How Do Relationships and Social Understanding Develop?
From caregiving and self-awareness to friendship, moral judgment, and the changing influence of peers.
- Level
- Introductory
- Reading load
- 9 core readings in 6 units
- Prerequisites
- No prior course in social or developmental psychology is required. The guides introduce the key terms. How Do We Develop Across the Lifespan? provides a broad framework. How Do Children Develop Language and Thought? offers useful background on learning and regulation.
- Last reviewed
- September 2026
Introduction
A child's social world grows in several directions at once. A caregiver's presence supports exploration; another person's mistaken belief becomes understandable; friendship may offer comfort even when a wider group excludes. These are related achievements and difficulties, but each concerns something different: a relationship, an understanding, or a place among others. Explaining social development requires attention to all three.
This path begins by comparing what research on children's relationships with caregivers predicts with what a structured observation can reveal. It then introduces distinctions in self-awareness and a model of how emotion regulation develops within families. A cross-cultural study examines the sequence of understanding other minds; a friendship study separates mutual relationships from group acceptance. Studies of rules and fairness ask how children judge social situations and make consequential choices. The final review considers how peers may influence one another as well as choose companions who already resemble them.
Across the path, ask what is changing: a relationship, an interpretation, an emotional response, a judgment, or an action. Distinguish an observed difference from its proposed mechanism and consider whether the measure has the same meaning across ages and settings. The readings offer several ways to investigate development without treating a child’s response, an early relationship classification, or a community comparison as a fixed verdict.
Unit 1 of 6
How do early relationships organize exploration and adaptation?
Begin with the claim that attachment matters, then examine the observations behind a central measure. A synthesis sets the scale and limits of prediction; the original study shows how behavior changes across episodes. Keep a relationship’s organization distinct from a child’s permanent characteristics.
Reading
1 of 9Attachment in the Early Life Course: Meta-Analytic Evidence for Its Role in Socioemotional Development
Groh, A. M., Fearon, R. M. P., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Roisman, G. I. (2017). Attachment in the early life course: Meta-analytic evidence for its role in socioemotional development. Child Development Perspectives, 11(1), 70–76. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12213
Major synthesis · Critical reappraisal · Moderate · Full work: 7 pages
Use the synthesis to distinguish a theory’s predictions, the strength of the observed associations, and evidence for mechanisms. Keep these distinctions available when examining the Strange Situation next.
A question to consider. If early attachment predicts later social competence, what evidence would separate a lasting early influence from the effects of continuing caregiving?
Reading
2 of 9Attachment, Exploration, and Separation: Illustrated by the Behavior of One-Year-Olds in a Strange Situation
Ainsworth, M. D. S., & Bell, S. M. (1970). Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation. Child Development, 41(1), 49–67. https://doi.org/10.2307/1127388
Landmark empirical study · Methodological contribution · Moderate · Full work: 19 pages
Connect the synthesis’s broad claims to the concrete organization of exploration, separation, and reunion. Examine how the situation makes behavior observable and what it cannot establish about a child’s future.
A question to consider. Which comparison across episodes would help distinguish exploration supported by a caregiver’s presence from a general tendency to explore?
Unit 2 of 6
How do awareness of self and emotion regulation develop?
Recognizing oneself and regulating an emotional response are different achievements. A conceptual framework distinguishes forms of self-awareness; a family model identifies several routes through which regulation may develop. Both require asking what behavior makes an inferred capacity visible and how social settings shape its expression.
Reading
3 of 9Five Levels of Self-Awareness as They Unfold Early in Life
Rochat, P. (2003). Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life. Consciousness and Cognition, 12(4), 717–731. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8100(03)00081-3
Foundational argument · Major synthesis · Moderate · Full work: 15 pages
Separate bodily awareness, self-identification, and awareness of others’ evaluations. Carry forward the attachment unit’s distinction between an observable response and the broader capacity or relationship inferred from it.
A question to consider. How would you distinguish a child’s awareness of being seen by others from recognizing a familiar image of themselves?
Reading
4 of 9The Role of the Family Context in the Development of Emotion Regulation
Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Myers, S. S., & Robinson, L. R. (2007). The role of the family context in the development of emotion regulation. Social Development, 16(2), 361–388. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007.00389.x
Foundational argument · Major synthesis · Moderate · Full work: 28 pages
Compare learning from emotional examples, caregivers’ responses, and the family’s emotional climate. Connect regulation with relationships while preserving the distinction between a model of influence and evidence establishing each pathway.
A question to consider. How could the same quiet response after frustration have different meanings depending on the child’s experience and the expectations of the setting?
Unit 3 of 6
How do children understand minds that differ from their own?
Understanding other people involves more than passing one false-belief task. This study compares several understandings and asks whether their ordering is shared across settings. Relate awareness of self and emotion to knowledge of other minds without assuming that one capacity automatically produces another.
Reading
5 of 9Scaling of Theory-of-Mind Understandings in Chinese Children
Wellman, H. M., Fang, F., Liu, D., Zhu, L., & Liu, G. (2006). Scaling of theory-of-mind understandings in Chinese children. Psychological Science, 17(12), 1075–1081. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01830.x
Landmark empirical study · Moderate · Full work: 7 pages
Examine the distinction between understanding that another person lacks knowledge and understanding that they hold a different belief. Compare the ordering of tasks across samples rather than reducing social understanding to a single age threshold.
A question to consider. What would repeated observations of the same children add to this cross-sectional comparison of task order, and what would still be needed to identify the experiences producing change?
Unit 4 of 6
What do friendships add beyond being liked?
Shift from what children understand to the relationships and groups they inhabit. Friendship, its quality, and classmates’ acceptance need different measures. The study shows why a description of someone’s group position is not a complete description of their relational life.
Reading
6 of 9Friendship and Friendship Quality in Middle Childhood: Links With Peer Group Acceptance and Feelings of Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction
Parker, J. G., & Asher, S. R. (1993). Friendship and friendship quality in middle childhood: Links with peer group acceptance and feelings of loneliness and social dissatisfaction. Developmental Psychology, 29(4), 611–621. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.29.4.611
Methodological contribution · Landmark empirical study · Moderate · Full work: 11 pages
Distinguish having a reciprocal friend, experiencing a particular friendship, and being liked by a group. Connect these measures to the earlier distinction between a child’s capacities and the relationships in which those capacities are expressed.
A question to consider. If understanding other minds is associated with peer acceptance, why would you still need separate measures of friendship quality and loneliness?
Unit 5 of 6
How do children judge rules, harm, and fairness?
Compare judgments about acts with choices that have consequences for oneself and another child. The first study asks whether rules are interchangeable; the second separates objections to receiving less from willingness to give up an advantage. Neither kind of evidence is a complete measure of moral development.
Reading
7 of 9Preschool Children’s Conceptions of Moral and Social Rules
Smetana, J. G. (1981). Preschool children’s conceptions of moral and social rules. Child Development, 52(4), 1333–1336. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129527
Landmark empirical study · Methodological contribution · Accessible · Full work: 4 pages
Examine how questions about rule absence and different settings probe the basis of a judgment. Keep these judgments separate from friendship measures and from observations of how children actually treat one another.
A question to consider. What would distinguish a child’s objection to harm from a belief that every rule must be followed because an adult made it?
Reading
8 of 9The Ontogeny of Fairness in Seven Societies
Blake, P. R., McAuliffe, K., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T. C., Barry, O., Bowie, A., Kleutsch, L., Kramer, K. L., Ross, E., Vongsachang, H., Wrangham, R., & Warneken, F. (2015). The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies. Nature, 528(7581), 258–261. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15703
Landmark empirical study · Moderate · Full work: 4 pages
Move from judging a depicted act to accepting or rejecting a distribution. Use the theory-of-mind comparison to revisit cultural scope: a common procedure makes differences visible but does not by itself explain them.
A question to consider. Why might judging an unequal allocation as wrong and rejecting that allocation produce different developmental patterns, even in the same children?
Unit 6 of 6
How do peers shape development as relationships change?
End by asking how relationships and individual change can affect one another over time. The review distinguishes selecting similar friends from changing within friendships and proposes a function for influence. Bring the earlier measures of relationships, understanding, emotions, and actions into this account without treating them as interchangeable outcomes.
Reading
9 of 9Toward Understanding the Functions of Peer Influence: A Summary and Synthesis of Recent Empirical Research
Laursen, B., & Veenstra, R. (2021). Toward understanding the functions of peer influence: A summary and synthesis of recent empirical research. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 31(4), 889–907. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12606
Major synthesis · Contemporary update · Moderate · Full work: 19 pages
Compare the review’s account of influence with the friendship study’s associations. Ask what observations would establish the timing of relationship and behavioral changes, and how beneficial and harmful effects depend on what a group values.
A question to consider. Design a follow-up to the friendship study that could distinguish selection, influence, and shared circumstances in changes in loneliness or school engagement.
Scope and omissions
The path follows relationships and social understanding from infancy through childhood, extending into adolescence where peer influence raises a different developmental question. Its main examples concern caregiving, awareness of self, emotion regulation, understanding other minds, friendship, rules, and fairness. Family processes and cultural variation recur throughout. The sequence organizes questions rather than proposing that all children pass through a single social timetable.
This is not a complete attachment course, a parenting manual, a clinical assessment guide, or an exhaustive account of morality. Identity, prejudice, intergroup relations, romantic relationships, and adult social development deserve fuller treatment elsewhere. The core includes several historically influential studies with restricted samples. Cross-cultural work widens the comparisons, but neither countries nor families are uniform units, and no selection here supplies a comprehensive contemporary review of every claim.
Synthesis
Relationships are settings in which children develop, and they change as children do. Attachment observations, tasks about minds, models of emotion regulation, and measures of friendship each approach a different part of this exchange. Judgments of rules, choices about rewards, and similarities among peers add further evidence. Together they widen the inquiry; none can represent the whole of a child's social development.
Choose a question, such as why a child becomes more comfortable with peers. Specify the relationship, capacity, feeling, or behavior to be explained. Identify a useful measure, an alternative interpretation of it, and a comparison that would help distinguish the alternatives. Then set out what you would observe over time to separate selection, influence, and continuing shared circumstances. Consider how the meaning of the observations might change across social settings.
Return to the first unit’s distinction between prediction and mechanism. Strong developmental explanations connect changes within encounters with patterns across time, while allowing children, caregivers, and peers to shape one another. They explain variation without turning an early classification into destiny or a cultural contrast into a hierarchy.
Continue with What Changes During Adolescence? to examine puberty, motivation, autonomy, identity, sexuality, and the opportunities offered by families, peers, and schools.
To place the changing role of peers within a broader account of adolescence, continue with the adolescence unit in How Do We Develop Across the Lifespan?. For a complementary account of observation, teaching, and evaluating information from others, follow How Do We Learn From Other People?.
Further reading
Optional. Not part of the core sequence.
- Hartup, W. W. (1996). The company they keep: Friendships and their developmental significance. Child Development, 67(1), 1–13. Paper. A broader conceptual account of friendship and its developmental significance, extending the distinction between having friends, who they are, and the qualities of those relationships.
- Wellman, H. M., & Liu, D. (2004). Scaling of theory-of-mind tasks. Child Development, 75(2), 523–541. Paper. Introduces the earlier task-scale approach behind the core cross-cultural comparison and offers greater methodological depth on ordering different understandings.
- Denham, S. A., Blair, K. A., DeMulder, E., Levitas, J., Sawyer, K., Auerbach–Major, S., & Queenan, P. (2003). Preschool emotional competence: Pathway to social competence? Child Development, 74(1), 238–256. Paper. Extends the emotion unit toward connections between preschool emotional competence and social functioning. Useful for examining how several emotional capacities are measured and related.
- Broesch, T., Callaghan, T., Henrich, J., Murphy, C., & Rochat, P. (2011). Cultural variations in children’s mirror self-recognition. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42(6), 1018–1029. Paper. Challenges interpreting absence of mark-directed behavior as absence of self-recognition and examines cultural variation in the task’s expression.
- Granqvist, P., Sroufe, L. A., Dozier, M., Hesse, E., Steele, M., van Ijzendoorn, M., Solomon, J., Schuengel, C., Fearon, P., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M., Steele, H., Cassidy, J., Carlson, E., Madigan, S., Jacobvitz, D., Foster, S., Behrens, K., Rifkin-Graboi, A., Gribneau, N., … Duschinsky, R. (2017). Disorganized attachment in infancy: A review of the phenomenon and its implications for clinicians and policy-makers. Attachment & Human Development, 19(6), 534–558. Paper. Clarifies the limits of research classifications and their application, including why disorganized attachment is not a diagnosis or a reliable indicator of maltreatment.
- Bridges, L. J., Denham, S. A., & Ganiban, J. M. (2004). Definitional issues in emotion regulation research. Child Development, 75(2), 340–345. Paper. Provides a focused conceptual extension on defining emotion regulation and distinguishing it from related emotional processes.