). Early social interactions between hearing parents and children with
profound hearing loss depend on parents’ ability to establish reciprocal interactions with
their infants. On a basic level, parents of children who cannot hear spoken input must
present compelling visual input in order to engage their infants’ attention to their commu-
nicative message (Lederberg, 1993). At the same time, parents must carefully gear their
input to their children’s needs. For example, too much physical input may overwhelm an
infant and interfere with the ability to learn from the interaction (MacTurk, Meadow-
Orlans, Koester, & Spencer, 1993). It is not always a simple matter for parents to find a
medium of communication that they can share with their children. This medium may
involve a level of facial expression, gesture, or sign that may not be altogether comfortable
for hearing parents. This complicates social-play exchanges that might otherwise occur
naturally and spontaneously.
Education
As infants with profound hearing loss develop, their social interactions are influenced by
the communication they share with their families and peers. In turn, their communication
systems are, to a large extent, determined by their educational experience. In the past,
educational approaches for children with hearing loss were the subject of intense and ex-
tended controversy. Proponents of oral approaches advocated educating children to enable
them to function in a hearing world by relying on residual hearing, speech reading, and
speaking. Proponents of manual approaches felt that spoken language competence was an
unrealistic goal and stressed signing systems. Total communication approaches that in-
cluded both signing and spoken language were viewed by some as a compromise, but the
controversy lived on. To complicate matters, there were several different signing systems
used in educating children with profound loss. ASL is a language with its own syntax and
vocabulary, but several other signing systems mix ASL signs with English syntax and usage
(see Bernstein-Ratner, 2001, for a brief overview).
In recent years, increasing emphasis has been placed on early intervention to provide
children with profound hearing loss with the opportunity to develop a rich language sys-
tem to permit the communication necessary to develop and maintain personal relation-
ships as well as to learn academic content (Northern & Downs, 1991). For children with
profound loss, some type of signing system is often indicated. This means, of course, that
hearing parents and family have the best chance of communicating their child with pro-
found loss if they are familiar with the signing system the child uses. As in Steven’s family,
this is not always the case.
Social competence
The research on the social competence of children with profound hearing loss has been
complicated by a myriad of factors that influence social development. For example, chil-
dren with profound hearing loss demonstrate varying levels of language development, a
wide range of communicative opportunities within the home, and different opportunities
to interact with peers who share the same language system. These variables have not been
systematically controlled across research studies, and research outcomes must be evaluated
with these factors in mind.
Spencer and Deyo (1993) suggested that there are at least two groups of children with
profound hearing loss (deaf) who could be expected to show distinct patterns of social
development. These groups consist of (a) children who develop language typically and
have typical early parent–child interactions and (b) children who have difficulty acquiring
language and have “difficult, relatively nonreciprocal interactions with parents” (Spencer
& Deyo, 1993, p. 71). These authors noted that these groups are usually, but not always,
configured based on the hearing status of the parents. Spencer and Deyo summarized a
number of studies that suggested that deaf children born to deaf parents “tend as a group
to have more positive socioemotional characteristics, better language development, and
higher academic performance than deaf children with hearing parents” (p. 70).
Additional research is needed to confirm the existence and describe the development of
different groups of children with profound hearing loss. More longitudinal studies are
needed to compare the social development and friendship formation of children of deaf
parents with those of children with hearing parents. We do not yet fully understand the
relative influence of many important factors on social competence. We do, however, un-
derstand that children with profound hearing loss experience certain challenges in social
interactions.
The fact that children with profound loss often use some system of signing to commu-
nicate means that their mode of communication will differ from that of many of their
peers. This may, in part, explain the fact that children with hearing loss are not easily
integrated into the social fabric of the regular classroom. As Lee and Antia (1992) note,
ensuring physical proximity among children with hearing loss and their hearing peers does
not guarantee that these children will interact. In fact, providing casual contact is not
sufficient to foster acceptance or friendship (Antia & Kreimeyer, 1996). In integrated
classrooms, children with hearing loss tend to segregate themselves and hearing children
often avoid them (Bench, 1992; Minett, Clark & Wilson, 1994; Spencer, Koester, &
Meadow-Orlans, 1994).
Children with hearing loss in integrated settings tend to be rejected by their peers more
often than are hearing children. For example, Cappelli, Daniels, Durieux-Smith, McGrath,
and Neuss (1995) found that 30% of the elementary school aged children with hearing
loss they studied were rejected by their peers. Additionally, these children were aware of
their rejection.
Loeb and Sarigiani (1986) studied children and adolescents with hearing loss and com-
pared them to hearing peers as well as to peers with visual impairments. Teachers perceived
the students with hearing loss as being more shy and having lower self-esteem than the
other groups, and the students with hearing loss perceived themselves as more shy and less
popular. Not all studies using teacher report have demonstrated social or behavioral diffi-
culties in children with hearing loss, however (MacLean, 1983). Still, parents often com-
plain of the difficulty their children with hearing loss experience in interacting with others
and establishing friendships (Davis, Elfenbein, Schum, & Bentler, 1986).
Even though children with profound hearing loss are not always accepted or included in
classroom activities in integrated or mainstreamed settings, in the long run, these children
may function better socially than do children with hearing loss who are educated in iso-
lated or institutional settings. For example, Aplin (1987) found that 12-year-old children
with hearing loss who attended regular schools showed better levels of social and emotional
adjustment than did their peers who attended special schools. Similarly Cartledge, Cochran,
and Paul (1996) reported that adolescents who attended regular schools rated their own
social competence higher than did peers in a residential school setting.
Language proficiency is extremely important to peer interaction. Children with pro-
found hearing loss who have more developed language systems tend to interact more often
with peers than do children with more limited language ability (Spencer, Koester, &
Meadow-Orlans, 1994). There are indications that language proficiency is related to the
mode of language to which children are exposed. That is, children with profound hearing
loss who communicate using at least some signing may acquire language more easily than
those who must depend only on spoken language. This greater facility with language can
also promote positive social interaction. For example, Cornelius and Hornett (1990) re-
ported that kindergartners with hearing loss in classes where instruction included signs and
spoken instruction engaged in more social play and produced fewer physically aggressive
acts toward each other than did children in oral classes, where instruction was carried out
primarily through spoken language.
The contexts in which children interact present different language demands for children
with profound hearing loss. For example, Lederberg (1991, 1993) noted that children
with profound loss may participate in dyadic play using limited language, but they have
difficulty in groups because group play demands a higher level of language ability. Diffi-
culty interacting in groups may persist throughout life. Adults with hearing loss have also
reported that they are uncomfortable talking with groups of hearing peers because of the
increased demands of watching multiple speakers in order to utilize visual cues (Maxwell et
al., 1999).
As important as language ability is to social interaction, it is not the only factor that
determines social functioning in children with profound hearing loss. For example, chil-
dren form peer relationships based on many factors. To illustrate, Lederberg (1991) ob-
served 3- to 5-year-old children with hearing loss in outdoor play at school. Forty-two
percent of children in dyads who formed long-term friendships (identified according to
mutual responsiveness and time spent playing together) had different levels of language
ability. Children seemed to choose each other as playmates according to factors such as
gender and age. Drawing from this study and earlier work, Lederberg (1991) concluded
that “linguistic competence was found to affect only a very narrow area of deaf children’s
peer relations” (p. 58).
Summary: Profound hearing loss
It is difficult to generalize about the social functioning of children with profound hearing
loss. Unfortunately, research has not fully described the social expectations and develop-
mental patterns of children within deaf or hearing communities. Although it is obvious
that hearing loss can affect language and social growth, it is less clear how hearing loss
interacts with other factors to influence the development of individual children. The early
social environment of a child with hearing loss depends on the parents’ ability to engage
that child’s attention and provide highly salient language and social input that the child
can process. Parents who sign fluently may find this a natural task, but hearing parents
may be more dependent upon early intervention programs to assist them. The choice of
communication modality (signing, speech, or a combination) that families adopt is an-
other factor that influences social development. Children in families and educational pro-
grams that incorporate signing may develop language more readily. Enhanced language
development is one important factor that facilitates interaction with peers.
Children with profound hearing loss who grow up in hearing communities are at risk
for social isolation. Children born to parents who belong to a deaf community may grow
up in a signing environment that values hearing loss as a cultural characteristic. These
children may function well socially within their minority community, but may never feel
quite “at home” in the hearing world. Some children, especially those who do not learn
sign language and acquire limited spoken language, may never feel totally included in
either the deaf or the hearing world.
Specific Language Impairment
Overview
In the case description presented earlier, David did not acquire language typically despite
the fact that his hearing was intact. In addition, David’s difficulty with language could not
be attributed to more generalized cognitive deficits, obvious neurological problems, or
environmental deprivation. The term “specific language impairment” (SLI) is currently
used to describe David’s difficulty (Leonard, 1998). A number of other terms overlap
partially or completely with SLI, including learning disability, developmental language
disability, developmental language disorder, and language-learning impairment (Nelson,
1998). Although the term SLI suggests a specific disability, children who are identified
with SLI form a heterogeneous group. Two individuals diagnosed with SLI may have very
different profiles of linguistic strengths and weaknesses. Despite this variability, it can be
said that children with SLI demonstrate a variety of problems with comprehension and
expression of language. These may include difficulty learning vocabulary, syntax, and
morphological structures. Additionally, children with SLI may struggle in social conversa-
tion and most have difficulty producing and understanding narratives. Children with SLI
tend to produce spoken language that is limited, labored, and immature. SLI persists as
children grow up, although the manifestations of the disorder change (Bashir, 1989). For
example, a 4 year old with SLI might produce short utterances with various grammatical
structures missing or modified (e.g., “Him baby. Him not eat candy”). At 12 years of age,
that same child might have a command of basic syntax and morphology but might struggle
producing a fluent narrative that is coherent enough to describe a simple event. As might
be expected, difficulty with language translates into social and academic problems that are
particularly evident in tasks involving listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Fey, Catts,
& Larrivee, 1995).
SLI is a relatively common disability. Tomblin et al. (1997), using strict diagnostic
standards, found a prevalence rate of 7% in a sample of over 7,000 kindergartners. SLI is
more prevalent in boys than in girls, and recent study has focused on familial aggregations
of SLI. The cause of SLI is not well understood. There has been a great deal of discussion
regarding etiology, but a definitive explanation of causal factors remains elusive (see Bishop,
1997; Leonard, 1998 for discussion).
Unlike children with profound hearing loss, there is no context in which children with
SLI will find both a viable alternative to spoken language and membership in a cultural
community that does not view language impairment as handicapping. A child with pro-
found hearing loss who is fluent in ASL may interact freely with other members of the deaf
culture. For a child with SLI growing up in a society that values verbal ability, there is no
equivalent community.
Parent–child interactions
Thanks to recent advances in audiological assessment procedures, Steven’s hearing loss was
identified in his infancy, and his parents were referred to an early intervention program.
David’s SLI was not identified until he was a preschooler. Unfortunately, the most obvious
manifestations of SLI are not evident until children reach the age where they would be
expected to start talking. This makes SLI difficult, if not impossible, to identify in infancy.
Since there is considerable variation in the times at which typical children reach language
milestones, it can be difficult to distinguish children who are normal “late talkers” from
children who have language impairment in the early stages of acquisition (for discussion
see Leonard, 1998; Paul, 2000). It might be speculated that children with SLI, like chil-
dren with hearing loss, experience early interactions with their caretakers somewhat differ-
ently than do typically developing children. Just how different the experience is from the
child’s perspective, however, is not clear. Infants with SLI can hear the sounds that inform
them of the caretaker’s presence when not in sight. Likewise, they have access to vocal and
sound play input from their parents. As they mature, however, they may have difficulty
making sense of the language they hear, and they are slow at acquiring the lexical and
syntactic characteristics of language.
As children with SLI become preschoolers, the interactions they have with their caretak-
ers may differ from those experienced by typical children. Although most research has
focused on the influence of parental input on the acquisition of language structure, some
studies have addressed the social nature of parent–child interactions. The results of this
research are equivocal. It is evident, however, that many parents modify their input in
order to communicate with their children who are less skilled conversational partners (see
Leonard, 1998 for review). It is likely that these modifications shape parent–child social
interactions in important ways that are not yet fully understood.
Education
As previously noted, children with SLI can be expected to have academic problems. One
reason for this is that these children are at a great disadvantage in the classroom where
rules, routines, and instruction are largely carried out via language. A number of special
service delivery models have been employed to support these children in academic work
and to facilitate their language growth. Some children with SLI are placed in small, self-
contained classrooms for children with language problems. These classrooms are generally
located within regular elementary schools, and the children with SLI may share recess time
or specific classes with typically developing children. Other children with SLI attend regu-
lar classrooms and are pulled out periodically for small group or individual sessions with a
speech-language pathologist and/or learning specialist. Some children, like David, attend
regular classrooms, and speech-language pathologists and other special service providers
team with the classroom teacher to provide services within the curriculum of the class-
room. For a child with SLI, opportunities for social interaction with peers may vary greatly
depending on educational placement.
Little work has been done to compare the social behaviors of children with SLI in vari-
ous types of school placements. It can be said, however, that children with SLI frequently
have social difficulty in school settings. The work of researchers who have described the
social problems of these children is reviewed in the next section.
Social competence
Since language skills are often critical to successful social interaction, it might be expected
that children with SLI would be at risk for social difficulty. Investigations conducted over
the past decade suggest that the most common manifestations of social difficulty in el-
ementary school children with SLI are withdrawal and weak sociable behaviors. For exam-
ple, Fujiki, Brinton, and Todd (1996) found that teachers rated 8- to 12-year-old children
with SLI as having more behavior problems and poorer social skills than their typically
developing peers using the teacher version of the Social Skills Ratings System (Gresham &
Elliott, 1990). Although specific item analyses were not conducted, it was noted that the
main behavioral differences were evident in subscales assessing hyperactivity and internal-
izing behaviors, and differences in social skills were evident in subscales assessing coopera-
tion and assertion.
Redmond and Rice (1998) employed the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1991a)
and the Teacher Report Form (Achenbach, 1991b) to measure parent and teacher percep-
tions of the social functioning of children with SLI and typically developing peers when
they were 6 and 7 years of age. Teachers rated children with SLI as having more social,
internalizing, and attention problems than their typical peers. Parent reports for children
with SLI and typically developing children did not differ. That is, teachers reported social
difficulties at school that parents evidently did not perceive at home. It was also of note
that the teacher ratings for individual children were not stable over time.
Fujiki, Brinton, Morgan, and Hart (1999) used the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (Hart
& Robinson, 1996) with teachers of 5–8 and 10–13-year-old children with SLI and their
typically developing peers. Teachers reported that children with SLI demonstrated higher
levels of reticent behavior than did typical children, and boys with SLI demonstrated higher
levels of solitary-active withdrawal than any of the other groups. In addition, children with
SLI were rated below their peers on the impulse control/likeability and prosocial behavior
subscales.
Researchers have also directly observed the social interactions of children with SLI. These
data have mirrored those obtained from teacher report. Children with SLI may become
isolated from their peers as early as preschool. For example, Rice, Sell, and Hadley (1991)
found that unlike their typical matches, children with SLI in a preschool classroom pre-
ferred adults as conversational partners over peers. Hadley and Rice (1991) found that
these same preschool children did not respond well to their peers’ conversational bids and
were, in turn, often ignored by their peers. Guralnick, Conner, Hammond, Gottman, and
Kinnish (1996) observed 4- and 5-year-old children with language impairment in play-
groups over a 2-week period. These researchers found that children with language prob-
lems were less well integrated into groups than were typically developing peers.
Patterns of isolation in group interactions appear to continue as children progress through
the elementary school years. Fujiki, Brinton, Robinson, and Watson (1997) observed in-
teractions of 8- to 12-year-old children with SLI as they talked together in a toy selection
task. They found that when placed in a group with two typically developing peers, chil-
dren with SLI became marginal participants, talking less, and being talked to less than
their typical peers. In addition, Brinton, Fujiki, Spencer, and Robinson (1997) found that
the inability to participate using spoken language did not fully account for the failure of
these children to become part of group interactions. The children with SLI were not easily
integrated into nonverbal aspects of group activity either. The children with SLI did not
compensate for their difficulty in talking by contributing collaborative or cooperative ac-
tion to the group activity.
The difficulty children with SLI experience in classroom and small group interactions
also seems to extend to less structured contexts. Children with SLI are often isolated at
recess, moving from playgroup to playgroup or spending a lot of time doing little or noth-
ing. For example, Fujiki, Brinton, Isaacson, and Summers (2001) observed first- to fifth-
grade children with language difficulties at recess. Typical children spent significantly more
time in peer interaction, whereas children with language impairment spent significantly
more time exhibiting withdrawn behaviors. In particular, several children with language
impairment showed high amounts of reticence and solitary-active withdrawal.
The loneliness that many children with SLI experience (Fujiki et al., 1996) probably
reflects the difficulty these children experience with many social tasks. For example, chil-
dren with SLI have difficulty gaining access to ongoing play activities (Brinton et al., 1997;
Craig & Washington, 1993). They seem to lack the assertiveness or the strategies to join in
group activity. Once they gain access to an activity, they may not know how to respond to
bids from their conversational partners such as questions or comments (Fujiki & Brinton,
1991; Hadley & Rice, 1991). Children with SLI may be at a loss when they need to reach
mutual decisions, negotiate courses of action, or resolve conflicts with their peers (Brinton,
Fujiki, & McKee, 1998; Grove, Conti-Ramsden, & Donlan, 1993; Stevens & Bliss, 1995).
They may also have difficulty collaborating with their peers in cooperative work groups
(Brinton, Fujiki, & Higbee, 1998; Brinton, Fujiki, Montague, & Hanton, 2000).
Peer relations
The isolation children with SLI often experience at school and the difficulty they have
with classroom social tasks could be expected to affect the way they are viewed by their
peers. Few studies have investigated peer acceptance of children with SLI, but those that
have suggest that children with SLI are not perceived as very desirable playmates by their
peers as early as preschool (Gertner, Rice, & Hadley,1994). Fujiki, Brinton, Hart, and
Fitzgerald (1999) found considerable variability in acceptance of elementary school chil-
dren with SLI. For example, one first grader with SLI was among the most popular chil-
dren in her class and another was the least popular. For these elementary school children,
a measure of reciprocal friendship was more telling than the measure of peer acceptance,
however. Most of the children with SLI had no reciprocal friends in their classes. In fact,
they were not named as a friend by anyone. It may have been the case that these children
had reciprocal friends in other classes or in their neighborhoods who could soften the
effects of having no friends in class. It is more likely, however, that their difficulty estab-
lishing and maintaining peer relationships extended beyond the schoolyard. This idea was
supported by Fujiki et al. (1996), who found that children with SLI reported fewer peer
contacts in play activities outside of school than did typically developing children.
Summary: Specific language impairment
Because SLI is not identified until the age that children would be expected to begin to
produce spoken language, it is difficult to speculate on the early social development of
infants with SLI. It is likely that language plays a different role in the early social interac-
tions of babies with SLI, but research has not described the nature of that role.
By the time they reach preschool, however, children with SLI are at risk for social difficul-
ties. These problems have been documented in children through the elementary school years.
Children with SLI tend to show patterns of isolation characterized by reticence and exclu-
sion. They have difficulty establishing and maintaining friendships with peers. Difficulty
forming friendships may be attributed, at least in part, to the struggles children with SLI
experience with tasks that are important in the social world of the classroom. Difficulty
entering ongoing interactions, responding to bids in conversation, negotiating differences,
and collaborating on tasks may work against their integration into the social fabric of the
classroom. Some special service delivery models may inadvertently contribute to the isola-
tion of children with SLI. Placements into self-contained classes may distance children with
SLI from most of their peers, and intermittent removal from class for language intervention
may make children with SLI feel disoriented and removed from class activities.
Conclusions
Children with profound hearing loss and children with SLI share a common challenge in
social development. Their ability to communicate with others is seriously undermined by
their difficulty acquiring spoken language. Frequently, children with hearing loss or SLI
must learn to establish and maintain relationships when they cannot easily share their
ideas, their thoughts, or their feelings with others. They must somehow make sense of
events without understanding much of the language that shapes the interactions within
those events. In addition, caretakers and parents frequently use language-based activities to
expose children to their social community and to teach them how to behave within it. For
example, consider the prominence of language in activities such as conversing at the dinner
table, negotiating bedtime, settling a sibling dispute, or sharing a favorite book. Children
who do not have full access to the language through which these activities are conducted
may miss important information concerning how their parents view the world and what
their parents expect of them. Similarly, children with weak language abilities are at a disad-
vantage in academic and social settings at school.
Because language ability is such an important factor in social competence, it is tempting
to conclude that language deficits lead directly and predictably to social problems. The
relationship between the language and social competence is strong, but it is neither simple
nor direct. Language impairment does not guarantee social problems, nor does the degree
of language impairment always predict the severity of social deficits. Language ability is
one important factor in the development of social behavior, but the interaction of im-
paired language with other cognitive, social, and behavioral processes is complex and may
vary from child to child.
The case studies of Steven and David illustrate how profound hearing loss and SLI are
associated with somewhat different social challenges. Because of his profound hearing loss,
Steven’s strongest language modality is visual (signing). He has limited social interaction
with his family members and peers who do not sign. He does have two reciprocal friends
who also sign in his class, however, and a small group of children with whom he eats lunch
and plays at recess. The fact that Steven has been able to interact with peers and make
friends in contexts where he can communicate bodes well for his future social develop-
ment. Although Steven may always be isolated from many people in the hearing world, he
may also eventually affiliate with the deaf community where, depending on his signing
fluency, he may enjoy unfettered communication (Maxwell et al., 1999). Within the con-
text of this minority culture, Steven may function well socially.
For David, the outlook is different. Although intervention is helpful and essential, mani-
festations of David’s language impairment are likely to persist into adulthood. Although
there may be contexts in which his language impairment will not be a handicap, there will be
no equivalent to the deaf community for David. Also, it is important to remember that
David’s social difficulties are evident even in situations that require little language. As a
child, David’s social difficulty is intertwined with, but cannot be entirely attributed to, his
language impairment. The social problems that are associated with his language impairment
may persist as he matures. In fact, a recent longitudinal study by Howlin, Mawhood, and
Rutter (2000) paints a bleak picture of the social adjustment of some young men with SLI.
For children with profound hearing loss and SLI, educational programs have wisely
targeted language development as a major objective. It has become clear, however, that
increased educational emphasis on social functioning is warranted. We are looking for
more effective, efficient ways to facilitate language and social skill simultaneously. It is
time to help Steven bridge the gap between the hearing and deaf communities and to bring
David in from the outskirts of social interaction.
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604 Subject Index
Subject Index
aberrant behavior 287 hostile 288, 292; negative 550; prosocial

abilities: behavioral 45; cognitive 35, 45, 47; 228, 458; social 139, 480–2; structural re-
concrete operational 504; determined by organization of 10; undesirable 106
biology 539; domain-specific 50; intellectual activities 50, 61, 98, 149, 428, 515–16, 578,
572, 591; mental 53; physical 591; social 582; after-school 164; antisocial 163;
47; verbal 49–50 channeled in safe and productive ways 100;
Aboriginals 564 children with disabilities 574; children with
absenteeism 277, 559, 580 severe mental retardation 577; choice or
abstraction 81 timing of 213; classroom 344, 594;
abuse 244, 294, 499, 550; verbal 551, 554 collective 86; common-ground 308; daily
academic difficulties 276, 277 581; exclusion from many 588; family 245;
acceptance: barrier 591; cultural mannerism of formal 164; group 485; high level 100, 102,
89; group 535; maternal 103; of parental 109; intrinsic interest in 526; joint 519;
authority 213; social 33, 358, 365, 366, legal 500; leisure 484; other-sex 130;
580; see also peer acceptance participation in 72; peer group 578; physical
accommodation 82, 363 131, 440, 443, 580; restrictions on 216;
accuracy 230, 291, 299, 523, 575; perception rule-governed, participation in 332;
365, 366, 367, 368, 369 sensorimotor and dramatic 330; sex-typed
achievement: academic 297, 400, 401, 469, 524; 128; shared 120; social 163, 580, 581; social
educational 90; encouragement 103; ethnic interaction mostly driven by 288; solitary
81; low 275; school 246, 406, 574 582; structured 69; symbolic 429
acquaintances 293 adaptability 98, 102; family 195
acquiescence 138 adaptation 13, 521; evolutionary 55; family 69;
acting-out behavior 190, 276, 277 social 158, 162, 294, 299
actions: collaborative or cooperative 598; adaptiveness/adaptedness 44–5, 49, 50, 54, 308
correspondence between ideas and 69; addictive behaviors 296
Subject Index 605
ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) Liberia; Senegal; South Africa; Zimbabwe

50, 211–12 African Americans 88, 539; couples living in
adjustment: academic 295, 540; differences in poverty 241; friendships 293; Head Start
232, 233; difficulties 38, 109; emotional children 358; parent–child relationships
253, 295, 594; laissez-faire 89; long-term 217, 218; play of low-income children
167; marital discord and 166; outcomes 431, 432; poor, single mothers 243;
295; parenting and 244; peer group 353; siblings 233; socialization 137, 138, 142,
poor 540; problems 168; psychological 242, 143, 522
245, 250, 251, 339, 341, 537, 543; age-related factors 157, 290, 357, 363, 543;
psychosocial 299; siblings and 228–30; behavioral typologies 64; changes 66, 312;
social-psychological 542; see also school differences associated with 423, 496;
adjustment; social adjustment distribution of R&T 442; gender of siblings
ADMR (average daily metabolic rate) 448 225; grounds of power 87; helpers 466–7;
adolescence 12, 35, 49, 126, 163; behavior 296; patterns 15; peer victimization 557–8;
concepts not constructed until 476, 486; playmates chosen according to 594; see also
dominance 55, 56, 443; Down syndrome early school age; elementary school age;
577; friendships 286, 340, 341, 401; from preschool period
infancy to 384–5; IQ scores 39; learning aggression 10, 146, 298, 424, 469, 527; access to
disabilities 575; lower income families 467; resources via 55; adaptive 51; aggressive
mental retardation in social relationships behavior predicts 277; among girls and boys
578; motherhood 243; parental treatment 533–48; associated with being disliked 295;
and adjustment 37; peer groups 39–40, 170, “bullying” distinguished from 550;
276, 341; perception accuracy 365; childrearing and 166; confrontive 398;
promiscuity 54; psychological adjustment defined 438; enmities and 285, 287; factor
242; R&T 441, 442, 443, 444, 445, 448; analysis and 33; Freud’s views on 9;
sibling relationships 223, 224, 229; social frustration and 100; general measures of
competencies 342; time spent with friends 355; hormones and 123; increase in 127;
289; twins 31; visual impairments 582 initiation of 319; minimized 443; overt 170,
adoption 28, 31, 34, 190, 239; siblings 29 299; peer 6, 275, 276, 294, 317, 554, 555,
adrenal glands 124 556; physical 361, 363; play fighting leads
Adult Attachment Interview 195 to 446; proactive 539, 540; problems 31;
adulthood 12, 276, 294, 577; preparations for programs developed to reduce 404; R&T
49; romantic relationships 295; self-worth and 440, 441, 445, 448, 449, 450; reactive
294 170, 540; “ritualized” 444; sibling 224,
advice 294, 552; parental 161, 162 225, 228, 229; social strategies 528;
affect 106, 206, 339; infant 15; “management subscales of 30; teacher’s evaluations of 318;
skills” 160; negative 317, 332–3, 336, 578; to mothers 66; typified 439; verbal 15, 341,
positive 150, 317, 318, 336, 361; regulation 363, 535, 536, 540; see also indirect/
of 104; representation of 423–4 relational/social aggression; bullying;
affection 34, 209, 210, 215, 225, 320, 321, 336; physical aggression
greater, girls anticipate 292; overt 287; aggressive-disruptive behavior 541
physical 66; sibling 36, 224 aggressive-rejected children 367
Affective Discomfort 107 alert state 69
affective process 81, 88, 207; markers 289; Algeria 494, 495
messages 312–13, 314, 322 alienation 535
affiliations 213; group 55, 56, 443, 491; romantic alliances 250
295 altruism 51, 88, 458; reciprocal 459, see also
affluent homes 537 prosocial behavior
Africa 45, 469; collectivism 74; play time with ambivalence 191, 198, 319, 320; depression,
peers of own sex 121; sub-Saharan 62, 65, anxiety and 189; inconsistency and 184;
66; see also Algeria; Kalahari; Kenya; infants show 334; understanding 314
606 Subject Index
American Girl Scouts 72 arousal 333; emotional 308, 309; empathic 462;
American Indians 217 physiological 460; response to another’s
American Psychological Association 12 distress 461
amusement 431 Asia 45, 74, 469; South East 121
ancestors 44–5, 47, 50, 51 Asian Americans 143, 217, 233–4
androgens 124, 125, 126, 127 ASL (American Sign Language) 590, 591, 592,
androgyny 244 596
anger 98, 106, 160, 184; answering 308; coping asocial behavior 397, 398
program 403; facial expressions of 323; girls Asperger syndrome 578
report not displaying 319; intensity of 320, assertion 597
316; misplaced 310; nonconflict 319; assertiveness 33, 63, 127, 190, 335; strategies
provoking 318; reactions 161; regulating 363
321; righteous 313 assimilation 82, 84
Anglo-Americans 359, 457, 462, 521, 513, 522 associations 109, 110, 231, 297, 298; causal 312;
animosities 250, 288 positive 215, 519
Ankara 429 assortative dialectics 291
annoyance 243–4, 313, 314 asthma 580
antagonism 55 asymmetries 208; EEG 264, 333; friendship 298;
antecedents 315, 439 interdependent 211; power 209
antenatal clinics 86 ATP (Australian Temperament Project) 99, 109,
anthropology 25, 74, 233; cognitive 62; social 67, 110
71 attachment 140, 161, 182–204, 399, 424; adult–
antipathy 271, 285; see also mutual antipathies child, early 150; ambivalent 335; Bowlby’s
antisocial behavior 106, 163, 166, 397; studies of 12; child–caregiver 149;
adolescence-limited and life-course- detachment and 88; Disorganized/
persistent 31; aggressive behavior predicts Controlling category 190; domain-specific
277; characteristics 167; children at risk for abilities hypothesized for 50; inferred
297; interventions to reduce 402–3; 183–4; insecure 54, 253, 298, 315, 334–5;
kindergarten 399; non-aggressive 31; peer maternal 519; monotropic 242, 253;
rejection positively related to 294; same-sex mother–child 461; nuclear family 245;
antipathies positively associated 295; paternal 519; primary figures 315; secure
similarity between friends in 291; see also 54, 137, 298, 253, 461; Sullivan’s theory of
aggression 15; see also Adult Attachment Interview;
anxiety 167, 212, 215, 313, 366; acute or chronic AQS; Attachment Story Completion Task;
183; anterior brain electrical activity and parent–child attachment; see also resistance
333; birth of sibling and 229; decreased Attachment Story Completion Task 186
344; expressions of 461; extreme or visible attention 6, 9, 34, 66, 197, 360; commanding
319; genuine expression of 316; high(er) 120; effortful control of 98; individualized
111, 525; insecurity associated with 190; 146; joint, impairments in 579; learning
lower 525; mother-figure relationship and facilitated 319; orientation of 312; parental
182; primary attachment figures at times of 228, 231; poorer 102; requesting 338;
315; self-reported 525; social 330, 331; see seeking 67, 195; shared 52, 53, 578, 579;
also “C” babies sustaining 161; unpopularity 360; see also
appearance 33, 118 ADHD
appraisal 89–90, 316, 521 attitudes 8, 14, 467, 515; bullying 560–1, 563;
apprehension 186 competitive, personal development 517;
approach 98, 102, 333; low 110 cooperative 523; ethnic 501, 502–4; family
approval 321 294; hypercompetitive 517; negative school
AQS (attachment Q-sort) 185, 186–8 400, 401; parental 28, 157; positive 299;
argument 228; reasoned 319 relationship 297; towards information 377,
Aristotle 475 378
Subject Index 607
attraction: children who resemble themselves 291; behavioral inhibition 190; attachment relation-
different aspects of 268; during play 290; ships and 334–5; biology and 332–3;
indices of 266; opposite-sex parent 245; parenting and 335–7
relationships based on 286; similarity in behavioral problems 30–3, 37, 145, 167;
225; unidimensional 269 extremely shy children 343; friends with
attractiveness 537 297; oppositional 109; physical discipline
attributions 87, 313, 503, 505; bias 293, 323; and 539; predate divorce 251; pre-existing
causal 6; hostile 543; internal 465 conditions and 241; socially well-adjusted
audiological evaluation/assessment procedures friends who have few 297; specific 405;
589, 59 victimization and 294
audiotapes 552 behavioral strategies 522–3
aunts 137 behaviorism 265
aura 288 belief-desire theory 387
Australia: bullying 549, 552, 553, 556, 557, 558, beliefs 338, 457; parental 429; parenting 67, 103;
560–2, 563, 564; Italian, Greek, Polish, and self-efficacy 130, 406; self-serving 459;
Vietnamese families 564; parental sociocultural structure of 206; specific 483;
monitoring 170; self-rated happiness 165; understanding 230, 385, 386; see also
social skills 106; see also ATP; New South cultural beliefs; false beliefs
Wales; Northern Territory; Queensland; belonging 543, 591
South Australia; Tasmania; Victoria; Berkeley survey (Clausen) 16
Western Australia biases 32, 291; attribution 293, 323; cognitive
Austria 494 10; ingroup 502; self-reports subject to 322;
authoritarian regimes 63 unrealistic or hostile/negative 161
authority 213, 293, 477, 479, 478, 486, 487; bidirectionality 13, 211, 212, 320, 323, 384, 523
attributes that give legitimacy to 480; binomial probabilities 269
different understandings of 492; hierarchy biological functions 183
498; legitimacy of 482; obedience to 476–7, biology: abilities determined by 539; aggression
481; parental 217, 484; popular participants 537; behavioral inhibition 332–3;
appeal to 527; respect for 476, 482; teachers environment 46; gender differences 535;
492; unilateral 209, 482 prosocial behavior 459–60; social behavior
autism 377, 380–1, 386, 578–9; high- 122–7; temperamental characteristics 459
functioning people 53 “biopsychological model” 70
autonomy 209, 470, 477, 483–7; encouragement birth and death rates 70
195; minimal threats to 462 Black people 494, 501, 502, 503
availability 166 blaming 299
avoidance 138, 184, 317; discussing separations “Bloemenheim” 68
196; enemies and 292–3; friends and 291, blood pressure 15
299; low 331; school 400, 401; see also C-M Bloomington Longitudinal Study (Bates) 109
system; M-C system “Bobo” punching doll 127
awareness 161, 309, 312, 317, 465; collective 80; bodily functions 229
ethnic 501; low-level 310; self 285, 381 body: movements 535; size 537
bonds: affectional 470; internal working 183–4;
“baby diaries” 4 mother–infant 245; unstable pair 54
backward countries 86 bone-marrow transplants 230
bad “vibes” 288 “booster treatments” 407
Baltimore 184, 316 Boston 69
banking 494 boyfriends 243
bed-wetting 559 Brahmans 482–3
behavioral attributes 290 brain 122; feedback systems 124; large 47;
behavioral difficulties 594 mammalian 123; recorded electrical activity
behavioral genetics 27–40, 157, 232 333
608 Subject Index
brainstem implants 591 causal factors 6, 95–178

Brazil 483, 485 causality 81; bidirectional 211; structural 84;
Britain 79; Black consciousness movements 503; supra-individual source of 84
Down syndrome and peer acceptance 576; cause-effect relations 331
fertility clinics 249; Muslim mothers in caution 293, 333
extended families 252; R&T 441, 448; CBCL (Child Behavior Checklist) 30, 31, 32, 33
sibling relationships 228, 233–4; single CCC (cognitive complexity and control) 380
parenting and stepfamilies 238; twin studies Central America 121
31; see also England; Scotland; Wales central nervous system 580
British Asians 564 character defamation 535
bullying/bullies 289, 294, 295–6, 307, 441, 538, characteristics: adult 46; affective 574; antisocial
549–68; enmities and 285; forms of behavior 16; autistic children 579;
aggression often associated with 404; social behavioral 291; cultural 595; enemies/
understanding scores 385; specific 341; friendships 298, 299; family 537, 539; good
victim relationships 339 and bad 503; parental 461; passed along to
bushmen 439 offspring 47; physical 537; psychological
“butterflies” 309 525; socioemotional 593; temperamental
459
“C” babies 334, 335 cheating 52, 443, 444, 445, 446–7
CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) 124, 125– Child Behavior Checklist 597
7, 447 “child-by-environment” model 397
caloric expenditure 448 “child-centered” approach 431
camaraderie 292 childbirth 65
Canada 103, 522, 552; children’s reasoning about childcare 61, 139, 189, 343; culture and 68, 70–
plea bargaining 500; Chinese-Canadian 1, 140–5; determined by species-specific
children 170 characteristics 70; good, “three Rs” of 68;
Canberra 553 help with 65; nonparental 536; paid 253;
cancer 580 selection of 141; social development and
capitalism 86, 88 145–7; structural dimensions 146
care 66; hegemonic 88; of other family members Childcare Staffing Study (Whitebook et al.) 142
467; quality 7; see also caregivers; childcare CHILDES database 386
care workers 241 childrearing 7, 64, 89, 245; child’s temperament
careers 343 and parent’s style 106; coercive/
caregivers 138, 147, 214, 319; aspects of authoritarian 166; communal 251, 252–3;
caregiving 189–90, 192; attachment culturally regulated customs 68; culturally
behavior leads to proximity to 183; behavior valued mechanism 254; development of
which attains or maintains proximity to 182; modern techniques 90; different opinions
children and 149; in peasant communities and values about 244; married daughters
429; initial bonds between infants and 12; 252; patterns of 243; practices 461;
multiple 253; primary 32, 99, 217, 242, problematic behaviors 251
252, 253, 430; race, ethnicity and class of children of color 143
142–3; regulation efforts 312; responsive chimpanzees 45, 52–3, 55, 376
caregiving 183; sibling 464; see also mothers China 103, 169–70, 521–2, 541; affectional
caretakers 66, 68, 596 bonds 470; one-child policy 180
caring 320, 457, 462 Chinese Americans 169, 218, 430–1, 501, 502
cars 118, 120, 124, 130 Chinese-Canadian children 170
Cassidy–Marvin system 186–9, 190, 197, 198, choices: forced 518, 521; of peers 166; personal
199 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487; social 291;
caste 483 toy 124, 126; unreciprocated 289
categorization system 98 chores 468
Caucasian children 293 Christian children 503
Subject Index 609
chromosomes 122 collaboration 210, 312, 516; difficulty in 599;

chronic illness 580–1 peer 4, 405
chronological age 290, 377 collectivism 74, 359, 469–70, 482, 521;
“circle of science” 81 unquestioned 82
civil liberties 486, 487 Colorado Adoption Study (De Fries et al.) 34
class see social class comfort 224, 311, 464, 465; contact 12;
classifications 191, 195, 272; domain 481; group reactions 321
269; nomination-based 271; sociometric commands 480, 523
269; status 268, 272 commitment 206, 209, 231; relationship 288
classmates 287, 290, 449, 575; acquaintances communes 252
with 404; becoming accepted by 402; communication 87, 481; attachment-related
difficulty interacting with 590; efforts to issues 193; capacities for 139; connected
promote children’s relationships with 402; 231; consistent, pervasive impairments in
favorably identified as 527; fear of 341; 578; differences in style between sexes 131;
judge behavior as deviant 398; liked 367; difficulties 108; disorders 575; during
“neutral” 291; positive attitudes about 299; socially directed acts 318; fostering 486;
relationships with 397, 399, 400 important implications for 579;
classrooms 275, 291, 343, 359, 360, 394, 425; interpersonal 70, 426–7, 579; nonverbal
activities 344; competitive and 576; non-verbal 209; play 419–22, 424,
individualistic atmosphere 524; 426, 431; primary medium of 591;
organizational rules 477; peer rejection successful 320; total 588, 592; verbal 209,
predicted children’s participation in 400; 424, 426
play 362; preschool 426; rules, routines and community 498; cultural 596; minority 595;
instruction 597; shared experiences 577; social 47
special education 577, 579 companionship 66, 158, 227, 287, 299
cleanliness 68 “compensatory” patterns 232
clitoris 122 competence 241, 275, 365, 382; academic 366;
closeness 209, 210, 299, 315; emotional and appearance 366; athletic 33, 366; behavioral
physical 120 366; cognitive 46, 81, 214; emotional
clothing 483; see also dress 309–21, 322, 323; greater feelings of 525;
C–M system see Cassidy–Marvin system interactional 82; linguistic 594; mentalistic
coaching 344, 403 understanding 384; metacommunicative
coalition groups 50 and transformational 424; peer 166, 366;
cochlear implants 591 perceived 295; psychological 213;
co-construction 211 relationship 161; scholastic 33; self 365;
coding systems 32, 185–6 verbal 197; see also social competence
coercion 463; cycles of 212, 536, 541; maternal competition 48, 86, 121, 228; cooperation and
537, 538 513–32; overt 51; social 53
cognition 82, 101, 161; capacities for 139; complementarity 209
disabilities that affect 574–8; disabilities that complementation 387
do not affect 574; interpersonal 161; moral compliance 63, 89, 145, 146, 208, 287, 464;
106 girls, with adults 465; other’s initiations
cognitive development 476; conservation stage of 210; parental 463; social roles 470
119; general changes in 286 compliments 74
cognitive evaluation theory 525 comprehension 595
cognitive processes 72, 207; abilities 35, 45, 47; compromise 119, 210, 485
capacities 106, 462; distraction 161; computer programming 70
operations 81; restructuring 161; strategies computer simulations 273
524; theory 129–30 conceptual development 81
cohabitation 246, 247, 248 conceptualization 100–1; family and peer systems
cohesion 195 157; “generalized other” 332; global 98;
610 Subject Index
Conceptualization (cont’d) consumption 87

parent–child relationships 209; social contact 100, 234; enemies 292–3; informal 164;
withdrawal 342; temperament 98 Internet 273; mixed-sex 359; peer 159, 170,
concern for others 457, 460, 468 359; play 164; positive 252; seeking 334;
concrete operational abilities 504 social 12, 163, 164; with parents 65
conditioning 9 contempt 313, 320; “macho” 310
conduct 33; cultural scripts for 69; disordered contextualization 79
228; disruptive 366; parent-rated 37; contingency 87; rule 477, 479
performative 83; problems 32, 277, 581; continuities 141, 157, 286, 299, 421;
school, “proper” 50 developmental 442; intergenerational 239
Conduct Problems Prevention Group 410, 534, control 34, 85, 90, 209, 287, 288; appearance of
544 care that disguises true purpose of 88;
confidants 230 behavioral 106; conscious 380; divided
confidence 335, 344; self 196, 516 mechanisms of 89; effortful 105, 106,
confidentiality 274 107–8; emotional 98; executive 380–1;
conflict 208, 209, 321, 341, 498; aggressive inhibitory 106, 381; loss of 192; lower 243;
children 297, 535; associated with being maternal 36, 335–7; paternal 246; resistance
disliked 295; child-related 167; children’s to 109; social 165
perceptions of 250; cognitive 10, 331; controlling behavior 186, 189–92 passim, 196, 232
dynamics of 250; family 251, 252; controversial children 272, 273, 275, 276, 290,
friendship 164, 293, 295, 298; gender 592
differences 119; happiness during 319; conventions 477, 478, 479, 481, 483, 581;
hostile strategies in 320; hypothetical 319; consensus-based 482; dress 484
instigation 15; interparental 167; conversation 309, 387, 403, 406, 431; friendly
intrapersonal 331; intrapsychic 10; low 66, 320; function of 421; long, intimate
frequency of 320; marital 166–7, 241, 249, 121; partners 598; replete with emotion talk
250, 251; mother–child 249; peer 575; real 321; social 595; spontaneous 343
anger 361; relationship 299; sibling 224, “cool rule” 319
225, 226, 228, 229, 230, 232, 287; social coolness 228
53; sources of advice concerning how to cooperation 52, 146, 286, 312, 597; and
handle 294; spousal 250; teachers 539 competition 513–32; mutual 210, 476; peer
conflict management 15, 308, 320; adaptive 398; rejection negatively related to 294; sibling
friends 286, 288, 292 224
conflict resolution 362–3, 485; autonomous 519; coping 6, 12, 241, 292; anger 403; behavior 196,
encouragement in 485; with peers 599 312; cognitive 311; parents’ means of 317;
conformity 63 perceptual 311; self-initiated techniques
confrontation 317, 318, 426; with unfamiliarity 336; strategies 11, 580
334 copulation 48
confusion 186, 505 corporal punishment 189
congenital syndromes 591 correlations 15, 185, 232, 268, 556; gene-
connectedness 209, 424 environment 158, 159; income and family
connectionist approach 381 structure 241; moderate 37; negative 103,
conscience 106, 107, 108; precursors of 465 107; physical aggressiveness and being
consciousness 88, 90, 503; self 339 physically victimized 555; positive 107, 109;
consensus 83, 487; moral 90 test-retest 272
consequences 314, 315, 479, 517; “beneficial” correspondence 69, 516
442; destructive 528; developmental 332, cortex 333, 381
540; harmful 481, 483; intrinsic 478; cortisol 15, 124, 264, 333, 343, 537
negative 313, 334 cost-benefit analyses 447–50
constraint 84, 85, 86; collective 87 Cost Quality and Outcome Study (Helburn)
construction 79 142, 150
Subject Index 611
counseling 552 customs 62, 74, 477; basis for understanding 68;
countries 504–5, 506 cultural or religious 482; experience and 61
courts 499
cousins 137 daily routines 69, 70
creativity 82 Darwin, Charles 45–6
crimes 499; televised 500 daycare 242, 537
criminality 85, 276, 277; parental 168 deafness 386, 590, 591, 593, 595, 596; see also
critical periods 123 profound hearing loss
cross-cultural studies/research 102, 293–4, 295, death 158; automobile accident 49; childbirth
402, 495; cooperation and competition 518, 238; parent 252; result of play 448
521, 522; socialization 63, 64; victimization debriefing 274
298 “decentring” 81
crying 439, 465 deception 51, 52, 386
cues 31, 161, 466; ambiguous 539; intention Deceptive Box test 377
575; pictorial 382; social 137, 576, 581, decision-making 498; autonomous 485, 487;
582; tactile 592; visual 592, 594 parental 68
cultural beliefs 61, 66, 68, 69, 89, 217; parental defiance 212, 424
103; shared 62; strong 246; values that “deficit model” 238
permeate 64 deficits 275, 403; academic 400; cognitive 573,
“cultural capital” 90 595, 577; communicative 577, 578;
cultural differences 64, 79, 369, 468, 496; emotional regulation 573; foundation
associated with income 431; cooperative and processes 576, 579; information-processing
competitive behaviors 521; family and peer 449; neurological 581; peer interaction 573;
influence 169–70; in socialization 470; play perception 368; racial 85; skill 405; social-
behavior 358; pretend play 428; cognitive processes 578; social information
temperament 103 processing 539; see also ADHD
“cultural mediational model” 70 degrees 143
cultural mores 550 delinquency 36, 40, 163; “desisting” 297;
cultural psychology 26, 71–2; premises 73 increases over time 299; later 229, 277;
cultural scripts 70–1 nonparticipation in 296; subscales of 30, 31
culture(s) 369, 482–3, 572; aggression in 543; democracy 63, 477, 486, 487, 498
childcare 70–1, 140–5; cognitive and demography 238
transmissional aspects 89; collectivist 73–4, Denmark 170, 494
359, 469, 482, 483, 521; common ancestral dependence/dependency 6, 87, 90, 229, 245,
heritage based on 217; cooperation and 291; all societies demonstrate 89; on mother
competition 515, 521–2; differences in age 186; social sense of 88; welfare 244
of acquisition across 383; ecological depression 212, 215, 291, 320, 341, 559; absence
frameworks 67–71; Euro-American 217; of 294; increased 169; life event capable of
important influence 513; individualist 73–4, inducing 242; lower levels of 163–4; major
482, 469; influences 207, 216–18; 36; maternal 168, 190, 243; rejected status
maladjustment across 541; other-sex activity and 278; self-reports of 541; symptoms of
130; patterns of 60–2, 74; personality and 296
62–4; play 431; prosocial 468; provider of deprivation 595
settings 64–7; psyche and 71–2; race, class desire-based theory 387
and home language 140; role of 49; shyness desires 52, 89, 149, 379, 578; bully 549;
seen as not problematic 211; similarities individual wants and 486
291; social responsibility 457; destiny 65
socioeconomic organization of 468; see also determinism 84, 85
headings above prefixed “cultural” developmental concept 85–91, 100–1
“cupboard love theory” 182 developmental niche 67–9
custody 246 developmental psychology 3, 8, 12, 14, 38, 67,
612 Subject Index
development psychology (cont’d) disliking 269, 270, 285, 287, 291; consensual
71, 80–3, 159, 239; contemporary, 339; perception of 366–7
dominant perspective in 243; evolutionary disorder 481
44, 45–50; social 355; sociology’s difference disordered children 540
from 79 disorganization 184, 186, 189, 190, 192, 198
developmental stages 357, 361 disposition 148, 150, 289, 335, 336, 470;
developmentally delayed children 70, 70 biological 332; inborn 67; inner 469
deviancy 340, 398, 470, 540, 541; increases in disputes 213; interpersonal 331; serious 249
168; peer 166, 276 disruptive behavior 249, 401, 406; school 364
diabetes 580 dissatisfaction 402
differences 73, 82, 293; adjustment 232, 233; age dissemblance 540
423, 496; behavioral 27, 597; class 428, distance 228
431, 467–8, 485, 495, 496; cross-cultural distancing 294
170, 522; developmental 421, 423, 486; distractibility 98, 109
ethnic 144, 233; family 35; friendship 298; distress 98, 167, 315, 333, 460; cause of 466;
genetic 31, 157, 158; group 28, 265; determinants of 461–2; economic 252;
helping young children understand and effective and appropriate responding to 464;
appreciate 143; mother–child and father– family 251; mother-figure relationship and
child relationships 214; perception accuracy 182; peer 105; provoking situations 185,
368, 369; personality 39, 232; psychopathology 193; psychological 559; redirecting attention
232; racial 144; sibling behavior 37; social 495; to alleviate 318; witnessing interadult anger
social-perceptual 366; social skills 597; social causes 316
status 357; temperamental 11, 233; see also distrust 149
cultural differences; individual differences; sex disturbance 460; bodily functions 229
differences division of labor 55, 65
differential behavior 226 divorce 35, 158, 168, 241–5 passim, 297;
difficult behavior 68–9 behavioral problems predate 251; long-term
“difficultness” 98, 109 negative effects of 250; made likely 239;
dilemmas: impersonal 336; interpersonal 336, problems associated with 248; women in
337; peer 162 lesbian relationships 247, 252
direct observational methods 553 DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) 47
directives 426 dogmatism 519
disability 233, 571–87; sibling 226 dolls 118, 120, 121, 128, 425; attachment
disadvantage 247, 314, 564; economic 169, 230; procedures 193–6; Black/White 502; boys
group 217; social 168, 245 and girls assigned to play with 426; girls in
disagreements 167, 288, 331; attempting to general prefer 124, 130; toddler pretends to
resolve 519 feed 423
disappointment 313 “domain approach” 477
disapproval 466 dominance 53, 66, 127, 443–6, 483; achieving
discipline 90, 209; harsh 34, 217, 218, 541; 120; functions 442; hierarchies 536;
inconsistent 536; maternal 106; physical 217, physical 541; social 55, 142, 447
538–9; punitive 100, 169, 536; violent 538 donor insemination 246, 247, 249
discomfort 106, 183, 319 Down syndrome 571, 576–7, 579
discontinuities 13, 141, 286 drawings 517, 521, 524, 550
discourse 426, 497; coherent 427; dominant dress 118, 128, 483, 484
forms of 79; rules and responsibilities 492 drink 89
discrete behaviors 32 drives 475
discriminations 480, 564 drugs 89; psychostimulant 50
discussions 485; class 589 Dutch see Netherlands
disgust 320 duties 482
disinterest 330 Dyadic Relationships Q-set (Parke & Waters) 298
Subject Index 613
dysfunctional behavior 296 style/playmate preference 121; reasoning

dysfunctional homes 166 486; SLI 597, 599; social interactions 360;
DZ (dizygotic) twins 28, 29, 33, 459; correlation social lives 357; status classifications 269,
for parental reports of activity level 36 270–1, 272; temperament 102, 106–7, 110;
toy preference 121
“early determinism” model 12–13 embarrassment 308, 330
early school age: aggression 538–40; childcare emotional regulation 11, 316–17, 361–2, 364,
and 137–55; gender identity 119; play style 536; deficits in 578; disabilities that do not
120; playmate preference 120; temperament affect 574; dispositions towards 148–9;
102, 106, 110; toy preference 120 Down syndrome children and 577; effective
“easy marks” 341 309; measured physiologically 336;
eating 69 necessary 310–11; rules about 318; social-
eating disorders 230 cognitive skills built upon 573;
EBPs (externalizing behavior problems) 36, temperamental differences in 459;
108–12 passim, 158; aggressive versus understanding 314
nonaggressive 31; boys living with never- emotionality 299; high 107, 109; low 107;
married mothers 244; Controlling/other negative 98, 105, 106, 107, 109, 215, 459;
children most at risk for 190; European- temperamental differences in 459
American children 218; parent reports of 32; emotions 11, 129, 307–8; ability to modulate
peers 277; twins 30; victimization and 294 361; adults’ displays of 576; causes of 160;
“ecocultural niche” 69–70 complex control of 6; encoding and
ecology 67–71, 439; social 66, 540 decoding 443; experience of 309–12,
“economic utility” model 70 316–17, 318, 320; family talk about 385;
economics 169, 244; children’s understanding of felt by others 481; intense positive 224;
493–7 masked 316; negative 109, 224, 333, 459,
EDD (eye-direction detector) module 52, 53 460; understanding 230, 231, 314–15, 317,
“educability” thesis 90 320–1, 323, 331; see also under various
education 89, 90, 146; advanced 147; aspirations headings, e.g. anxiety; contempt;
294; college 430; curriculum matters 487; disappointment; emotional regulation;
early childhood 140, 142; language emotionality; empathy; expression of
impairment 597; parent 295, 564; profound emotions; guilt; happiness; rage; sadness;
hearing loss 592; see also early school age; shame
elementary school age; preschool period empathy 73, 106, 292, 313, 316, 459; higher
educational psychology 355 levels of 108, 244; maturity and 560;
EEG asymmetries 264, 333 mediating role of 463; primitive form of
efficacy 184, 241; self 130, 336, 406, 485 465; prosocial behavior and 460–2; sex
effort: collaborative 516; creative 519; parenting differences in 465–6; thoughts arousing
48 467; well-developed 322
egalitarianism 63, 65, 210, 227 empiricism 81
ego 84, 288; cognitive 88 employment 68, 158, 242
ego-control 536 empowerment 424
egocentrism 331, 332, 376, 427, 476 enactment 193, 461
Einstein, Albert 329 encoding and decoding 442, 443, 581
elders 63 encouragement 195
electrical activity 15 endearments 138
elementary school age: aggression 540, 541; endocrine disorders 12, 123, 125
asthmatic children 580; conflict resolution enemies 285–306; more extreme 268
362; disabilities 571, 574, 575, 577; energy 106, 127, 448
emotion 316, 321; interpersonal perceptions engagement 292
367; judgments 484; peer acceptance linked England: bullying 549, 550, 557, 558, 560, 562,
with loneliness 400; peer rejection 275; play 564; Christian versus Muslim people living
614 Subject Index
England (cont’d) associated with play 447; social 63

in 504; geographical knowledge about 505; exchange theory 15
parental monitoring 170; pretend play 430; excitement 69
see also London; Sheffield exclusion 119, 551, 588
English-speaking people 504 exclusivity 298, 299
entitlements 483 expectations 206, 285; cultural 343, 572;
environment 46, 90, 157, 206, 573; active and friendship 286–7; gender 213, 319; mutual
interactive 68; biology and 46; child deemed understanding of 576; of others 481;
to have appropriately adapted to 82; parental 213; positive 360; previous 384;
childcare 149; communicative 591; social 287, 308, 343
competitive 464; cramped 100; cultural 69, expenditure 496
71; family 34, 35, 37, 146, 147, 151, 294, experiences 10, 62, 159, 161, 331; causal
299; healthy 146; home 54, 55; hostile 318; contribution of 231; communal 242;
incompatible information from 10; customs and 61; daily 423; direct 81; early
interacting with 46; physical 49; play 425; 442; environmental 39; existential 86;
prenatal 47; psychological 13; relating family relational 228; inner 387; interactive,
specific aspects to children’s outcomes 36–8; multiple and recursive 139; internalized
safe 143, 146; school 121, 343, 519, 524, 192; interpersonal 7, 266, 271, 272;
581; segregated 145; shared 28, 31, 35–6; negative 276, 278, 339; organization into
signing 595; social 49, 53, 265, 334, 402, meaning 68; past, database of 539; peer 165,
495, 579, 581, 591, 582, 595; spacious 100; 166, 276, 278; social 53, 145, 339, 344,
species-typical 47; see also environmental 481, 579, 580; socialization 277, 278
influences “experimental” schools 492
environmental influences 13, 14; shared/ experiments 359–60, 382, 522
nonshared 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35–6, 37, 39, 40 exploitation 441
environmentalism 97 exploration 50, 334
envy 319; regulating 321 expression of emotions 225, 312–13, 317–20
epidemiological studies 580 passim, 332, 462, 540; “modulated” 109;
epigenesis 46–7 uninhibited 224
epistemology 83–4; divergent 81; genetic 81, 82 extended family 137, 143, 251, 252, 253–4;
equal agency 211 multigenerational 65; support from 252
Estonia 431 “external” influences 35
ethical considerations 123, 274 externalizing behaviors 228; negative 212; peer
ethnicity 140, 147, 150, 151, 363, 367; class and reports 539; sixth-grade 164; see also EBPs
141; differences 144, 233; friends 290; extortion 560, 563
groups 64, 501–4; influences 207, 216–18; exuberance 316
race and 141, 564 eye contact 578, 582
ethnography 63, 79, 143, 233, 238, 445;
monocultural analyses 74; multi-site studies facial expressions 460, 461, 578, 588, 592; anger
64–7; observation 72 323; negative 535
“ethnotheories” 68 factor analysis 33
ethological approach 156, 182–3 “factual assumptions” 483
etiology 596 failure 319, 528; internal attributions for 465;
Europe 45, 73, 180, 223, 247, 498; social 338
individualism 74; see also Austria; Britain; fairness 210, 213, 477, 484
Estonia; France; Germany; Italy; false beliefs 52, 53, 383; centrality of 376–7; true
Netherlands; Poland; Portugal; Scandinavia; versus 378; understanding 379, 380, 381,
Spain 382, 384, 386, 387
European Americans 169, 217, 218, 432, 539; familiarity 224, 230, 330, 340
households 430; preschoolers 431 families 35, 83, 156–77, 179–261; adoptive 29;
evolutionary perspectives 44–59, 182, 183; costs affluent 145; child with disabilities 572;
Subject Index 615
consistency within 32; developmentally feminism: Marxist 87; theories in relation to

delayed children 70; differences between 35; family 83
“ecocultural niche” of children and 69–70; fertility treatments 249
father-headed 241; feminist theories in fights/fighting 48, 126, 288, 289, 295, 401, 540,
relation to 83; higher 467; high-income 554; R&T play and 442–3, 444, 445, 446
141; homeless 105; immigrant 218; Finland 494
institutional contexts of 85; “intact” 248; firstborn children 229, 230
low-income 145, 147, 168, 467; middle- flexibility 107, 521; attentional 381; variable 67
class 70; nonadaptable 295; noncohesive focus 107–8; attentional 50
and nonadaptable 294; poor 169; random food 53, 66, 182, 483
allocation of children into 39; single-parent foreign people 506
243; socialization of emotion in 11; special fostering 251
38; stepfather 227; see also extended family; France 494, 495
nuclear family; parenting; parents; SES freedom 73, 484; of speech and religion 486, 487
family coercive processes 536 freewill 84
Family Lifestyles Project 253 French-speaking people 504
Family and Relative Care Study (Kontos et al.) friendliness 228; teacher’s evaluations of 318
142 friendships 139, 146, 159, 232, 267, 339, 398,
family size: large 53, 66, 168; smaller 53 464; adult 165–6; allowing children to
family structures 245 identify 274; asymmetrical 298; behaviors
family systems model 239, 249–51 that hurt 534; beneficial aspects of 319–20;
fantasy 439, 440; ideational 427; shared 308; see best 121, 164, 165, 320, 341, 404; better
also play 268; characterized 120; classroom 400–1;
farming societies 63 control of sons’ choice of 163; emotional
fate 495 developments within 319–21; enemies and
father absence 242, 243, 244, 245, 246 285–306; establishing 594; exclusion from a
fathers 217, 291, 316; angry interchanges with circle of 119; formation of 318; high-quality
317; attachment to 196; children’s 273, 402; important influences 158;
relationships with 214; differential interaction 231; long-term 594; low-and
contributions of 245; divorced 241; middle-income homes 168–9; mutual 574,
educational and occupational level 232; less 575, 580; nominations 527; number and
responsive 170; less supportive of their sons quality of 575; other-sex 295; perceptions of
250; non-custodial 246; positive and 369; preferences 367; “protective” 299;
negative interactions with 245; rejection by reciprocal 142, 589, 599; role models 129;
161; security of attachment with 242; step R&T 450; same-sex, new 118; social
245; time with children 64–5 withdrawal and 340–1; support from 252;
favoritism 55, 505 see also playmates
FDA (Food & Drug Administration, US) 591 “fronts” 318
fear 184, 308, 310, 332; anterior brain electrical frowns 439
activity and 333; aroused with unusual frustration: aggression and 100; Freud’s views on
readiness and intensity 183; boys unlikely to 9; long-term 183
share 319; learned 8; provoking situations fun 449; bullying for 553, 560, 563
193; shared 316; social 333, 344; social functioning 47, 108, 252; autonomic 190; family
decisions and 339; strangers 55; 195; group 263, 265, 273; immediate
temperamental 106 166–7; later, setting the stage for 49; long
fearfulness 98, 104, 106, 333, 335, 336, 338, 341 term, of parents 212; maternal 111;
feedback 338; negative 50; performance 403 neurological 380; psychological 46, 111;
Fels study (Kagan & Moss) 16 social 105, 138; social-cognitive 6;
“female aggression” 542 socioemotional 195, 196, 197; see also social
female–female competition 523 functioning
feminine boys 117 fussiness 536
616 Subject Index
games 144, 149, 227, 317, 521–2; competitive grammatical structures 596
121; computer, competitive or cooperative grandchildren 51
528; cooperative social 439; dyadic 518, grandmothers 137, 140, 217; involvement 252,
520, 526; rule-governed, participation in 253; positive relationships with 252
332; run-and-chase 139; sex-typed behaviors gratification 536; self 467
relating to 128; “shape” 380 Greensboro 431
gangs 276 gregariousness 519
“gatekeepers” 251 groups 158, 207, 265; antagonism within 55;
gender 140, 150, 151, 316, 322, 483, 501, 543, asymmetrical 445; coalition 50; comorbid
557; and age gap 225; behavioral typologies 110, 539; conformity 485; cooperative-
related to 64; childcare and 141, 144–5; learning 527; culture 359; disadvantaged
friendships 289, 290; playmates chosen 217; ethnic 64, 501–4; experimental play
according to factors such as 594; power as 543; extracurricular 273; hyperactive-
an issue of 87; pretend play and 424–8; aggressive 110; majority/minority 502;
social withdrawal and 342–3; stereotypes mixed-sex 523; national 504–7; normative
129, 130; see also sex differences; also and antisocial behavior 15; planned play
following headings prefixed “gender” 574; same-gender 541; social 47, 543;
gender identity 246; biological explanations socioeconomic 535; sociolinguistic 505;
125–6; early school 119; preschool 118 sociometric 290; status 270–1, 272, 273;
gender role atypical development 245; flexible symmetrical 444, 445; traditional-teaching
views about 247, 252; parental sex and 527; see also peer groups
development 246 growth 8–9, 85; cognitive 10; conflation of
gender segregation 14, 48, 118, 120, 131, 425, development with 86; constructive change
440 through 80; intellectual 81; social 595;
generalizability 477, 479, 537 species-specific potentials for 67–8
generalization 81 Guatemala 429
Genesis 329 guidance 162, 341
genes/genetics 48, 54, 81, 82; associated with guiding theory 242
behavior 28; coded “messages” 47; guilt 90, 106, 313, 475; individualized 89;
component aggression 535; differences 31, intense experiences of 320; regulating 321
233, 234; fitness 459; making it into future guns 118, 120
generations 51; multiple 37; parents versus
157–9; predispositions 239; relatedness habits 61, 463
248–9; segregating 28; substantial influence “habitus” 90
40; see also behavioral genetics Handbook of Child Psychology 418
genitalia 122; ambiguous 124; female-appearing “handicap” 591
124; virilized 125 happiness: nonconflict 319; self-rated 165
Germany 7, 445, 469, 494, 496, 563, 564 harm 140, 424, 457, 477, 478; interpreted 534;
gestures 588, 592; aggressive 554 protection from 183; psychological 479
ghosts 62 harmony 299, 308; group 430, 444; spousal 54
Girl Guides 576 hatred 287
goals 316, 516; cultural 69; remediational 162; Head Start program 141, 142, 537
revenge 320; socialization 213 headaches 559
God 495 headteacher role 492–3
gonads 122 health 424; chronic problems 572; effects of
Good Start Childcare Center 137 bullying 559; psychological 340
good will 308 hearing impairment 588, 589
“goodness of fit” 100 hearing loss see profound hearing loss
gossip 309 heart rate 15; acceleration 461; consistently high
government 487, 497 333
GPA (grade point average) 164 helping behavior 455–74, 528
Subject Index 617
helplessness 424 73–4

hemiplegia 580, 581 ID (intentionality detector) module 52
heredity 34, 157 idealization 189, 241
heritability 29, 33, 45–6, 98, 459; defined 28; for ideals 241; cherished 242; cultural 253
warmth 34; greater for aggressive problems ideas 69, 193; structuralist 5
31; increases 35; moderate 30, 32 identification 245; national group 505; same-sex
heroic roles 119 parent 253; self, ethnic 501, 502
hierarchy 50, 55, 56, 90, 441, 493; dominance identity 286, 485; development 502; educational
443, 536; established in peer group 430; 86; emergent 84; ethnic 138, 503, 504;
power 498; social 478, 483 national 505; personal 465; problems 245;
Hindus 457, 469, 470; Orthodox 482–3 sexual 247, 253; social 84; see also gender
Hispanic-Americans 233, 501, 502 identity
hitting 479 Ifaluk 62
holistic view 79 illegitimate children 245–6, 247
HOME (Home Observation for Measurement of illness 158, 233
the Environment) 34 imagination 378
homeostasis 68, 82 imitation 49; reinforced 9; same-sex parents 129
homicide 49 immaturity 186; adaptive value of 49; extended
Hominids 44–5, 47 period of 47; friends 297; metacognition 50;
homophilous pools 291 social 330
homosexuality 247 impoverished children 383
Hong Kong 494 imprinting in animals 182
“honorship” 103 imprisonment 168
horizontal relationships 210 impulse regulation 148–9
hormones 95, 440; androgenic 126, 127; gonadal impulsivity 251, 459; toddler 109
123; “masculinizing” 124; testicular 122 inadequacy 84, 212; adolescent siblings 229;
hospitalization 461, 580 social 339
hostility 169, 212, 288, 292, 316, 362–3, 539, inappropriate behavior 287
543; mother–partner 227; preschool 315; incentives 344
reasoning avoids 463; sibling 224, 226, 227, inclusion 308, 577
228; toward strangers 55 inclusive fitness 51, 55, 182–3
household chores 467 income: high 141; indices of 564; inequalities
household structure 248 495; low(er) 145, 147, 168–9, 428, 431,
housekeeping 66 432, 467; maternal employment 230;
HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical) middle 168–9, 431
333, 334–5 incompetence 229
HRAF (Human Relations Area Files) 63 inconsistency 34, 184
Huli children 429 inculcation 85
human development 123 indebtedness and repayment 465
humiliation 330 independence 63, 73, 74, 209, 485; age-
hunter-gatherers/hunting 45, 48, 63 appropriate 6; lack of parental
hurt 319, 321, 330, 479, 537, 549, 553; denial of encouragement of 336–7; motivation 429;
563 values about 431
hurtfulness 445 India 64, 65, 429, 439, 468, 482–3, 522; play
hyperactivity 110, 581; see also ADHD time with peers of own sex 121
hypersensitivity 340 indices acceptance 267, 270, 276; attachment-
hypothalamus 333 related 186–8, 191–2; attraction 266;
hypotheses 443, 525; functional 442; stage- behavioral and facial 361; childcare quality
related 10; testing 447–50 148; liking/disliking 270; observational 407;
parent income level 564; physiological 461;
I-C (individualism-collectivism) construct rejection 267, 276; sociometric 267; status
618 Subject Index
indices acceptance (cont’d) inner states 230, 231, 386

268; victimization 557 innovation 82
indifference 266, 268 insanity 85
indifference interpersonal 270 insecurity 104, 189, 192, 198, 336; associated
indirect/relational/social aggression 170, 398, with anxiety 190; peer group 341
534, 535, 536–7, 540, 541–3, 555, 557; insensitivity 104, 563
CAH and 126; physical vs. 110; relationship instability: behavioral inhibition 335;
exclusivity and 299 employment 169
individual differences 245; aggressive behavior instincts 475
535, 538; cooperative behaviors 519; Institute of Human Relations 9
genetics and 233, 234; parents’ institutional upbringing 253
psychological adjustment 250; R&T play institutions 206
441, 447, 449; siblings 224–5, 227–8, 231, “intact” homes 241
233; sleep 69 integration 82; social 164, 165
individualism 88, 431, 469–70, 482 intellectual development/evolution 10, 47, 55
individuals 265; how perceived by group intelligence 38, 224, 540; adult 82; development
members 266 of 83; see also IQ
Indonesia 483 intentions 6, 161, 420, 578; anticipating 230;
indoors play 119 beneficent 479; bully 549; hostile 316, 575
industrialization 383 interactions: abusive 341; avoidance of 165;
inequalities 496; of wealth 495 bidirectional 47; bizarre 193; bully–victim
infancy 49, 161, 384–5, 578; attachment quality 398, 551; child-adult 139, 146; contexts 13;
192, 195; Down syndrome children 576; continuous 100; cooperative 320, 397;
healthy development 68; hearing loss coordinated 15, 298; difficult 400, 593;
identified in 596; individuals must survive dyadic 7, 32; effects 100; evolved
46; indulged 62; primary caregivers 160; “strategies” develop in 49; face-to-face
security measured in 242; sibling 159–60; friends and enemies 292–3; gene-
relationships 223, 224; studies 189, 190; environment 46; group 598; hostile 193;
symbolic representation during 422 impoverished opportunities for 12;
infant behavior 8 interpersonal 591; marital 167; mother–
inferences 130 child 34, 227; motivation to engage in 577;
inflexibility 98, 103, 110, 111 negative 102; observational 32; others 192;
information: boys use language to give 120; parental 189; particular to individuals 138;
selection, storage, and retrieval of 83; social positive 189, 245, 298, 320; pretend play
539; socially provided 497; way in which we 424; provocative 449; qualities of 13;
perceive and remember 129 reciprocal 592; relationships dialectically
information exchange 288, 309, 387 linked with 206; rough-and-tumble 127;
information-processing 10, 378; deficit 449; similar styles of 131; socially skilled 142;
domain-specific 50; social 539, 542, 573, sophisticated 426; successful, responsibility
575, 577, 579 for 319; symbolic 5, 332; temperament-by-
inheritance 54 parenting 101, 104, 106; temperament-by-
inhibition 6, 98, 101, 159, 466; mother-rated temperament 100, 105; three-way 52; verbal
103; nonsocial 102; social 102; very high 213; videotaped 34; violent 193; see also
100; see also behavioral inhibition parent–child interaction; peer interaction;
initiative 197 sibling interaction; social interaction
injury 233, 481; automobile accident 49; interconnected entities 469
debilitating 51; physical 534; result of play 448 interdependence 66, 73, 88, 431, 469, 482, 485;
injustice 480 cultures favoring 470; social, political, and
Innate Module account 378, 379 economic 265
inner city areas 564 interests 149, 158, 228; common 288; mutual
inner motives 470 121; sex-typed 128; shared 120, 149
Subject Index 619
internal working models 183–4, 334 Kalahari 63

internalization precursors 465 Kant, Immanuel 81, 86, 475
internalizing behavior 228 Kenya 64, 65, 67, 468; Gussii community 70
internalizing problems 32, 36, 111, 244, 276, Khalapur 65
291, 339, 340; controlling/other children kibbutz children 253
most at risk for 190; externalizing vs. 366; kicks and punches 444
peers 278; self-perceptions and 339; Kids Help Line (Australia) 552, 564
victimization and 294, 299 kin 51, 70, 231, 459; extended 217
interpersonal behaviors 526 kindergartens 102, 120, 141, 340, 407; age-
interpretations 309, 384 heterogeneous–age-homogeneous 464;
interventions 70, 320, 355, 402–7; early 588, aggression just prior to 538; antisocial
592, 595; hypothetical social problems 337; behavior 399; attachment security 195;
making extensive use of peers 344; bullying 553, 554; children at risk for
prevention of bullying 565; programs 145; retention 401; increases in aggression from
social 478, 527; social withdrawal 343–4 538; liking and disliking for 367; pretend
interviews 125, 481, 551; open-ended 498, 504; interactions 424; sharing in 469; transition
semistructured 553 into 294, 299
intimacy 65, 287, 528; friendships attain a new knowledge 52; acquiring 71, 130; acquisition
quality of 319; greater, girls anticipate 292; 524; different kinds of 79; emotion 319,
required for success in opposite-sex 320; geographical 505; parental 213;
relationships 295; sibling relationships 224; political 498, 499; social 403; social
social 286 interaction essential in development of 375
intimidation 535 Korea 73, 253, 431
involvement: grandmothers’ 252, 253; social 299, Korean Americans 241, 359, 431
384–5 Kpelle adults 429
IQ (intelligence quotient) 39, 53, 576, 581, 588, Kung San 63
589
Ireland 557 labeling 463
Irish-Americans 430, 431 labia 122, 124
irritability 98, 106, 110; higher 103 language 147, 285, 536; common ancestral
irritation 224 heritage based on 217; considered a context
“isolates” 268 for development 387; critical part played by
isolation 104, 580, 598; active 330; peer 330, 83; development 379; different levels of
398; SLI children 599; social 169, 253, 581, ability 594; emotion 312, 315, 317, 321;
595 enhanced development 595; everyday 80;
Israel/Israelis 494, 522; kibbutzim 242; Middle- expressive 576; hearing loss can affect 595;
Eastern descent 469; non-European children home 138, 140, 141; lexical and syntactic
505 characteristics of 596; limited ability 594;
Italy 441, 448, 500, 560 mothers’ 212; natural 378; private 387;
proficiency extremely important to peer
Japan 61, 469, 470, 485, 494 interaction 594; role of 386; shared 138;
jealousy 83, 321 social understanding and 386–7; strategies
job loss 168–9 524; theory of mind and 387; varying levels
joy 160, 316 of development 593; see also sign language;
judgments 118; criterion 477, 479; justifying spoken language; syntax; also headings
485; moral 476–8, 483, 484; neutral 271; below prefixed “language”
social 14, 476–8, 501; sociometric 272 language acquisition 53, 83, 590, 591, 593;
justice 476, 477, 482 parental input on 596
justifications 479, 482, 496; bullying 559 language difficulties 589, 598
juveniles 295; offending 249 language disorders 579
Juxtlahuaca 65 language impairment 588–9; see also SLI
620 Subject Index
“late talkers” 596 maladaptive behavior 137, 138, 139, 150, 278,
Latin America 74, 469; see also Brazil; Guatemala; 331; observations of 32; prior attachment
Mexico; Peru histories 149; temperamental influences
Latinos 73, 137, 138, 141, 143, 217 108–11; see also aggression; avoidance;
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial 7 bullying; withdrawal
laws 56, 476, 477, 498, 499–500; socially maladjustment: across cultures 541; girls 461;
beneficial 480; unjust 480; wrong 487 school 401; social 559; social-psychological
leadership 55, 103, 275; demonstrating 447; peer 542
446; social 443 maltreatment 190
learning 72, 148, 581; attention that facilitates mammals 45, 48, 122
319; child-directed strategies 573; manageability 109
collaborative 5; cooperative 524, 526, 527; Manus people 61
group, unstructured 524; observational 49; marital discord/problems 166, 168, 226, 536
operant 9; opportunities available in Marquesas Islands 429
childcare 149; play 431; significant marriage 189; arranged 65; “ideal” 242; legal,
neurological deficits that affect 581; skills importance of 247–8; stable 245
important for peer relations 442; word 387 Marxist feminism 87
learning disabilities 527, 574–6 mastery 6, 81, 423, 424, 457; opportunity
learning theory 9, 81; cognitive-social 403 provided to demonstrate 526; skill 406; task
legal system 499 292
lesbian couples/partnerships 247, 252 material things 84
Liberia 64, 429 maternal behavior 34; differential treatment 37;
life circumstances/changes 53, 244 overcontrol 335–7; reports 99
likeability 340 mates/mating 47, 48, 50; alternative strategies 53;
liking 267, 285, 293, 364, 404; consensual 339; securing 51
perception of 366–7; ratings 527; mathematization 81, 86
unidimensional 269 maturation 54; biological 69; structural 47
linguistics 67 maturity 213, 556, 557, 560; higher levels of
logic 308 244; reproductive 54; social 103
logico-deductive process 81 Mayan children 429
London 243, 248, 581 meaning(s) 287, 428, 429; attribution,
loneliness 163, 164, 274, 276, 580; alleviating ascription and assumption of 87;
297; elementary years, peer acceptance linked commonsense 80; cultural 69, 70; giving
with 400; increased 559; predicted 341; 87; mental-state terms 387; organization of
school 402; SLI children 598; social experience into 68; psychological 331;
withdrawal and 329, 339; victimization and receiving 87; systems of 67
401 measurement 99, 269, 466; ordinal 270
loss 192 mediation 10; environmental 37; genetic 37, 38
love 226; parental 228, 231; withdrawal of 217 medication 212; long-term use 580
loving sensations 88 memory 9, 267; capacities for 139; working 381
lower-class people 468, 485 mental health 238, 245, 266; health parent 241,
loyalty 286 250; parents 232; problems and worries 243
lying 211 mental illness 62
mental operations 83
MacArthur Network on the Transition from mental retardation: mild 572, 574, 575–6; mild
Infancy to Early Childhood 186 574–6; severe 577–8
Main–Cassidy system 186, 191–2, 195, 196, mental states 230, 243, 250; mothers 228;
197, 198 opportunities for discussions of 53; parent–
“maintenance system” 64 child relationship and 244; talk about 386,
maladaptation 196, 297; psychological and 387; terms 385–6, 387; understanding 231,
interpersonal 342 378, 379, 380, 383, 578–9
Subject Index 621
messages: affective 312–13, 314, 322; conflict with demands of 480; development
communicative 592; cultural, conflicting of judgments about 482; maintenance of
540; encoding and decoding of 442; 475; several cultures distinguish social
metacommunicative 419, 420, 421; convention and 483; social understanding
socialization 312 and 385
metacognition 50, 376; immature 50 morphology 595, 596
metacommunication 419, 420, 421, 424, 429 mortality 45
metaphors 429; social 85 motherese 429
metaphysics 83 mothering 215, 242
Method of Shared Concern 565 mothers 45, 73, 88, 186, 291; adoptive 249;
methods 64 American 69; angrier 316; angry
Mexican-Americans 521, 522 interchanges with 317; behavior with/
Mexico 64, 65, 66, 468, 521; indigenous people toward their children 65, 66; caregiving
439 behavior 185; children’s relationships with
middle-class people 6, 70, 73, 101; autonomy 214; controlling 335; critical negative
485; language impairment 589; older behavior from 230; dependence on 186;
siblings and false-belief performance 383; differential contributions of 245; divorced
play 430, 431, 432; sharing with peers 468; 241, 246, 252; educational and occupational
understanding of social class 495, 496; level 232; inexperienced 253; intrusive 160;
upper 482; white 142, 217 Korean 73; lesbian 247; mental state 228;
Middle East 469 middle-class 430; more likely to discuss
migrant groups 217 emotions with daughters than with sons
mimicry 537 129; Muslim 252; never-married 243–4,
mind: articulation of 83; children’s discovery of 246; observations 298; punitive,
230; children’s understanding of 376–9, authoritarian 170; rejection by 161;
382; gradual development of concepts remarried 244; secure attachment to 315;
concerning 386; modern 47; see also theory separated or divorced 243; social behavior
of mind 65–6; “social” 247; stimulating infants 69;
“minimal vitalism” 381 time with children 64; unemployed 141; use
misbehavior 539 of mental-state terms 385–6; see also single
misconduct 169 mothers
mistakes 441, 446 motivations 47, 69, 130, 143, 224, 579;
mistrust 150 academic 526; conflicting 331; extrinsic
misunderstandings 331 525, 526; independence of 429; individual
mitigation 426 73; inner 469; intrinsic 517, 525, 526;
moderator effects 299 participation in social interactions 577;
modernity 83, 85 underlying prosocial behavior 464
money 493–4, 496 motives 293
monitoring 7, 189, 226, 573; parental 163; poor motor activity 50, 332–3, 580, 581
166; self 581 MPA (medroxyprogesterone acetate) 125, 126
mood 462, 466; depressed 339, 540; lowered Mullerian organs 122
106; negative 98, 110, 210; positive 102, multigenerational households 217
210; quality of 98; self-generated multiple disabilities 577–8
improvement in 467 multiple “wives” 45
moral behavior 8 multivariate accounts 13
moral development 476, 484; cooperation muscle tension 15
emerges during later stages of 519 Muslims 252, 503, 504
Moral Regulation/Vigilance 107, 108 mutual antipathies 286, 287, 291; identified 289,
morality 384, 478; authority conflicts with the 290; phenomenology of 295; qualitative
demands of 479; autonomous 476; critical features of 300; same-sex 290, 295, 298;
perspective on rules and laws when they socially maladaptive behaviors and 296
622 Subject Index
mutuality 208, 210, 286; relationship 292; niche picking 459

selection 291 nieces 51
myths 428, 429 nonaffection 538
MZ (monozygotic) twins 28, 29, 459; noncompliance 211, 536
concordance for major depression 36; DZ nongenetic studies 38
correlations 33 normalization 82
norms 65, 82, 318, 359, 468, 477; behavioral
name-calling 564 275; cultural 103; equivalence 286; group
nannies 140 276, 321; peer 308; prevailing 550; self-
narratives 382; attachment 192–3; difficulty generated 462; societal 73; understanding of
producing and understanding 595; peer 542 332; violations of 483
natal induction 86 North America 482, 485, 549; see also Canada;
nation-states 504 United States
National Association for the Education of Young Northern Territory (Australia) 562
Children’s Anti-Bias Curriculum 144 Norway 494, 554–5, 557, 562, 565
nationalistic projections 86 “notice” 268
nationality 217, 504–7 novelty 10, 98, 333, 334
Native-American children 501 nuclear family 65, 238, 239, 245–9, 252–3, 254
natural selection 46, 48, 51, 52, 459 nursery schools 484, 492
“naturalness” 86, 87 nursing 48
Neanderthals 45 nurturance 66, 119, 209, 215, 243–4, 287, 459,
negative affectivity 106, 109 468
negativity 225, 227; parental 38, 104, 538 nurture 85; nature and 27, 29
neglected children 268, 270, 272–5 passim, 290, Nyansongo 65
499
negotiation 213, 214, 485; opportunities for 331; Oakland survey (Clausen) 16
polite 319 obedience 63, 71, 217, 476–7, 480, 481
neighborhoods 35, 216, 232, 273, 288, 291, 588, object relations 245
589; inner-city 316; quality of 163 obligation 476
neighbors 140 Obninsk 431
neo-Kantian tradition 81 observations 481, 523, 537; aggression 542;
nephews 51 classroom and playground 576; parent–child
nervous system: central 580; parasympathetic interactions 484
333, 336; sympathetic 333 occupations 467; manual and nonmanual
Netherlands 290, 295, 494, 564; girls with CAH 495
125; parents 68–9; sleep and arousal in offspring 54, 123, 165; characteristics passed
infants and young children 68 along to 47; physical 48; social control over
networks: friendship 289, 340, 577; homogeneity 165
vs. diversity 359; intensivity vs. extensivity Okinawa 64, 65, 66, 468
359; support 249, 573; see also social older siblings 34, 36, 53, 383; “displaced” 230;
networks feelings for 228; internalizing problems 36;
neuro-anatomical structures 12 pretend play with 231
neurological problems 595 one-parent families 248–9
neuroticism 215 ontogeny 49
neutral instructions 520 openness 196
New South Wales 562, 571, 576 operant learning 9
New York Longitudinal Study (Thomas & opposite-sex parents 245, 246
Chess) 97–8 oppositional behaviors 101, 108, 463
New Zealand 249, 494 oppression 90
NICHD (Early Childhood Research Network) Orchard Town 65, 66, 67
142, 145 orphanages 12
Subject Index 623
ostracism 535 behavior influencing 37; in part shaped by

other-mothers 143 genetically influenced characteristics of the
other-referenced competition 517, 527 child 34
outcomes 95, 168, 266, 285, 515, 516; academic parental environmental influence 39
158, 165, 277; adjustment 295; aggressive “parental ethnotheories” 65
behaviors 539; behavior, long-term 158; parental investment theory 54
better 297; competent 100; cooperation and parental reports 32, 34, 37; children with SLI
competition 523–8; damaging 276; 597–8
deleterious 244, 296; different 104; parenting 29, 34–5, 157, 239, 315–17, 538;
friendship 294, 296; genetic and adjustments in 214; aggression and
environmental processes 29; good 297, 299; particular types of behaviors 542;
long-term 276–8; negative 29, 33, 248, 250, authoritarian 163, 169; authoritative 463,
343, 575; optimal 146, 147; peer 470; behavioral inhibition and 335–7; belief
relationship 102, 146, 160; poor 243; systems and 67; better 250; challenging
positive 33, 101, 160, 252; predictive, children 536; culturally organized 71;
withdrawal 342; problematic 101; relating developmental research relating 38; early
specific aspects of environment to 36–8; experiences 334; effort 48; emotionally
research 593; social 158, 160, 165, 169; responsive 244; genetic factors and 35, 158;
social-behavioral 339; social withdrawal 343; good 74; harsh practices 539; inappropriate
socialization 160; socially competent 315 212; inconsistency of 34; lesbian, no
ovaries 122 deficiencies in 247; moderating effects on
overcontrol 104 temperament-behavior 158; nature 88;
overinvolvement 335 parent–child relationships and 207, 208;
overprotection 104 play 48; poor 166, 250; practices 61, 109,
oversolicitousness 335–7 163, 463; preoccupation with 7; quality of
166; research on 13, 15; single 238; step
Pacific islands/society 61, 62, 63 251; study of 70
pain 309, 314, 315, 319, 481 parenting style 241, 243, 245, 463, 565;
pain genuine expression of 316 characteristics 106
“panopticon” 90 parents 65, 497; aggression to 6; authoritarian
Papua New Guinea 383, 429 208; characteristics 214–15; cohabiting 246;
parent–child attachment 104, 145, 149, 158, contact with 65; demands of 11; discourse
160, 299 with 497; distressed 244; fraternal twins’ 36;
parent–child interaction 32, 34, 35, 71, 104, genes versus 157–9; genetic link between
159–61, 197; “absolute” level of 229; early children and 39; higher-income 141;
593; emotionally charged 193; language influence on children’s peer relationships
impairment 596–7; mother–infant 15; 159–66; lack of influence 39; lack of
observations of 484; peer interactions and support from 296; lower-class 565;
520; profound hearing loss 591–2; quality mediating influence of 104; negativity from
of 247 38, 104; not particularly authoritarian 63;
parent–child relationships 88, 145, 159, 205–22, overprotective and controlling 104; parents
244, 245, 462; affective changes in quality versus 159; prosocial behavior often not
of 166; differential 229; distant or praised by 457; sensitive responding by 7;
uninvolved 226; emotional developments in social behavior with 64; see also fathers;
315–17; insecurity 225; lesbian quality of grandmothers; mothers; opposite-sex
247; marital relationship effects on 250; parents; parenting; same-sex parents; also
mental state and 244; mirrored in sibling headings above prefixed “parent–child”;
interaction 251; need to be studied over “parental”
time 242; negativity in 227; perceived power particularity 79
in 519; positivity in 226; quality of 335 “partners in crime” 31
parental behavior 38, 70, 104, 210; children’s pathology 84
624 Subject Index
patterning 85 aggression related to 537; social withdrawal

“patterns of culture” 60–2, 74 and 339–40; withdrawn and aggressive
Payne Fund 7, 8 behavior correlated positively with 402
peasant communities 63, 429 peer relationships 14, 15, 38, 321, 339; based on
pediatric care/practice 81 many factors 594; children with chronic
peer acceptance 169, 170, 265–84, 357, 398, disorders 580; cooperation and competition
400; conflict resolution strategies related to 519, 526–8; difficulties in 277, 405, 580,
362; conversational skills as a means of 581, 599; interventions to promote 403–4;
improving 403; cooperation beneficial learning skills important for 442; outcomes
effects for 527; defined 397; Down 146; parental influence on 159–66; poor
syndrome children 577; emotional 358; problematic 407; problems for children
regulation and 361; group-entry behavior with learning disabilities 572; quality of
and 360; hostile strategies negatively 337; school adjustment effects 407–8;
correlated with 362–3; low 405; mentally siblings and 167–8, 231–2; SLI and 599;
retarded children and 575; negative temperament in 101–4, 104
consequences for 368; play behaviors that peer victimization 276, 295, 329, 339, 397, 398–
predict 359; positive 576; predicted gains in 9, and behavioral problems 294; bullying
358; prosocial behavior related to 359; SLI 554–9 passim, 561, 562; children with
children 599; social withdrawal and 339–40; disabilities 581; cross-sectional study of 298;
underestimated 366 escalating 297; friends 291; incidence of
peer groups 39, 48, 263–352; activities 578; boys’ 561, 562; increases among children at risk
446; dynamics of 13; entry to 359–61; 297; internalizing behaviors and increases
gender-segregated 144; harmony and over time 299; interventions aimed at
hierarchy established in 430; institutional reducing 404; overt 555; relational 555;
contexts of 85; rejection aggressive behaviors reported 561; school maladjustment and
antecede 397; R&T may serve a social 401; withdrawal and 278, 340
function in 443; same-gender, fitting in 540; peers 128, 140, 251, 464; aggression to 6;
social adjustment 358; socialization 55, 144; collaboration 4; commands from 480;
status 444 competent play with 358–9; day-to-day
peer interaction 5, 10, 55–6, 102, 105, 121, 148, behaviors with 522; deviant 166, 276;
149–50, 273; contact patterns 359; difficulty getting along with 28; factors
emotional development in 318–19; language altering relative impact of 168–70; familiar
proficiency extremely to 594; mitigation 338; insecure boys less well liked by 192;
usually reported for 426; negative 274; mutual respect among 476; preschoolers
parent-child interactions and 520; overestimate own toughness/dominance in
preschoolers 519; rejected children excluded relation to estimates of 49; R&T used to
from 368; significant deficits in 575; small deceive and manipulate 445; same-gender
340; socially withdrawal and 337, 338, 341; 144; social competence with 147; social
typical children in 598 initiations with 576; temperament in
peer nominations 267–9, 273, 289, 358, 537, relations with 101–4, 104; typically
541, 542, 551; cross-sex 367; friendship developing 574, 575, 577, 579, 583, 598;
404, 527, 580; liking or disliking 398; unfamiliar 338, 360; see also headings above
measures 271; mutual 295; negative 274; prefixed “peer”
rating measures and 272; same-sex 367; penis 122
sociometric 290, 364–5; unlimited 274 penology 90
peer rejection 163, 169, 265–84, 294–6 passim, perception(s) 241, 266, 336, 342; biases in 291;
319, 323, 338; asocial behavior linked with interpersonal 353, 364–9, 579; negative
398; children with hearing loss 593; parental 110; positive 576, 577; social
competition seems to lead to 527; measured 241–2, 366; stimuli 13; tapping 270;
by teacher ratings 539; predicted children’s teacher and peer 272; unique 35; see also
participation in classroom 400; relational self-perception
Subject Index 625
performance 71, 82, 90, 406, 467, 517; ability to interactive 334; Leslie’s theoretical analysis
evaluate objectively 521; academic 273, 275, of 378; masculine-typical, reduction in 125;
523, 524, 593; athletic 525; cognitive 380, nature of 519; nonsocial 419–20; outdoors
576; competition 523; false-belief 383, 384; 119; parallel 341, 419; parent–child 161;
individual 524; job 294; motor 523, 524, physical contact 447; popular participants
525; normative 332; play 422; poor 449; disrupt 527; positive 320; potential partners
school 166, 294, 402, 405; team 524; 164; pretend 53, 139, 358, 417–37; rough-
theory-of-mind 385 and-tumble 48, 119, 123, 126, 127, 359,
persistence 98, 106, 111; high 102; lack of 10; 438–53; rules of 163–4; sequential 575; sex
low 109, 110 differences 48; shared 231, 421, 424; shared
personality 36, 55, 85, 215; children’s understanding of 581; SLI children 598;
understanding of their own 33; clashes 289; solitary 330, 358, 359, 419, 420; symbolic
culture and 61, 62–4, 74; development 8, 377, 519; theories of 442; vigorous 443; see
39; differences in 39, 232; enduring patterns also games; play style; social play
of 314; parental 35; sibling relationships play fighting see play: rough-and-tumble
224–5; social failures are based on 338; play style 290, 359; biological explanations
temperament and 224–5 126–7; cooperative, toddlers with 398; early
perspective-taking 369; cognitive and emotional school 120; elementary school age 121;
464; importance of development of 332; preschool 119
inability 331; limited 275; social 439; playgrounds 288, 291, 360, 361, 552; boys’
training in 461 behavior 445; observations 537
perspectivism 476 playgroups 594, 598
persuasion 214, 293 playmates 139, 169, 307–8, 338, 358; chosen
Peru 383 594; least liked 298; less preferred 574, 580;
Pervasive Developmental Disorder 578 pinning or intimidating 445; preferences
phenotypes 36, 122 124; regular 165
Philippines 64, 65, 66, 468 pleasure 527
philosophy 377 Pleistocene period 44
phobias 330 PMR (play metabolic rate) 448
phone-ins 552 Poland 494
photographs 267, 270 polite requests 431
physical aggression 131, 341, 362, 363, 534, politeness 316
535–6, 538–9, 540–1; boys’ play 119; political understanding 497–9
increased tendencies 126 polygynous species/societies 45, 65
physical prowess 439, 444 popularity 40, 197, 232, 270, 272, 273; average
physiological processes 11, 333 441; children with asthma 580; cooperation
picture response procedures 196–7 and competition 527; friendship and 290,
picture sequencing 500 299, 367; sociometric 275; toughness and 444
Plato 86 Portugal 562, 564
play 82, 131, 214, 265, 266–7, 270, 528, 553; positive behavior 232
active 128; associative 419; attraction during potentialities 65, 67
290; behavioral responses to provocation poverty 241, 383; parents overwhelmed by the
during 361; boys and girls 48; classroom stresses of 536; social class, job loss and
362; competent 358–9; competitive 527; 168–9
constructive 419, 446; cooperative 162, 358, power 66, 90, 208, 209, 293, 498; asymmetry in
419, 420, 527; “coordinated” 105; death or 211; balance of 227; different strategies of
injury a result of 448; differences in content seeking 447; experimental 126; hierarchical
of 144; doll 48, 128; dramatic 144, 419, 50; imbalance of 550, 553, 554, 556;
425, 439; economies using tokens 496; political 497; sharing 210, 287; social 287;
fantasy 53, 427, 431, 440; functional 419, systematic abuse of 550; unequal
446; “general” 403; imaginative 231; distribution of 87; see also dominance
626 Subject Index
practices 68; authoritarian 217; beliefs 217; Preschool Assessment of Attachments 186
expressive 82; intentional constitutive 87; pretence 377, 378; see also play
parenting 61, 109, 163, 463; punitive pride 313
disciplinary 100, 169; “rational” cognitive primary schools 550, 551, 553, 559, 560, 561,
82; religious 483; socialization 74; 581
structured 72; violations of 483 primates 48, 49, 55, 123, 440
praise 74, 466; self 519 priming processes 466
preadolescent period 444, 445; children with “primitive mentality” 83
learning disabilities 575 privileges 288
predators 45 probability 268, 290, 589
predictive power 32 problem behavior 37; primary predictor of 190;
predispositions 54, 157; evolved 48; genetically see also behavioral problems
based 158 “problem children” 449
pre-existing conditions/behavioral problems 241 problem-solving 275, 312, 318, 338, 403, 524;
preferences: competitive and cooperative 517, reasoning 311; social 405
518, 521, 522, 524; friendship 367; leisure process quality 146
activities 484; outgroup 502; peer 39–40, proclivities 158
359, 367; playmate 118, 120, 121, 126; profit concept 493, 494
social 269, 270, 273, 289; systematic 505, profound hearing loss 590–5
506; toy 118, 120, 121, 124–5 progestins 126, 127
pregnancy 45, 48, 125; hormones prescribed progress 85; conflation of development with 86
during 123, 124 prohibitions 486; alterability of 477; violations of
prejudice 503 483
preschool period: aggression 439, 535–8; bullying promiscuity 54, 249
553, 554, 563; childcare 141, 147; children propinquity 288
with disabilities 572, 574; cooperation and prosocial behavior 55, 56, 101, 197, 295, 319,
competition 523, 527, 528; developments 399, 457–74, 528; antecedes peer-group
which occur in 376–7; Disorganized/ acceptance 397–8; higher 164; increases in
Controlling category 190; emotions 310–12, 332; naturally occurring 402; other parents
313, 315, 317, 318, 320; externalizing can encourage 165; peer rejection negatively
problems 30–1; friendships 286, 287, 289, related to 294; prevalence of 51; related to
293, 294, 295, 298, 299; gender identity peer acceptance 359; sibling 229; similarity
118; home environment 34; hostility 315; between friends in 291; SLI 598; strategies
hypothetical stories 478; limited 363; temperamental contributions 105–8
understanding of “other minds” and feelings protection: developmental 285; physical 294; self
230; mild cognitive disabilities 575; 216, 314
overestimation of own toughness/ proverbs 429
dominance, in relation to estimates of peers provocation 10, 293, 398; angry 535; bullying
49; peer interaction 519; peer rejection 275; 559; distress 185, 193; relational 543
play 119, 130, 162, 193, 195, 358, 420–1, proximity 182, 183, 593
443, 446; playmate preference 118; PRQ (Peer Relations Questionnaire) 550, 556,
popularity with peers 232; prosocial themes 557, 558, 564
469; rating procedure 270, 272; reticence psyche 71–2
336, 337; role 423; self-concepts 519; psychoanalysis 212, 265, 475
shyness 343; siblings 227, 228, 229; SLI psychobiological variables 98
598; social behaviors 308, 342, 357, 359, psychodynamics 6
485; solitude 340; symbol use 192; symbolic psychological factors: benefits 397; bullying 551;
representation with 422; sympathetic 462; “desiderata” 184; development 340;
temperament 102, 105–6, 109; toy difficulties 341; explanations 54, 131;
preference 120; twin study 37; visual gender development 131; problems 539;
function 582 states 515, 516
Subject Index 627
psychology 25, 35, 74, 128–31, 234; caretaker understanding and 380; problem-solving
68; cognitive revolution in 9; comparative 311; responsiveness to 462; social and moral
377; ego 245; experimental 7; male 48; see 475–90; superiority of 463
also cultural psychology; developmental reciprocity 50, 87, 210, 213–14, 289; cultures
psychology; educational psychology; favoring 470; mutual 463; positive affective
psychological factors; social psychology 320; symmetrical 209, 286, 292; teaching
psychometrics 34, 267, 271–3 470
psychopathology 7, 29, 35, 182, 542, 543; recreation 214
differences 232; parental 168 regularity 68, 69, 86, 98
psychosocial issues 424, 515; data 64; regulation: affect 104; attentional 107, 161;
development 98; difficulties having friends behavior/affect 578–9; legitimate 484;
decreases 294 optimum 105; parent-reported 108; poor 7;
puberty 45, 54 social 424; see also emotional regulation
Puerto-Rican children 431 reinforcement 539; contingent 343, 402;
punishment 462, 464, 482; adult patterns of 479; differential 128, 129; external principles
corporal 189; criminal 90; hitting and 479; 403; positive 344; secondary 9
obedience to authority in order to avoid rejection 184, 218, 366, 431, 449, 527; avoiding
476; parental use of 111; violent 538 308; by fathers/mothers 161; fear of 329;
Puppet Interview 195, 196, 197 intense and personalized 295; reciprocal
purdah 66 295; social 294, 367, 542; sociometric 340,
445, 446; verbal 535; see also peer rejection
Q-set sorting 185, 186–8, 298, 519 relationships: adult–child 89, 149; attachment
quarrels 289, 554 139, 145, 149, 150, 185, 193, 242, 253,
Quechuan people 383 334–5; authoritarian 217; behaviors
Queensland 562 intended to damage 119; bidirectional 384;
questionnaires 106, 124–7 passim, 448; bully–victim 339; caregiver–child 148;
anonymous 552, 563; parent-rated 99; self- causal 381, 443; childcare providers 146;
report 518, 550–1, 553; sociometric 274; see classroom 397, 401, 405, 406; close 207–8,
also PRQ; SDQ 285, 287, 294, 297, 315; commitment to
288; communal 207; communication
race 85, 140, 141, 142–3, 150, 151, 564; shared necessary to develop and maintain 592;
138 concurrent and longitudinal 109;
rage 313 conspiratorial 492; contexts in which they
Rajastan 429 occur 13; correlational 505; darker 285;
Rajputs 65 dominance 443–6; early 13; enemy 288–9;
ranking 86 “exchange” 207; family 208, 246, 294, 385;
rating scales/measures 186, 267, 270–1, 274, 505 functional 63; girls talk to each other to
rationality 80; scientific 81, 82 form and strengthen 120; Hinde’s analysis
rats 123, 127 of 206–7; hypothesized 63, 74, 106;
reactions 35; anger 161; being bullied 558–9; insecure 149; interpersonal 15, 263, 339,
comfort 321; differential 100; emotional 362, 423, 424; intimate 298; kin 70;
314, 316; emotional 460; harsher 319; marital/spousal 35, 65, 156, 226, 232,
intensity of 98; mixed 457; parental 315; 250–1; measures of quality 7; mother–child
prosocial 319; vicarious emotional 461 109, 156; “negative” 285, 299; playmate
reactivity 98, 103, 105, 108; infant 104; motor 139; positive 299, 457; romantic 295;
332–3; negative 104; skin conductance 461; school 399–400, 401–2; serious difficulties
tapping 111; very high 100 in 539; sexual, promiscuous 249; stratified
reality 81, 483; consensus 82; social 84 87; supportive 298, 299; symmetrically
realm of fact 81, 82 reciprocal 319; see also family relationships;
reasoning 53, 197; commonsense 79; domain- friendships; parent–child relationships; peer
general 381; legal 500; mental-state relationships; social relationships; teacher–
628 Subject Index
relationships (cont’d) rights 288, 476, 477, 482; individual 73, 484,
child relationships 485; political and civil 487
relatives 252; see also aunts; cousins; risk 48–9, 110, 249, 295, 542; developmental
grandchildren; grandmothers; nephews; nieces 285; externalizing behavior problems 105;
reliability 32; inter-coder 186, 191, 195; inter- high 71; low 51; never-married mothers
rater 197, 551; test–retest 195, 197, 272 243; psychological 343; psychosocial 190;
religion 8, 483, 486–7 social 343; temperament as 100, 104
relocations 158 RMR (resting metabolic rate) 448
remarriage 244, 249, 250, 251, 297 RNA (ribonucleic acid) 47
remediational goals 162 Robber’s Cave experiment 15
repetitions 67 role models: important 129; pretend 429; same-
representational procedures 192–7 sex 246
representations: affect 423–4; attachment 193, role play 332, 420; gender difference in 427
195, 197; cognitive 286; event 421; roles 478; alternation of 439; doctor–patient 420;
intrapersonal 323; mental 161, 378; play domestic 427; institutional 492; legal 499;
423; self 196, 197; social 161; symbolic mediating 463; mutual understanding of
422–3, 425, 427–8 576; preschool 423; responsibilities 288; sex
“repressive tolerance” 89 144; social 65, 469, 470, 543
reproduction 46, 48, 49, 54; cultural 89; social 89 romanticism 88
reproductive behaviors 122, 123 rough-and-tumble play see play
reproductive technologies 247 rules 65, 209; breaking 228, 527; developing
repulsion 266, 269 awareness of 465; display 313, 314, 319,
reputations 398; social 299 320; explicit 482; game 480; legal 479;
resemblance 28 legitimacy of 482; maintaining 481; moral
reservedness 296 480; play 163–4; social 424, 476, 477, 478,
residential schools 594 482, 484, 581; strict 515; understanding of
resilience 297 332, 492, 576
resistance 208, 535; angry/whiny 186; see also Rumanian adoptees 190
“C” babies rural children 495
resource allocation 516, 518, 521, 522 Russia 169,170, 431, 537
resourcefulness 214
respect 476, 482; mutual 476 sadness 106, 160, 313, 319, 459; genuine
responsibility 244, 466, 468; attributions of 313; expression of 316; regulating 321; relieving
discourse on rules and 492; moral and 467; responding to another’s distress with
criminal 87; role 288; social 457, 463; 460; teacher-rated withdrawal and 318
successful interaction 319; taking care 464 Salt Lake City 429
responsiveness 215, 462; emotional 577; SAM (shared-attention mechanisms) 52, 53
maternal 106, 162, 537; mutual 594; same-sex couples 250
parental 34; paternal 537; peer 102; social same-sex parents 128, 245, 246–7; parents
576–7; teaching 470; threshold of 98 identification with 253; imitation of 129
rest 68, 69 sampling 64, 273; spot 448
reticence 101, 337, 330, 335; preschool 336; sanctions 130, 169, 274, 479
solitary-passive behavior and 338 San Pedro 429
reunion 193, 195, 197 Santa Claus 121
revenge 299, 320, 563 SAT see Separation Anxiety Test
rewards 265, 381, 520, 526, 539; cooperative satisfaction 209; marital 195
524; individualistic 524, 525 savings 496
Rhesus monkeys 12, 127 “scaffolding” 442
rhyming 429 Scandinavia 541, 549; see also Denmark; Finland;
rhythmicity 98, 102, 109 Norway; Sweden
rich or poor people 495 scapegoating 289
Subject Index 629
schemas/schemata 81, 287, 342; cognitive 10; self-concepts 29, 33; preschoolers 519
gender 129–30 self-determination 73, 525
school 90, 288, 291, 364; absenteeism from 277, self-directed questions 334
559, 580; adapting to 71; aggression self-disclosure 286, 288, 292, 309, 341
observed at 538; children’s understanding of self-distraction 312
492–3; desire to remain in 277; disruptive self-enhancement 469
behavior in 364; dress codes 483; dropout self-esteem 74, 195, 213, 465; decreased 169;
277; institutional contexts of 85; leaving having friends increases 294; higher 244;
without qualifications 249; lunchroom 121; low(er) 276, 339, 341, 343, 593–4; social
physical aggression shown to be related to aggression directed toward damaging 535
541; positive attitudes toward 299; primary self-evaluation 520
to secondary transition 561–2; social self-expression 486
behavior 397–402; subsequent difficulties self-fulfilling prophecies 241
277; see also classmates; classrooms; self-generation 470
playgrounds; school adjustment; teachers self-handicapping 439, 444, 445
school adjustment 197, 249, 275, 299, 366; self-images 144
children’s behavior and 401–2; early self-interest 51
problems 394; friendships and 341; self-perception 230, 278, 366, 368; and
interventions to enhance 404–9; nursery internalizing problems 339; social 367
492; relationships in school and 399–400 Self-Perception Profile for Children 33
science: cognitive 377, 378; concept of 72; self-preservation 459
growth of 88 self-ratings 292, 295
scientism 86 self-regulation 11, 98, 104, 461; attentional 102,
Scotland: awareness of class differences 496; 106, 107; behavioral 336; emotional 107;
bullying 564; Glaswegian children’s low 103; moderate to high level of 105
knowledge of 505; legal vocabulary 499; self-reliance 63, 184
perceptions of wage differentials 495; self-reports 103; adolescents 40; anxiety 525;
understanding of money 494 bullying 550–1, 553, 555, 558;
scrotum 122, 124 competencies 366; competitive and
SDN-POA (sexually dimorphic nucleus of the cooperative behaviors 518, 523, 526;
pre-optic area) 122 depression 541; empathy 466; reliance on
SDQ (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) 15; shyness 342; subject to biases 322
30 self-sacrifice 459, 465, 466
Seattle 186, 196, 197 self-worth 336; adulthood 294; general 33; low
secondary schools 551, 553, 561, 562 341
secrets/secrecy 121, 249 SEM see structural equation modeling
security 184–99 passim, 299; attachment 106, semiotics 70, 83, 421, 422
149, 192, 195, 242, 253, 385; emotional 7; Senegal 430
false sense of 445; felt 334, 336; internal sensitivity 286, 520; maternal 189; moral 315
sense of 519; internal working models of sensory systems 591; disabilities 572
334; measured in infancy 242 sentences 387, 590
Selection Processor device 378 sentiments 398
self: articulation of 83; collective orientation separation 158, 193, 195, 245, 251, 424; mild
towards 431; development of 90; dimension 196; parental 226, 230, 248, 249; severe
of sociality at odds with dominant image of 197; stress of 186
88; individualistic orientation towards 431; Separation Anxiety Test (SAT) 189, 196–7
internal working models of 161; internalized SES (socioeconomic status) 35, 39, 73, 101, 241,
model of 334; positiveness of 196; sense of 246, 501; bully/victim problems and 564;
125, 332, 485 higher 537, 542; low(er) 275, 322, 538,
self and others 314–15, 334, 364 541; see also social class
self-blame 167 sex differences 369; aggression 536–7, 541;
630 Subject Index
sex differences (cont’d) single mothers 244, 248; depression 243;

biological contributions to 535; bullying resilience-promoting social networks for 252
562–3; cooperation and competition 522–3; single parenthood 243–4, 245, 295
emotion regulation 362; friendships 292; “sissy” term 117
interpersonal communication 426–7; peer Six Culture Study (Whiting & Whiting) 26, 64–7
conflict 363; play 425–6, 440, 444, 447; skills: academic 356; acquiring 71; assertion 356;
prosocial behavior 465–6; social behaviors behavioral 357; cognitive 52, 275;
47–8, 49, 117–36; social withdrawal and communication 184, 275, 227, 575, 576;
342–3; symbolic representation 427–8; competitive 265; complementary 247;
temperament 103, 107–8, 110–11 compliance 356; conversational 403, 406;
sexual behavior: consent 87; experimentation cooperative 265; delayed communication
with members of own sex 247; female- 588; developing 515; emotional encoding
typical 123; male-typical 123; promiscuous and decoding 160–1; executive 381; fighting
relationships 249 442, 443, 444, 446; friendship-making 404;
shame 106, 167, 313, 320; intense experiences of group entry 360; helping 466; hunting 443;
320; regulating 321 individual 72; innate 381; interpersonal 28,
sharing 464, 467 394–415, 578; language 576; manual 86;
Sheffield 564 mental 86; motor 580; nonverbal joint
“shopping expeditions” 291 attention 579; parents in different
shyness 101, 170, 211, 291, 294, 593; risk arrangements 245; peer relations 356;
associated with 297; social withdrawal and perspective-taking 331–2; play 576;
329–52 problem-solving 275, 338; prosocial 398;
sibling interaction 68, 224, 231; cooperative 385; school-related 72, 277; self-management
parent–child relationship may be mirrored 356; social-cognitive 275, 337, 573; social
in 251 understanding 167; see also social skills
sibling relationships 223; aggressiveness and skin conductance reactivity 461
hostility in 225–6; development influence of slanderous rumors 535
228–32; individual differences in 224–5, sleep 69, 559
227–8, 233; positive 252 sleeping arrangements 61, 65
siblings 51, 126, 127, 213, 319; adoptive 29; birth of SLI (specific language impairment) 569, 570,
229; bullying between 553; conflict 287; 590, 595–9
environmental influences shared by 28; slights 288
“favored” 229; genetic differences between 37; “slow learners” 572
hostility 109; importance of 251; normally smiles 439, 444
developing, autistic children with 579; receiving sneers 288
affection 36; similarity 31, 32; socialization snobbishness 537
context for peer 167–8, 464; step-and half 233; sociability 98, 101, 294, 338; friendship success
total parental regard following birth of 83; see positively related to 299; frontal EEG
also older siblings; sibling interaction; sibling activity associated with 333; high 109;
relationships; younger siblings mothers 66; peer 364, 366; poor 275
sickle cell disease 580 sociableness 576
sign language 386, 592, 594; combined with social adjustment 190, 246, 253, 356; aggression
spoken language 588; see also ASL and 539, 540, 541; friends and 294, 295,
signals 443, 446; emotional 161; self 311; social, 297; hemiplegia and 581; preschool play
ability to encode and decode 442 and 358; profound hearing loss and 594;
signifiers 422 social information-processing and 368
similarities 286, 288, 290, 291 social background 383; see also social class; social
“similarity-attraction” hypothesis 291 status
simulation theory 379, 387 social behavior 6, 7, 106; age-appropriate 572;
simultaneity 314 Bühler’s survey of studies of 8; competent
single-father households 246 332; complicated, strategies for 49; deviant
Subject Index 631
276; effective and ineffective 357; emotional social context 265, 310, 477, 479, 483; aggressive
signals to regulate 161; fitness and behavior 543; effective and ineffective
development of 51–2; incompetent 403; behaviors 357; expression of emotion 312;
language and 589; maladaptive 108–11, prosocial behavior 467–70; sex-segregated,
138, 331; mothers 65–6; negative 276, 319, middle childhood 369; significant 90; social
527; negative consequences for 368; older skills 361
children 15; peers 273, 277; preschoolers social contracts 482
359; problematic 101, 575; prompting, social costs 397
praising and reinforcing 344; rejected status social exchanges 288, 292, 318, 362, 468
and 275; same-sex antipathies predicts 296; social facts 84
school context 397–407; sex differences in social functioning 318; adaptive 308, 356; coping
49, 117–36; SLI children 597; students with associated with 317; effective 361; group
moderate to severe mental retardation 577; 273; poor 162; profound hearing loss 594,
with parents 64; see also aggression; 595; SLI children 597
antisocial behavior; asocial behavior; social impact 272, 273
avoidance; bullying; prosocial behavior; social interaction 12, 72, 144, 309, 357, 369,
withdrawal 536, 539; age-appropriate strategies 573;
social class 140, 150, 151; bullying 564–5; behavioral uniformities that serve to
children’s understanding of 495–6; cultural coordinate 477; capacities for 139;
context of pretend play and 428–32; consistent, pervasive impairments in 578;
differences 428, 431, 467–8; poverty, job disabilities 572, 573, 574; early 592;
loss and 168–9; race, ethnicity and 141, elementary school 360; enhanced 317;
142–3; variations in thinking about 495; see essential in the development of knowledge
also lower-class; middle-class; SES; upper- 375; facilitating 457; few opportunities for
class; working-class 579; friends or enemies 296; goals of
social cognition 50, 375–93; peer interaction participants in 516; importance of
influences development of 332 communication skills for 575; inability to
social-cognitive processes 573, 576, 578; deficits observe 581; influences development of
578; theory 130 judgments 481; influences development of
social competence 27, 101, 138, 139, 315–21, understanding 383; involvement in more
357; adolescent 342; children with 384–5; mostly driven by activities 288;
disabilities 571–87; development of 46, 140, motivation to participate in 577;
150, 334, 571–87; developmental tasks of observational and laboratory studies of 15;
308–9; efforts to promote children’s opportunities limited 580; peer 10, 142,
relationships with 402; friendships and 293, 149; positive 148, 344, 594; preschoolers
296; heritability of 28; important aspect of 485; problematic 108, 368, 582; profound
361; influence of social experiences 145; hearing loss 593; reciprocities in 289; shy
interdependency of emotional and 308; and socially withdrawn children 343;
language and 589–90, 597–9; low 161; siblings 68; skills that would facilitate 344;
nascent 5; negative self-perceptions of 339, SLI 597; social cognitive development and
341; peer interaction and 332; peer play and 385–7; styles 142, 151; theories pertaining
334; peer ratings of 165; perceived 168, to 331–2; videotape of 322
339, 341; play should both reflect and social learning 5; formulations 11; mechanistic
promote 358; predicted 169; predictor of core processes/accounts of 9, 10
friendship status 294; profound hearing loss social learning theory 62, 128–9, 130, 475;
and 593–4; same-sex and mixed-sex cornerstone of 128
antipathies linked to 295; social style and social networks 239, 251–4, 285; closely knit 469;
142, 146; sociometric status as an indicator interdependence and morality 482; opportunities
of 365; temperamental contributions 105–8; to participate in a broad range of 573; parents
tripartite model 409–10; variations in 162 164–6; shopping expeditions frequently occur
social constructionists 83 within 291; supportive peer 580
632 Subject Index
social order 482 interaction influences development of 383;

social organization 448, 492 verbally skilled and sophisticated 540
social play 139, 144; children with disabilities social withdrawal 36, 103, 159, 167, 197, 274;
574; initiations of children with Down early inhibition associated with 102;
syndrome 576; pretend 419, 420, 421, 422, generally viewed as a characteristic of peer
429, 431; profound hearing loss 594 rejection 276; intercorrelated social
social problems 539, 541, 589, 597 behaviors measuring 296; peer rejection and
social psychology 12, 71 275; shyness and 329–52; temperamental
social relationships 79, 86, 87, 273, 541; influences on development of 101; very
adolescents mental retardation in 578; high inhibition may be synonymous with
age-appropriate 574; appropriate ways of 100
maintaining 162; attempt to understand Social Skills Rating System 597
476; cognitive representational models of sociality 8, 88
161; conflictual character of 88; socialization 5, 81–2, 156–9 passim, 208, 312,
disabilities 572, 577; dispositional and 315, 334; agents of 457, 462; alternate 39;
335; internal working models of 334; behavioral genetics perspective 38–40;
interpersonal perceptions and 368; marital bidirectional 35; childcare and 137–55;
conflict and 166–7; parents’ influence children as collaborators in 11; children’s
163; positive trusting 143; problems in roles in their own 30; cross-cultural studies
581; stable, prerequisite to developing of 63, 64; culture-specific practices 359;
359; visual impairments 582; Western deviant 277; differences in 54, 460, 466,
societies 482 470; ethnic 142–3, 503; events 440; familial
social skills 339, 597; adaptive 276; adequate 161, 216; gender 144; goals 213; group 55;
162; children with disabilities 573; children important activity that contributes to 430;
with mild disabilities 574; delayed 583; low SES children 322; most pervasive
differences in 597; evidence relating R&T to contexts 394; multiple opportunities for
442; false-belief understanding and 384; 144; mutual 291; parental 6, 158, 233;
good 297; hampered opportunities for patterns of 89; person-centered forms of
learning 169; interventions to promote 537; political 497; practices 74; primary
402–3; learned during peer play 447; lower group 273; prosocial behavior 462–5; role of
105; mastering 286; maternal ratings of 165; 60–2; siblings and peer relationships 167–8;
meaningful variations in 15; new 164, 286; successful, foundation for 210; theories of
parent-and teacher-rated 106; poor(er) 107, 84–5
340, 343; R&T play and 442–3; significant society 207; childcare, culture and 140–5;
gains in 579; social cognition and 353–415; children’s understanding of 491–512; moral
social withdrawal and 337–8; training 344; bond in 87
variance in 106 sociocultural context 100
social status 80, 248, 266, 276, 366; behaviors socioeconomic factors 63, 70; backgrounds 467,
that hurt 534; conflict and 363; differences 495–6; see also SES
357; social aggression directed toward sociology 25, 78–94; family 238
damaging 535 sociometric status 105, 142, 290, 291, 294,
social strategies 573, 575; difficulties generating 317–19 passim, 366, 527; indicator of social
and enacting 576 competence 365; sex differences in emotion
social stratification 86, 90 regulation 362
social structures 84, 89; and symbolic order 90 sociometry 265–74; assessments 340, 575;
social theory 83, 87; critical mode of 89 measures 266–74, 338; methods 15; ratings
social understanding 579; bullies tend to score 527; studies 166; technique 365; testing
higher on measures of 385; competence in 287
384; development of 286; executive skills solitariness 420, 582
and 381; language and 386–7; mild deficits solitary-passive children 341
in 575; siblings and 230–1, 232; social solitary-sensorimotor/solitary-dramatic behaviors
Subject Index 633
340 perceptions of 13; social 579; visual 332

solitude 329, 330, 338, 340; developmental Strange Situation procedure 185–6, 195, 197,
significance of 331–2; preschoolers 340; 334, 335
various reasons for behavioral expression of strangers 463; help given to 465
331 strength 439, 444, 447; physical 298; potential
somatic complaints 296 183
soothability 98, 105; low 108 stress 12, 182, 226, 252, 299; acute 168; high 54;
South Africa 88, 495 parents’ levels of 241; psychological 244;
South Australia 562 “shared” 233
space 81 stressors: economic 168; family 104; response to
Spain 564 11
Spanish language 138, 141 Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) 99, 401
spanking 538–9 subcultures 332
special education 575; classrooms 577, 579 subsistence 64
special needs 569–603 substance use 249
Special Olympics 576 Sudan 253–4
special schools 589, 594 suffering 329
specific learning disabilities 574 supervision 163, 243
speech 591; confrontational 426; egocentric 427; support 299, 582; community programs 252;
supportive 212 emotional 66; from friends 169; maternal
speech-language pathologists 597 158; parental 54; practical 253, 254; sibling
spina bifida 581 224, 228, 230, 231; social 158, 234, 252,
spoken language 591, 592, 594; ability to acquire 253, 297, 309, 397, 577; victims of bullying
and use 590; ability to produce and 560
understand 589; inability to participate surveillance 90
using 598; limited, labored and immature survival of the fittest 459; see also inclusive fitness
595; signing combined with 588; viable Suwon 431
alternative to 596 Sweden 31, 557, 564
spontaneous script generation 500 symbols 5, 90, 332, 343, 422–3, 427–8, 429
SRCD (Society for Research in Child symmetry 209, 210, 292, 315; reciprocity and
Development, US) 25, 39 292
stability 140, 146, 228; behavioral inhibition sympathy 269, 271, 286, 318, 321, 460, 461;
333–4; change and 98–9; gender 118; group girls consistently found to have higher levels
272; play behaviors 359 of 108; lack of, with plight of bullied victims
standardization 82 561; parent-reported 107
“stars” 268 symptoms: depressive 296; EBP 109;
state concept 498 internalizing and externalizing 229
status 449–50; classifications 270–1, 272; synchrony 208, 210
dominant 55, 443, 444, 445, 446; falling syntax 387, 592, 595, 596
441; peer-group 268, 270–1, 272, 273, 269,
275, 276, 444; social organization 448; see tactile stimulation 447
also SES; social status; sociometric status tag questions 431
stepparents/families 226, 227, 233, 238, 245, Tainae people 383
246, 248–9, 251 Taira 65
stereotypes 425, 465, 579; gender 129, 130, 535; Taiwan 169, 469
national 506; repeated behaviors 578; talk: about bullying 561; emotion 321, 323;
rhythmic 440 family 386; “feeling” 316; learning how to
stigma 572 387; relationship 309
stimulation: cognitive 146; physical 128; tactile tantrums 535
447; verbal 146 Tarong 65
stimuli 9, 13, 312; auditory 332; novel 332; Tartu 431
634 Subject Index
task orientation 102, 107, 517, 527; poor 103 testes 122, 124, 125
tasks 52, 71, 288, 292; academic 524; adjective testosterone 122, 123
attribution 505; challenging 526; theft 483
competitive 520, 525; cooperative 520; theory of mind 50, 53, 381, 383, 386; false-belief
developmental 320; difficult 10; understanding the major step into 384;
discrimination 449; false-belief 52, 53, 380, language 387; most recent phase of studies
386; game-like 359; involving listening, 376; performance 385; precursor to 377; see
speaking, reading, and writing 596; also TOMM
noncompetitive 525; personal-social 582; “Theory Theory” 378, 379, 381
reasoning 197; social 573; sociocognitive thinking 495; commonsense 80; egocentric 331;
232; theory-of-mind 386; see also task least advanced 494; political 498
orientation thought(s): inferential 9; internalized 337;
Tasmania 562 matured 81; “prelogical” 83; social 480–2;
Teacher Behavior Rating Scale 598 sociological 83–5; structural re-organization
teacher–child relationships 397, 399, 400, 401 of 10; transition from figurative to operative
teacher ratings 537, 542; disruptive behavior 364; 81; understanding of others’ 230, 331
peer rejection measured by 539; SLI threats 287, 288, 294
children 597; social adjustment 295; social threshold 109
competence 162; social skills 355, 384 time 81, 86, 448; sharing 292
Teacher Report Form 597 timidity 333
teacher reports 32, 241, 551–2 toddlers 13, 55, 65; childcare 147; concern for
teachers 55, 140, 167, 317, 485; authority of others 465; cooperative play styles 398;
492; buffers against deleterious effects of “difficult” temperament profile 110;
family life 251; children under relatively externalizing and internalizing problems
close supervision from 552; conflicts with 244; inhibition 102, 106, 333, 335, 336,
539; evaluations of friendliness and 337; pretend play 423, 428–9; relatively
aggression 318; influence of 128; insecure neglected 62; retreat from unfamiliar adults
boys less well liked by 192; interpretations and peers 334; sex-typed toys 129; shielding
of events 449; observations 298; perception 336; social preferences 289; Spanish-
of students with hearing loss 593; praise speaking 138; teaching “toughness” to 316;
from 343; prosocial behavior often not training to be obedient 71
praised by 457; referrals to identify “tomboys” 117, 125, 127
withdrawn children 344; relationships with TOMM (theory of mind module) 52–3, 378
397, 399, 400; resource 589; see also toughness 316, 446, 449, 560, 563;
headings above prefixed “teacher” overestimation of own 49
teammates 158 Tower of Hanoi 380
teasing 224, 404 toys 439; attractive 461; choices 125; large motor
technical progress 89 447; male-typical 126; preferences 118, 120,
teenagers 576 121, 124–5; sex-typed 128–9; see also cars;
television 500, 541 dolls
temperament 67, 97–116, 189, 317, 320, 332, trading principles 494
462, 536; attachment and 190, 334; training 66, 344, 386, 405; crossover 405; in
biologically based characteristics 459; perspective taking 461; skills 404;
contributions to studies of 16; specialized 146, 147
developmental niche and 68; differences in traits 28, 67, 215; biologically deterministic 95;
233; difficult in infancy 158; growing genetically influenced 37; heritable 157;
renascence in the concept of 11; particular highly stable 540; labels 463; negative 503;
underlying type 333; role of 157–8; siblings, perceptions of 369; positive 215, 503;
personality and 224–5 psychological 39; species-wide 46
“temple of doom” model 104 transactional accounts 10
temptation 8 transactional model 100, 104
Subject Index 635
transformations 68, 81, 422–3, 424 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 227;
transgressions 106, 477, 478, 479, 485; responses never-married mothers 243; nuclear family
481; serious 483 247; nursery-school children 15; parental
triumph 319 management 170; play 430, 431, 441;
truancy 277 siblings 126, 180, 223, 233–4; single
trust 231, 286, 400; betrayal of 341 parenting and stepfamilies 238; sleep and
truth: contrastive 378; synthetic a priori 81 arousal in infants and young children 68;
“tummy rumble” 311 spanking of children 538–9; Vietnamese
Turkey 429, 432 immigrants 241; see also American Indians;
turmoil 244, 252 Asian Americans; Chinese Americans;
twins 28, 32, 34, 36; adolescent 31; externalizing European Americans; Hispanic-Americans;
problems in 30; fraternal 28–9; identical Irish-Americans; Korean Americans;
28–9; observational studies 35; preschool Mexican-Americans
studies 37; see also DZ; MZ univariate studies 294
unmarried partners 247
unattractiveness 275 unpopularity 270, 340, 527; aggressive 366; and
uncertainty 333 attention 360; withdrawn 366
unconscious 90 upper-class children 430
unconventional behavior 252, 253 urban communities 430–2
understanding 80, 89, 103, 224, 227, 491–512; utterances 421, 424, 596
concrete operational 504; emotional 160,
316, 323, 384; false-belief 379–87 passim; vagal tone 264, 333, 336
immanent conditions of 81; interpersonal validity 99, 186, 272; concurrent 276; convergent
575; mental-state 380, 382, 383, 384, 386; 68
norms 332; others’ emotions/thoughts 331; values 8, 14, 318, 475; childrearing, working-
Piaget’s categories of 81; rules 332; shared class mothers 316; collectivistic public
121, 573, 578, 581; socioeconomic 493; systems 6; cultural 64, 72, 74, 81, 217, 253,
theory-like 378; see also social understanding 468–70, 572; family 245; internalization of
undesirable behavior 66 462–3; moral 7; normative 297; parental
unease 106 157, 165; shared 73, 165; sociocultural
unemployment 169, 495 structure of 206
Unexpected Transfer test 377 variables 98, 189, 359, 573; biological/genetic
unfairness 478, 479, 481 158; causal relationships between 519;
unfamiliarity 330, 331, 333, 340, 360; contextual 572; family constellation 224;
confrontation with 334 flexibility 67; gender and contextual 426;
unhappiness 274 individualistic 251; mediating 146; psycho-
uniformities 477 biological 98; relationship 462–3; social
“unilateral” model 211 159; socialization 463
uniqueness 485; uniqueness loss of 83 venting 535
United Kingdom see Britain verbal factors: abilities 49–50; age 377; responses
United States 16, 64; Black consciousness 193; strategies 362; tactics 523; see also
movements 503; bullying 554, 562; aggression; communication; competence;
childcare 141, 142; disabilities 571, 576; interactions; stimulation
economic understanding 494; fathers 65; verbalization 429, 461, 551
friends and enemies 290, 293, 468; girls victimization see peer victimization
with CAH 125; individualism 74, 431; Victoria 562
kindergartens 469, 554; learning problems videotapes 241, 322, 447, 449, 552
574; median income for mother-headed village communities 428–30
families 241; middle-class mothers 73; violations: commitment 288; contractual 285;
Midwestern 542; mothers in the labor force rule 287
7; National Health Survey (1992) 580; violence 48–9, 541; media 536, 541; physical 565
636 Subject Index
virilization 124 wimps 560, 563

visibility 90; social 269 windows task 380–1
visual impairments 581–2 withdrawal 104, 138, 150, 190, 229, 275, 366;
vocabulary 595 general measures of 355; passive 330;
vulnerability 197, 299, 320; “anxious” 341; rejection and later internalizing difficulties
dispositional 336 278; SLI children 597; solitary-active 598;
solitary-passive 330; teacher-rated 103, 318;
wage differentials 495 see also social withdrawal
Wales 571 Wolffian ducts 122
wariness 329, 331, 332, 336; fearful children women 143; consciousness 88; emotional
“primed” to react with 333; social 330, 343 expressiveness 225; workload 64, 65; see also
warmth 215, 217, 225, 243; heritability for 34; mothers
mothers 162; parental 169, 195, 197; working-class people 383, 495; mothers’
paternal 246; siblings 227 childrearing values 316
weakness 551; inherent 183; physical 298 worry 106, 228
welfare 141, 207, 244, 482, 484
well-being 33, 143, 246; effects of bullying 559; Yale group 9
emotional 400; physical 184, 424; younger siblings 34, 53; care of 66–7;
psychological 184, 353 internalizing problems 36; power exerted by
Western Australia 562 227;
Western societies 424, 428, 482, 572; chronic Yucatan 429
disorder 580; cultural construction 485; Yugoslavia 494, 498
women’s consciousness 88
White people 143, 233, 501, 502, 503, 564 Zimbabwe 494
WHO (World Health Organization) 571 “zone of proximal development” 71
Author Index 637
Author Index
Some page numbers refer to co-authors appearing Ahadi, S. A. 106, 149

in the text as ‘et al.’ after the name of the first Ahlbo, A. 535, 543
author. These names can be found in the chapter Ahmed, K. 226
reference lists under the name of the first author. Ahmeduzzaman, M. 439
Ainsworth, M. D. S. 12, 161, 182, 184, 185,
186, 192
Aaron, J. 239 Aketson, B. 212
AAUW Educational Foundation 343 Akkermans, W. 269, 270
Abbey, B. 319 Allen, H. 244
Abbott-Shim, A. 146 Allen, K. 99
Abbott-Shim, M. 147 Allen, V. L. 502
Abdalla, H. 249 Almeida, A. M. T. D. 562, 564
Abecassis, M. 263, 287, 289, 290, 295, 296 Alpert, R. 9
Aber, M. S. 297 ALSPAC study team 216, 226, 229, 233
Ablard, K. E. 225 Althusser, L. 89
Aboud, F. 232, 502, 503–4 Amato, P. R. 167, 241, 245, 248, 250, 251, 252
Abramovitch, R. 167, 232, 496, 500 Ambert, A.-M. 87, 88, 213, 214
Abrams, D. 524 Amos, D. 110
Achenbach, T. M. 30, 394, 597 Anderson, C. 91, 212
Achermann, J. 189 Anderson, K. E. 212
Acitelli, L. K. 206 Anderson, K. J. 212, 214
Addington, J. 241 Anderson, L. 268
Adelson, J. 157 Anderson, M. A. 527
Adlam, A. 382 Andersson, B. 147
Adolph, K. E. 8, 9 Andersson, K. 333
Agentta, B. 53 Andrews, D. W. 297, 410
638 Author Index
Andrews, K. 297 Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J. 190

Andrews, P. B. 164 Baker-Sennett, J. 71–2
Angst, J. 224 Baldwin, A. 13, 16, 168
Antia, S. 593 Baldwin, C. 168
Aplin, D. Y. 594 Baldwin, J. M. 9, 10
Apostoleris, N. H. 427 Ballard, M. 167
Appleton, M. 386 Balle-Jensen, L. 170
Aquan-Assee, J. 294, 295, 299 Bandura, A. 9, 49, 128, 130
Archard, D. 81 Bank, L. 226, 229, 277
Arcus, D. 104, 332 Bank, S. 226
Ariel, S. 421, 424 Banks, O. 91
Aries, P. 92 Banks, W. C. 502
Arnett, J. 170 Barbarin, O. A. 252
Arnold, D. H. 13 Barenboim, C. E. 6
Arnold, E. H. 13 Barkley, R. A. 212
Arnos, K. S. 591 Barnes, E. 5, 14
Aronfreed, J. 475 Barnett, D. 189, 190
Arrington, R. E. 14 Barnett, M. A. 466, 529
Arsenio, W. F. 308, 318–19, 322 Baron, R. E. 254
Asendorpf, J. 330, 331, 333, 336–7, 338 Baron-Cohen, S. 52, 53, 377, 578
Asher, S. R. 158, 266, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, Barrett, J. 102, 103
276, 277, 294, 297, 299, 320, 321, 339, Barrett, K. 312, 313, 457
340, 341, 362–3, 394, 400, 401, 403–4, Barrett, M. 456, 491, 492, 503, 504, 505, 506,
409, 502, 534, 575 507, 508
Ashman, A. F. 524 Barry, H. I. 63, 64
Asten, P. 244, 248 Barth, J. M. 319, 518, 519
Astington, J. W. 376, 377, 383, 384, 386, 387, Bartini, M. 55, 443, 444, 513
388, 579 Bartko, W. T. 168
Aston, J. 441, 448 Barton, E. A. 274
Atkins, M. S. 294 Bartsch, K. 379, 386–7
Atkinson, L. 179 Bashir, A. S. 596
Atlas, R. S. 404 Bastiani, A. 319
Ausch, L. 426 Bates, J. C. 164
Ausubel, D. P. 365 Bates, J. E. 7, 11, 16, 98, 99, 100, 108, 109, 145,
Aviezer, O. 253 158, 159, 160, 161, 218, 275, 316, 536,
Avis, J. 53 538, 539
Azmitia, M. 300 Bateson, G. 420
Azria, M. 142, 293, 294 Bateson, P. P. G. 442
Batson, C. D. 460
Baak, K. 102, 333, 337 Battistich, V. 526
Babigian, H. 266 Baudonniere, P. M. 422, 425, 528
Bacchini, D. 560 Baumann, D. J. 466, 467
Bacon, M. K. 63, 64 Baumeister, R. F. 265
Badzinski, D. M. 314 Bauminger, N. 579
Baer, D. 9 Baumrind, D. 13, 39, 208, 243, 535
Baerends, G. P. 183 Baydar, N. 227, 230
Bagwell, C. 158, 292, 294 Bay-Hinitz, A. K. 528
Bailey, D. B. 582 Bayles, K. 99, 109, 159
Baker, J. A. 142 Bazarskaya, N. 170, 180
Baker, R. L. 99 Bear, G. 542, 572, 575
Baker, S. W. 124, 125, 126, 127 Beardsall, L. 225, 228, 230, 317
Author Index 639
Beatty, W. W. 439, 440, 447 Binet, A. 3

Beaudet, J. 503, 504 Binney, V. 193, 196, 197
Beck, U. 84 Birch, H. G. 97, 98
Bégin, G. 366 Birch, S. H. 339, 397, 399, 400, 401, 402, 407,
Begley, A. 576 408
Behrens, T. R. 590 Birkenfeld, A. 119
Beidel, D. C. 330, 344 Bishop, D. V. M. 596
Bekoff, M. 442, 446 Bissaker, K. 179–80
Bell, R. Q. 12, 35, 102, 210 Bizman, A. 464
Bellack, A. S. 344 Bjorklund, D. 25–6, 46, 48, 49, 50
Bell-Dolan, D. 274, 339 Bjorkqvist, K. 534–5, 540, 541–2, 543
Bellmore, A. 274, 279, 353, 366, 367 Black, B. 360, 421, 427
Belsky, J. 13, 54, 145, 170, 171, 186, 215, 225, Black, C. 383
226, 298, 320 Black, D. 233
Belson, W. A. 170 Black, K. N. 246
Bem, D. J. 343, 534 Blakeslee, S. 244
Bem, S. 129 Blass, S. 575
Bench, J. R. 593 Blehar, M. C. 182, 184, 185
Benedict, R. 60–1, 62, 74 Blevin, A. 517, 524, 525
Benenson, J. F. 427 Bliesener, T. 563, 564
Bennett, D. S. 99, 109, 145, 159 Bliss, L. S. 599
Bennett, M. 375, 505, 507 Bloch, M. 430
Benninga, J. S. 526 Block, J. H. 128
Bentler, R. A. 594 Block, M. E. 573
Berenbaum, S. A. 124, 126 Blurton Jones, N. G. 438, 439
Berger, M. 517, 524, 525 Bochner, S. 571, 576
Bergman, L. R. 16 Boer, F. 223, 226
Berk, L. E. 358 Bohlin, G. 196, 197, 333
Berlin, L. 186 Boivin, M. 275, 278, 291, 297, 299, 339, 340,
Berndt, R. 421 341, 366, 401, 402, 408
Berndt, T. J. 288, 297, 299, 364, 398, 400–1 Bokhorst, J. 269, 270, 271, 274
Bernheimer, L. P. 69–70 Bolin, L. 287, 289
Bernicot, J. 293 Bombi, A. 493–4, 495, 496
Bernier, H. 110 Bond, L. A. 535
Bernieri, F. 35, 55 Bonino, S. 529, 560
Bernstein, B. 90–1 Bonn, M. 494, 495
Bernstein Ratner, N. 592 Bookstein, F. 147
Bernzweig, J. 105, 107, 161 Boomsma, D. I. 30, 33
Berridge, D. M. 53, 231, 383 Boost, K. 142
Berscheid, E. 12, 13, 207, 528 Booth, A. 250, 251
Bersoff, D. M. 457, 469, 483 Booth, C. 190, 241, 254, 290, 291
Berti, A. 493–4, 495, 496, 497–8, 499, 500, 508 Borger, D. 124, 127
Beveridge, M. 226, 229 Borja-Alvarez, T. 360
Bhavnagri, N. P. 162 Bornstein, M. H. 15, 16, 55, 157, 166
Biben, M. 48 Borwick, D. 340
Bienert, H. 405 Bosacki, S. 384
Bierman, K. L. 275, 277, 403, 405, 406, 407 Bost, K. K. 142, 190
Biernbaum, M. A. 212 Boulton, M. J. 401, 441, 443, 444, 447, 448,
Bigelow, B. J. 209 527, 559, 564
Bigler, R. S. 129, 130 Bourdieu, P. 89–90
Billman, J. 102, 109, 111 Boutin, P. 110
640 Author Index
Bowker, A. 339, 341, 366 Buchanan-Barrow, E. 456, 491, 492, 498, 499,
Bowlby, J. 12, 44, 51, 139, 149, 156, 179, 182– 503, 504, 507, 508
4, 242, 245, 253, 254, 334 Buchele, K. S. 279
Boyle, M. H. 244 Buckwalter, P. 596
Boyum, L. 160, 162, 440, 442–3 Bugental, D. B. 50, 208, 209, 243, 519
Brachfeld-Child, S. 320 Bühler, C. 8, 14
Bradbard, M. 142 Buhrmester, D. 227, 287, 292
Bradley, R. H. 34, 245 Buhs, E. 353, 354, 400, 401, 402, 407, 408
Bradley, S. 119, 190 Bukowski, W. 158, 163, 263, 265, 266, 267,
Brady, J. E. 517, 524 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274–5, 276,
Braeges, J. L. 479 278, 294, 295, 299, 300, 332, 339, 340,
Braeways, A. 247 341, 342, 366, 397, 401, 575, 580
Brakke, N. P. 276, 360 Bull, R. 386
Branch, C. W. 503 Burch, P. R. 403, 406
Brand, E. 252 Burchinal, M. 146, 147, 277, 291, 297, 582
Bransletter, W. H. 105 Burgard, P. 496
Brassard, J. A. 164 Burger, C. 318
Braswell, L. 406 Burgeson, R. 294
Braun-Curtin, R. 243, 244 Burgess, K. B. 101, 104, 264, 275, 333, 336,
Braungart, J. 34, 160–1 337, 338–9, 340, 341, 398, 538, 539
Bray, N. W. 578 Burgy, L. 364
Brazelton, T. B. 70–1 Buriel, R. 156, 158, 208, 216, 217
Bream, L. 337–8 Burke, M. 225
Bretherton, I. 129, 139, 184, 186, 193, 195, 418 Burks, V. M. 160, 162, 440, 442–3
Bridger, R. 142 Burleson, B. R. 160
Bridges, D. 463 Burman, E. 80
Bridges, L. J. 312 Burstein, N. D. 102
Bridges, M. 167, 168 Burton, C. 365, 367
Brinden, P. 249 Burts, D. C. 147, 160, 359, 463
Brinton, B. 569–70, 597, 598–9 Buss, D. M. 44, 46, 50
Brittner, P. A. 12, 189 Buss, K. 335
Brober, A. 147 Bussey, K. 129, 130
Broberg, A. 333, 337 Butler, L. J. 397, 398, 409
Brody, G. 224, 225, 226, 227, 229, 241, 243, Butler, R. 517, 521, 524, 525
252, 464 Butovsky, L. 160–1
Bromley, B. D. 286 Butt, D. S. 516
Bronfenbrenner, U. 13, 14, 169, 216, 268, 455 Buysse, V. 574
Bronson, M. B. 572 Byers, J. A. 442
Brooks-Gunn, J. 168, 227, 230 Byrd, W. 404
Brougere, G. 428 Byrne, E. A. 333, 336
Brown, B. B. 13, 273
Brown, D. J. 523 Cabrera, N. J. 245
Brown, E. 579 Cai, X. 577
Brown, G. W. 242 Cairns, B. D. 276, 277, 513, 535, 542
Brown, J. 161, 224, 227, 315, 317, 320, 385 Cairns, R. 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 245, 276, 277,
Brown, M. M. 99, 109, 159, 573, 583 279, 513, 535, 542
Brown, P. J. 278, 341 Caldarella, P. 356, 357
Brown, R. 501, 502–3, 504, 507, 524 Caldwell, B. M. 34
Bruner, J. 53, 383 Calkins, S. D. 104, 109, 159, 264, 330, 332–3,
Bruschi, C. 275 334, 335
Bryant, B. 15, 108, 164 Call, J. 53
Author Index 641
Call, K. T. 467 Charlesworth, R. 147, 268, 269

Cameron, P. 247 Charlesworth, W. R. 44, 444, 516, 522, 523, 529
Camino, C. 483, 485 Charlin, V. 466
Campbell, J. 297 Charman, T. 196, 197, 385
Campbell, S. B. 13 Chasdi, E. H. 67
Canary, D. J. 209 Chase-Landale, P. L. 241
Cann, W. 333 Chazan, R. 190
Capage, L. 384 Cheah, C. 101, 104, 336
Capaldi, D. 277, 534, 540 Chen, C. 169, 170
Caplan, M. Z. 457 Chen, H. 103, 345
Cappelli, M. 593 Chen, X. 103, 105, 111, 169–70, 271, 276, 336,
Card, N. A. 298 340, 341, 342, 343, 345, 455, 541
Cardon, L. R. 28 Cherlin, A. J. 241
Carey, N. 483 Chess, S. 97, 98, 100, 111
Carlo, G. 107, 461 Cheyne, W. M. 496
Carlson, E. 13, 16, 160, 184, 295, 299 Chiasson, L. 385
Carlson, M. 466 Chilamkurti, C. 314
Caro, T. 443, 447, 448 Child, I. L. 63, 64
Caron, C. 110 Chipuer, H. M. 36
Carpendale, J. 353–4, 384, 386, 387 Chisholm, K. 12
Carruthers, P. 378 Chodorow, N. 212, 214
Carson, D. K. 102, 103 Choi, S.-H. 73
Carson, J. 160, 162, 317, 440, 442–3 Chomsky, N. 286
Carter, D. B. 130 Chowduri, F. 445
Cartledge, G. 594 Christensen, A. 12
Carvalho, A. 444, 446, 448 Christie, J. 419, 432
Casas, J. 119, 536, 537, 541, 551, 555, 556, 563 Christopher, J. S. 344
Caspi, A. 12, 54, 231, 239, 343, 382, 534 Christopoulos, C. 519
Cassidy, J. 160–1, 186, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, Chung, T. 363
197, 242, 440, 442–3 Cialdini, R. B. 466, 467
Caswell, C. 316 Cicchetti, D. 100, 190, 382
Caswell, R. 323 Cicirelli, V. 223
Catalalano, R. 549 Cicourel, A. 84
Cattelino, E. 529 Cielinski, K. L. 142, 293, 294
Catts, H. W. 596 Cillessen, A. H. N. 265, 266, 269, 272, 274,
Cauce, A. M. 299 278, 279, 353, 366, 367, 543
Caughty, M. 147 Clark, C. D. 428
Cauley, K. 519 Clark, J. G. 590
Cavell, T. A. 542 Clark, K. 501, 502, 593
Caverly, S. 264, 323 Clark, L. A. 215
Caya, L. 142, 293, 294 Clark, M. P. 501, 502
Cen, G. 103, 345 Clark, M. S. 207, 465
Ceschin, F. 422, 425, 427, 431 Clark, S. E. 385
Chachere, G. 541 Clarke, C. 102
Chaille, C. 421 Clarke-Stewart, K. A. 241, 254
Chalmers, J. B. 461 Clatfelter, D. 245, 317
Chambers, B. 425 Clausen, J. A. 11, 16
Chambers, M. 551, 559 Clawson, M. A. 275
Chandler, M. J. 382, 384, 385 Clements, W. A. 53, 383
Chao, R. K. 218 Cleveland, H. H. 238, 239
Chapman, M. 375, 387, 388, 389, 464, 465 Clifford, R. 141, 146
642 Author Index
Clingempeel, W. G. 212, 244, 248, 252 Conti-Ramsden, G. 599

Clinton, W. 110 Cook, G. L. 273
Coates, B. 9 Cook, H. 520
Cochran, L. 594 Cook, K. V. 5, 128
Cochran, M. M. 164 Cook, M. C. 317
Coelen, C. 145, 147 Cook, T. D. 164
Cohen, A. S. 267 Coolahan, K. 358
Cohen, D. J. 100, 382 Cooley, C. H. 5, 368
Cohen, L. 463 Cooper, P. 243
Cohen, P. 125–6 Cooperman, G. 318–19
Cohen, R. 293, 367, 398, 580 Cooperman, J. M. 534
Cohn, D. 192, 519 Coplan, R. 109, 264, 290, 291, 330
Cohn, J. F. 13, 15 Coppotelli, H. 15, 268, 269, 275, 276
Coie, J. D. 15, 160, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, Cornelius, G. 594
272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 308, Corsaro, W. 318, 420, 423, 492
319, 323, 339, 360, 361, 367, 394, 395, Corter, C. 167, 232
397, 398–9, 403, 404, 406, 408, 409, 534, Cosmides, L. 44, 46, 50
536, 538, 540, 543 Costabile, A. 441, 444, 446, 448, 560
Cole, A. K. 164 Costanzo, P. R. 165
Cole, D. 368, 422, 423, 427, 432 Costin, S. E. 320, 466
Cole, K. 383 Cote, R. 110
Cole, M. 69, 72 Couchoud, E. A. 315, 317, 318, 319, 361
Cole, P. 109, 313, 316, 317, 457, 469 Cowan, C. P. 166, 212, 243, 244
Coleman, C. C. 299, 339, 340, 341, 400, 401, Cowan, G. 293
408, 559 Cowan, P. 166, 212, 243, 244, 479, 480
Coleman, J. 164, 165 Cowen, E. 244, 252, 266
Coles, R. 497 Cowie, H. 527
Coley, R. L. 246, 252 Cox, M. 249, 250, 251
Coll, C. G. 142 Cox, R. 251
Collaer, M. L. 117, 122 Coy, K. C. 99, 106
Collins, J. G. 580 Coyne, J. 316
Collins, W. A. 1, 10, 13, 15, 16, 55, 157, 166, Craig, H. K. 598
171, 213, 214, 295 Craig, W. M. 543, 552
Collishaw, S. 247 Creasey, G. L. 358
Colpin, H. 207 Creps, C. 224, 227
Colyar, J. J. 252 Crick, N. R. 119, 273, 297, 331, 356, 368, 397,
Comfort, C. 277 398, 403, 458, 534, 535, 536, 537, 539,
Compas, B. 11 541, 542, 543, 551, 555, 556, 563, 573,
Conant, C. 289, 292 583
Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group Crnic, K. 215
275, 410, 534, 544 Crockenberg, S. 158
Conger, J. C. 344 Croft, C. 315
Conger, K. 229 Crombie, G. 121
Conger, R. 168, 169, 229, 250 Crosby, L. 297, 534
Connell, J. P. 312 Cross, D. 377
Connell, R. W. 497, 498 Crouter, A. C. 216, 224, 226
Conner, R. T. 598 Crowson, M. 579
Connolly, J. 358, 420, 422, 425, 427, 432 Crowther, J. K. 535
Connolly, K. 14, 439 Crozier, W. R. 342
Connor, R. T. 572, 574, 575 Cryer, D. 146
Conrad, J. 277 Csapo, M. 403, 406
Author Index 643
Csikszentmihalyi, M. 35 DelVecchio, W. F. 12
Culkin, M. 146 de Muinck Keizer-Schrama, S. M. P. F. 125
Cumberland, A. 315, 319 DeMulder, E. 190, 323
Cummings, E. M. 167, 244, 316 DeMulder, K. E. 315
Cummings, M. E. 254 Demyttenaere, K. 207
Cummins, D. D. 53, 56 Denham, S. 161, 264, 308, 309, 311, 312, 313,
Cunic, K. 142 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 322, 323,
Curry, J. F. 403, 406 361, 461
Cutting, A. L. 105, 317, 320, 383, 386 Dennis, J. 96
Denton, K. 320
Dahlberg, G. 146 Denzin, N. 82
Daly, M. 46, 48, 246, 248 Derer, K. R. 577
Damon, W. 331, 479–80, 560 Derman-Sparks, L. 144
Danaher, D. L. 363 DeRosier, M. E. 276, 278, 290, 543
Daniels, D. 35 Derryberry, D. 332
Daniels, T. 593 Desjardins, M. J. 121
Daniels-Beirness, T. 337–8 Dettling, A. C. 343, 537
Darke, P. 496 DeVet, K. 107
Darling, N. 165, 208 de Villiers, J. G. 387
Darwin, C. 4, 45 de Villiers, P. A. 387
Das, R. 398 Devnos, L. 591
Davey, A. 501, 503 de Waal, F. B. M. 55, 56, 444
Davidov, M. 455 Dewey, J. 3, 10
Davidson, C. E. 190 DeWolf, M. 147, 160, 359, 463
Davies, G. M. 499 DeWolff, M. S. 184
Davies, L. 230, 233 Deyo, D. A. 593
Davies, M. 378, 553 Diamond, K. 569, 573, 575, 583
Davies, P. 167, 244 Dickinson, J. 495–6
Davies, W. H. 273, 580 Diefendorf, A. O. 590
Davis, J. A. 594 Dijksltra, J. 68
Dawe, A. 84 Dinneen, E. 189
Dawe, H. C. 289 DiPetro, J. 147
Dawson, G. 579 DiPietro, J. 127, 440
Deane, K. 185 Dishion, T. 163, 166, 291, 297, 299, 410
Deater-Deckard, K. 30, 31, 32, 34, 37, 147, 216, Ditner, E. 279
217, 218, 226, 229, 233, 243, 244, 248, Dittman, R. W. 124, 127
251, 254, 539 Dix, T. 462
De Barshyshe, B. 166 Dixon, S. 70–1
Deci, E. L. 525, 526 Dobkin, P. L. 297
Declercq, M. 316 Dodge, K. A. 6, 10, 15, 145, 158, 160, 164, 217,
DeFries, J. C. 28, 34, 40, 239 218, 268, 269, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276,
DeGarmo, D. S. 15, 241 278, 316, 331, 356, 360, 368, 397, 398–9,
DeHart, G. B. 426 403, 409, 449, 534, 536, 538, 539, 540,
DeJong, A. 191, 193, 195, 196 543, 573, 583
DeJung, J. E. 365 Dodge, M. K. 425
DeKlyen, M. 192, 212 Doehring, P. 420–1, 422, 425, 427, 431
Delfosse, P. 365 Doering, R. W. 119
de Lorimier, S. 420–1, 424, 432 Doherty, M. 382
Delucchi, K. L. 526 Dollard, J. 5, 9
De Lucia, L. A. 118 Domino, G. 522
Delugach, J. D. 360 Donahue, M. L. 575
644 Author Index
Donaldson, M. 504 Earls, F. 216, 535

Donelan, N. 319 Early, D. 141
Donelan-McCall, N. 320, 385 East, P. L. 168, 273
Dong, Q. 169, 170 Eastenson, A. 289, 362
Donlan, C. 599 Easterbrooks, M. A. 186, 190
Donzella, B. 537 Easton, D. 289, 292
Doob, L. W. 9 Eaton, W. O. 36
Dornbusch, S. 165 Eaves, L. 32, 33, 36
Dorsch, A. 528 Eccles, J. 164, 252, 395
Douglas, H. 382 Eckerman, C. O. 251, 255
Douvan, E. 157 Eddy, T. J. 53
Downey, D. B. 246 Edelbrock, C. 30, 33, 394
Downey, G. 316 Edelstein, W. 191, 196, 197, 199, 333
Downs, A. C. 129 Eder, D. 289, 318
Downs, M. P. 590, 592 Eder, R. A. 33
Doyle, A. 165, 358, 420–1, 422, 424, 425, 427, Edgar, B. 45
431, 432, 503, 504 Edman, G. 126
Dozier, S. 316 Edwards, C. P. 64–5, 66, 74, 118, 121
Draper, P. 54 Eftekhari, A. 224
Draper, T. W. 272 Egan, S. K. 399, 559
Dreman, S. B. 468 Egeland, B. 13, 184, 295, 299, 335
Drinkard, J. 293 Eggers-Pierola, C. 141
Drinkwater, M. 543 Ehrhardt, A. A. 124, 125–6, 127
Drop, S. L. S. 125 Eilertsen, D. E. 31
Dubin, E. R. 364 Eisenberg, A. R. 362
Dubin, R. 364 Eisenberg, N. 4, 6, 10, 11, 16, 102, 105, 107,
Duck, S. 206, 209, 288 108, 149, 161, 315, 317, 318, 320, 322,
Duda, J. 500 361, 362, 363, 457, 459, 460, 461, 462,
Dumas, J. E. 336 463, 464, 465–6, 467, 535
Duncan, G. J. 168 Elbaum, B. 575
Duncan, M. K. 517, 524, 525 Elder, G. H. 4, 13, 14, 164, 169, 231, 343, 534
Dunham, P. 384 Eley, T. C. 31
Dunn, J. 6, 11, 35, 36, 37, 102, 105, 129, 161, Elfenbein, J. 594
167, 180, 216, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, El Hassan Al Awad, A. M. 253
228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 243, 244, Elicker, J. 289, 299, 341
248, 251, 254, 255, 299, 315, 317, 318, Elins, J. L. 229
319, 320, 383, 384, 385, 386, 430, 432, Elliott, S. N. 344, 357, 597
464, 536 El-Sheikh, M. 167, 316
Dunn, L. 147 Emde, R. N. 4, 6, 459, 463
Dunnington, M. J. 268, 269 Emerson, P. E. 12
Dunsmore, J. 308, 309, 313 Emery, R. E. 168
Durieux-Smith, A. 593 Emler, N. 492, 495–6
Durkheim, E. 84, 86, 88 Emmerich, W. 119
Durkin, K. 500 Emmers-Sommer, T. M. 209
Durland, M. 147 Emory, R. E. 239
Duveen, G. 425, 426 Endriga, M. C. 192
Dweck, C. 10 Engelberts-Vaske, A. 321
Dworkin, R. 475 Engelhard, G. 518, 523–4
Dzur, C. 444, 522, 529 Engfer, A. 343
English and Romanian Adoptees (ERS) study
Earle, D. 495 team 12
Author Index 645
Englund, M. 289, 299, 341 Fintelman, M. 68

Enslein, J. 420 Fisher, J. D. 465
Epps, J. 406 Fiske, A. P. 67, 72, 73, 74
Epstein, R. 124, 125, 126, 127 Fitzgerald, A. 599
Epstein, S. 32 Fitzpatrick, M. S. 208
Erel, O. 226 Fivush, R. 117
Erickson, E. 423 Flanagan, C. 241, 243, 244, 250
Erikson, M. F. 335 Flavell, E. R. 384
Ermert, J. A. 581 Flavell, J. H. 5, 9, 376, 384
Ernst, C. 224 Fleege, P. O. 147
Erwin, E. J. 572, 581 Fleeson, J. 13, 161
Eslea, M. 565 Flin, R. H. 499
Estes, D. 242 Flor, D. L. 169, 241, 243, 252
Etxeberria, J. 528 Florsheim, P. 252
Eyberg, S. M. 109 Floud, J. 91
Eysenck, H. J. 36, 459 Flyr, M. L. 96
Fonagy, P. 196, 197, 315, 385
Fabes, R. A. 102, 105, 107, 108, 110, 149, 161, Fonzi, A. 513, 519, 528, 529, 560
317, 318, 320, 322, 361, 362, 457, 459, Forbes, D. 363
460, 461, 462, 463, 465–6, 467, 534, 535, Ford, M. 483
540 Forehand, R. 226, 227, 229, 407
Fagen, D. B. 244, 252 Foreman, N. S. 110
Fagen, R. 440, 441, 447 Forgatch, M. S. 15, 241
Fagot, B. I. 30, 32, 129, 440, 535 Forrester, M. 376
Fantuzzo, J. 344, 358 Foster, S. L. 274
Faraone, S. D. 36 Foster, W. K. 515
Farber, E. A. 461, 463 Foucault, M. 90
Farrington, D. P. 540 Fox, D. J. 501, 502
Farroni, T. 506 Fox, J. J. 344
Farver, J. 105, 359, 431 Fox, N. A. 104, 109, 159, 264, 330, 332–3, 334,
Fauber, R. L. 166 335
Faust, M. 575 Frame, C. 449
Fausto-Sterling, A. 124 Frank, G. 85
Fein, G. 334, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 424 Frankel, K. A. 536
Feiring, C. 13, 242, 295 Franken, R. E. 523
Feldman, J. 121, 125–6 Freedman, J. 496
Feldman, S. 170 Freeman, N. H. 53, 231, 382, 383, 384
Feldstein, M. 110 Fremmer-Bombik, E. 191, 192
Felson, R. B. 368 French, D. C. 270, 277, 291, 362, 363, 540
Ferguson, L. L. 535 Frenkel, O. J. 190
Ferguson, T. J. 313, 367 Freud, S. 5, 9, 12, 245, 246, 475
Fergusson, D. M. 249, 254 Frey, K. S. 118, 119
Ferketich, S. 110 Friedman, J. 105, 149, 318, 322
Fernyhough, C. 386, 388 Friedman, R. 316, 469
Ferrell, K. A. 582 Frith, U. 377
Feshbach, J. D. 460 Fritz, A. 382
Fey, M. E. 596 Frodi, A. 147
Field, T. 147, 243, 423 Frost, J. L. 425
Fincham, F. 167, 250 Fry, D. P. 439
Finnegan, R. A. 209, 291, 294, 296 Fry, P. S. 241
Finnie, V. 162, 360 Frye, D. 379, 380
646 Author Index
Fryxell, D. 572, 577 Gersten, M. 102, 333, 337

Fujiki, M. 569–70, 597, 598–9 Gertner, B. L. 599
Fulker, D. W. 30, 34, 459 Gesell, A. 1, 8–9, 10
Fuller, B. 141 Gest, S. D. 276, 294, 513
Fung, H. 430 Gesten, E. L. 403
Furman, W. 10, 13, 224, 225, 227, 287, 292, Gewirth, A. 475
299, 344, 400, 405, 406 Gewirtz, J. L. 9
Furrow, D. 385 Giammarino, M. 275
Furstenberg, F. F. 164, 241, 245 Giangrande, S. K. 110
Furth, H. 494 Giangreco, M. F. 573
Gibbs, J. C. 461, 463
Gaddy, G. 316 Gibson, N. M. 241, 243, 252
Gadsden, V. L. 252 Gibson, W. B. 422, 423, 425, 427
Galen, B. R. 534, 535, 543 Giddens, A. 84
Galinsky, E. 142, 146–7 Giffen, H. 421
Gallagher, M. 243 Gillberg, C. 578
Gallatin, J. 486 Gillies, R. M. 524
Gallimore, R. 67, 69, 233 Gilligan, C. 88
Gallucci, C. 572, 573 Ginsberg, S. D. 12
Garaigordobil, M. 528 Gjone, H. 31
Garber, J. 316, 319, 323 Glantz, F. 145, 147
Garcia, H. V. 142 Glazer, J. A. 268, 269
Garcia, M. M. 229 Gleason, T. R. 287
Garcia-Coll, C. 102, 333 Glenn, S. M. 425, 427
Gardner, E. F. 365 Glover, A. 343
Gardner, W. 242 Gnangy, E. M. 212
Garfinkel, H. 79 Gnepp, J. 314
Gariepy, J. 276, 513, 535 Goffman, E. 420
Garner, P. W. 316, 319, 464 Goins, C. 344
Garnier, C. 519 Gold, A. 190
Garvey, C. 362, 421, 431, 439 Gold, J. A. 517
Gaskins, S. 429 Goldberg, S. 190
Gasser, E. B. 365 Golden, M. M. 268, 272
Gately, D. 244 Golding, J. 216, 233
Gaultney, J. F. 49, 50 Goldman, J. 421
Gauthier, R. 118 Goldman, K. S. 119
Gauze, C. 294, 295, 299 Goldman, L. 418, 428, 429
Ge, X. 168, 169 Goldman, M. 107, 215
Geary, D. C. 46, 48, 50 Goldsmith, D. 71–2
Gelb, R. 360, 527 Goldsmith, H. H. 30, 32, 38, 536
Gelles, R. J. 539 Goldstein, S. 147
Gelman, R. 314 Goldwyn, R. 193, 195, 199
Gelman, S. A. 499, 507 Goleman, D. 265
Genta, M. L. 560 Golombok, S. 95, 117, 120, 247, 249, 252
Gentile, C. 275, 338–9, 340 Golter, B. S. 164
George, C. 184, 185–6, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, Göncü, A. 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 424,
197 427, 428–9, 431, 432
George, F. W. 122 Goodenough, F. L. 8, 15, 535
German, T. P. 379 Goodman, R. 30, 581
Gershman, E. 287, 289 Goodnow, J. J. 162, 208, 209, 462, 463
Gershoni, R. 292 Goodwin, R. 421, 426
Author Index 647
Goossens, F. A. 269, 270, 271, 274 Grout, L. 317

Gorder-Holman, J. 576 Grove, J. 599
Gordon, E. W. 142 Grusec, J. E. 4, 9, 11, 162, 208, 211, 455, 457,
Gorman-Smith, D. 252 462, 463, 466
Gottesman, I. I. 536 Grych, J. H. 167
Gottfried, A. W. 110 Guay, F. 297
Gottlieb, G. 46 Guerin, D. W. 110
Gottman, J. 161, 167, 168, 171, 288, 290, 308, Gulko, J. 120, 121
316, 317, 320, 359, 360, 398, 540, 541, Gunnar, M. 10, 11, 12, 335, 343, 537
572, 574, 598 Gunnarson, L. 164
Gouldner, A. J. 210 Guo, M. 169, 170
Goy, R. W. 122, 127 Gupta, P. 468
Graetz, B. 580 Guralnick, M. J. 102, 572, 573, 574, 575, 583,
Graham, S. 403 598
Gramsci, A. 88–9 Gurman, A. S. 31
Grant, G. 502 Guthrie, I. 102, 105, 107, 108, 110, 149, 317,
Gray, J. T. 216 318, 322, 460
Gray, P. 121 Guttman, L. M. 252
Greek, A. 227, 230
Green, B. L. 49, 50 Haas, E. 299
Green, E. H. 15 Hacker, P. M. S. 387
Green, F. L. 384 Hackney, R. 323
Green, J. M. 193, 195, 199 Hadley, P. A. 598, 599
Green, M. 535 Hagan, R. 129, 535
Greenbaum, C. W. 468 Hagberg, B. 578
Greenberg, M. S. 465 Hagekull, B. 109, 196, 197, 333
Greenberg, M. T. 183, 186, 190, 191, 192, 196, Hagestadt, C. 382
197, 212 Haight, L. W. 419, 430
Greenberger, E. 169, 170 Haith, M. 538
Greener, S. 458 Hala, S. 375, 382
Greenfield, P. M. 73 Halberstadt, A. G. 308, 309, 313, 315, 316
Greenslade, K. E. 212 Hall, G. S. 3, 4, 7, 14
Greenspan, S. I. 334 Hallinan, M. T. 289
Greenwood, C. R. 343, 344 Halloway, S. D. 141
Greisler, P. C. 291 Halsey, A. 91
Grenot-Scheyer, M. 577 Halteman, W. 287
Gresham, F. M. 356, 357, 403, 404, 574, 597 Halverson, C. 119, 129
Griener, A. R. 212 Hamalaimen, M. 457
Griesler, P. C. 168, 365–6 Hambrook, M. 87
Griffin, J. E. 122 Hamilton, C. E. 146, 147, 149, 242, 253, 399
Griffin-Pierson, S. 517 Hamilton, W. D. 51, 459
Gringlas, B. 165, 243 Hammond, M. A. 572, 574, 575, 598
Grisanti, G. C. 125 Handel, S. J. 520, 526
Grolnick, W. S. 312 Handley-Derry, M. 190
Gronlund, N. E. 266, 268 Hanish, L. 105, 107, 161
Groom, J. M. 102 Hanline, M. F. 577
Groos, K. 442 Hannah, M. E. 466
Gross, A. E. 465 Hansen, D. J. 344
Grossier, D. B. 381 Hanson, T. L. 244
Grossmann, K. 191, 192, 315 Hanton, J. L. 599
Grotpeter, J. 297, 398, 534, 535, 541, 542, 543 Happé, F. 377, 382, 386
648 Author Index
Hare, B. 53 Helleday, J. 126

Hargis, K. 467 Helmstetter, E. 573
Harkness, S. 14, 26, 62, 63, 65, 67–8, 72, 74 Helwig, C. 456, 479, 480, 483, 486, 487
Harlow, H. F. 12, 156 Hembree, S. E. 290, 295, 339, 400
Harmon, R. J. 186 Heming, G. 166
Harold, G. T. 250 Hemphill, S. 95, 96, 97n
Harper, L. 147 Henderson, C. 164
Harré, R. 534 Henderson, H. A. 264, 336
Harris, J. D. 461 Henderson, S. 226, 229, 233
Harris, J. R. 39, 55, 96, 156, 157, 158, 159, 163, Henderson, V. K. 250
239, 255, 265 Hendrick, H. 79, 87
Harris, K. M. 245 Hendricks, C. 86
Harris, M. J. 35, 55 Hendricks, J. 86
Harris, M. L. 213, 214 Henington, C. 542
Harris, P. 6, 53, 313, 314, 316, 377, 378, 387, Henke, R. R. 146
432 Hennighausen, K. 295
Harris, T. O. 242 Herbsman, C. 319, 323
Harris-Hendriks, J. 233 Hernandez, D. J. 238, 243
Harrist, A. W. 160 Herrera, C. 317, 319
Harry, B. 571, 572 Hersen, M. 344
Hart, C. H. 96, 103, 119, 147, 158, 159, 160, Hershey, K. L. 106, 149
164, 170, 171, 179, 180, 216–17, 245, 272, Hertsgaard, L. 335
340, 358, 359, 397, 398, 463, 537, 542, Hertzig, M. E. 97, 98
570, 573, 598, 599 Herzog, E. 243, 244
Hart, D. 333 Hess, D. L. R. 314
Hart, S. 243 Hess, L. E. 294
Hartas, D. 575 Hesse, E. 189
Harter, S. 33, 365 Hestenes, L. 573
Hartshorne, H. 8 Hetherington, E. M. 15, 16, 37, 40, 55, 157,
Hartup, W. W. 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13, 15, 156, 158, 166, 167, 168, 212, 223, 226, 227, 229,
163, 205, 209, 263, 268, 269, 273, 286, 232, 233, 238, 243, 244, 248, 251, 252,
289, 290, 291, 292, 294, 295, 320, 344, 254, 297
362, 363, 368, 449, 517, 524 Hewitt, J. 32, 33, 40
Harvey, J. H. 12 Higbee, L. 599
Harvey, O. 15, 527 Higgins, D. A. 534, 540
Haselager, G. T. 272, 290, 291, 295 Hinde, R. A. 12, 44, 102, 103, 184, 206, 207,
Hastings, P. 103, 333, 336–7, 345, 463 209, 210, 216, 218, 225, 289, 292, 442,
Hatano, G. 494 443
Hatton, D. D. 582 Hines, M. 95, 117, 122, 124, 126, 127
Hauser-Cram, P. 572 Hinshaw, S. P. 211–12
Havill, V. 110, 111 Hinton, I. D. 499
Hawk, L. W. 578 Hirst, P. 84
Hawkins, J. A. 297, 299, 400–1 Hiruma, N. 316, 469
Hawkins, J. D. 394, 395, 408 Hobson, R. P. 388–9
Hawley, P. A. 55 Hocevar, D. 99
Hay, D. 149, 180, 244, 248, 251, 252, 255, 457, Hochschild, A. R. 316
462, 465, 540 Hodapp, R. M. 576, 577
Hayes, D. 287, 289 Hodge, S. 110, 111
Hazen, N. L. 360 Hodges, E. V. E. 209, 291, 294, 296, 297, 298,
Heath, S. B. 423 299
Helburn, S. 142, 146 Hodges, J. 253, 344
Author Index 649
Hof, P. R. 12 Hughes, J. N. 542

Hoffer, T. 164 Hughes, T. 549
Hofferth, S. 146, 245 Huie, K. 147
Hoffman, M. L. 462, 463 Hult, G. 147
Hoffner, C. 314 Humphrey, N. K. 47, 52
Hofman, J. E. 292 Humphreys, A. P. 440, 444, 445
Hofman, V. 333 Hunter, A. G. 252
Hofmann, V. 191, 196, 197, 199 Hunter, T. 441, 444, 446, 448
Hogan, D. 216, 431 Hurley, J. 319, 323, 361
Holden, G. W. 539 Hurtig, A. L. 125
Holgren, R. 149, 318 Huston, A. 118, 130, 424, 427, 500, 536, 541
Holland, D. 62 Huston, T. L. 12
Hollis, M. 84 Hwang, B. 577
Hollos, M. 483 Hwang, C. 147
Holloway, S. D. 141, 147 Hwang, H. J. 253
Holmes, H. A. 383 Hwang, P. 337
Holt, J. 87 Hyle, P. 227, 230
Holt, R. 293, 317, 318, 319, 361 Hyman, C. 277
Hom, H. L. 517, 524, 525 Hymel, S. 263, 265, 266, 267, 270, 271, 272,
Homann, T. 581 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 297,
Hommel, G. 581 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 366, 397, 398,
Hood, J. 190 401, 402, 408, 409
Hood, W. R. 15, 526
Hooper, F. 419, 439 Ialongo, N. S. 252
Hooven, C. 161, 316, 317 Iannotti, R. 464
Hopmeyer, A. 276 Iervolino, A. C. 40
Hops, H. 343, 344, 406 Illich, I. 87
Horn, J. M. 36 Ingoldsby, B. B. 217
Hornett, D. 594 Innes, F. K. 573, 583
Horowitz, F. D. 4, 5 Insabella, G. M. 167, 168
Horrobin, J. M. 576 Ironsmith, M. 278–9
Horvat, M. 448 Isaacs, J. 298
Horwood, L. 249, 254 Isaacson, T. 598
Howard, J. A. 529 Isen, A. M. 466
Howarth, N. 500 Isley, S. L. 245, 317
Howe, N. 231, 425 Israel, J. 591
Howes, C. 95–6, 118, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, Iverson, A. M. 273, 274
142, 143, 144, 145, 146–7, 149, 150, 289, Iverson, G. L. 274
292, 293, 358, 398, 399, 418, 419, 420, Izzo, L. 266
432
Howlin, P. 600 Jaccard, J. 147
Hoyt-Meyers, L. 244, 252 Jacklin, C. N. 118, 119, 120, 128, 129, 131,
Hoza, B. 269, 270, 340, 397, 575 440, 535, 540
Hraba, J. 502 Jackson, J. 39, 382
Hsu, H. 165 Jacobsen, C. 469
Hsu, H.-C. 147 Jacobsen, T. 191, 196, 197, 199
Hubbard, J. 160, 295, 308, 361, 543 Jacobson, J. L. 360, 527
Huberty, P. D. 448 Jacobvitz, D. 189, 190
Hudley, C. 403 Jager, B. K. 582
Huesmann, L. R. 541 Jahoda, G. 494, 495, 496, 505, 506, 507
Hughes, C. 318, 320, 381, 382, 577 Jain, J. 432
650 Author Index
James, A. 26, 78–9 Kaplan, A. 242

James, J. 95–6, 137 Kaplan, N. 196, 197
Janosz, M. 528 Kappes, M. E. 124, 127
Jansen, E. A. 291 Kappes, M. H. 124, 127
Jarvis, P. A. 358 Karbon, M. 105, 107, 161, 461
Jasiobedzka, U. 480 Karbon, R. 107
Jenkins, J. 230, 233, 383, 386, 387, 579 Karmiloff-Smith, A. 26
Jenkins, R. 142 Karraker, K. H. 129
Jenks, C. 26, 78, 87, 89 Karylowski, J. 467
Jensen, P. S. 50 Kasari, C. 576, 577, 578, 579
Jersild, A. T. 15 Katz, L. F. 161, 166, 167, 316, 317
Jiao, Z. 297, 299, 400–1 Katz, P. A. 503
Jin, S. 103, 160, 170, 180, 340 Kaufman, F. R. 126, 127
Johanson, C. 319, 323, 361 Kaukiainen, A. 535, 543
Johanson, D. 45 Kavanagh, K. 410
John, R. S. 226 Kavanaugh, R. D. 432
Johnson, A. 4 Kazdin, A. E. 534
Johnson, C. 524 Kazura, K. 142
Johnson, D. 432, 523, 524 Keane, S. P. 161, 344, 527, 528
Johnson, J. C. 278–9 Keefer, C. H. 70–1
Johnson, J. E. 419 Keiley, M. K. 141
Johnson, N. 505, 506 Keith, B. 167, 241, 248
Johnson, R. T. 523, 524 Kellam, S. 216, 252
Johnston, C. 243 Keller, M. 333
Johnston, M. K. 362, 363 Kelley, H. H. 12
Jones, A. 425, 427 Kelley, M. L. 217
Jones, D. C. 316, 319, 322, 464, 466 Kelly, M. L. 470
Jones, E. E. 4 Kelly, T. 145
Jones, M. C. 8 Kendall, P. C. 406
Jones, N. 243 Kendrick, C. 227, 229, 230, 536
Jones, S. 105, 149, 317, 318, 321 Kennedy, C. H. 572, 577
Jordan, C. 67, 69 Kenny, D. A. 254, 369, 370
Jordan, V. D. 501, 502 Kenrick, D. T. 466, 467
Joseph, S. 559 Keogh, B. K. 102
Josephs, I. E. 314 Kerkman, D. 500
Joshi, M. S. 316 Kerns, K. A. 164, 298, 518, 519
Juhnke, C. 107 Kessel, F. S. 418, 421, 422, 427, 431
Junger-Tas, D. 549 Kessen, W. 71
Junger-Tas, J. 564 Kestenbaum, R. 314, 461, 463
Juvonen, J. 572, 575 Kidwell, S. L. 189
Kiernan, K. 241
Kadesjö, B. 578 Killen, M. 331, 483, 485
Kagan, J. 6, 7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 102, 104, 332, 333, Killian, C. 96
335, 337, 342, 465 Kim, K. 54
Kagan, S. 146, 518, 520, 521 Kim, M. 96
Kagitçibasi, C. 73 Kim, S. 483, 487
Kahen, V. 166 Kim, U. 73
Kahn, M. D. 226 Kim, Y. 359, 431
Kalyanpur, M. 571, 572 Kindermann, T. 279
Kandel, D. B. 291, 297 King, G. 404
Kanphaus, R. 110, 111 Kingston, L. 108, 109
Author Index 651
Kinnish, K. 572, 574, 575, 598 Kumar, R. 244, 248

Kirkham, C. 557 Kupersmidt, J. B. 168, 276, 277, 279, 290, 291,
Kirsh, B. 119 297, 365–6, 397, 398, 409, 534
Kirsh, S. J. 161, 192 Kurdek, L. 102, 299, 365, 366
Kister, E. 141 Kusel, S. J. 398, 551, 557, 562
Kitayama, S. 6, 67, 72, 73, 74, 469 Kyriakidou, C. 53, 231, 383
Kitzmann, K. M. 239, 250
Klebanov, P. K. 168 Labovitz, G. 170
Klein, E. 419 Lacasa, P. 71–2
Klin, A. 382 Lacohée, H. 382
Klineberg, O. 505, 506, 507 Ladd, G. W. 160, 162, 164, 165, 270, 273, 294,
Knapp, P. K. 50 299, 308, 339, 340, 341, 353, 354, 358,
Knight, G. P. 518, 521, 534, 540 359, 394, 395, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401,
Kniskern, D. P. 31 402, 403, 405, 406, 408, 538, 539, 554,
Kobayashi-Winata, H. 470 555, 559, 573
Koch, H. L. 223, 265 LaFreniere, P. 118, 336, 337, 361, 362, 523, 528
Kochanoff, A. 264, 316 Lagerspetz, K. 534–5, 541–2, 543
Kochanska, G. 11, 99, 102, 106, 107, 209, 210, Laguttata, K. H. 379
215, 316, 337, 462, 463 Laible, D. 315
Kochenderfer, B. J. 299, 339, 340, 341, 397, Laird, R. D. 162, 164
400, 401, 408, 554, 555, 559 Lake, M. 167
Koeppl, G. K. 403, 404 Lalonde, C. 384
Koester, L. S. 592, 593, 594 Lamb, M. 141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 242, 245,
Kohlberg, L. 1, 5–6, 10, 119, 456, 475–7 253, 337, 536
Kohn, A. 517 Lamb, R. 534
Konner, M. J. 439 Lambert, R. 146, 525
Kontos, S. 142, 146–7, 573 Lambert, S. F. 339
Koontz, K. 580 Lambert, W. E. 505, 506, 507
Koops, W. 314 Lamberty, G. 142
Kopp, C. B. 465 Lampron, L. B. 403, 406
Korn, S. 97, 98 Lancelotta, G. X. 404
Kouba, E. 417 Lancy, D. 217, 419, 429
Kowal, A. 226 Landau, S. 266, 267, 271, 272, 274
Kramer, L. 168, 171, 226 Lang, A. R. 212
Krantz, M. 365, 367 Lang, B. 381
Krappmann, L. 158, 319, 445 Langlois, J. H. 129
Krasnor, L. R. 338, 340, 344 Lanthier, R. 224, 225, 232
Kratochwill, T. R. 344 Laplante, B. 110
Kravetz, S. 575 Lare, J. 497
Krehbiel, G. 406 Larner, M. 164
Kreimeyer, K. H. 593 Larrivee, L. S. 596
Krekewich, K. 190 Larson, M. 335
Krevans, J. 461, 463 Larson, R. 35, 224
Krile, D. 365, 366 Latour, A. 519
Kroonenberg, P. M. 190 Lau, A. 479
Krupnick, J. 316 Laupa, M. 479, 480
Krzysik, L. 142, 293, 294 Laursen, B. 4, 7, 13, 15, 205, 289, 362, 363
Ku, H. 555, 556 La Voie, J. C. 422, 423, 427, 432
Kuczynski, L. 15, 209, 210–11 Lazarus, P. J. 342
Kulakova, N. 431 Lea, S. 495
Kulsis, M. 119 Leadbeater, B. J. 383, 388
652 Author Index
Leahy, R. L. 495 Li, D. 170, 345, 455, 541

Leaper, C. 212, 214, 425 Li, Z. 345, 455, 541
Leary, M. R. 265 Libby, C. R. 517
Leckie, B. A. 543 Liben, L. S. 129, 130
Lederberg, A. R. 592, 594 Lichtenstein, P. 31
Lee, C. 593 Lieberman, A. F. 334
Lee, J. 165 Lillard, A. 417, 432
Lee, S. 431, 579 Lillie, R. 102
Lee, Y. 359, 431 Lindeman, D. P. 344
Leekam, S. R. 52, 53, 236, 383 Lindner, M. A. 517
Leffert, J. S. 575 Lindsey, E. 162, 210, 425
LeFurgy, W. 575 Lippitt, R. 13, 15
Lehoux, P. M. 534 Lipshitz, S. 575
Leibert, C. 342 Liss, M. B. 419, 424
Leiderman, P. H. 70–1 Little, J. K. 120, 130
Leinbach, M. D. 535 Liu, M. 455
Leis, P. E. 483 Livesley, W. J. 286
Leiser, D. 494, 495, 507 Lloyd, B. 421, 425, 426
Lemann, T. B. 268 Lochman, J. 277, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407
LeMare, L. 104, 271, 272, 275, 279, 331, 338, Loeb, R. 593
398 Loeber, R. 32, 33, 540
Lemerise, E. 308, 322, 342, 543 Loehlin, J. C. 36
Lengua, L. J. 251 Logan, S. 551, 559
Lenhart, L. A. 403 Lollis, S. 104, 210–11, 275, 331, 398
Lenox, K. 277 Long, N. 166, 407
Lenton, S. 233 Lord, C. 578, 579
Leonard, L. B. 595, 596, 597 Lorden, S. W. 577
Lerner, R. 247 Losel, F. 563, 564
Leslie, A. 52, 377–8, 379 Losoya, S. 149, 318
Lester, J. 169, 170 Lover, A. 318–19
Leung, K. 170, 189 Low, J. 500
Leung, M.-C. 279 Lubeck, S. 142
Levan, S. 550 Luiten, A. 313
Leve, L. D. 30, 32 Lundell, L. 455
Lever, J. 120, 121 Lundy, N. 464
Levin, H. 9, 12, 243 Luria, Z. 128
Levine, M. 496 Lynch, D. 290, 291
LeVine, R. A. 70–1 Lynch, K. 110
Levine, S. 333 Lyons, E. 505, 506, 507, 508
LeVine, S. 70–1 Lyons-Ruth, K. 189, 190
Levinger, G. 12, 205, 218 Lytton, H. 35, 128, 463
Levy, D. 494, 495, 507 Lytton, J. 212
Levy, G. D. 130
Lewin, K. 13–14, 15 Maassen, G. H. 269, 270, 271, 274
Lewis, A. 496 McAdoo, H. P. 142
Lewis, C. 53, 231, 353–4, 382, 383, 384 McAlpine, L. M. 581
Lewis, J. M. 244, 250 McCandless, B. R. 267, 270
Lewis, K. 444 McCartney, K. 35, 55, 146, 147, 241, 254
Lewis, M. 233, 242, 251, 255 McCarty, F. 146
Lewko, J. H. 209 McClaskey, C. L. 573, 583
Li, B. 103, 169–70, 455, 541 McClearn, G. E. 28, 35
Author Index 653
McClintock, C. G. 520 Maganto, C. 528

McClintock, E. 12 Magill-Evans, J. 579
McClowry, S. G. 110 Magnus, K. B. 244, 252
Maccoby, E. E. 4, 5, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, Magnuson, K. 142
48, 55, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 127, 128, Magnusson, D. 16
129, 131, 144, 157, 166, 207, 208, 209, Maguire, M. 315, 320, 432
210, 213, 243, 425, 440, 463, 535, 540 Mahapatra, M. 482–3
McConnell, S. R. 344 Maheady, L. 344
McCoy, J. 167, 226, 227, 229, 344 Mahrokhian, A. 293
McDermott, P. 358 Main, M. 184, 186, 191, 196, 197, 242, 553
McDevitt, S. C. 102, 109, 111 Malloy, M. 573
MacDonald, C. D. 367 Malloy, T. E. 365
MacDonald, K. 210, 440 Malone, M. J. 291, 294
McDougall, P. 263, 265, 275, 276, 277, 278, Manassis, K. 190
279, 341 Mandleco, B. L. 159, 171, 179
McDowell, D. 96, 160, 161, 162, 163 Manfredi, M. M. 592
McEwen, B. S. 122, 127 Mangelsdorf, S. 335
McFadyen-Ketchum, S. A. 538 Manke, B. 40, 206, 224
MacGavin, L. 293 Mantz-Simmons, L. 232
McGrath, P. J. 593 Marcoen, A. 193, 196, 197, 198, 199
McGrew, W. C. 439 Marcovitch, S. 190
McGroder, S. M. 244 Marcus, D. E. 119
McGuire, K. D. 299 Marcuse, H. 89
McGuire, L. S. 125 Margolin, G. 226
McGuire, S. 33, 37, 224, 229 Maridaki-Kassotaki, K. 53, 231, 383
MacHale, S. M. 224, 226 Markey, F. U. 15
MacKay, R. 85 Markiewicz, D. 165
McKee, L. 599 Markon, D. 541
McKee, T. R. 170 Markus, H. 6, 67, 72, 73, 74, 469
McKinley, M. 317, 318, 319, 361 Marmer, J. K. 245
McKinney, W. T. 12 Marschark, M. 592
MacKinnon, C. 226, 464 Marshall, H. R. 267, 270
McKinnon, J. 190, 341 Marshall, P. J. 190
MacKinnon, R. 464 Marshall, S. 210
MacKinnon-Lewis, C. 161 Marshall, T. R. 332–3
McKnew, D. 316 Martin, C. L. 110, 119, 120, 129, 130
McLanahan, S. 241, 243, 244, 249, 252 Martin, N. G. 36
MacLean, G. 594 Martin, P. 443, 447, 448
MacLean, M. 316 Martin, R. P. 110, 111
McLean Taylor, J. 88 Martinez, C. R., Jr 241
McLellan, J. A. 209 Martini, M. 429–30
McLoyd, V. 14, 420, 423, 427, 428, 431 Martorell, G. 519
MacMillan, D. L. 574 Maruyama, G. 523
MacMillan, V. M. 344 Marvin, R. 12, 183, 186, 189, 464
McMinimy, V. 466 Marvinney, D. 145, 335
McNeilly-Choque, M. K. 119, 170, 216–17, Masi, W. 147
245, 537, 542 Maslin, C. A. 536
MacTurk, R. H. 592 Mason, T. 323
McWilliams, L. 13 Masse, L. C. 297
Madsen, K. C. 556–7 Masten, A. 295, 341–2, 343
Madsen, M. C. 518, 520, 521 Mastropieri, M. A. 344
654 Author Index
Mastroyannopoulou, K. 233 Mills, A. 244, 248

Maszk, P. 149, 318, 322 Mills, J. 207
Mateer, F. 8 Mills, R. 208, 211, 275, 339, 462
Matheson, C. C. 69–70, 144, 147, 149, 358, Miner, J. L. 319
399, 418, 419, 420, 432 Minett, A. 593
Matheson, L. 441, 448 Minnett, A. M. 227, 232
Mathiesen, A. S. 342 Minturn, L. 65
Matthews, K. A. 529 Mintz, J. 430
Matthews, W. S. 422 Mischel, W. 9, 11, 128
Maughan, B. 247 Mistry, J. 428–9
Mauk, G. W. 590 Mistry, M. 252
Mauthner, N. 381 Mitchell, J. 119, 315
Mawhood, L. 600 Mitchell, P. 376, 379, 380, 382, 383
Maxwell, M. 591, 594, 600 Mithen, S. 45
May, M. 8 Mivtzari, E. 464
Mayes, L. C. 382 Mize, J. 162, 179–80, 209, 210, 403, 405, 425
Maziade, M. 110 Mizuta, I. 316, 469
Mead, G. H. 5, 331, 332 Mobley, L. 227, 229
Mead, M. 60, 61–2, 92 Modell, J. 4, 13, 14
Meadow-Orlans, K. 592, 593, 594 Moffitt, T. E. 31, 54
Meadows, K. 360 Molenaar, J. C. 125
Meaney, M. J. 439, 440, 447 Moller, L. 425
Mednick, B. R. 99 Money, J. 124, 125, 126, 127
Meerum Terwogt, M. 314–15, 318 Monroe, W. S. 5, 14
Meins, E. 199, 385, 386 Monsaas, J. A. 518, 523–4
Mekos, D. 147 Montague, E. C. 599
Mellor, A. 564 Montgomery, D. E. 387
Melnick, S. 211–12 Montgomery, R. 300
Melson, G. F. 165 Montimy, H. P. 407
Meltsas, M. 431 Mont-Reynaud, R. 170
Meltzoff, A. N. 579 Montvilo, R. K. 365
Mendelson, M. 232 Moody, J. C. 556–7
Mendez, J. 358 Moore, B. 460, 466
Menesini, E. 449, 560 Moore, C. 379, 384, 385, 581
Mercer, L. 265, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279 Moore, G. 13
Merette, C. 110 Moore, S. G. 268, 287
Merleau-Ponty, M. 83, 87, 92 Moore, S. W. 497
Merrell, K. W. 356, 357 Moorin, E. 420
Mettetal, G. 308, 320, 540, 541 Mora-Mechan, J. A. 564
Meyer, J. 32, 33 Moreno, J. L. 15, 265, 266, 267, 268, 271, 278,
Meyer-Bahlburg, H. F. L. 124, 125–6, 127 279
Middleton, M. 505, 506 Morenoff, J. D. 216
Midlarsky, E. 466 Morgan, M. 598
Milich, R. 266, 267, 271, 272, 274 Morison, P. 341–2, 343
Miller, A. 517, 524, 525 Morita, J. 549
Miller, C. L. 403, 405 Morland, J. K. 501, 502
Miller, J. G. 457, 469, 470, 482–3 Morris, J. H. 12
Miller, L. S. 541 Morris, J. T. 121
Miller, N. 5, 9, 212, 466 Morris, T. L. 330
Miller, P. 316, 363, 376, 419, 421, 430, 460 Morrison, D. 241
Miller, S. A. 383 Morrison, N. C. 245, 250
Author Index 655
Morrow, J. 99 333, 336–7, 338, 340, 537, 542

Mortimer, J. T. 467 Nelson, N. W. 595
Moscovici, S. 492 Nemeth, C. 505
Mosher, M. 119, 536, 537, 551, 555, 563 Neppl, T. K. 426, 427
Mosier, C. 428–9 Neuss, D. 593
Mosley, C. 319, 323 Neville, B. 162, 574
Mosley, J. E. 361 Newcomb, A. F. 268, 269, 270, 271, 274, 275,
Moss, E. 190 276, 292, 294, 517, 524
Moss, H. A. 9, 16, 128 Newcomb, M. A. F. 158
Moss, P. 146 Newcombe, N. 503
Mounts, N. S. 162 Newell, L. D. 96, 570
Mowrer, O. H. 9 Newell, W. 142, 293, 294
Mrazek, D. 30, 50 Newman, M. 233
Much, N. 481 Newson, E. 565
Mullen, M. 342 Newson, J. 565
Mulvey, E. P. 297 Newton, P. 386
Mulvihill, B. A. 105 Ng, S. 494
Mundy, P. 578, 579 Nias, D. K. B. 459
Munholland, K. A. 184 NICHD Early Childcare Research Network 142,
Munn, P. 129, 225, 226, 464 145, 146, 147, 242, 253
Murata, K. 525 Nichols, R. C. 36
Murphy, B. 102, 107, 108, 149, 317, 318, 320, Nicholson, J. M. 249, 254
322, 362, 363, 463 Nigg, J. T. 211–12
Murphy, D. A. 212 Nimetz, S. 147
Murray, A. D. 426, 427 Nisbett, R. E. 67, 72, 73, 74
Murray, C. 247, 249, 252 Nisbett, R. M. 480
Murray, K. 99, 106, 107 Nixon, C. L. 384
Murray, L. 243 Noel, J. M. 55, 443, 444
Muzi, M. J. 238, 246 Noll, R. B. 273, 580
Mynard, H. 559 Noller, P. 208
Northcott, W. 591
Nachmias, M. 335 Northern, J. L. 590, 592
Nadler, A. 465 Northway, M. L. 268
Nagai, A. 247 Nowicki, S. 529
Nagle, R. J. 403, 404 Nowlis, V. 9
Naito, M. 53, 383 Nucci, L. P. 481, 483, 484, 485, 486
Nash, A. 180, 252, 253, 255 Nucci, M. S. 481
National Center for Children in Poverty 141 Nuckolls, C. 233
National Center for Health Statistics 49 Nunner-Winkler, G. 315
Neale, J. 342 Nuttin, J. M. 520
Neale, M. 28, 32, 33, 459
Neckerman, H. J. 276, 277, 513, 535 Oberklaid, F. 99, 103, 106, 110, 111, 333
Neeman, J. 295 O’Brien, M. 118, 541, 596
Neff, K. D. 483 Ochoa, S. H. 575
Neiderhiser, J. M. 33, 36, 157, 226, 229 O’Connor, R. D. 343
Neill, S. R. StJ. 445 O’Connor, T. 230, 233, 239, 243, 244, 248,
Nelson, B. 110, 111 251, 254
Nelson, C. 421 Oden, S. 404
Nelson, D. 103, 160, 170, 180, 216–17, 245, Odom, S. L. 579
340, 523, 537, 541 Office of National Statistics 238
Nelson, L. J. 101, 103, 104, 119, 160, 170, 180, Ogawa, J. R. 362, 363
656 Author Index
Ohana, J. 492, 495, 496, 507 Parkin, L. 53, 383, 386

Okagaki, L. 573 Parnass, J. 427
Olenick, M. 147 Parpal, M. 15, 463
Ollendick, T. H. 341, 517, 520 Parritz, R. H. 335
Olsen, J. A. 103, 272, 340 Parsons, T. 81, 84, 87
Olsen, S. F. 96, 103, 119, 159, 160, 170, 171, Parten, M. 1, 15, 265, 419
179, 216–17, 245, 340, 537, 542, 570 Passeron, J. 89–90
Olson, D. 376, 377, 388 Pastor, D. 13, 335
Olthof, T. 264, 313, 314–15, 321 Paterson, G. 100, 106
Olweus, D. 398, 404, 534, 540, 549, 550, Patriquin, M. 385
554–5, 556–7, 558, 562, 563, 564, 565 Patt, M. B. 417
Omenn, G. S. 125 Pattee, L. 270, 274, 275, 276
O’Moore, M. 557 Patterson, C. J. 168, 247, 252, 277, 291, 297,
O’Neil, R. 160, 161, 163, 165, 166, 167, 216, 365–6, 519
245, 317 Patterson, C. P. 290
O’Neill, J. 84, 87 Patterson, G. R. 15, 31, 163, 166, 168, 169, 226,
Oppenheim, D. 193, 195 228, 229, 277, 291, 536, 538
Oppenhein, D. 253 Paul, P. 594
Ortega, R. 564 Paul, R. 596
Osborne, A. 382 Pawlby, S. 244, 248
Osterling, J. 579 Pearl, R. 466
Osterman, K. 535, 543 Pearson, J. L. 252
Oswald, D. P. 341 Peck, C. A. 572, 573
Oswald, H. 319, 445 Pecore, K. 119
Overton, W. F. 119 Pederson, A. 266
Owen, M. T. 241, 250, 254 Pedlow, R. 99, 333
Ozbek, I. N. 499 Peery, J. 268–9
Ozonoff, S. 380, 381 Peisner-Feinberg, E. 146
Pekarik, E. 342
Padilla, A. M. 501, 502 Pelham, W. E. 212
Palermiti, A. 54 Pellegrini, A. D. 25–6, 46, 48, 50, 55, 359, 417,
Paley, B. 249, 250 419, 425, 432, 439, 440, 441, 443, 444,
Palfai, T. 380 445, 446, 447, 448, 449, 513
Palmer, D. J. 464, 575 Peltonen, T. 534–5, 541–2
Paltin, D. M. 212 Pence, A. 146
Panksepp, J. 50 Pennington, B. F. 380, 381
Paquette, D. 337 Penny, R. 507, 508
Paquette, J. A. 533, 534, 542, 543 Penza, S. 313
Parad, H. W. 275 Pepitone, E. A. 522
Parent, S. 190 Peplau, L. A. 12, 207
Park, K. A. 298 Pepler, D. J. 167, 232, 404, 543, 552
Park, S. 147 Pepper, S. 360
Parke, R. D. 14, 96, 128, 156, 158, 160–1, 162, Perlman, S. M. 125
163, 165, 166, 167, 192, 208, 214, 216, Perlmutter, J. C. 419, 425, 440
217, 245, 317, 440, 442–3 Perner, J. 52, 53, 231, 376, 378, 381, 382, 383,
Parker, J. G. 158, 163, 263, 267, 271, 273, 384, 386, 388
274–5, 276, 277, 278, 299, 300, 319, 332, Perry, D. G. 129, 209, 291, 294, 296, 297, 398,
339, 340, 341, 394, 398, 400, 403–4, 408, 399, 551, 557, 559, 562
409, 534 Perry, L. C. 129, 209, 291, 294, 296, 297, 398,
Parker-Cohen, N. Y. 102 551, 557, 562
Parkhurst, J. T. 276, 297 Perry, S. 147
Author Index 657
Perry, T. B. 288 Poulon, R. 105, 107

Peters, D. 384 Povinelli, D. J. 53
Peters, P. L. 534 Powell, B. 246
Peterson, C. C. 386 Powell, D. 243, 244
Peterson, D. M. 380 Powell, M. 268, 270
Peterson, D. R. 12 Power, T. G. 217, 418, 419, 422, 470
Peterson, L. 339, 466 Powlishta, K. K. 120, 121
Peterson, R. F. 528 Premack, D. 376
Peterson-Badali, M. 500 Price, J. M. 275, 276, 278, 358, 397, 398, 539
Petrakos, H. 231, 425 Prinz, R. 341, 342
Pettit, G. 145, 158, 160, 162, 164, 209, 210, Prior, M. 99, 103, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 333
218, 275, 316, 425, 538, 539, 573, 583 Prout, A. 26, 78–9
Pfeffer, C. 50 Provenzano, F. J. 128
Phillips, B. N. 365 Pryce, C. R. 48
Phillips, D. 141, 142, 146, 147 Pueschel, S. M. 576
Phillips, W. 578 Pulkiinen, L. 457
Phillipsen, L. 146, 147, 150 Putallaz, M. 160, 165, 359, 360, 362
Piaget, J. 1, 5, 6, 10, 11, 80, 81–3, 85, 119, Putnam, J. W. 576
331–2, 365, 375, 388, 422, 423, 442, 456, Putnam, S. 107, 431
475–6, 480, 483–4, 504, 505, 506, 519 Pyle, K. 241
Pianta, R. C. 147, 399, 401
Pickering, K. 216, 226, 229, 233, 243, 244, 248, Quilitch, H. R. 528
251, 254 Quinn, N. 62
Pickert, S. M. 422, 423, 425, 427 Quiroz, B. 73
Pickles, A. 32, 33, 244, 247 Qureshi, S. 252
Pierce, K. A. 398 Qvortrup, J. 78
Pieterse, M. 571, 576
Pikas, A. 565 Rabiner, D. 161, 360
Pike, A. 25, 26, 33, 37, 40 Radke-Yarrow, M. 102, 190, 337, 343, 465
Piliavin, I. M. 465 Raeff, C. 73
Pillow, B. H. 384 Rafky, D. 92
Pilowsky, T. 579 Rah, Y. 96
Pinkerton, R. 147 Rahe, D. F. 344
Pipp, S. 186 Raikes, H. 146
Pitcher, E. G. 119 Rambaud, M. F. 141
Pitkin, S. E. 577 Ramey, S. L. 147
Pliner, P. 496 Ramsey, P. G. 359
Plomin, R. 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, Ramsey, R. 166
157, 223, 224, 225, 226, 229, 232, 239, Randall, P. 550, 560
342 Rasbash, J. 233
Poeppelmeyer, D. 591, 594, 600 Rau, L. 9
Polazzi, L. 107 Raver, C. C. 383, 388
Polich, L. 591, 594, 600 Rawls, J. 475
Pollack, B. 439 Ray, G. 293
Ponjaert, I. 247 Rayner, R. A. 8
Porges, S. W. 333, 336 Reaven, N. M. 339
Porter, C. L. 103, 170, 340 Records, N. L. 596
Postman, N. 87 Reddy, V. 386
Poteat, G. M. 278–9 Redelheim, P. S. 344
Poulin, F. 166, 291, 299 Redfern, S. 196, 197, 385
Poulin, R. 105, 149, 161, 318, 322 Redler, E. 463
658 Author Index
Reef, M. J. 294 Robinson, E. J. 380

Reichert-Erickson, M. 147 Robinson, J. 459, 463
Reid, J. B. 30, 32, 226, 229 Robinson, L. 598
Reid, M. K. 147 Rodi, M. S. 577
Reinisch, J. M. 126 Roe, K. 460
Reis, H. T. 13 Roeyers, H. 579
Reiser, M. 149, 317, 318, 460 Roff, M. 268, 272
Reiser, N. 105 Rogers, S. J. 380, 381
Reiss, D. 37, 40, 157, 223, 226, 229, 232, 233 Rogoff, B. 69
Reite, M. 423 Rogoff, G. 71–2
Reiter, S. 316 Roland-Levy, C. 495
Rende, R. 30, 33, 34, 228 Rolf, J. E. 535
Renken, B. 335 Romney, D. M. 128, 212
Rennie, K. 316 Ronan, K. R. 406
Renshaw, P. 263, 265, 278, 341, 402 Rook, D. S. 168
Repetti, R. 171 Rook, K. S. 273
Resnick, S. M. 126 Roopnarine, J. 419, 439
Reznick, J. S. 102, 333, 337 Rose, A. 294, 299, 320, 321, 362–3
Rheingold, H. 5, 12, 128, 251, 255, 457, 465 Rose, N. 82
Riansari, M. 291 Rose-Krasnor, L. 190, 290, 291, 334, 365, 370
Riazanova, T. 505, 507 Rosenbaum, M. E. 291
Rice, A. S. 501, 502 Rosenberg, A. 102, 333, 337
Rice, M. L. 500, 598, 599 Rosenberg, B. 118, 224
Richard, J. 513, 527 Rosenblum, L. P. 581, 582
Richards, M. H. 224 Rosenhan, D. L. 466, 467
Richman, A. 70–1 Rosenthal, B. G. 501
Richters, J. 343, 462 Rosenthal, D. A. 170
Ridge, B. 99, 109, 158, 159 Rosenthal, I. M. 125
Ridgeway, D. 186, 193, 195, 317 Rosenthal, R. 146
Riedmann, A. 234 Rosenthal, S. 242
Rigby, K. 514, 549, 550, 551, 556, 557, 560, Roskos, K. 419, 432
561, 563, 564 Ross, H. 289, 292
Riggs, K. J. 376, 379, 380 Ross, L. 480
Riksen-Walraven, M. 185, 291 Ross, W. G. 341
Riley, D. 164 Roth, K. 464
Rim, Y. 505 Rothbart, M. K. 7, 11, 16, 98, 99, 100, 106, 108,
Rimé, B. 316 149, 158, 161, 332
Rinaldi, C. 231, 425 Rothberg, S. 535, 543
Rinaldi, J. 579 Rothgerber, H. 581
Ris, M. D. 580 Rousseau, D. R. 190
Ritchey, W. 274 Rowden, L. 271, 272, 398
Ritchie, S. 143, 149 Rowe, D. 31, 39, 157, 238, 239, 342
Ritzen, E. M. 126 Rubenstein, J. 145
Rizzo, T. A. 288 Rubin, J. Z. 128
Robbins, P. 241, 400 Rubin, K. H. 101, 103, 104, 109, 158, 163,
Roberts, B. W. 12 169–70, 190, 263, 264, 265, 267, 270, 271,
Roberts, G. C. 515, 516 272, 274–5, 276, 278, 290, 291, 300, 330,
Roberts, W. R. 317 331, 332, 333, 334, 336–8, 339, 340, 341,
Robinson, C. 103, 119, 121, 159, 160, 170, 171, 342, 343, 344, 345, 398, 418, 419, 422,
179, 216–17, 245, 340, 537, 542, 598 424, 541
Robinson, D. 551, 559 Ruble, D. N. 520
Author Index 659
Rudinger, G. 16 Sarason, I. G. 405

Rueda, R. 571, 572 Sarigiani, P. 593
Ruffman, T. 53, 231, 383, 386 Saudino, K. J. 36
Ruh, J. 295 Sawin, D. B. 128
Ruiz, R. A. 501, 502 Sawyer, R. K. 418, 420, 421, 427
Ruopp, R. 145, 147 Saywitz, K. J. 499, 500
Rushton, J. P. 459 Scarr, S. 39, 147, 157, 239
Ruskin, E. 576, 578, 579 Schachtel, D. 344
Russell, A. 162, 171, 179–80, 209, 211, 212, Schafer, M. 449
214, 215, 360 Schaffer, H. R. 12
Russell, G. 211, 213, 214 Schallenberger, M. E. 14
Russell, J. 380–1, 386, 387 Schell, K. 210
Rust, J. 120 Schiavo, R. S. 320
Rutter, M. 12, 28, 32, 37, 168, 247, 578, 600 Schieche, M. 333, 334, 335
Ryan, K. O. 125 Schiefele, U. 395
Ryan, R. M. 525, 526 Schiff, H. M. 365
Ryckman, R. M. 517 Schlundt, D. C. 360
Rydell, A.-M. 196, 197 Schmidt, C. R. 517, 520
Rynders, J. E. 576 Schmidt, L. A. 264, 333
Rys, G. S. 542 Schmidt, M. 315, 323
Schmitz, S. 30
Saarni, C. 11, 308, 312, 316, 318, 319, 320, Schmuecker, G. 243, 244, 248
322, 361, 540 Schneider, B. 170, 179, 319, 404, 405, 406, 513,
Saarnio, D. A. 578 516–17, 518, 527, 528, 529, 542
Sachs, J. 421 Schocken, I. 360
Sacks, S. Z. 582 Schoefs, V. 193
Sadker, D. 343 Scholte, R. 290, 295
Sadker, M. 343 Schonert-Reichl, K. 277
Saebel, J. 212, 214 Schroeter, C. 581
Sagi, A. 242, 253 Schuengel, C. 190, 253
Sainato, D. M. 344 Schulkin, J. 333
St. James-Roberts, I. 253 Schulsinger, C. 99
St.-Laurent, D. 190 Schultz, L. H. 332
Saintonge, J. 190 Schulz, M. 166
St Peters, M. 500 Schum, R. 594
Salisch, M. von 264, 312, 318, 320, 323, 445, Schutz, A. 79, 87
540 Schwalter, J. 50
Salmivalli, C. 535, 543 Schwartz, D. 398–9, 543
Salovey, P. 467 Schwartz, I. S. 572, 573
Salvador, M. 227, 229 Schwartz, S. H. 469, 470
Sameroff, A. 164, 168, 538 Schwartzman, A. E. 534
Sampson, R. J. 216 Schwartzman, H. 421, 424, 428
Sanders, P. 212, 214 Schwarz, R. L. 294
Sandler, I. N. 251 Schwebel, A. I. 244
Sandoval, R. 526 Scolton, K. L. 161, 192
Sani, F. 505, 507 Scruggs, T. E. 344
Sanson, A. 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 106, Seal, J. 319, 398, 408
108, 110, 111, 333 Sears, P. S. 9
Santrock, J. W. 227, 232 Sears, R. 4, 9, 12, 243
Sapiro, C. 483, 485 Sebanc, A. M. 293, 298, 299
Sarason, B. R. 405 Sedikides, C. 279
660 Author Index
Segal, S. 248 Shulman, S. 16, 160

Seid, M. 167 Shultz, L. H. 119
Seidman, S. 421 Shure, M. B. 403
Seidner, L. 139, 420 Shute, R. 580
Seifer, R. 168 Shwalb, B. J. 525
Sell, M. A. 598 Shwalb, D. W. 525
Sells, S. B. 268, 272 Shweder, R. A. 72, 481, 482–3
Selman, R. 6, 213, 332 Siegal, M. 386
Seltzer, J. A. 246, 248 Siegler, R. S. 494, 508
Senn, M. J. E. 4 Sigman, M. 576, 578, 579
Serbin, L. A. 120, 121, 534 Signorella, M. L. 129, 130
Sesma, A. 299 Silberg, J. 32, 33
Setiono, K. 291 Silva, P. A. 54
Sevon, G. 494, 495, 507 Simmel, C. 211–12
Shackelford, T. K. 48 Simmons, R. G. 294
Shakin, D. 128 Simonoff, E. 32, 33
Shakin, M. 128 Simpkins, S. 96, 163, 165
Shalhav, S. 575 Simpson, A. E. 342, 343
Shanahan, M. J. 467 Sinclair, H. 418, 421
Shantz, C. U. 362 Sinclair, R. J. 299
Shantz, C. V. 376 Singer, D. J. 418
Shantz, D. 362 Singer, J. D. 141
Shapiro, S. 420–1, 465 Singer, J. L. 418
Shapiro, T. 50 Singleton, L. C. 270
Sharabany, R. 119, 292 Siperstein, G. N. 575
Sharp, D. 244, 248 Sippola, L. 269, 270, 294, 295, 299
Sharp, S. 550, 565 Siwers, B. 126
Sharpe, S. 381 Skaggs, N. M. 166
Shauman, K. A. 146 Skarpness, L. R. 102, 103
Shavit, R. 464 Skellenger, A. C. 582
Shaw, D. S. 168, 229, 241, 243, 244, 250 Skinner, B. F. 475
Sheldon, A. 119, 426 Skjeldal, O. 578
Shell, R. 464 Slabach, E. H. 99
Shepard, S. 102, 105, 107, 108, 110, 149, 317, Slaby, R. G. 118, 119
318, 322 Slee, P. T. 549, 550, 551, 556, 560
Sheppard, B. H. 362 Sletta, O. 278
Sheridan, S. M. 344 Slijper, F. M. E. 124, 125
Sherif, C. W. 15, 517, 526 Slomkowski, C. 34, 225, 228, 230, 232, 315,
Sherif, M. 15, 526 319, 385
Shifflett-Simpson, K. 316 Slough, N. 191, 196, 197
Shin, L. 431 Sluckin, A. 49, 445
Shiner, R. 12 Smart, D. 95, 96, 103, 106, 110, 111
Shinn, M. 4, 142, 146–7 Smees, R. 449
Shipman, K. 313, 316, 321 Smetana, J. G. 213, 479, 480, 483, 484, 485
Shirley, M. M. 8, 16 Smilansky, S. 419
Shook, G. L. 344 Smith, C. 425
Short, J. 506 Smith, D. J. 344
Shouldice, A. 185, 186, 188, 189, 196, 197 Smith, E. 149
Shu, S. 558 Smith, L. 376
Shukla, S. 577 Smith, M. 149, 230, 297, 320, 362, 557
Shulman, C. 579 Smith, P. K. 14, 48, 49, 53, 54, 96, 193, 196,
Author Index 661
197, 322, 365, 378, 385, 386, 439, 440, Stanley-Hagan, M. M. 243, 244, 248, 254
441, 443, 444, 445, 446, 447, 448, 449, Stanowicz, L. B. 517, 520
516, 527, 535, 549, 550, 556–7, 558, 559, Starkey, P. 425, 431
562, 563, 564, 565 Statistics, U.S.D.o.E.N.C.f.E. 141
Smith, R. B. 165 Staub, D. 572, 573
Smith, S. 217 Steele, H. 315
Smith, V. 193, 195, 199 Steele, M. 315
Smollar, J. 157 Stegge, H. 318
Snezhkova, I. 431 Stegner, H. 124, 127
Snidman, N. 102, 104, 332, 333, 337, 342 Steinberg, L. 15, 16, 50, 54, 55, 145, 157, 163,
Snow, M. E. 118, 129 165, 166, 208
Snyder, J. 228 Steinberg, M. 399, 401
Soberman, L. H. 410 Steinkamp, M. W. 527, 528
Sodian, B. 315, 382 Stern, M. 129
Sokol, B. 385 Sternglanz, S. H. 128
Solomon, D. 526 Stevens, L. J. 599
Solomon, J. 184, 185–6, 191, 192, 193, 195, Stevens, N. 158, 286
196, 197 Stevenson, H. W. 9, 469, 470
Solomon, R. L. 268 Stevenson, J. 31
Solomonica-Levi, D. 579 Stevenson, M. R. 246
Song, M. J. 483 Stevenson, Y. 499
Sonuga-Barke, E. J. S. 252, 253, 496 Stevenson-Hinde, J. 179, 184, 185, 186, 188,
Spangler, G. 333, 334, 335 189, 190, 196, 197, 342, 343
Sparkes, K. K. 521, 522 Stewart, J. 439, 440, 447
Sparks, R. K. 526 Stewart, M. I. 289, 362
Speer, A. L. 461 Stewart, R. 227, 229, 464
Speier, M. 82 Stewart, S. L. 103, 104, 330, 336, 338, 340, 345
Speltz, M. A. 192 Stingle, S. F. 520
Speltz, M. L. 212 Stipek, D. 49
Spencer, A. 247 Stocker, C. 34, 36, 37, 102, 167, 225, 226, 229,
Spencer, J. C. 598 232, 299
Spencer, P. 592, 593, 594 Stone, G. 82
Sperry, L. 316 Stone, T. 378
Spinrad, T. L. 315 Stoneman, Z. 167, 224, 225, 226, 227, 229, 464
Spiro, M. E. 62 Stoolmiller, M. 534
Spitzer, S. 161 Storey, K. 344
Spivack, G. 403 Stormshak, E. A. 275
Sponheim, E. 578 Stouthamer-Loeber, M. 163
Springer, T. 110 Stovall, A. 344
Sroufe, L. A. 13, 16, 149, 160, 161, 184, 289, Strain, P. S. 344, 577
295, 299, 315, 334, 335, 341, 442, 461, Strassberg, Z. 538
463 Straus, M. 539
Stabb, S. D. 403, 405 Strayer, F. F. 55, 443, 444, 536
Stack, D. M. 534 Strayer, J. 317
Stainton-Rogers, M. 78 Strayor, F. 118
Stall, M. 226 Strobine, D. M. 147
Stallard, P. 233 Strouse, D. 209
Stambak, M. 418, 421 Strube, M. J. 522
Stanhope, L. 167, 232 Sturgess, W. 230
Stanley, B. 526 Sudia, C. E. 243, 244
Stanley, C. 193, 195, 199 Suess, G. 161, 191, 192, 315
662 Author Index
Sueyoshi, L. 485 Thompson, L. A. 30, 33

Sugarman, D. B. 365 Thompson, R. A. 7, 12, 145, 242, 315
Sullivan, H. S. 15, 293, 295, 321, 528 Thomson, E. 243, 244
Sulloway, F. 224, 239, 255 Thorne, B. 15
Summers, C. 598 Thrasher, F. M. 15
Sundet, J. M. 31 Tidswell, T. 381
Suomi, S. J. 440 Tinsley, B. R. 270
Super, C. 14, 26, 62, 65, 67–8, 72, 74 Titmus, G. 289, 292
Susman, A. 213, 214 Tizard, B. 253
Sutton, J. 96, 322, 385, 449 Todd, C. M. 597, 598
Sutton-Smith, B. 118, 224, 358, 418, 449 Tolan, P. 252
Swettenham, J. 96, 322, 385, 449 Tomada, G. 513, 528, 529, 542
Swift, D. J. 542 Tomasello, M. 53, 379, 387, 389
Swinson, R. P. 190 Tomblin, J. B. 596
Switzer, G. 461 Tommasini, N. R. 110
Symons, D. 385, 444 Tonyan, H. 139, 149
Tooby, J. 44, 46, 50
Tajfel, H. 505, 506, 507 Torestad, B. 16
Takahashi, K. 494 Townsend, M. A. R. 461
Takriti, R. 503, 504 Tracz, S. M. 526
Tambs, K. 342 Travers, J. 145, 147
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. 245 Tremblay, R. E. 297
Tammeveski, P. 431 Triandis, H. C. 73, 482
Tamplin, A. 102, 103, 289, 292 Triplett, N. 4, 14, 523
Tani, F. 513, 528, 529 Trivers, R. L. 48, 51, 459
Tannen, D. 121 Trommsdorff, G. 461, 469
Tardif, C. 179 Tronick, E. Z. 15
Tasker, F. 247, 252 Troop, W. 353, 354
Tassi, F. 170, 319, 513, 516–17, 518, 527, 529 Trost, M. 266
Tate, C. S. 499 Troy, M. 341
Tattum, D. 550 Troyer, D. 461
Tattum, E. 550 Trudel, M. 536
Taylor, A. 382, 575 Tryon, A. S. 527
Teitler, J. 241, 249, 252 Tsuang, M. 36
Tercyak, K. P. 382 Tudge, J. 216, 431
Terry, R. 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271–2, 273, Tuermer, U. 432
274, 277, 397 Tulviste, P. 5
Terry, T. 142 Turiel, E. 456, 477, 478, 479, 480, 481, 483
Tesla, C. 315, 385 Turnbull, W. 386, 387
Tesser, A. 297 Turner, P. J. 190, 192
Tessier, O. 420–1, 422, 424, 425, 427, 431, 432 Turner, S. M. 330, 344
Tesson, G. 209 Turner, T. M. 277
Teti, D. M. 225 Tyler, B. 519
Thelen, E. 8, 9
Thivierge, J. 110 Udvari, S. 170
Thomas, A. 97, 98, 100, 111 Ugolini, E. 500
Thomas, C. W. 110 Uhlendorff, H. 165
Thomas, E. A. C. 420, 423, 427, 431 Underwood, B. 460, 466
Thompson, B. 542 Underwood, K. 401, 559
Thompson, D. R. 494, 508 Underwood, M. 319, 323, 361, 404, 513, 533,
Thompson, G. G. 268, 270 534, 535, 542, 543
Author Index 663
Unger, O. 139, 418, 420 Volovikova, M. 505, 507

Updegraff, R. 268 Voran, M. 141
Upshur, C. 572 Vygotsky, L. S. 5, 69, 71, 375–6, 388, 389, 422,
Urberg, K. A. 291 423, 442, 519
U.S. Department of Education 571
Usher, B. 109, 317, 463 Wachs, T. D. 38, 99
Wagner, E. 397, 398, 409, 465
Vaden, N. A. 168 Wagner, K. A. 497
Vaillancourt, T. 263, 265, 275, 276, 277, 278, Wainryb, C. 385, 483
279 Waite, L. J. 243
Valas, H. 278 Waldron, M. C. 239
Valsiner, J. 375 Walker, C. 442
Van Avermaet, E. 515, 516 Walker, D. L. 403–4
Van Brunschot, M. 360 Walker, H. M. 343, 344
Vandell, D. L. 157, 158, 227, 232, 241, 254, Wall, S. 182, 184, 185, 422, 423, 425, 427
290, 295, 339, 400 Wallander, J. L. 572, 580
Vandemeulebroecke, L. 207 Wallerstein, J. A. 244
Vandenberg, B. 334, 418, 419, 422, 424 Wallis, H. 124, 127
van den Borne, B. 517 Wallston, B. S. 465
van den Oord, E. J. 30, 33, 238, 239 Walster, E. 528
Vandenplas, C. 316 Walster, G. 528
Vandereyken, W. 230 Walter, J. L. 361, 362
van der Linden, J. L. 269, 270, 271, 274 Walters, R. H. 9
van der Vlugt, E. 68 Wang, M. C. 142
Van Eck, O. V. 314 Wang, S. J. 162
Van Hall, E. V. 247 Wang, X. 430
van IJzendoorn, M. H. 184, 185, 190, 199, 253 Wanlass, R. L. 341
Van Lieshout, C. F. M. 290, 291, 295 Warfield, M. E. 572
Vannatta, K. 273 Wargo, J. B. 277
Van Tassel, E. 267 Warren, D. 420, 423, 427, 431, 582
van Tijen, N. 68, 74 Warren-Leubecker, A. 499
Van Tuyl, S. 227, 229 Wartner, U. G. 191, 192
Van Vrecken, E. 230 Washburn, M. 212, 214
Varni, J. W. 572, 580 Washington, J. 190, 598
Varouxaki, A. 384 Washington, W. N. 142
Vaughan, G. M. 502 Wasik, B. 142
Vaughn, B. E. 55, 142, 190, 267, 268, 293, 294, Wasserman, A. 360
446 Wasson, C. 190
Vaughn, S. 404, 575 Waters, E. 55, 182, 184, 185, 254, 267, 268,
Verba, M. 519 298, 442, 462
Vereijken, C. M. J. L. 185 Watson, A. C. 384
Verhulst, F. C. 30, 33 Watson, J. 5, 8, 377
Verschueren, K. 179, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, Watson, V. 598
199 Watt, N. F. 394, 395, 408
Vespo, J. E. 251 Wayland, K. K. 403
Vinden, P. G. 383, 388 Weber, H. 316
Vitaro, F. 297, 299 Webley, P. 494, 495, 496
Vodde-Hamilton, M. 212 Webster-Stratton, C. 109
Voegler, M. E. 279 Wehner, E. 10
Volkmar, F. R. 578 Weigel, C. 110
Volling, B. L. 225, 226, 229, 320 Weil, A. M. 504, 505, 506
664 Author Index
Weinberg, R. A. 4 Wilson, H. 505, 506, 507

Weinberger, L. A. 425, 431 Wilson, J. D. 122
Weinfeld, N. 13, 184 Wilson, M. 46, 48, 246, 248, 479, 591
Weingarten, C. 87 Wilson, W. E. 343
Weinraub, M. 243 Wilson-Mitchell, J. E. 252, 253
Weintraub, S. 342 Wimbush, D. D. 217
Weisner, T. S. 26, 67, 69–70, 233, 252, 253 Wimmer, H. 52, 376
Weiss, B. 316, 539 Winebarger, A. A. 30, 32
Weist, M. D. 341 Winslow, E. B. 229, 241, 243, 244, 250
Weisz, J. R. 299, 407 Winsor, A. 142
Wellman, H. 52, 377, 378–9, 382–3, 386–7, Wiseman, J. 288
499, 507 Witcher-Alagna, S. 465
Wellman, N. E. 541 Wittgenstein, L. 387
Welsh, J. D. 109 Wo, J. 160
Welsh, M. C. 381 Wolchik, S. A. 251
Wentzel, M. 461 Wolf, A. 141
Werebe, M. J. G. 422, 425, 528 Wong, F. Y. 541
Werner, E. E. 252 Wong, M. 494
Wertleib, D. 110 Wood, C. H. 120, 130
Wertsch, J. V. 5, 69, 71 Wood, J. 88
Wessler, A. E. 274 Wood, W. 541
West, J. 146 Woodfield, A. N. 386
West, L. 206 Woodruff, G. 376
West, S. G. 251, 394, 395, 408 Woodworth, S. 215
Weston, D. R. 478, 479 Woody, E. 279, 339, 366
Whennell, S. 505 Woolley, J. D. 432
White, B. J. 15, 526 Work, W. C. 244, 252
White, K. J. 403 World Health Organization 571, 581
White, L. 234 Wosinski, M. 107
White, R. K. 13, 15 Wozniak, P. 359, 463
White, S. H. 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 14 Wright, J. C. 193, 196, 197, 275, 500, 536, 541,
Whitebook, M. 141, 142, 146, 147 543
Whitehill, M. B. 344 Wright, V. 397
Whiting, B. B. 64–5, 66, 67, 74, 118, 121, 464, Wrong, D. 84
468, 535 Wu, P. 103, 160, 170, 180, 340
Whiting, J. W. M. 9, 63, 64, 67, 464, 468, 535 Wu, S. 170
Whitney, I. 557, 562, 563, 564 Wu, X. 180, 272
Wiebe, R. P. 238, 239 Wyman, P. A. 244, 252
Wigfield, A. 395 Wynne-Edwards, V. C. 459
Wild, J. 119
Wild, M. 96 Xie, H. 279, 542
Willerman, L. 36
Williams, G. A. 297, 575 Yaggi, K. E. 229
Williams, J. E. 501, 502 Yamada, H. 485
Williams, K. 430, 551, 559 Yando, R. 243
Williams, R. 88 Yang, C. 103, 160, 170, 180, 340
Willig, R. H. 124, 127 Yarlas, A. S. 365
Willis, P. 91 Yee, M. D. 501
Wilson, A. 384 Yinon, Y. 464
Wilson, B. J. 161, 360 Yirmiya, N. 578, 579
Wilson, G. 593 Young, G. 313
Author Index 665
Youngblade, L. 105, 170, 298, 315, 320, 385 Zelazo, P. D. 376, 380, 479
Younger, A. J. 275, 338–9, 340 Zeller, M. H. 273
Youniss, J. 157, 209, 286, 315 Zeman, J. 313, 316, 319, 321, 323
Yude, C. 581 Zhang, X. 596
Zimba, R. F. 483
Zahn-Waxler, C. 109, 251, 316, 317, 457, 459, Zimmerman, R. 12
463, 464, 465, 469 Zoller, D. 315, 317
Zakriski, A. L. 367, 543 Zucker, K. J. 119
Zambarano, R. J. 539 Zuppan, B. A. 211–12
Zarbatany, L. 320, 360 Zurmohle, U. M. 581
Zbikowski, S. M. 580

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Blackwell Handbook of

Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development

This outstanding series of handbooks provides a cutting-edge overview of classic research,

The Blackwell Handbooks of Developmental Psychology will provide an invaluable overview

Blackwell Handbook of Infant Development

Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development

Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development

Blackwell Handbook of Adolescence

Peter K. Smith and Craig H. Hart

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Blackwell handbook of childhood social development / edited by Peter

Typeset in 10.5 on 12.5 pt Garamond

For further information on

List of Contributors viii

Part I: Historical Overview 1

Part II: Influences on Development: Disciplinary Views 25

Part III: Influences on Development: Causal Factors 95

8 Children’s Social Development within the Socialization Context of

Part IV: The Family Context 179

Part V: The Peer Group 263

Part VI: Social Skills and Social Cognition 353

Part VII: Play 417

Part VIII: Helping and Moral Reasoning 455

Part IX: Cooperation, Competition, Aggression, and Bullying 513

Part X: Children with Special Needs 569

Maria von Salisch

Introduction by the Editors

and environmental influences, the multiply determined nature of developmental proc-

Historical Perspectives on Contemporary

The Historical Flow

Three periods of social development research

Emergence. Interest in the phenomena of social development suffuses early accounts of

What is social development the development of? Historical determinants

Transformations in Social Development Research

Specifying developmental processes

The maturationist assumptions of researchers stemmed both from a naïve psychology of

Mediational processes in social development. In search of processes, then, social develop-

Expanded views of regulatory processes

Expanded units of social experience

Incorporating contextual variations into social processes

decades. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) germinal volume, The ecology of human development,

The Search for Method

Careful observational studies of nursery-school children in the United States, though,

White, S. H. (1992). G. Stanley Hall: From philosophy to developmental psychology. Developmen-

Influences on Development: Disciplinary

Behavioral Genetics, Shared and Nonshared

Behavioral Genetic Theory

be interested in how, generally, children develop interpersonal skills. This is a question

Behavioral Genetic Methods

Behavioral Genetic Findings in Social Development

From the extant evidence, it is difficult to draw overarching conclusions. Certainly

Shared versus Nonshared Environmental Influences

Relating Specific Aspects of the Environment to Children’s Outcomes

Univariate genetic analysis Bivariate genetic analysis

Trait A Trait A Trait B

Socialization from a Behavioral Genetic Perspective

The seeming lack of communication between developmental psychologists (especially

Evolutionary Perspectives on Social

David F. Bjorklund and Anthony D. Pellegrini