Emotional, Social, and Moral Development in Children: A Comprehensive Guide
BLOCK IV
IV.2) Emotional Development, Affective Personality, and Development: School Self-Concept, Your Better Self, and Strategies of Intervention
Preschool children often describe themselves in terms of physical attributes and activities, such as their appearance. These external characteristics are frequently used to distinguish themselves from others. As children grow, their self-concept evolves, becoming more focused on psychological and social aspects.
Around 6-8 years old, children begin to describe themselves as individuals with thoughts, desires, and feelings that differ from others. By age 8, they can distinguish between physical and psychological aspects of themselves. The “I” is now described in terms of internal and psychological attributes, building upon external and physical characteristics. Alongside this psychological development, children discover and develop the social dimension of their “self.” They identify themselves as members of specific social groups and families.
As children approach adolescence, they begin to conceptualize their “self” in terms of interpersonal feelings and the quality of those feelings.
A preschooler might be considered a companion or friend of another child simply because they share a desk at school. However, an older child understands friendship as a deeper connection, based on shared activities, learning experiences, and mutual interests.
These advancements in self-awareness are linked to the child’s growing cognitive abilities and increasingly rich and distinct social interactions. At 6-7 years old, the development of logical thinking leads to qualitative changes in a child’s self-knowledge. Perspective-taking abilities allow them to imagine how others perceive them.
Finally, the ability to reflect on one’s own thoughts and feelings, which emerges during adolescence, represents the ultimate capacity for enriching self-knowledge. This has led to a long-standing debate. Some argue that the self is a product of social comparison and therefore subject to constant change. For example, a child of average intelligence might be considered less intelligent when compared to a more intelligent peer. Conversely, the same child might perceive themselves as smarter when compared to a less intelligent peer. Others, however, argue for the utmost stability of the self. Once the self is defined and differentiated, it reaches a level of organization that undergoes only minor modifications. Despite these opposing views, it is true that the self is also a product of social comparison. However, once the self is defined, differentiated, and organized, it develops a certain resistance to change. At least, as long as the fundamental aspects of the child’s environment remain relatively stable, such as family and school, the self will not undergo substantial changes.
IV.3) Social and Moral Development: The Stages of Moral Reasoning (Stages of Moral Development), Prosocial Reasoning, Conventional Rules
IV.3.1) The Stages of Moral Development
We have already discussed the moral development of children in Freud, emphasizing the emergence of morality through the overcoming of the Oedipus complex and the resolution of narcissism. We also explored the stages of moral reasoning in Kohler. We will now focus on Piaget’s contributions to this area.
Piaget’s originality lies in linking cognitive development to moral development and distinguishing between heteronomous and autonomous morality.
- Heteronomous morality, typical of children aged 6-7 (when logical thinking begins), is characterized by two fundamental features:
- Moral egocentrism: The child clings to their own ideas as if they were absolute beliefs and assumptions, viewing their feelings as paramount.
- Moral realism: The patterns of behavior established by external authority are seen as absolute and unchanging. Children are driven by moral obedience.
- Moral autonomy emerges during the stage of concrete operations. The child develops a less rigid notion of standards. For them, justice is determined by the consent of those affected. This leads to a cooperative and flexible attitude, with the pressure of adults diminishing in favor of solidarity among peers. Children demand absolute equality of treatment for all and mutual respect among everyone. Remember our emphasis on the child’s development requiring free and full recognition of equality with truth and beauty, as Maslow calls it. Therefore, moral autonomy involves considering different viewpoints, which means that it is only developed through cooperation with others. In this context, it becomes the norm to say: “The best class is the one where dissent is a merit, and spontaneity is a virtue.”
After these two moralities, Piaget suggests that upon reaching adolescence, individuals access personal morality. This implies a specific takeover that may involve reviewing and even acting in ways that differ significantly from the social group. Adolescence is the age of great ideals. It is crucial to allow teenagers to express their own perspectives. It can be challenging to listen to teenagers’ judgments and their sometimes alarming sectarianism. Only their views are considered good.
IV.3.2) Prosocial Reasoning and Conventional Rules
Prosocial reasoning, as described by Nancy Eisenberg, refers to voluntary acts that are not motivated by personal gain for the child. These acts are intended to benefit others, such as sharing, helping, comforting, or consoling (empathic altruism), without expecting anything in return or reward. These are altruistic behaviors, characterized by philanthropy, charity, selflessness, and generosity, always involving some deprivation or renunciation for the child.
For children to develop prosocial behavior, to develop freely and fully, it is necessary to positively reinforce empathy and altruism, as we have argued. And negatively reinforce aggression, one of the hallmarks of the manipulative, lying, and ultimately aggressive behavior that leads to killing. Empathy, as developed by Rogers and before him by the Dominican Montesinos in a famous sermon, is shown by understanding and helping others in their difficulties. You see them as someone like you, but outside of yourself (empathy). Therefore, the child who enjoys freedom, critical thinking, and creativity, as taught by Rogers, recognizes and respects the other, embodying these three characteristics essential for individual development. Otherwise, they would be a self-centered, spoiled child (who does not recognize the other as an “I” like themselves) destined to join the ranks of those who engage in totalitarian practices. Normal child development also depends on altruism (in addition to empathy), as opposed to narcissism, which is closely linked to empathy. Therefore, the development of both can be related.
Auguste Comte introduced the term altruism to refer, first, to the regard for others as opposed to human selfishness. Instead of prioritizing the ego, selfishness, the self only considers the ALTER, the other, altruism. On the other hand, altruism also refers to the conscious moral principle that serves the common good of one’s neighbor as the highest end of human action. Therefore, educators can and should encourage altruistic behavior against egocentricity, which means that prosocial behavior, being empathetic and altruistic, is opposed to aggression and criticizes violent class models, as we have done in our discussion of totalitarianism. It is now proven, as we have been saying since the beginning of this course, that normal child development, free and full development, implies empathic altruism, which children discover with their peers in the classroom, along with Maslow’s truth, beauty, and justice. Instead, the immature, egocentric, narcissistic child (which we have studied in Freud and Piaget) ends up manipulating, lying, and killing, as in totalitarian regimes.
IV.4) Development and Training of Divergent Thinking and Creativity
Many definitions have been given for cognitive styles. Following Fierro, we will examine the styles most investigated in relation to performance as a product of the teaching-learning process. There are two main cognitive styles.
- Dependence/Field Independence: The dependent child is characterized by a synthetic, intuitive, and inclusive style of information processing. However, the independent child is characterized by an analytical and critical style of information processing.
- Reflectivity/Impulsivity: Reflective individuals, when faced with problems, reflect, conduct thorough and systematic comparisons between all possibilities. However, impulsive individuals act quickly, developing a hypothesis and then testing whether it is correct or not.
- Simplicity/Cognitive Complexity: This feature refers to the number and variety of categories and concepts with which children conceptualize the world. It seems that cognitive complexity is characteristic of a more mature cognitive state. Certainly, reality for the mature child is very complex because, for example, as Melanie Klein suggests, there is not just the good breast, the good mother, but both. There is also the bad mother, the less attentive mother to the child. For the same reason, there is not just manipulation of the left or right, but both. Nor is there only the totalitarianism of the extreme right, but also the kind of totalitarianism of the extreme left. They cannot, therefore, be presumed to despise but to accept with understanding the complexity of reality.
- Flexibility/Rigidity of Thought: A cognitive style that is liberal (respecting freedoms) is more desirable than a rigid, authoritarian, and dogmatic style of thinking, characteristic of totalitarianism itself, which is why it is so criticized in the classroom and by people who are very immature, very childish, and narcissistic.
In addition to this dichotomous presentation, there are other classifications of cognitive styles from other perspectives.
- From the perspective of information processing, González Pineda refers to three distinct cognitive styles: the deep, superficial, and strategic.
- Depth: Relates new information to previous experience and knowledge.
- Surface: Does not extract personal meaning from experience.
- Strategic: Combines the two above.
- From another point of view, Stenberg conceptualized cognitive style as the link between the relationship between intelligence and personality on academic performance as a result of the process of E/A. From this perspective, he describes three cognitive styles.
- Legislative Style: This individual loves to create, design, and plan ideas.
- Executive Style: This child likes to follow established rules. They prefer to use specific methods or procedures.
- Judicial Style: This child likes to evaluate, monitor, and supervise an activity, later subjecting it to criticism and prosecution.
Creativity is an ambiguous and imprecise concept. Torrance describes creativity as a skill set. He says, creative thinking is the process of receiving items that do not fit or are missing, formulating ideas or hypotheses about them, testing these hypotheses, and communicating the results. You may modify and test hypotheses. Gardner discusses creativity and problem-solving. The creative individual is a person who regularly solves problems, designs products, or defines new questions. From a purely cognitive perspective, Stenberg sees creativity as the ability to restructure problems, seeing things in a new way.
From all these definitions, one can deduce the relationship between creativity, intelligence, and personality.
From a cognitive standpoint, the creative individual tends to be original, independent, open to new experiences, flexible, intuitive, and skeptical.
From the point of view of personality, creative individuals are those who thrive in paradoxes and the reconciliation of opposites. They are achievement-oriented, emotionally mature, and emotionally and aesthetically sensitive.
Consequently, for a child to be creative, we must allow them the freedom to criticize. It is difficult to be creative if one is narcissistic and self-centered because that attitude will not allow them to see things as they are and criticize what should not be. For that, they need empathy and altruism. Thus, creativity can be both constructive, as in the cases of Newton and Einstein, and destructive, as in the case of ETA and all totalitarian terrorist groups. Therefore, we will continue to follow Rogers’ view of creativity as the culmination of freedom and criticism. These three attitudes are vital for the child in the classroom to look at everyone else, the truth, just as beautiful as Maslow recommends. Thus, our course ends as it began, reminding us of Rogers and Maslow. The purpose and principle go hand in hand. All knowledge, all writing, is acquired, is framed between alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and omega, the last letter. Our alpha was to be partners and build freely to criticize, our omega has been to discover the beauty of truth and justice. Along the way, we have become a little more empathetic and altruistic. We are almost friends, or friends of truth.
or friends of truth.