CHAPTER 10
SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
RESOURCES-AT-A-GLANCE
Detailed Outline
Learning
Objectives
Instructor’s Resources
Test Bank
MyPsychLab Connection
Chapter Introduction pp. 240-241
PowerPoint Slides
1-4
Sketchnote Video
Middle Childhood
Theories of Social and Personality
Development pp. 241-243
Psychoanalytic Perspectives
The Trait and Social-Cognitive
Perspectives
10.1
10.2
PowerPoint Slides
5-10
MC 1-8
FI 76–79
SA 91–92
ES 106
Advances in Social Cognition
pp. 246-249
The Child as Psychologist
Moral Reasoning
10.5
10.6
PowerPoint Slides
16–19
MC 17-24
FI 84–86
SA 94-96
ES 108–109
Influences Beyond Family and
10.12
PowerPoint Slides
39–49
MC 58-75
SA 104-105
ES 113
Watch
The Social World of the School–
Aged Child pp. 249-256
Relationships with Parents
10.7
PowerPoint Slides
20–38
MC 25-57
FI 87–90
SA 97-103
Watch
Sibling Rivalry, p. 249
Child and Adolescent
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
The social and personality development in children ages 6 to 12 includes changes in social relationships
and the expansion of the self-concept. Influences beyond the family and school include after-school care,
poverty, and television.
Freud believed that the challenge of the middle childhood years was to form emotional bonds with peers
and to move beyond those that were developed with parents in earlier years. Erikson claimed that
The psychological self develops in middle childhood. As a result, self-descriptions begin to include traits
such as intelligence and friendliness along with physical characteristics. The self-concept of the six– to
12-year-old contains an evaluative aspect called self-esteem. It is shaped by the degree of discrepancy a
child experiences between goals and achievements, and the degree of perceived social support from peers
and parents.
Between ages 6 and 12, children’s understanding of others’ stable, internal traits improve. Piaget claimed
that moral reasoning develops in stages which correlate with his cognitive stages.
Middle childhood is a period of increasing independence of the child from the family, yet attachment to
parents and siblings continues to be important. The biggest shift in relationships in the middle childhood
years is the increasing importance of peers, particularly close friendships. Gender segregation of peer
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After completing Chapter 10, students should be able to answer the following questions:
10.1 How did the psychoanalytic theorists characterize the middle childhood years?
10.2 What are the main ideas of the trait and social-cognitive theorists?
10.3 What are the features of the psychological self?
10.4 How does self-esteem develop?
10.5 How does children’s understanding of others change in middle childhood?
10.6 How do children in Piaget’s moral realism and moral relativism stages reason about right and
wrong?
KEY TERMS
bullying (p. 254)
self-regulation (p. 249)
conduct disorder (p. 254)
social comparisons (p. 244)
moral realism stage (p. 247)
social status (p. 254)
moral relativism stage (p. 248)
trait (p. 242)
psychological self (p. 243)
INTEGRATED CHAPTER TEACHING NOTES
THEORIES OF SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT (pp. 241-243)
Psychoanalytic Perspectives
LO 10.1 How did the psychoanalytic theorists characterize the middle childhood years?
Freud believed that the challenge of the middle years was to form emotional bonds with peers and to
move beyond those that were developed with parents in earlier years. Erikson further characterized
middle childhood as the period during which children experience the crisis of industry versus inferiority.
Children develop a sense of their own competence through the achievement of culturally defined learning
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.1, pp. 241-242)
Think back to your own elementary school experiences. Do you think you gained a sense of industry or
inferiority from them? How did they affect your subsequent development?
The Trait and Social-Cognitive Perspectives
LO 10.2 What are the main ideas of the trait and social-cognitive theorists?
The primary goal of trait theories is to find the origins of individual differences. A trait is a stable pattern
Critical Thinking Questions (Learning Objectives 10.1-10.2, pp. 241-243)
How might you use Bandura’s three-part model to create an explanation of how an event in your
childhood influenced your development in the domain and personality development? What role did your
emotional responses and personality traits play in the event?
SELF-CONCEPT (pp. 243-246)
The Psychological Self
LO 10.3 What are the features of the psychological self?
Personality Traits
Children describe their own personalities with increasing degrees of precision across the middle
childhood years. A number of these themes were illustrated in the results of an older study of self–
concepts of 9- to 18-year-olds. Children who participated were asked to give 20 answers to the question
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.3, p. 244)
Take a moment and write down your own 20 answers to the “Who am I?” question. Then compare your
answers to the examples given in the text of children’s answers. What types of descriptions did you
include?
Self-Efficacy
Albert Bandura defines self-efficacy as an individual’s belief in her capacity to cause an intended event to
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.3, p. 244)
Ask students to make a list of areas where they believe they have self-efficacy.
The Valued Self
LO 10.4 How does self-esteem develop?
A child can have an accurate view of her personality traits, and even have a solid sense of self-efficacy,
The Nature of Self-Esteem
A child’s evaluative judgments have several interesting features. Over the years of elementary school,
children’s evaluations of their own abilities become increasingly differentiated, with quite separate
judgments about skills in academics or athletics, physical appearance, peer social acceptance, friendships,
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.4, p. 245)
How might parental expectations affect self-esteem?
A number of longitudinal studies of elementary school-age children and teenagers show that global self–
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.4, p. 245)
List possible reasons for the variation in global self-esteem over time.
How Self-Esteem Develops
Susan Harter found that self-esteem is strongly influenced by mental comparisons of children’s ideal
selves and their actual experiences. Each component of self-esteem is valued differently by different
children. The degree to which a child’s self-assessment of each component affects her self-esteem is
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.4, p. 245)
How might a child compensate for the discrepancies between what the child desires and what the child
thinks he has achieved?
The overall sense of support the child feels from the important people around her, particularly parents and
peers, also influence a child’s self-esteem. To develop high self-esteem, children must first acquire the
sense that they are liked and accepted in their families, from both parents and siblings. Then they need to
be able to find friends with whom they can develop stable relationships. Since childhood friendships
begin with shared interests and activities, children need to be in an environment in which they can find
others like themselves.
The separate influences of the perceived discrepancy between the ideal and actual self and social support
are clear in the results of developmental psychologists Susan Harter’s research on self-esteem. She
The criteria by which children learn to evaluate themselves vary considerably from one society to another.
▪ In individualistic cultures, parents focus on helping children develop a sense of self-esteem that is
based in the children’s own interests and abilities.
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.4, p. 245)
Give examples of how parents in individualistic and collectivist cultures might encourage self-esteem.
From all these sources, the child fashions her ideas (her internal model) about what she should be and
what she is. Like the internal model of attachment, self-esteem is not fixed in stone. But once created,
Critical Thinking Question (Learning Objectives 10.3-10.4, pp. 243-246)
How might Bandura’s reciprocal determinism model be applied to explaining how a child could have a
good understanding of her personality and strong self-efficacy and yet still have low self-esteem?
ADVANCES IN SOCIAL COGNITION (pp. 246-249)
The Child as Psychologist
LO 10.5 How does children’s understanding of others change in middle childhood?
School-aged children look beyond appearances and search for deeper consistencies that will help them
interpret both their own and other people’s behavior. Their descriptions of others move through highly
similar changes, from the concrete to the abstract. If you ask a 6- or 7-year-old to describe others, he will
focus almost exclusively on external features, such as what the person looks like, where he lives, what he
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.5, pp. 246-247)
Give examples of behavioral comparisons and psychological constructs.
School-aged children understand family roles and relationships much better than younger children. By
age 9 or so, children who live in two-parent homes understand that their parents’ roles as parents and as
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.5, p. 247)
In teams, ask the class to discuss how their family roles and processes changed during their childhood.
Moral Reasoning
LO 10.6 How do children in Piaget’s moral realism and moral relativism stages reason about
right and wrong?
Moral reasoning is the process of making judgments about the rightness or wrongness of specific acts.
Piaget’s Moral Realism and Moral Relativism
Piaget studied moral development by observing children playing games. He noticed that younger
children seemed to have less understanding of the games’ rules. His observations led to his proposal of a
two-stage theory of moral development.
▪ At the beginning of middle childhood, children are in Piaget’s moral realism stage. They believe that
the rules of games cannot be changed because they come from authorities, such as parents,
government officials, or religious figures. They also believe that all rule violations result in
punishment.
Research supports Piaget’s claim that children over age 8 give more weight to intentions than
Feature Box Activity (Learning Objective 10.6, p. 248)
Developmental Science at Home: Encouraging Moral Reasoning
Critical thinking Question (Learning Objectives 10-5-10.6, pp. 246-249)
Children’s understanding of others’ traits and behaviors and their understanding of moral dilemmas
advances dramatically after age 8. How does each of these important domains of development support
the other?
THE SOCIAL WORLD OF THE SCHOOL-AGED CHILD (pp. 249-256)
MyPsychLab Connections
Watch: Sibling Rivalry, p. 249
Watch: Child and Adolescent Friendships: Brett Laursen, p. 251
Watch: Relational Aggression, p. 253
Watch: Measuring Popularity in Young Children, p. 256
Relationships with Parents
LO 10.7 How does self-regulation affect school–aged children’s relationships with their parents?
Middle childhood is a period of increasing independence of the child from her family. Yet, attachment to
parents continues to be important, and relationships with siblings add another dimension to the social
worlds of 6- to 12-year-olds who have them. What changes in middle childhood is the agenda of issues
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.7, p. 249)
How do you suppose parenting style influences the issues on the agenda?
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.7, p. 249)
What are some explanations for the cultural differences in the age at which parents expect children to
supervise their own behavior?
Some studies suggest that there are sex differences in parents’ expectations with respect to self-regulatory
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.7, p. 249)
Give examples of differences in parental expectations for girls and boys.
Researchers have learned that there are parenting variables that contribute to the development of self-
regulation:
Such parental behaviors are associated with the authoritative style of parenting. Longitudinal research
demonstrates that school-aged children whose parents have been consistently authoritative since their
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.7, pp. 249-250)
What are other factors that might influence the social competence of children?
Feature Box Activity (Learning Objective 10.7, p. 250)
Research Report: Only Children, Birth Order, and Children’s Development
How many possible explanations can you think of for the success of only children?
Friendships
LO 10.8 What changes occur in children’s understanding of friendships during this period?
The biggest shift in relationships in the years of middle childhood is the increasing importance of peers,
particularly close friendships. One frequent manifestation of this trend is the appearance of “best friend”
relationships. A best friend is much more than a playmate; a best friend is also a reflection of these
children’s better understanding of the characteristics that distinguish friendship from other kinds of
relationships.
Social-cognitive researcher Robert Selman found that, if you ask preschoolers and young school-aged
children how people make friends, the answer is usually that they “play together” or spend time
Evidence of the centrality of friends to social development in middle childhood also comes from studies
of children’s behavior within friendships.
▪ Children are more open and more supportive with friends—smiling, looking, laughing, and touching
one another more—than with non-friends.
▪ They talk more with friends and cooperate and help one another more than with non-friends.
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.8, pp. 250-251)
Do you still have any friends from your elementary school years? If not, why do you think those early
friendships did not survive? If you do, what do you think differentiates an early friendship that survives
from one that does not?
Gender Self-Segregation
LO 10.9 In what ways do boys and girls interact during the middle childhood years?
Possibly the most striking thing about peer group interactions in the elementary school years is how
gender-segregated they are. This pattern seems to occur in every culture in the world and is frequently
visible in children as young as three or four. In fact, gender seems to be more important than age, race, or
any other categorical variable on 6- to 12-year-olds’ selection of friends. The strength of children’s
preference for same-sex associates increases substantially across middle childhood. Moreover, gender
segregation is unrelated to sex differences in parenting, suggesting that it is a feature for 6- to 12-year-
olds’ social relationships that they construct for reasons of their own.
Discussion Launcher (Learning Objective 10.9, p. 252)
Give examples of negative stereotyping of the opposite sex in school-aged children. Do these negative
stereotypes still exist in adulthood?
Gender segregation patterns are even more pronounced when we look at friendships. Girls’ and boys’
friendships differ in intriguing ways:
▪ Boys’ friendship groups are larger and more accepting of newcomers than are girls’.
▪ Girls are more likely to play in pairs or in small, more exclusive groups.