Theories of Social Development

Theories of Social Development

  • Attempt to account for important aspects of development:
    • Emotion
    • Personality
    • Attachment
    • Self
    • Peer relationships
    • Morality
    • Gender

Psychoanalytic Theories

  • Freud’s Psychosexual Theory
  • Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory

Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development

  • Freud believed that many of his patients’ emotional problems originated in their early childhood relationships.
  • “Psychosexual” because he believed that even young children have a sexual nature that motivates their behavior.
  • Freud's theory posits a series of universal developmental stages in which psychic energy becomes focused in different erogenous zones.

Freud's Personality Structure

  • Id: unconscious, instinctual drives
  • Ego: conscious, rational part of personality
  • Superego: internalized moral standards

Stages of Psychosexual Development

  • Oral (first year)
    • The primary source of satisfaction and pleasure is oral activity.
    • During this stage, the mother is established as the strongest love-object.
  • Anal (1-3 years)
    • The primary source of pleasure comes from defecation.
  • Phallic (3-6 years)
    • Characterized by the localization of pleasure in the genitalia.
  • Latency (6-12 years)
    • Characterized by the channeling of sexual energy into socially acceptable activities.
  • Genital (12+ years)
    • Sexual maturation is complete, and sexual intercourse becomes a major goal.

Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory

  • Accepted basic tenants of Freud’s theory but emphasized the role of social factors and the ego.
  • Emphasized development over the lifespan (birth to late life).

Stages of Psychosocial Development

  • Trust vs. Mistrust (first year)
    • Developing trust in other people is the crucial issue.
  • Autonomy vs. Shame and doubt (1–3½ years)
    • The challenge is to achieve a strong sense of autonomy while adjusting to increased social demands.
  • Initiative vs. Guilt (4–6 years)
    • Resolved when the child develops high standards and the initiative to meet them without being crushed by worry about not being able to measure up.
  • Industry vs. Inferiority (6–puberty)
    • The child must master cognitive and social skills, learn to work industriously, and play well with others.
  • Identity vs. Role Confusion (adolescence)
    • Adolescents must resolve the question of who they really are or live in confusion about what roles they should play as adults.
  • Intimacy vs. Isolation (Early adulthood)
    • Attempt to form affectionate relationship(s), typically romantic relationships.
  • Generativity vs. stagnation (Middle adulthood)
    • Adults attempt to keep contributing to the world through work, child-rearing, or other productive work.
  • Integrity vs. Despair (Late life)
    • Elderly need to decide whether they are satisfied with how they lived their lives.

Meta-Analytic Proportion

The graphic shows a meta-analytic proportion from youth to adulthood (30+).

  • Eating disorders
  • OCD
  • Anxiety
  • Substance Abuse
  • Personality disorders
  • Mood disorders
  • Schizophrenia

Learning Theories

  • Watson’s Behaviorism
  • Skinner’s Operant Conditioning
  • Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

John Watson’s Behaviorism

  • Strictly focused on observable behaviors (all behaviorists).
  • Development determined by a child’s environment.
    • Through (classical) conditioning.
      • Little Albert.
    • Parents solely responsible for raising children.
      • Argued for:
        • Feeding schedule
        • Distance and objectivity
  • Gradually fell out of favor.

B.F. Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

  • Development determined by a child’s environment.
    • Through (operant) conditioning.
      • Reinforcement.
      • Punishment.
    • Giving attention can be reinforcement.
      • Time-out.
    • Behavior modification.
      • E.g.: socially withdrawn child.

Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

  • Emphasizes observation and imitation as the primary mechanisms of development.
  • Albert Bandura.
    • Preschool children can acquire new behaviors through observing others.
    • Bobo Doll Experiment.
      • Preschool children initially watched a short film in which an adult model performed highly aggressive actions on an inflatable Bobo doll.
Results of the Bobo Doll Experiment
  • Can children learn through vicarious reinforcement?
  • Children watched clips of adults acting aggressively to Bobo doll.
  • The actor was either:
    • Rewarded.
    • Punished.
    • Saw no consequences.
  • Children were then left alone with the doll.
    • Counted # of aggressive behaviors reproduced.
  • Children were then given a reward to recreate as many aggressive behaviors as they saw.
    • Counted # of aggressive behaviors reproduced.

Reciprocal Determinism

  • Child's Behavior ↔ Social Environment
  • Example with violent video games:
    • Child enjoys playing violent video games.
    • Interacting with peers, child plays violent games more and more often.
    • Child's increasing skill leads to greater enjoyment of violent games and to spending more time with the group and less time with other friends.
    • Child becomes desensitized to aggression in other contexts and becomes less empathic.
    • Child becomes more aggressive with peers, leading to rejection by non-group members and further commitment to the violent-games group.
    • Child encourages peers to begin playing violent games together.
    • Child and other peer group members encourage one another to play increasingly violent games.
    • Child and other group members become desensitized to violence in games.
    • Child and other group members encourage each other to behave more aggressively in general.
Average number of initiative aggressive behaviors reproduced

The graphic shows the average number of initiative aggressive behaviors reproduced, depending on whether the model reward, model punished, model saw no consequences, no incentive, or positive incentive, split between boys and girls.

Theories of Social Cognition

  • Dodge and Dweck

Dodge’s Social Information Processing Theory

  • Focus on children’s aggressive behavior.
  • Behavior related to how people process social environment.
  • Hostile attribution bias
    • Tendency to interpret other people’s ambiguous behaviors as antagonistic.
    • Cyclical effects
      • Interpret hostility → React with aggression → Face more rejection → interpret more hostility
    • Origins?
    • How to intervene?

Dweck’s Theory of Self-Attributions and Achievement Motivations

  • Achievement motivations
    • Learning or performance goals
  • Types of attributions
    • Incremental orientation (think: growth or malleable)
    • Entity orientation (think: fixed)
    • Frequencies: 40% Incremental, 40% entity, 20% don’t fit in either category
  • Can we capitalize on this? If so, how?
  • Impact beyond academics?

Ecological Theories

  • Lorenz, Bronfenbrenner, and Evolutionary Theories

Lorenz and Imprinting

  • Ethological theory.
  • Imprinting
    • Learning in which newborns of some species attach to their adult members.
    • Experience-expectant process.
  • Bowlby’s Attachment theory.

Evolutionary Theories

  • Related to ethology.
  • Focus on natural selection and adaptation.
  • Parental investment theory
    • Parents are motivated to care for children to perpetuate their genes.

Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model

  • Microsystem: immediate environment (e.g., home, school, peer group).
  • Mesosystem: connections between microsystems (e.g., interaction between home and school).
  • Exosystem: external social settings that affect the child (e.g., parents' workplace).
  • Macrosystem: culture and political system, dominant beliefs and ideologies.
  • Chronosystem: dimension of time; changing personal and societal conditions over the life course.

Final Overview: Theories of Social Development

  • Psychoanalytic
    • Freud’s Psychosexual Theory
    • Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory
  • Learning Theories
    • Watson’s Behaviorism
    • Skinner’s Operant Conditioning
    • Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
  • Social Cognitive Theories
    • Dodge’s Social Information Processing Theory
    • Dweck’s Theory of Self-Attributions and Achievement Motivation
  • Ecological Theories
    • Lorenz and Imprinting
    • Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model