What kinds of childrearing practices foster the development of helping, sharing, and other prosocial behaviors? What roles do biology and culture play in the development of prosocial behavior? This book reviews and summarizes scholarly research that has been devoted to the development of prosocial behavior in children, and examines the various factors and influences that contribute to children's prosocial development, including the media, parents, peers, biology, culture, personal characteristics, and situational determinants. The authors argue that prosocial behavior can be learned and is...

Friendship is one of life's most essential and rewarding forms of interaction--a feature of every culture that most persons experience daily. While most research efforts on friendship have concentrated on such issues as peer acceptance and dyadic properties, there has been little exploration of friendship's role in a child's social and emotional growth. The Company They Keep provides a forum in which a group of internationally recognized scholars presents the major conceptual issues, themes, goals, methodological strategies and findings from their research on friendship. Contributors explore...

To be known and to know others are essential aspects of social interaction. Disclosing personal information and perceiving it in others are all aspects of an individual's experience. Many problems at the forefront of our times--such as divorce, AIDS, rape, and child abuse--challenge our understanding of what should and should not be told. This timely volume presents the most recent developments in the analysis of disclosure processes. It brings together issues as diverse as loneliness, moral development, family therapy, and child abuse into a substantive whole that will prove an invaluable...

This volume, featuring work by leading researchers in educational and developmental psychology, provides new perspectives on how and why children tend to thrive or fail at school. The individual chapters examine the unique roles of peers and teachers in communicating and reinforcing school-related attitudes, expectations, and definitions of self. The relation of children's school adjustment to school motivation, interpersonal functioning, and social skillfulness are also explored. The developmental and social perspectives on motivation and achievement presented in this text provide fresh...

Developmental Science provides an account of the basic principles of the new developmental synthesis, as formulated by the Carolina Consortium on Human Development. Based on a collaborative statement, individual chapters outline implications of the orientation for method and theory in traditional disciplines. The chapters address specific developmental issues, varying across time frames, methodologies, disciplines, cultures and even species. They provide an inside look at the issues that confront modern social and behavioral study, including its strengths and problems.

Friendship is one of life's most essential and rewarding forms of interaction--a feature of every culture that most persons experience daily. While most research efforts on friendship have concentrated on such issues as peer acceptance and dyadic properties, there has been little exploration of friendship's role in a child's social and emotional growth. The Company They Keep provides a forum in which a group of internationally recognized scholars presents the major conceptual issues, themes, goals, methodological strategies and findings from their research on friendship. Contributors explore...

In the past, researchers have treated the development of the emotions and the task of emotional regulation as two separate topics, the former emphasizing "normative" questions and the latter emphasizing "individual" differences. Until now, understanding the first topic has never been seen as relevant for the second. This is the area pioneered by Emotional Development. This book presents the early phases of emotional life from a developmental perspective. It argues that emotional generation hinges on the developing ability to express arousal or "tension" in accordance with one's context. It...

This book is unique in focusing on the role of conflict in psychological and social development: the hows, whens, wheres, and whys of conflict in everyday life. A major theme of Conflict in Child and Adolescent Development is how the management of conflict can enhance the psychological growth of individuals and strengthen relationships among people.

From the perspectives of a wide range of disciplines, this volume studies a variety of cognitive and affective processes in the context of children's friendships.

A group of distinguished social scientists from a wide range of academic backgrounds the opportunity to reflect on social cognitive development.