Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Social‐Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

Item

Title

Social‐Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

Author

Malti, Tina

Sette, Stefania

Dys, Sebastian P.

Research Area

Cognition and Emotions

Topic

Emotional Development

Abstract

Social‐emotional responding (SER) refers to (i) an individual's awareness and understanding of emotional experiences in the self and others, (ii) expression of emotions, and (iii) emotion regulation capacities. The normative development of these responses is considered a central component of human development. This is because SER underlies our capacities to express other‐oriented behaviors and cope with challenges of everyday life in adaptive and socially responsible ways. The goal of this essay is to identify emerging trends in this area of developmental research. We first discuss central conceptual issues in social‐emotional development and present a conceptual framework from developmental psychology to study SER. Next, we identify current shortcomings in research on SER. We focus on three central components of SER: self‐conscious emotions, other‐oriented emotions, and emotion regulation. On the basis of our analyses of the current gaps, we highlight three promising attempts to solve some of the current shortcomings in this literature: attempts to understand developmental relations among self‐conscious emotions, other‐oriented emotions, and emotion regulation capacities; attempts to identify psychological, neural, and behavioral mechanisms underlying social‐emotional responding, and; the application of this knowledge to interventions that concern children and families.

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Identifier

etrds0415

extracted text

Social-Emotional Responding: A
Perspective from Developmental
Psychology
TINA MALTI, STEFANIA SETTE, and SEBASTIAN P. DYS

Abstract
Social-emotional responding (SER) refers to (i) an individual’s awareness and
understanding of emotional experiences in the self and others, (ii) expression of
emotions, and (iii) emotion regulation capacities. The normative development of
these responses is considered a central component of human development. This
is because SER underlies our capacities to express other-oriented behaviors and
cope with challenges of everyday life in adaptive and socially responsible ways.
The goal of this essay is to identify emerging trends in this area of developmental
research. We first discuss central conceptual issues in social-emotional development
and present a conceptual framework from developmental psychology to study
SER. Next, we identify current shortcomings in research on SER. We focus on three
central components of SER: self-conscious emotions, other-oriented emotions, and
emotion regulation. On the basis of our analyses of the current gaps, we highlight
three promising attempts to solve some of the current shortcomings in this literature:
attempts to understand developmental relations among self-conscious emotions,
other-oriented emotions, and emotion regulation capacities; attempts to identify
psychological, neural, and behavioral mechanisms underlying social-emotional
responding, and; the application of this knowledge to interventions that concern
children and families.

Social-emotional responding (SER) is a core dimension of human development. It entails our emotional experiences and reactions that are
continuously triggered by interactions between our neurobiological and
behavioral systems with social experiences in everyday life. These responses
are embedded in a lifelong process of growth, maturation, and change
and shape our well-being, the quality of our communication and social
relationships, and our productivity. The goal of the current essay is to
discuss emerging trends in social-emotional development, with an emphasis
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

on the period from early childhood to late adolescence, as this time encompasses key normative developmental transitions in SER. We first discuss
conceptual issues in social-emotional development and identify three core
areas in SER: the development of self-conscious emotions, the development
of other-oriented emotional responses, and emotion regulation. We then
introduce a developmental framework to study these dimensions of SER.
Next, we discuss selected findings from the recent literature, with a focus on
children’s development of self-conscious and other-oriented emotions and
regulatory capacities in the context of social and moral conflict in everyday
life. On the basis of this review, we highlight emerging trends in this
literature and identify promising venues for application of social-emotional
development research to public policy concerns.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES
Social-emotional development is a term used in developmental psychology to
describe various processes in the emotional and social domain of human
development. Most prominently, it pertains to processes of change and maturation in experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in ways that
are appropriate for an individual’s age and development, across the lifespan
(Saarni, 1999). It is considered central to balancing self-oriented needs and
desires with other-oriented responsibilities because it involves understanding of one’s own internal affective states, understanding and appreciating
the emotional experiences of others, and coordinating and integrating one’s
own and others’ perspectives. Because of this continuous interaction between
the self and the social world, there is wide agreement that social-emotional
capacities are integral to navigating the conflicts of everyday social and moral
life, such as peer exclusion and inclusion, and meaningful contributions to
civic society.
On an intrapersonal dimension, social-emotional development also relies
on cognitive development, which promotes gathering knowledge about
others and the world. As children develop cognitive skills, such as an understanding of others’ mental states, they can update the ways in which they
process and evaluate social conflicts (Killen, Mulvey, Richardson, Jampol, &
Woodward, 2011). These evaluations then color children’s social-emotional
responses to these situations—a notion reflected in increasing coactivation
between brain areas responsible for cognitive and affective processing.
Here, we focus on three elements of social-emotional development that have
been identified as essential components of emotional responding, that is,
self-conscious emotions, other-oriented emotions, and emotion regulation,
and their development from early childhood to late adolescence (Eisenberg,
2000; Malti & Ongley, 2014).

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

3

Self-conscious emotions have been described as emotional responses to
social or moral conflict situations. They have been labeled “self-conscious”
because they are evoked by the individual’s understanding and evaluation
of the self in relation to violating a norm, such as behaving unfairly (Malti,
2016). In psychology, self-conscious emotions (e.g., guilt) have been distinguished from other-oriented emotions (e.g., righteous anger) in that the
former reflect an evaluation of one’s own deeds while the latter involve a
focus on other individuals. The most widely investigated other-oriented
emotional responses are empathy and sympathy (Eisenberg, 2000). Empathy
has been defined as an affective and cognitive response that stems from the
comprehension of another’s emotional state, where the affective response
resembles the other person’s feelings. The cognitive component involves
identifying with another person’s emotional experience (Eisenberg, Spinrad,
& Morris, 2014). Sympathy entails feelings of concern for another that stem
from the apprehension of the other’s emotional state. Unlike empathy, however, sympathy does not necessarily involve feeling the same emotion that
the other person is experiencing. As the minimum prerequisites for empathy
involve only emotional contagion and the ability to differentiate between
one’s self and other, empathy is sometimes considered “value-neutral,”
and not directly linked to moral conduct (Eisenberg et al., 2014). Feelings
of empathy and sympathy also depend on the evaluations of the context
surrounding the distress of an other. If one evaluates an other’s emotional
distress to be unreasonable given the type (e.g., morally vs issues of personal preference) and severity of the transgression, one is less likely to
experience feelings of empathy or sympathy. Emotion regulation has been
conceptualized as the “[p]rocesses used to manage and change if, when, and
how (e.g., how intensely) one experiences emotions and emotion-related
motivational and physiological states, as well as how emotions are expressed
behaviorally” (Eisenberg, Hofer, & Vaughan, 2007, p. 288). It is considered
essential for healthy development and behavioral adaptation.
We focus on SER in the context of social and moral conflict.
These contexts are typically multifaceted and occur at an intersection
among moral, social–conventional, and personal spheres. As such, these
situations help us understand how children negotiate and integrate considerations such as fairness, peer norms, and personal desires. Understanding
children’s responding to these situations is important as they are often their
most common and personally binding conflict experiences. As such, they
are central to for studying the development of children’s SER.
The development of self-conscious and other-oriented emotional responses
and emotion regulation capacities has been shown to promote prosocial,
other-oriented behavior, and impede antisocial, selfishly motivated behavior
(Arsenio, 2014; Malti & Krettenauer, 2013). Furthermore, expressions of these

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

emotions, by way of their communicative properties (e.g., facial expressions,
bodily postures, or vocalizations) can themselves serve as prosocial acts by
providing support and comfort to others.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
FROM DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
We have recently described a conceptual framework from developmental
psychology to understand the development of the three components of SER
(Malti, 2016). The framework describes the dimensions of SER and their
development. We also present a taxonomy of SER, in which the structure
and function of SER is described along two core organizational principles:
First, the principle of self- and other-orientation. This is an organizational
principle to understand whether the component of emotional responding is (more) focused on the self (e.g., self-conscious emotions), an other
(e.g., other-oriented emotions such as sympathy or prosocial behavioral
tendencies), or both (social understanding requires an understanding of
one’s own and others’ perspective) in a way that is adequate for their
age and development (Malti, 2016). Second, the principle of over- and
underregulation. This organizational principle that helps identify the extent
to which the individual is able to regulate and balance his/her own and
others’ needs in a manner that is adequate for their age and development
(Eisenberg, 2000). Central to this SER framework and taxonomy is first,
the integration of others’ and self-perspectives that transcend one’s own
standpoint and may ultimately lead to other-oriented sympathy (Malti,
2016; Malti & Ongley, 2014). Second, the taxonomy indicates that there is
a basic human need to demonstrate emotional control and flexibility by
regulating one’s own needs, which leads to optimal balance and resilience.
In addition, there is both intraindividual and interindividual variation in
these two components of SER reflecting developmental processes of growth,
decline, and transformation. Research has been conducted to understand the
emergence and development of SER. In the following, we critically discuss
this literature selectively, with a focus on identifying shortcomings and
providing suggestions for emerging trends and future directions in research.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS
One of the most prototypical self-conscious emotions is guilt (Malti, 2016).
Guilt in the moral domain has been conceptualized as a feeling of regret
over wrongdoing (Malti, Gummerum, Keller, & Buchmann, 2009). It reflects
a violation of one’s personal moral code (Malti, 2016). In contrast, neurotic
guilt, which arises in response to events beyond our control, is neither the

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

5

result of real damage nor real wrongdoing and, as such, is an irrational
emotional overreaction. The emergence and development of guilt has been
studied in developmental psychology. One main purpose of this line of
work has been to understand when guilt evolves, how it changes across
childhood and adolescence, and what are its implications for adaptive and
maladaptive social behavior. In short, research indicates that children show
precursors of guilt, such as an averted gaze, bodily tension, and emotional
distress, around 4 years of age (Kochanska, Gross, Lin, & Nichols, 2002).
A more full-fledged form of guilt (such as self-reports of guilt, followed
by reasons pertaining to fairness, justice, or care) appears at 6 years of
age (Malti, 2016), which coincides with children’s understanding that one
may feel multiple, mixed emotions simultaneously. Once children reach
7–8 years of age, they also tend to shift toward attributing negative (i.e.,
guilty) emotions to themselves as transgressors (for a review, see Arsenio,
2014). Nevertheless, interindividual differences in the anticipation of guilt
remain well into adolescence and beyond. One reason for this may be that
differences in guilt in early childhood may, in part, be due to early cognitive
constraints, while in late childhood and beyond they may increasingly
reflect interindividual differences in motivations, desires, and beliefs.
Future work that investigates this current gap in the literature may clarify
why some children report guilt, while others do not. In addition, it also
remains to be seen how guilt relates to other types of emotional responses
in the context of social and moral conflict, such as sympathy or moral
anger. While previous work has proposed the development of guilt to be
strongly motivated by sympathy (Hoffman, 2000), emerging research has
questioned this notion (Malti & Ongley, 2014). For instance, some research
has suggested that different types of emotions can compensate each other in
responding adequately to such conflicts (Ongley & Malti, 2014). This may
reflect more differentiated antecedents for self-centered and other-oriented
emotions—an idea that is worth pursuing in future work given the various
implications for how children are likely to solve such conflicts.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OTHER-ORIENTED EMOTIONS
Again, a bulk of this literature has examined empathy and sympathy, and
has focused on identifying developmental trajectories, and, more recently,
its emergence. Empathy is believed to emerge in the first year of life, as early
as 8 months of age (Davidov, Zahn-Waxler, Roth-Hanania, & Knafo, 2013).
Sympathy, which involves feelings of concern for the welfare of others,
appears to evolve in the second year of life and is seen as a product between
empathic capacities and advancements in cognitive abilities, such as perspective taking (Eisenberg et al., 2014). To at least some degree, infants as young

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

as 8 months seem to react to the distress of others with resonant negative
affect, which may be considered a precursor to empathy. Nevertheless, the
debate on the emergence of empathy and sympathy is far from resolved. For
instance, the notion that affective empathy increases with development has
been criticized based on recent longitudinal evidence indicating little to no
increase in feelings of empathic concern across early childhood (Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009). However, other longitudinal and cross-sectional
findings suggest that children increasingly anticipate feelings of concern for
others from mid-childhood to early adolescence (Malti, Eisenberg, Kim, &
Buchmann, 2013).
Noteworthy, previous researchers found differential developmental trajectories of sympathy across childhood. For example, Kienbaum (2014)
found mean level stability of observed sympathy from teachers’ reports and
increase of sympathy for self- and parent-reports in a sample of children
aged 5–7 years. These discrepancies in findings likely reflect the unique
perspective and context of observation that each informant shares with the
child. As a whole, however, these inconsistencies make it somewhat more
difficult to discern normative patterns of sympathetic responding, how they
change with age, and how they relate to other components of SER.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTION REGULATION
The ability to regulate emotions has been shown to increase from infancy
to adolescence. Specifically, infants progress rapidly from external (e.g.,
parental care) to internal (e.g., self-soothing) sources of regulation to distress
in the first year of life, and these abilities increase considerably in the first few
years of life (Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Eggum, 2010). Substantial developments
continue in early- to middle-childhood. For example, children’s ability to
inhibit or control their motor behavior improves from 3 to 6 years, especially
when children spend most of their time in the preschool/kindergarten
context, in which specific behavioral regulations are requested. Moreover,
older children are more able to adopt cognitive strategies to control their
emotions. For example, the ability to direct attention away from an attractive
toy may help children in regulating their own emotions when a peer is
playing with the same attractive toy. Such cognitive strategies may help him
or her to not respond with socially inappropriate behaviors (e.g., pushing
the peer to get the attractive toy) but rather use more constructive strategies
to handle the social situation, such as playing with another toy.
Other regulatory capacities, such as effortful control, delay of gratification,
and attentional control have also been intensely studied in the developmental literature. It has been shown that these capacities increase from early
childhood to adolescence as well (Eisenberg et al., 2010). Nevertheless, there

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

7

is also evidence for stability of effortful control from early childhood to adolescence, which has been interpreted as an indicator that effortful control is a
trait-like characteristic (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). What is less understood is if
and how the various regulatory capacities underlie children’s self-conscious
and other-oriented responses to social and moral conflict. For instance, it
remains unclear which components of effortful control are most necessary
to promote the emergence of self-conscious and other-oriented emotions
and whether certain components are more important for either type of
emotion.
EMERGING TRENDS
DEVELOPMENTAL RELATIONS BETWEEN COMPONENTS OF SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING
Because of an increasing interest in deriving overt indices of social-emotional
functioning, one emerging trend in the literature is to explore developmental
relations between central components of SER. While links between regulation and sympathy have been studied (Taylor, Eisenberg, & Spinrad, 2015),
little research has explored cross-sectional relations among self-conscious
emotions, other-oriented emotions, and emotion regulation, and even
less is known about dynamic relations between these components of SER
over time. However, it is likely that they do not develop independently,
and that the way they influence each other over time predicts adjustment
and behavioral outcomes. For instance, across development, increases in
regulation may promote sympathy, as well-regulated children are less likely
to experience self-focused overarousal and more likely to feel concern
for others after apprehending their emotional state (Eisenberg & Eggum,
2009). This, in turn, may help them to anticipate guilt feelings over own
wrongdoing. Vice versa, in conjunction with children’s advancing cognitive
skills, feelings of sympathy can increasingly exert their force by promoting
other components of morality in childhood and adolescence, for instance,
by promoting feelings of guilt (Daniel, Dys, Buchmann, & Malti, 2014).
There is also some emerging evidence that high levels of self-conscious
emotions, such as guilt, can compensate for, in part, the absence of
other-oriented emotional responses, such as sympathy, in predicting prosocial, other-oriented behaviors (Ongley & Malti, 2014). Interestingly, there
is also some first evidence that the well-known link between anger and
aggression in childhood and adolescence can be mitigated if high levels
of self-conscious or other-oriented emotions exist (Colasante, Zuffianò, &
Malti, 2015). Future research is warranted to more fully understand how one
distinct emotion can buffer the absence of another, both cross-sectionally

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and across development, and how this is related to children’s and adolescents’ capacities to regulate emotions. This may not only advance our
knowledge of similarities and differential developmental pathways in SER,
but eventually bear important implications for intervention practices that
aim at promoting prosocial behaviors in children and adolescents.
DEVELOPMENTAL MECHANISMS UNDERLYING SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING
While components of SER and their normative development have been studied, much less is known about the developmental mechanisms that underlie
SER. Recent work in developmental science has shed some light on potential
biological and psychological mechanisms underlying the formation of empathy and sympathy. In terms of eliciting other-oriented emotions, behavioral
synchrony, the temporal coordination of biological events or social behavior, has been identified as a key mechanism. Synchrony between mothers
and their infants, as well as infants and others, has been linked to children’s
empathy (Feldman, 2007) and prosociality (Cirelli, Einarson, & Trainor, 2014).
Because emotional experiences are dynamic processes, an emerging body
of research has also explored the dynamic nature of children’s emotional
responding to social conflict situations, and the potential physiological
and attentional mechanisms that may contribute to interindividual and
intraindividual differences in SER. For example, in a study examining
children’s heart rate variability before and during the presentation of moral
transgressions, we found that children who showed more heart rate deceleration, which has been linked to outward, sustained attention, reported
stronger feelings of guilt (Malti, Colasante, Zuffianò, & de Bruine, 2016).
Thus, differences in physiological responding contribute to interindividual
variability in the expression of the self-conscious emotion of guilt and
related negatively valenced emotional responses (such as sadness) following
one’s own wrongdoing (Figure 1). What still needs to be investigated is
if and how emotion regulation skills affect links between physiological
arousal and self-reported feelings of guilt or sympathy, respectively. It is
likely that emotion regulation affects the ways children respond to moral
transgressions over time, for instance, by helping them channel their arousal
into constructive emotional responses. Vice versa, dysfunctional emotion
regulation may contribute to lowering links between arousal and the experience of self-conscious emotions, for instance, by diverting the child’s focus
toward the negative consequences of a transgression for another rather than
the short-term benefits of violating a norm.
Similarly, children’s spontaneous emotional expressions may reveal the
underlying spontaneous reactions that are associated with the anticipation
of self-conscious and other-oriented emotional responses. We have recently

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

9

96
95
94

−1 SD NVMEs
Mean NVMEs

Mean HR

93

+1 SD NVMEs

92
91
90
89
88

Baseline

Vignettes

Emotions

Interval

Figure 1 HR reactivity at low (−1 SD), medium, and high (+1 SD) levels of
NVMEs. (Note: HR, heart rate; NVMEs, negatively valenced moral emotions.)
Source: Taken from Malti et al. (2016), Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

conducted a series of studies in which we observed their brief facial reactions
to moral transgression stories. We found that spontaneous reactions of fear,
perhaps in response to social sanctions (e.g., fear of consequences from peers
or authority figures) were related to children’s self-reported guilt (Dys &
Malti, in press). Despite much emphasis on guilt rooted in other-oriented
concern (Hoffman, 2000; Malti et al., 2009), these findings suggest that there
may be another qualitatively different form of guilt, rooted in concern over
social sanctions related to one’s transgression (Malti, 2016).
Lastly, another promising potential mechanism underlying the formation
of self-reported emotions of guilt is attention allocation during moral transgression stories. It may be the case, for instance, that children who do not
experience moral emotions fail to sufficiently visually process the emotional
state of the victim, impeding an affective moral response. Future research is
warranted to explore the links between attention allocation and the anticipation of self-conscious and other-oriented emotional responses, respectively.
APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE ON NORMATIVE SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING TO PRACTICE
Over the past decade, researchers have increasingly acknowledged that it
is time to apply the extensive knowledge on children’s and adolescents’
normative social-emotional development to refine the existing practices,
as well as generate new developmentally tailored educational strategies

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

aimed at promoting the healthy development of children and adolescents.
For example, a practitioner’s understanding of normative development
of sympathy can help determine if, and by how much, a child (or a
classroom) is developmentally normative, delayed, or advanced in sympathy (Malti, Chaparro, Zuffianò, & Colasante, 2016). Interestingly, many
existing evidence-based programs that aim to promote social-emotional
development in school settings include some degree of between-grade
differentiation in their curricula (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, &
Schellinger, 2011). However, the degree to which age-graded tailoring is
needed remains to be determined given mixed findings regarding their
effectiveness (Malti et al., 2016). Importantly, most programs do not adjust
their curricula for possible developmental differences in SER within grades.
This is surprising because there is much variability between children of
the same chronological age. Therefore, future interventions should explain
how normative social-emotional development is translated into specific
intervention strategies within each developmental level.
Other, related open questions concern the issue of how many (and which)
dimensions of SER should be targeted, as well as when, and how. In a
recent review, we found that evidence-based programs targeting higher
numbers of social-emotional development constructs were more effective
in mitigating conduct problems and promoting academic functioning. This
finding suggests that it may be beneficial to target various components of
SER as they may work in concert to improve children’s and adolescents’
positive outcomes. Similarly, intervention timing and duration need to
be explored further. For instance, there is some evidence to suggest that
social-emotional interventions that commence earlier in development (e.g.,
during preschool and kindergarten) were more effective in promoting
social-emotional development (Malti et al., 2016). What remains to be seen is
if and how developmentally tailored interventions in other critical periods
of social-emotional development (e.g., puberty) compare to early childhood
interventions in terms of effectiveness. In sum, future work is needed to promote the translation of social-emotional development research into practice,
enhance practitioners’ understanding of normative development, integrate
social-emotional knowledge and assessment into the eventual selection and
use of intervention strategies both between and within age groups.
CONCLUSION
In this essay, we have identified current shortcomings in social-emotional
development research with a focus on three core components of SER:
self-conscious emotional responses, other-oriented emotional responses,
and emotion regulation capacities in the context of everyday moral conflict

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

11

and social exclusion. On the basis of this analysis, we have identified promising trends and central areas for future work. We have shown that research
has been devoted to our understanding of the emergence and development
of distinct self- and other-oriented emotions (most prominently empathy/sympathy and guilt). Yet, much less is known about their conjoint and
differential developmental trajectories, and if and how the development of
one type of emotion affects the development of other emotions and related
behavioral outcomes. Moreover, we have underscored the importance
of examining specific mechanisms underlying the formation of self- and
other-oriented emotions. For instance, further research unraveling the roles
of cognitive and affective mechanisms such as attention and synchrony can
provide further direction for intervention programs aimed at optimizing
children’s and adolescents’ social-emotional responding.
Emerging evidence suggests that we humans are equipped with cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that support the development of
social-emotional responsiveness. Translational research is needed to implement knowledge on normative social-emotional development into practice,
including the use of screening and assessment tools to understand child
and adolescent social-emotional development, the refinement of existing
educational practices, and the development of new developmentally tailored
practices to promote social-emotional growth. In addition, we have argued
for the need to generate more differentiated intervention programs that
account for children’s developmental stage, in lieu of a blanket approach
to treating all children of the same age. Still, research that can inform this
differentiated approach is nascent and constitutes an emerging trend in
developmental science.
Going forward, it will be important to understand how an increasingly
complex, changing, globalized world with economic challenges, and
exposure to increasingly diverse communities and societal change at large
affect child and adolescent social-emotional development and its biological,
psychological, and behavioral underpinnings. Given the importance of
good SER for raising healthy, productive, and responsible future generations, understanding and promoting these developmental processes in the
best ways possible will be one of the most important endeavors for the
behavioral, neural, and social sciences in the next decade.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

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Psychology, 51(1), 665–697.
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distress. In J. Decety & W. Ickes (Eds.), The social neuroscience of empathy (pp. 71–83).
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Eisenberg, H., Hofer, C., & Vaughan, J. (2007). Effortful control and its socioemotional
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York, NY: Guilford Press.
Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., & Eggum, N. D. (2010). Emotion-related self-regulation
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Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., & Morris, A. (2014). Empathy-related responding in
children. In M. Killen & J. G. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (Vol.
2nd ed., pp. 184–207). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Feldman, R. (2007). Parent–infant synchrony and the construction of shared timing;
physiological precursors, developmental outcomes, and risk conditions. Journal of
Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48, 329–354.
Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Killen, M., Mulvey, L. K., Richardson, C., Jampol, N., & Woodward, A. (2011).
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Malti, T. (2016). Toward an integrated clinical-developmental model of guilt. Developmental Review, 39, 16–39. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2015.11.001.
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Malti, T., Colasante, T., Zuffianò, A., & de Bruine, M. (2016). The physiological correlates of children’s emotions in contexts of moral transgressions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 142, 372–381. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2015.09.017.
Malti, T., Eisenberg, N., Kim, H., & Buchmann, M. (2013). Developmental trajectories of sympathy, moral emotion attributions, and moral reasoning: The role of
parental support. Social Development, 22(4), 773–793.
Malti, T., Gummerum, M., Keller, M., & Buchmann, M. (2009). Children’s moral motivation, sympathy, and prosocial behavior. Child Development, 80(2), 442–460.
Malti, T., & Krettenauer, T. (2013). The relation of moral emotion attributions to prosocial and antisocial behavior: A meta-analysis. Child Development, 84(2), 397–412.
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ed., pp. 163–183). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Ongley, S. F., & Malti, T. (2014). The role of moral emotions in the development of
children’s sharing behavior. Developmental Psychology, 50(4), 1148–1159.
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(Series Eds.) & N. Eisenberg (Vol. Ed.). In Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social,
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Wiley.
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Taylor, Z. E., Eisenberg, N., & Spinrad, T. L. (2015). Respiratory sinus arrhythmia,
effortful control, and parenting as predictors of children’s sympathy across early
childhood. Developmental Psychology, 51(1), 17–25.
Vaish, A., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Sympathy through affective perspective taking and its relation to prosocial behavior in toddlers. Developmental
Psychology, 45(2), 534–543.

TINA MALTI SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Tina Malti is an associate professor of developmental psychology at the
University of Toronto. She obtained her PhD in developmental psychology
from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Free University
Berlin, and an MA and licensure in clinical child psychology from the
University of Fribourg. Her research interests are children’s and adolescents’
emotional responses to everyday social conflict, trajectories of aggressive
behavior, and the development of prosocial orientations from early childhood to adolescence. In addition, she pursues a line of research on the ways

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

in which social-emotional development research can improve practices
and policies that affect children’s behavioral health, social inclusion, and
learning. Tina Malti is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science
and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 7, Developmental Psychology). She is an associate editor of Child Development and
currently serves as the membership secretary of the International Society for
the Study of Behavioural Development.
STEFANIA SETTE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Stefania Sette is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of developmental and social psychology at Sapienza, University of Rome. She obtained a
PhD in developmental psychology at Sapienza University of Rome and is a
licensed clinical child psychologist. Her research focuses on the role of socioemotional development and the quality of the teacher–child relationship on
peer relationships and social behavior in the early years. She also has an
interest in the development and evaluation of assessment tools to measure
preschoolers’ social and emotional competencies. Currently, she is collaborating with the Social-Emotional Development and Intervention Laboratory at
the University of Toronto in a research project on children’s social-emotional
development in contexts of peer exclusion and victimization.
SEBASTIAN P. DYS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Sebastian P. Dys is a PhD student in the Developmental Sciences Program
at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the cognitive and
affective mechanisms underlying the formation of children’s social and
moral emotions. In this work, he employs a multimethod approach, using
automated emotion recognition technology, eye tracking, physiological
instruments, and interviews. His overarching goal is to provide direction
to educators, program developers, and parents interested in specific strategies and practices aimed at promoting social-emotional and behavioral
development.
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Elizabeth Bruch et al.

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

15

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Social-Emotional Responding: A
Perspective from Developmental
Psychology
TINA MALTI, STEFANIA SETTE, and SEBASTIAN P. DYS

Abstract
Social-emotional responding (SER) refers to (i) an individual’s awareness and
understanding of emotional experiences in the self and others, (ii) expression of
emotions, and (iii) emotion regulation capacities. The normative development of
these responses is considered a central component of human development. This
is because SER underlies our capacities to express other-oriented behaviors and
cope with challenges of everyday life in adaptive and socially responsible ways.
The goal of this essay is to identify emerging trends in this area of developmental
research. We first discuss central conceptual issues in social-emotional development
and present a conceptual framework from developmental psychology to study
SER. Next, we identify current shortcomings in research on SER. We focus on three
central components of SER: self-conscious emotions, other-oriented emotions, and
emotion regulation. On the basis of our analyses of the current gaps, we highlight
three promising attempts to solve some of the current shortcomings in this literature:
attempts to understand developmental relations among self-conscious emotions,
other-oriented emotions, and emotion regulation capacities; attempts to identify
psychological, neural, and behavioral mechanisms underlying social-emotional
responding, and; the application of this knowledge to interventions that concern
children and families.

Social-emotional responding (SER) is a core dimension of human development. It entails our emotional experiences and reactions that are
continuously triggered by interactions between our neurobiological and
behavioral systems with social experiences in everyday life. These responses
are embedded in a lifelong process of growth, maturation, and change
and shape our well-being, the quality of our communication and social
relationships, and our productivity. The goal of the current essay is to
discuss emerging trends in social-emotional development, with an emphasis
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

on the period from early childhood to late adolescence, as this time encompasses key normative developmental transitions in SER. We first discuss
conceptual issues in social-emotional development and identify three core
areas in SER: the development of self-conscious emotions, the development
of other-oriented emotional responses, and emotion regulation. We then
introduce a developmental framework to study these dimensions of SER.
Next, we discuss selected findings from the recent literature, with a focus on
children’s development of self-conscious and other-oriented emotions and
regulatory capacities in the context of social and moral conflict in everyday
life. On the basis of this review, we highlight emerging trends in this
literature and identify promising venues for application of social-emotional
development research to public policy concerns.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES
Social-emotional development is a term used in developmental psychology to
describe various processes in the emotional and social domain of human
development. Most prominently, it pertains to processes of change and maturation in experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in ways that
are appropriate for an individual’s age and development, across the lifespan
(Saarni, 1999). It is considered central to balancing self-oriented needs and
desires with other-oriented responsibilities because it involves understanding of one’s own internal affective states, understanding and appreciating
the emotional experiences of others, and coordinating and integrating one’s
own and others’ perspectives. Because of this continuous interaction between
the self and the social world, there is wide agreement that social-emotional
capacities are integral to navigating the conflicts of everyday social and moral
life, such as peer exclusion and inclusion, and meaningful contributions to
civic society.
On an intrapersonal dimension, social-emotional development also relies
on cognitive development, which promotes gathering knowledge about
others and the world. As children develop cognitive skills, such as an understanding of others’ mental states, they can update the ways in which they
process and evaluate social conflicts (Killen, Mulvey, Richardson, Jampol, &
Woodward, 2011). These evaluations then color children’s social-emotional
responses to these situations—a notion reflected in increasing coactivation
between brain areas responsible for cognitive and affective processing.
Here, we focus on three elements of social-emotional development that have
been identified as essential components of emotional responding, that is,
self-conscious emotions, other-oriented emotions, and emotion regulation,
and their development from early childhood to late adolescence (Eisenberg,
2000; Malti & Ongley, 2014).

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

3

Self-conscious emotions have been described as emotional responses to
social or moral conflict situations. They have been labeled “self-conscious”
because they are evoked by the individual’s understanding and evaluation
of the self in relation to violating a norm, such as behaving unfairly (Malti,
2016). In psychology, self-conscious emotions (e.g., guilt) have been distinguished from other-oriented emotions (e.g., righteous anger) in that the
former reflect an evaluation of one’s own deeds while the latter involve a
focus on other individuals. The most widely investigated other-oriented
emotional responses are empathy and sympathy (Eisenberg, 2000). Empathy
has been defined as an affective and cognitive response that stems from the
comprehension of another’s emotional state, where the affective response
resembles the other person’s feelings. The cognitive component involves
identifying with another person’s emotional experience (Eisenberg, Spinrad,
& Morris, 2014). Sympathy entails feelings of concern for another that stem
from the apprehension of the other’s emotional state. Unlike empathy, however, sympathy does not necessarily involve feeling the same emotion that
the other person is experiencing. As the minimum prerequisites for empathy
involve only emotional contagion and the ability to differentiate between
one’s self and other, empathy is sometimes considered “value-neutral,”
and not directly linked to moral conduct (Eisenberg et al., 2014). Feelings
of empathy and sympathy also depend on the evaluations of the context
surrounding the distress of an other. If one evaluates an other’s emotional
distress to be unreasonable given the type (e.g., morally vs issues of personal preference) and severity of the transgression, one is less likely to
experience feelings of empathy or sympathy. Emotion regulation has been
conceptualized as the “[p]rocesses used to manage and change if, when, and
how (e.g., how intensely) one experiences emotions and emotion-related
motivational and physiological states, as well as how emotions are expressed
behaviorally” (Eisenberg, Hofer, & Vaughan, 2007, p. 288). It is considered
essential for healthy development and behavioral adaptation.
We focus on SER in the context of social and moral conflict.
These contexts are typically multifaceted and occur at an intersection
among moral, social–conventional, and personal spheres. As such, these
situations help us understand how children negotiate and integrate considerations such as fairness, peer norms, and personal desires. Understanding
children’s responding to these situations is important as they are often their
most common and personally binding conflict experiences. As such, they
are central to for studying the development of children’s SER.
The development of self-conscious and other-oriented emotional responses
and emotion regulation capacities has been shown to promote prosocial,
other-oriented behavior, and impede antisocial, selfishly motivated behavior
(Arsenio, 2014; Malti & Krettenauer, 2013). Furthermore, expressions of these

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

emotions, by way of their communicative properties (e.g., facial expressions,
bodily postures, or vocalizations) can themselves serve as prosocial acts by
providing support and comfort to others.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
FROM DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
We have recently described a conceptual framework from developmental
psychology to understand the development of the three components of SER
(Malti, 2016). The framework describes the dimensions of SER and their
development. We also present a taxonomy of SER, in which the structure
and function of SER is described along two core organizational principles:
First, the principle of self- and other-orientation. This is an organizational
principle to understand whether the component of emotional responding is (more) focused on the self (e.g., self-conscious emotions), an other
(e.g., other-oriented emotions such as sympathy or prosocial behavioral
tendencies), or both (social understanding requires an understanding of
one’s own and others’ perspective) in a way that is adequate for their
age and development (Malti, 2016). Second, the principle of over- and
underregulation. This organizational principle that helps identify the extent
to which the individual is able to regulate and balance his/her own and
others’ needs in a manner that is adequate for their age and development
(Eisenberg, 2000). Central to this SER framework and taxonomy is first,
the integration of others’ and self-perspectives that transcend one’s own
standpoint and may ultimately lead to other-oriented sympathy (Malti,
2016; Malti & Ongley, 2014). Second, the taxonomy indicates that there is
a basic human need to demonstrate emotional control and flexibility by
regulating one’s own needs, which leads to optimal balance and resilience.
In addition, there is both intraindividual and interindividual variation in
these two components of SER reflecting developmental processes of growth,
decline, and transformation. Research has been conducted to understand the
emergence and development of SER. In the following, we critically discuss
this literature selectively, with a focus on identifying shortcomings and
providing suggestions for emerging trends and future directions in research.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS
One of the most prototypical self-conscious emotions is guilt (Malti, 2016).
Guilt in the moral domain has been conceptualized as a feeling of regret
over wrongdoing (Malti, Gummerum, Keller, & Buchmann, 2009). It reflects
a violation of one’s personal moral code (Malti, 2016). In contrast, neurotic
guilt, which arises in response to events beyond our control, is neither the

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

5

result of real damage nor real wrongdoing and, as such, is an irrational
emotional overreaction. The emergence and development of guilt has been
studied in developmental psychology. One main purpose of this line of
work has been to understand when guilt evolves, how it changes across
childhood and adolescence, and what are its implications for adaptive and
maladaptive social behavior. In short, research indicates that children show
precursors of guilt, such as an averted gaze, bodily tension, and emotional
distress, around 4 years of age (Kochanska, Gross, Lin, & Nichols, 2002).
A more full-fledged form of guilt (such as self-reports of guilt, followed
by reasons pertaining to fairness, justice, or care) appears at 6 years of
age (Malti, 2016), which coincides with children’s understanding that one
may feel multiple, mixed emotions simultaneously. Once children reach
7–8 years of age, they also tend to shift toward attributing negative (i.e.,
guilty) emotions to themselves as transgressors (for a review, see Arsenio,
2014). Nevertheless, interindividual differences in the anticipation of guilt
remain well into adolescence and beyond. One reason for this may be that
differences in guilt in early childhood may, in part, be due to early cognitive
constraints, while in late childhood and beyond they may increasingly
reflect interindividual differences in motivations, desires, and beliefs.
Future work that investigates this current gap in the literature may clarify
why some children report guilt, while others do not. In addition, it also
remains to be seen how guilt relates to other types of emotional responses
in the context of social and moral conflict, such as sympathy or moral
anger. While previous work has proposed the development of guilt to be
strongly motivated by sympathy (Hoffman, 2000), emerging research has
questioned this notion (Malti & Ongley, 2014). For instance, some research
has suggested that different types of emotions can compensate each other in
responding adequately to such conflicts (Ongley & Malti, 2014). This may
reflect more differentiated antecedents for self-centered and other-oriented
emotions—an idea that is worth pursuing in future work given the various
implications for how children are likely to solve such conflicts.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OTHER-ORIENTED EMOTIONS
Again, a bulk of this literature has examined empathy and sympathy, and
has focused on identifying developmental trajectories, and, more recently,
its emergence. Empathy is believed to emerge in the first year of life, as early
as 8 months of age (Davidov, Zahn-Waxler, Roth-Hanania, & Knafo, 2013).
Sympathy, which involves feelings of concern for the welfare of others,
appears to evolve in the second year of life and is seen as a product between
empathic capacities and advancements in cognitive abilities, such as perspective taking (Eisenberg et al., 2014). To at least some degree, infants as young

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

as 8 months seem to react to the distress of others with resonant negative
affect, which may be considered a precursor to empathy. Nevertheless, the
debate on the emergence of empathy and sympathy is far from resolved. For
instance, the notion that affective empathy increases with development has
been criticized based on recent longitudinal evidence indicating little to no
increase in feelings of empathic concern across early childhood (Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009). However, other longitudinal and cross-sectional
findings suggest that children increasingly anticipate feelings of concern for
others from mid-childhood to early adolescence (Malti, Eisenberg, Kim, &
Buchmann, 2013).
Noteworthy, previous researchers found differential developmental trajectories of sympathy across childhood. For example, Kienbaum (2014)
found mean level stability of observed sympathy from teachers’ reports and
increase of sympathy for self- and parent-reports in a sample of children
aged 5–7 years. These discrepancies in findings likely reflect the unique
perspective and context of observation that each informant shares with the
child. As a whole, however, these inconsistencies make it somewhat more
difficult to discern normative patterns of sympathetic responding, how they
change with age, and how they relate to other components of SER.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTION REGULATION
The ability to regulate emotions has been shown to increase from infancy
to adolescence. Specifically, infants progress rapidly from external (e.g.,
parental care) to internal (e.g., self-soothing) sources of regulation to distress
in the first year of life, and these abilities increase considerably in the first few
years of life (Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Eggum, 2010). Substantial developments
continue in early- to middle-childhood. For example, children’s ability to
inhibit or control their motor behavior improves from 3 to 6 years, especially
when children spend most of their time in the preschool/kindergarten
context, in which specific behavioral regulations are requested. Moreover,
older children are more able to adopt cognitive strategies to control their
emotions. For example, the ability to direct attention away from an attractive
toy may help children in regulating their own emotions when a peer is
playing with the same attractive toy. Such cognitive strategies may help him
or her to not respond with socially inappropriate behaviors (e.g., pushing
the peer to get the attractive toy) but rather use more constructive strategies
to handle the social situation, such as playing with another toy.
Other regulatory capacities, such as effortful control, delay of gratification,
and attentional control have also been intensely studied in the developmental literature. It has been shown that these capacities increase from early
childhood to adolescence as well (Eisenberg et al., 2010). Nevertheless, there

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

7

is also evidence for stability of effortful control from early childhood to adolescence, which has been interpreted as an indicator that effortful control is a
trait-like characteristic (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). What is less understood is if
and how the various regulatory capacities underlie children’s self-conscious
and other-oriented responses to social and moral conflict. For instance, it
remains unclear which components of effortful control are most necessary
to promote the emergence of self-conscious and other-oriented emotions
and whether certain components are more important for either type of
emotion.
EMERGING TRENDS
DEVELOPMENTAL RELATIONS BETWEEN COMPONENTS OF SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING
Because of an increasing interest in deriving overt indices of social-emotional
functioning, one emerging trend in the literature is to explore developmental
relations between central components of SER. While links between regulation and sympathy have been studied (Taylor, Eisenberg, & Spinrad, 2015),
little research has explored cross-sectional relations among self-conscious
emotions, other-oriented emotions, and emotion regulation, and even
less is known about dynamic relations between these components of SER
over time. However, it is likely that they do not develop independently,
and that the way they influence each other over time predicts adjustment
and behavioral outcomes. For instance, across development, increases in
regulation may promote sympathy, as well-regulated children are less likely
to experience self-focused overarousal and more likely to feel concern
for others after apprehending their emotional state (Eisenberg & Eggum,
2009). This, in turn, may help them to anticipate guilt feelings over own
wrongdoing. Vice versa, in conjunction with children’s advancing cognitive
skills, feelings of sympathy can increasingly exert their force by promoting
other components of morality in childhood and adolescence, for instance,
by promoting feelings of guilt (Daniel, Dys, Buchmann, & Malti, 2014).
There is also some emerging evidence that high levels of self-conscious
emotions, such as guilt, can compensate for, in part, the absence of
other-oriented emotional responses, such as sympathy, in predicting prosocial, other-oriented behaviors (Ongley & Malti, 2014). Interestingly, there
is also some first evidence that the well-known link between anger and
aggression in childhood and adolescence can be mitigated if high levels
of self-conscious or other-oriented emotions exist (Colasante, Zuffianò, &
Malti, 2015). Future research is warranted to more fully understand how one
distinct emotion can buffer the absence of another, both cross-sectionally

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and across development, and how this is related to children’s and adolescents’ capacities to regulate emotions. This may not only advance our
knowledge of similarities and differential developmental pathways in SER,
but eventually bear important implications for intervention practices that
aim at promoting prosocial behaviors in children and adolescents.
DEVELOPMENTAL MECHANISMS UNDERLYING SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING
While components of SER and their normative development have been studied, much less is known about the developmental mechanisms that underlie
SER. Recent work in developmental science has shed some light on potential
biological and psychological mechanisms underlying the formation of empathy and sympathy. In terms of eliciting other-oriented emotions, behavioral
synchrony, the temporal coordination of biological events or social behavior, has been identified as a key mechanism. Synchrony between mothers
and their infants, as well as infants and others, has been linked to children’s
empathy (Feldman, 2007) and prosociality (Cirelli, Einarson, & Trainor, 2014).
Because emotional experiences are dynamic processes, an emerging body
of research has also explored the dynamic nature of children’s emotional
responding to social conflict situations, and the potential physiological
and attentional mechanisms that may contribute to interindividual and
intraindividual differences in SER. For example, in a study examining
children’s heart rate variability before and during the presentation of moral
transgressions, we found that children who showed more heart rate deceleration, which has been linked to outward, sustained attention, reported
stronger feelings of guilt (Malti, Colasante, Zuffianò, & de Bruine, 2016).
Thus, differences in physiological responding contribute to interindividual
variability in the expression of the self-conscious emotion of guilt and
related negatively valenced emotional responses (such as sadness) following
one’s own wrongdoing (Figure 1). What still needs to be investigated is
if and how emotion regulation skills affect links between physiological
arousal and self-reported feelings of guilt or sympathy, respectively. It is
likely that emotion regulation affects the ways children respond to moral
transgressions over time, for instance, by helping them channel their arousal
into constructive emotional responses. Vice versa, dysfunctional emotion
regulation may contribute to lowering links between arousal and the experience of self-conscious emotions, for instance, by diverting the child’s focus
toward the negative consequences of a transgression for another rather than
the short-term benefits of violating a norm.
Similarly, children’s spontaneous emotional expressions may reveal the
underlying spontaneous reactions that are associated with the anticipation
of self-conscious and other-oriented emotional responses. We have recently

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

9

96
95
94

−1 SD NVMEs
Mean NVMEs

Mean HR

93

+1 SD NVMEs

92
91
90
89
88

Baseline

Vignettes

Emotions

Interval

Figure 1 HR reactivity at low (−1 SD), medium, and high (+1 SD) levels of
NVMEs. (Note: HR, heart rate; NVMEs, negatively valenced moral emotions.)
Source: Taken from Malti et al. (2016), Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

conducted a series of studies in which we observed their brief facial reactions
to moral transgression stories. We found that spontaneous reactions of fear,
perhaps in response to social sanctions (e.g., fear of consequences from peers
or authority figures) were related to children’s self-reported guilt (Dys &
Malti, in press). Despite much emphasis on guilt rooted in other-oriented
concern (Hoffman, 2000; Malti et al., 2009), these findings suggest that there
may be another qualitatively different form of guilt, rooted in concern over
social sanctions related to one’s transgression (Malti, 2016).
Lastly, another promising potential mechanism underlying the formation
of self-reported emotions of guilt is attention allocation during moral transgression stories. It may be the case, for instance, that children who do not
experience moral emotions fail to sufficiently visually process the emotional
state of the victim, impeding an affective moral response. Future research is
warranted to explore the links between attention allocation and the anticipation of self-conscious and other-oriented emotional responses, respectively.
APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE ON NORMATIVE SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING TO PRACTICE
Over the past decade, researchers have increasingly acknowledged that it
is time to apply the extensive knowledge on children’s and adolescents’
normative social-emotional development to refine the existing practices,
as well as generate new developmentally tailored educational strategies

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

aimed at promoting the healthy development of children and adolescents.
For example, a practitioner’s understanding of normative development
of sympathy can help determine if, and by how much, a child (or a
classroom) is developmentally normative, delayed, or advanced in sympathy (Malti, Chaparro, Zuffianò, & Colasante, 2016). Interestingly, many
existing evidence-based programs that aim to promote social-emotional
development in school settings include some degree of between-grade
differentiation in their curricula (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, &
Schellinger, 2011). However, the degree to which age-graded tailoring is
needed remains to be determined given mixed findings regarding their
effectiveness (Malti et al., 2016). Importantly, most programs do not adjust
their curricula for possible developmental differences in SER within grades.
This is surprising because there is much variability between children of
the same chronological age. Therefore, future interventions should explain
how normative social-emotional development is translated into specific
intervention strategies within each developmental level.
Other, related open questions concern the issue of how many (and which)
dimensions of SER should be targeted, as well as when, and how. In a
recent review, we found that evidence-based programs targeting higher
numbers of social-emotional development constructs were more effective
in mitigating conduct problems and promoting academic functioning. This
finding suggests that it may be beneficial to target various components of
SER as they may work in concert to improve children’s and adolescents’
positive outcomes. Similarly, intervention timing and duration need to
be explored further. For instance, there is some evidence to suggest that
social-emotional interventions that commence earlier in development (e.g.,
during preschool and kindergarten) were more effective in promoting
social-emotional development (Malti et al., 2016). What remains to be seen is
if and how developmentally tailored interventions in other critical periods
of social-emotional development (e.g., puberty) compare to early childhood
interventions in terms of effectiveness. In sum, future work is needed to promote the translation of social-emotional development research into practice,
enhance practitioners’ understanding of normative development, integrate
social-emotional knowledge and assessment into the eventual selection and
use of intervention strategies both between and within age groups.
CONCLUSION
In this essay, we have identified current shortcomings in social-emotional
development research with a focus on three core components of SER:
self-conscious emotional responses, other-oriented emotional responses,
and emotion regulation capacities in the context of everyday moral conflict

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

11

and social exclusion. On the basis of this analysis, we have identified promising trends and central areas for future work. We have shown that research
has been devoted to our understanding of the emergence and development
of distinct self- and other-oriented emotions (most prominently empathy/sympathy and guilt). Yet, much less is known about their conjoint and
differential developmental trajectories, and if and how the development of
one type of emotion affects the development of other emotions and related
behavioral outcomes. Moreover, we have underscored the importance
of examining specific mechanisms underlying the formation of self- and
other-oriented emotions. For instance, further research unraveling the roles
of cognitive and affective mechanisms such as attention and synchrony can
provide further direction for intervention programs aimed at optimizing
children’s and adolescents’ social-emotional responding.
Emerging evidence suggests that we humans are equipped with cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that support the development of
social-emotional responsiveness. Translational research is needed to implement knowledge on normative social-emotional development into practice,
including the use of screening and assessment tools to understand child
and adolescent social-emotional development, the refinement of existing
educational practices, and the development of new developmentally tailored
practices to promote social-emotional growth. In addition, we have argued
for the need to generate more differentiated intervention programs that
account for children’s developmental stage, in lieu of a blanket approach
to treating all children of the same age. Still, research that can inform this
differentiated approach is nascent and constitutes an emerging trend in
developmental science.
Going forward, it will be important to understand how an increasingly
complex, changing, globalized world with economic challenges, and
exposure to increasingly diverse communities and societal change at large
affect child and adolescent social-emotional development and its biological,
psychological, and behavioral underpinnings. Given the importance of
good SER for raising healthy, productive, and responsible future generations, understanding and promoting these developmental processes in the
best ways possible will be one of the most important endeavors for the
behavioral, neural, and social sciences in the next decade.

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TINA MALTI SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Tina Malti is an associate professor of developmental psychology at the
University of Toronto. She obtained her PhD in developmental psychology
from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Free University
Berlin, and an MA and licensure in clinical child psychology from the
University of Fribourg. Her research interests are children’s and adolescents’
emotional responses to everyday social conflict, trajectories of aggressive
behavior, and the development of prosocial orientations from early childhood to adolescence. In addition, she pursues a line of research on the ways

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

in which social-emotional development research can improve practices
and policies that affect children’s behavioral health, social inclusion, and
learning. Tina Malti is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science
and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 7, Developmental Psychology). She is an associate editor of Child Development and
currently serves as the membership secretary of the International Society for
the Study of Behavioural Development.
STEFANIA SETTE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Stefania Sette is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of developmental and social psychology at Sapienza, University of Rome. She obtained a
PhD in developmental psychology at Sapienza University of Rome and is a
licensed clinical child psychologist. Her research focuses on the role of socioemotional development and the quality of the teacher–child relationship on
peer relationships and social behavior in the early years. She also has an
interest in the development and evaluation of assessment tools to measure
preschoolers’ social and emotional competencies. Currently, she is collaborating with the Social-Emotional Development and Intervention Laboratory at
the University of Toronto in a research project on children’s social-emotional
development in contexts of peer exclusion and victimization.
SEBASTIAN P. DYS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Sebastian P. Dys is a PhD student in the Developmental Sciences Program
at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the cognitive and
affective mechanisms underlying the formation of children’s social and
moral emotions. In this work, he employs a multimethod approach, using
automated emotion recognition technology, eye tracking, physiological
instruments, and interviews. His overarching goal is to provide direction
to educators, program developers, and parents interested in specific strategies and practices aimed at promoting social-emotional and behavioral
development.
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Elizabeth Bruch et al.

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

15

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Social-Emotional Responding: A
Perspective from Developmental
Psychology
TINA MALTI, STEFANIA SETTE, and SEBASTIAN P. DYS

Abstract
Social-emotional responding (SER) refers to (i) an individual’s awareness and
understanding of emotional experiences in the self and others, (ii) expression of
emotions, and (iii) emotion regulation capacities. The normative development of
these responses is considered a central component of human development. This
is because SER underlies our capacities to express other-oriented behaviors and
cope with challenges of everyday life in adaptive and socially responsible ways.
The goal of this essay is to identify emerging trends in this area of developmental
research. We first discuss central conceptual issues in social-emotional development
and present a conceptual framework from developmental psychology to study
SER. Next, we identify current shortcomings in research on SER. We focus on three
central components of SER: self-conscious emotions, other-oriented emotions, and
emotion regulation. On the basis of our analyses of the current gaps, we highlight
three promising attempts to solve some of the current shortcomings in this literature:
attempts to understand developmental relations among self-conscious emotions,
other-oriented emotions, and emotion regulation capacities; attempts to identify
psychological, neural, and behavioral mechanisms underlying social-emotional
responding, and; the application of this knowledge to interventions that concern
children and families.

Social-emotional responding (SER) is a core dimension of human development. It entails our emotional experiences and reactions that are
continuously triggered by interactions between our neurobiological and
behavioral systems with social experiences in everyday life. These responses
are embedded in a lifelong process of growth, maturation, and change
and shape our well-being, the quality of our communication and social
relationships, and our productivity. The goal of the current essay is to
discuss emerging trends in social-emotional development, with an emphasis
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

on the period from early childhood to late adolescence, as this time encompasses key normative developmental transitions in SER. We first discuss
conceptual issues in social-emotional development and identify three core
areas in SER: the development of self-conscious emotions, the development
of other-oriented emotional responses, and emotion regulation. We then
introduce a developmental framework to study these dimensions of SER.
Next, we discuss selected findings from the recent literature, with a focus on
children’s development of self-conscious and other-oriented emotions and
regulatory capacities in the context of social and moral conflict in everyday
life. On the basis of this review, we highlight emerging trends in this
literature and identify promising venues for application of social-emotional
development research to public policy concerns.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES
Social-emotional development is a term used in developmental psychology to
describe various processes in the emotional and social domain of human
development. Most prominently, it pertains to processes of change and maturation in experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in ways that
are appropriate for an individual’s age and development, across the lifespan
(Saarni, 1999). It is considered central to balancing self-oriented needs and
desires with other-oriented responsibilities because it involves understanding of one’s own internal affective states, understanding and appreciating
the emotional experiences of others, and coordinating and integrating one’s
own and others’ perspectives. Because of this continuous interaction between
the self and the social world, there is wide agreement that social-emotional
capacities are integral to navigating the conflicts of everyday social and moral
life, such as peer exclusion and inclusion, and meaningful contributions to
civic society.
On an intrapersonal dimension, social-emotional development also relies
on cognitive development, which promotes gathering knowledge about
others and the world. As children develop cognitive skills, such as an understanding of others’ mental states, they can update the ways in which they
process and evaluate social conflicts (Killen, Mulvey, Richardson, Jampol, &
Woodward, 2011). These evaluations then color children’s social-emotional
responses to these situations—a notion reflected in increasing coactivation
between brain areas responsible for cognitive and affective processing.
Here, we focus on three elements of social-emotional development that have
been identified as essential components of emotional responding, that is,
self-conscious emotions, other-oriented emotions, and emotion regulation,
and their development from early childhood to late adolescence (Eisenberg,
2000; Malti & Ongley, 2014).

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

3

Self-conscious emotions have been described as emotional responses to
social or moral conflict situations. They have been labeled “self-conscious”
because they are evoked by the individual’s understanding and evaluation
of the self in relation to violating a norm, such as behaving unfairly (Malti,
2016). In psychology, self-conscious emotions (e.g., guilt) have been distinguished from other-oriented emotions (e.g., righteous anger) in that the
former reflect an evaluation of one’s own deeds while the latter involve a
focus on other individuals. The most widely investigated other-oriented
emotional responses are empathy and sympathy (Eisenberg, 2000). Empathy
has been defined as an affective and cognitive response that stems from the
comprehension of another’s emotional state, where the affective response
resembles the other person’s feelings. The cognitive component involves
identifying with another person’s emotional experience (Eisenberg, Spinrad,
& Morris, 2014). Sympathy entails feelings of concern for another that stem
from the apprehension of the other’s emotional state. Unlike empathy, however, sympathy does not necessarily involve feeling the same emotion that
the other person is experiencing. As the minimum prerequisites for empathy
involve only emotional contagion and the ability to differentiate between
one’s self and other, empathy is sometimes considered “value-neutral,”
and not directly linked to moral conduct (Eisenberg et al., 2014). Feelings
of empathy and sympathy also depend on the evaluations of the context
surrounding the distress of an other. If one evaluates an other’s emotional
distress to be unreasonable given the type (e.g., morally vs issues of personal preference) and severity of the transgression, one is less likely to
experience feelings of empathy or sympathy. Emotion regulation has been
conceptualized as the “[p]rocesses used to manage and change if, when, and
how (e.g., how intensely) one experiences emotions and emotion-related
motivational and physiological states, as well as how emotions are expressed
behaviorally” (Eisenberg, Hofer, & Vaughan, 2007, p. 288). It is considered
essential for healthy development and behavioral adaptation.
We focus on SER in the context of social and moral conflict.
These contexts are typically multifaceted and occur at an intersection
among moral, social–conventional, and personal spheres. As such, these
situations help us understand how children negotiate and integrate considerations such as fairness, peer norms, and personal desires. Understanding
children’s responding to these situations is important as they are often their
most common and personally binding conflict experiences. As such, they
are central to for studying the development of children’s SER.
The development of self-conscious and other-oriented emotional responses
and emotion regulation capacities has been shown to promote prosocial,
other-oriented behavior, and impede antisocial, selfishly motivated behavior
(Arsenio, 2014; Malti & Krettenauer, 2013). Furthermore, expressions of these

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

emotions, by way of their communicative properties (e.g., facial expressions,
bodily postures, or vocalizations) can themselves serve as prosocial acts by
providing support and comfort to others.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
FROM DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
We have recently described a conceptual framework from developmental
psychology to understand the development of the three components of SER
(Malti, 2016). The framework describes the dimensions of SER and their
development. We also present a taxonomy of SER, in which the structure
and function of SER is described along two core organizational principles:
First, the principle of self- and other-orientation. This is an organizational
principle to understand whether the component of emotional responding is (more) focused on the self (e.g., self-conscious emotions), an other
(e.g., other-oriented emotions such as sympathy or prosocial behavioral
tendencies), or both (social understanding requires an understanding of
one’s own and others’ perspective) in a way that is adequate for their
age and development (Malti, 2016). Second, the principle of over- and
underregulation. This organizational principle that helps identify the extent
to which the individual is able to regulate and balance his/her own and
others’ needs in a manner that is adequate for their age and development
(Eisenberg, 2000). Central to this SER framework and taxonomy is first,
the integration of others’ and self-perspectives that transcend one’s own
standpoint and may ultimately lead to other-oriented sympathy (Malti,
2016; Malti & Ongley, 2014). Second, the taxonomy indicates that there is
a basic human need to demonstrate emotional control and flexibility by
regulating one’s own needs, which leads to optimal balance and resilience.
In addition, there is both intraindividual and interindividual variation in
these two components of SER reflecting developmental processes of growth,
decline, and transformation. Research has been conducted to understand the
emergence and development of SER. In the following, we critically discuss
this literature selectively, with a focus on identifying shortcomings and
providing suggestions for emerging trends and future directions in research.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS
One of the most prototypical self-conscious emotions is guilt (Malti, 2016).
Guilt in the moral domain has been conceptualized as a feeling of regret
over wrongdoing (Malti, Gummerum, Keller, & Buchmann, 2009). It reflects
a violation of one’s personal moral code (Malti, 2016). In contrast, neurotic
guilt, which arises in response to events beyond our control, is neither the

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

5

result of real damage nor real wrongdoing and, as such, is an irrational
emotional overreaction. The emergence and development of guilt has been
studied in developmental psychology. One main purpose of this line of
work has been to understand when guilt evolves, how it changes across
childhood and adolescence, and what are its implications for adaptive and
maladaptive social behavior. In short, research indicates that children show
precursors of guilt, such as an averted gaze, bodily tension, and emotional
distress, around 4 years of age (Kochanska, Gross, Lin, & Nichols, 2002).
A more full-fledged form of guilt (such as self-reports of guilt, followed
by reasons pertaining to fairness, justice, or care) appears at 6 years of
age (Malti, 2016), which coincides with children’s understanding that one
may feel multiple, mixed emotions simultaneously. Once children reach
7–8 years of age, they also tend to shift toward attributing negative (i.e.,
guilty) emotions to themselves as transgressors (for a review, see Arsenio,
2014). Nevertheless, interindividual differences in the anticipation of guilt
remain well into adolescence and beyond. One reason for this may be that
differences in guilt in early childhood may, in part, be due to early cognitive
constraints, while in late childhood and beyond they may increasingly
reflect interindividual differences in motivations, desires, and beliefs.
Future work that investigates this current gap in the literature may clarify
why some children report guilt, while others do not. In addition, it also
remains to be seen how guilt relates to other types of emotional responses
in the context of social and moral conflict, such as sympathy or moral
anger. While previous work has proposed the development of guilt to be
strongly motivated by sympathy (Hoffman, 2000), emerging research has
questioned this notion (Malti & Ongley, 2014). For instance, some research
has suggested that different types of emotions can compensate each other in
responding adequately to such conflicts (Ongley & Malti, 2014). This may
reflect more differentiated antecedents for self-centered and other-oriented
emotions—an idea that is worth pursuing in future work given the various
implications for how children are likely to solve such conflicts.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OTHER-ORIENTED EMOTIONS
Again, a bulk of this literature has examined empathy and sympathy, and
has focused on identifying developmental trajectories, and, more recently,
its emergence. Empathy is believed to emerge in the first year of life, as early
as 8 months of age (Davidov, Zahn-Waxler, Roth-Hanania, & Knafo, 2013).
Sympathy, which involves feelings of concern for the welfare of others,
appears to evolve in the second year of life and is seen as a product between
empathic capacities and advancements in cognitive abilities, such as perspective taking (Eisenberg et al., 2014). To at least some degree, infants as young

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

as 8 months seem to react to the distress of others with resonant negative
affect, which may be considered a precursor to empathy. Nevertheless, the
debate on the emergence of empathy and sympathy is far from resolved. For
instance, the notion that affective empathy increases with development has
been criticized based on recent longitudinal evidence indicating little to no
increase in feelings of empathic concern across early childhood (Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009). However, other longitudinal and cross-sectional
findings suggest that children increasingly anticipate feelings of concern for
others from mid-childhood to early adolescence (Malti, Eisenberg, Kim, &
Buchmann, 2013).
Noteworthy, previous researchers found differential developmental trajectories of sympathy across childhood. For example, Kienbaum (2014)
found mean level stability of observed sympathy from teachers’ reports and
increase of sympathy for self- and parent-reports in a sample of children
aged 5–7 years. These discrepancies in findings likely reflect the unique
perspective and context of observation that each informant shares with the
child. As a whole, however, these inconsistencies make it somewhat more
difficult to discern normative patterns of sympathetic responding, how they
change with age, and how they relate to other components of SER.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTION REGULATION
The ability to regulate emotions has been shown to increase from infancy
to adolescence. Specifically, infants progress rapidly from external (e.g.,
parental care) to internal (e.g., self-soothing) sources of regulation to distress
in the first year of life, and these abilities increase considerably in the first few
years of life (Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Eggum, 2010). Substantial developments
continue in early- to middle-childhood. For example, children’s ability to
inhibit or control their motor behavior improves from 3 to 6 years, especially
when children spend most of their time in the preschool/kindergarten
context, in which specific behavioral regulations are requested. Moreover,
older children are more able to adopt cognitive strategies to control their
emotions. For example, the ability to direct attention away from an attractive
toy may help children in regulating their own emotions when a peer is
playing with the same attractive toy. Such cognitive strategies may help him
or her to not respond with socially inappropriate behaviors (e.g., pushing
the peer to get the attractive toy) but rather use more constructive strategies
to handle the social situation, such as playing with another toy.
Other regulatory capacities, such as effortful control, delay of gratification,
and attentional control have also been intensely studied in the developmental literature. It has been shown that these capacities increase from early
childhood to adolescence as well (Eisenberg et al., 2010). Nevertheless, there

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

7

is also evidence for stability of effortful control from early childhood to adolescence, which has been interpreted as an indicator that effortful control is a
trait-like characteristic (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). What is less understood is if
and how the various regulatory capacities underlie children’s self-conscious
and other-oriented responses to social and moral conflict. For instance, it
remains unclear which components of effortful control are most necessary
to promote the emergence of self-conscious and other-oriented emotions
and whether certain components are more important for either type of
emotion.
EMERGING TRENDS
DEVELOPMENTAL RELATIONS BETWEEN COMPONENTS OF SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING
Because of an increasing interest in deriving overt indices of social-emotional
functioning, one emerging trend in the literature is to explore developmental
relations between central components of SER. While links between regulation and sympathy have been studied (Taylor, Eisenberg, & Spinrad, 2015),
little research has explored cross-sectional relations among self-conscious
emotions, other-oriented emotions, and emotion regulation, and even
less is known about dynamic relations between these components of SER
over time. However, it is likely that they do not develop independently,
and that the way they influence each other over time predicts adjustment
and behavioral outcomes. For instance, across development, increases in
regulation may promote sympathy, as well-regulated children are less likely
to experience self-focused overarousal and more likely to feel concern
for others after apprehending their emotional state (Eisenberg & Eggum,
2009). This, in turn, may help them to anticipate guilt feelings over own
wrongdoing. Vice versa, in conjunction with children’s advancing cognitive
skills, feelings of sympathy can increasingly exert their force by promoting
other components of morality in childhood and adolescence, for instance,
by promoting feelings of guilt (Daniel, Dys, Buchmann, & Malti, 2014).
There is also some emerging evidence that high levels of self-conscious
emotions, such as guilt, can compensate for, in part, the absence of
other-oriented emotional responses, such as sympathy, in predicting prosocial, other-oriented behaviors (Ongley & Malti, 2014). Interestingly, there
is also some first evidence that the well-known link between anger and
aggression in childhood and adolescence can be mitigated if high levels
of self-conscious or other-oriented emotions exist (Colasante, Zuffianò, &
Malti, 2015). Future research is warranted to more fully understand how one
distinct emotion can buffer the absence of another, both cross-sectionally

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and across development, and how this is related to children’s and adolescents’ capacities to regulate emotions. This may not only advance our
knowledge of similarities and differential developmental pathways in SER,
but eventually bear important implications for intervention practices that
aim at promoting prosocial behaviors in children and adolescents.
DEVELOPMENTAL MECHANISMS UNDERLYING SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING
While components of SER and their normative development have been studied, much less is known about the developmental mechanisms that underlie
SER. Recent work in developmental science has shed some light on potential
biological and psychological mechanisms underlying the formation of empathy and sympathy. In terms of eliciting other-oriented emotions, behavioral
synchrony, the temporal coordination of biological events or social behavior, has been identified as a key mechanism. Synchrony between mothers
and their infants, as well as infants and others, has been linked to children’s
empathy (Feldman, 2007) and prosociality (Cirelli, Einarson, & Trainor, 2014).
Because emotional experiences are dynamic processes, an emerging body
of research has also explored the dynamic nature of children’s emotional
responding to social conflict situations, and the potential physiological
and attentional mechanisms that may contribute to interindividual and
intraindividual differences in SER. For example, in a study examining
children’s heart rate variability before and during the presentation of moral
transgressions, we found that children who showed more heart rate deceleration, which has been linked to outward, sustained attention, reported
stronger feelings of guilt (Malti, Colasante, Zuffianò, & de Bruine, 2016).
Thus, differences in physiological responding contribute to interindividual
variability in the expression of the self-conscious emotion of guilt and
related negatively valenced emotional responses (such as sadness) following
one’s own wrongdoing (Figure 1). What still needs to be investigated is
if and how emotion regulation skills affect links between physiological
arousal and self-reported feelings of guilt or sympathy, respectively. It is
likely that emotion regulation affects the ways children respond to moral
transgressions over time, for instance, by helping them channel their arousal
into constructive emotional responses. Vice versa, dysfunctional emotion
regulation may contribute to lowering links between arousal and the experience of self-conscious emotions, for instance, by diverting the child’s focus
toward the negative consequences of a transgression for another rather than
the short-term benefits of violating a norm.
Similarly, children’s spontaneous emotional expressions may reveal the
underlying spontaneous reactions that are associated with the anticipation
of self-conscious and other-oriented emotional responses. We have recently

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

9

96
95
94

−1 SD NVMEs
Mean NVMEs

Mean HR

93

+1 SD NVMEs

92
91
90
89
88

Baseline

Vignettes

Emotions

Interval

Figure 1 HR reactivity at low (−1 SD), medium, and high (+1 SD) levels of
NVMEs. (Note: HR, heart rate; NVMEs, negatively valenced moral emotions.)
Source: Taken from Malti et al. (2016), Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

conducted a series of studies in which we observed their brief facial reactions
to moral transgression stories. We found that spontaneous reactions of fear,
perhaps in response to social sanctions (e.g., fear of consequences from peers
or authority figures) were related to children’s self-reported guilt (Dys &
Malti, in press). Despite much emphasis on guilt rooted in other-oriented
concern (Hoffman, 2000; Malti et al., 2009), these findings suggest that there
may be another qualitatively different form of guilt, rooted in concern over
social sanctions related to one’s transgression (Malti, 2016).
Lastly, another promising potential mechanism underlying the formation
of self-reported emotions of guilt is attention allocation during moral transgression stories. It may be the case, for instance, that children who do not
experience moral emotions fail to sufficiently visually process the emotional
state of the victim, impeding an affective moral response. Future research is
warranted to explore the links between attention allocation and the anticipation of self-conscious and other-oriented emotional responses, respectively.
APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE ON NORMATIVE SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL RESPONDING TO PRACTICE
Over the past decade, researchers have increasingly acknowledged that it
is time to apply the extensive knowledge on children’s and adolescents’
normative social-emotional development to refine the existing practices,
as well as generate new developmentally tailored educational strategies

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

aimed at promoting the healthy development of children and adolescents.
For example, a practitioner’s understanding of normative development
of sympathy can help determine if, and by how much, a child (or a
classroom) is developmentally normative, delayed, or advanced in sympathy (Malti, Chaparro, Zuffianò, & Colasante, 2016). Interestingly, many
existing evidence-based programs that aim to promote social-emotional
development in school settings include some degree of between-grade
differentiation in their curricula (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, &
Schellinger, 2011). However, the degree to which age-graded tailoring is
needed remains to be determined given mixed findings regarding their
effectiveness (Malti et al., 2016). Importantly, most programs do not adjust
their curricula for possible developmental differences in SER within grades.
This is surprising because there is much variability between children of
the same chronological age. Therefore, future interventions should explain
how normative social-emotional development is translated into specific
intervention strategies within each developmental level.
Other, related open questions concern the issue of how many (and which)
dimensions of SER should be targeted, as well as when, and how. In a
recent review, we found that evidence-based programs targeting higher
numbers of social-emotional development constructs were more effective
in mitigating conduct problems and promoting academic functioning. This
finding suggests that it may be beneficial to target various components of
SER as they may work in concert to improve children’s and adolescents’
positive outcomes. Similarly, intervention timing and duration need to
be explored further. For instance, there is some evidence to suggest that
social-emotional interventions that commence earlier in development (e.g.,
during preschool and kindergarten) were more effective in promoting
social-emotional development (Malti et al., 2016). What remains to be seen is
if and how developmentally tailored interventions in other critical periods
of social-emotional development (e.g., puberty) compare to early childhood
interventions in terms of effectiveness. In sum, future work is needed to promote the translation of social-emotional development research into practice,
enhance practitioners’ understanding of normative development, integrate
social-emotional knowledge and assessment into the eventual selection and
use of intervention strategies both between and within age groups.
CONCLUSION
In this essay, we have identified current shortcomings in social-emotional
development research with a focus on three core components of SER:
self-conscious emotional responses, other-oriented emotional responses,
and emotion regulation capacities in the context of everyday moral conflict

Social-Emotional Responding: A Perspective from Developmental Psychology

11

and social exclusion. On the basis of this analysis, we have identified promising trends and central areas for future work. We have shown that research
has been devoted to our understanding of the emergence and development
of distinct self- and other-oriented emotions (most prominently empathy/sympathy and guilt). Yet, much less is known about their conjoint and
differential developmental trajectories, and if and how the development of
one type of emotion affects the development of other emotions and related
behavioral outcomes. Moreover, we have underscored the importance
of examining specific mechanisms underlying the formation of self- and
other-oriented emotions. For instance, further research unraveling the roles
of cognitive and affective mechanisms such as attention and synchrony can
provide further direction for intervention programs aimed at optimizing
children’s and adolescents’ social-emotional responding.
Emerging evidence suggests that we humans are equipped with cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that support the development of
social-emotional responsiveness. Translational research is needed to implement knowledge on normative social-emotional development into practice,
including the use of screening and assessment tools to understand child
and adolescent social-emotional development, the refinement of existing
educational practices, and the development of new developmentally tailored
practices to promote social-emotional growth. In addition, we have argued
for the need to generate more differentiated intervention programs that
account for children’s developmental stage, in lieu of a blanket approach
to treating all children of the same age. Still, research that can inform this
differentiated approach is nascent and constitutes an emerging trend in
developmental science.
Going forward, it will be important to understand how an increasingly
complex, changing, globalized world with economic challenges, and
exposure to increasingly diverse communities and societal change at large
affect child and adolescent social-emotional development and its biological,
psychological, and behavioral underpinnings. Given the importance of
good SER for raising healthy, productive, and responsible future generations, understanding and promoting these developmental processes in the
best ways possible will be one of the most important endeavors for the
behavioral, neural, and social sciences in the next decade.

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TINA MALTI SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Tina Malti is an associate professor of developmental psychology at the
University of Toronto. She obtained her PhD in developmental psychology
from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Free University
Berlin, and an MA and licensure in clinical child psychology from the
University of Fribourg. Her research interests are children’s and adolescents’
emotional responses to everyday social conflict, trajectories of aggressive
behavior, and the development of prosocial orientations from early childhood to adolescence. In addition, she pursues a line of research on the ways

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

in which social-emotional development research can improve practices
and policies that affect children’s behavioral health, social inclusion, and
learning. Tina Malti is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science
and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 7, Developmental Psychology). She is an associate editor of Child Development and
currently serves as the membership secretary of the International Society for
the Study of Behavioural Development.
STEFANIA SETTE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Stefania Sette is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of developmental and social psychology at Sapienza, University of Rome. She obtained a
PhD in developmental psychology at Sapienza University of Rome and is a
licensed clinical child psychologist. Her research focuses on the role of socioemotional development and the quality of the teacher–child relationship on
peer relationships and social behavior in the early years. She also has an
interest in the development and evaluation of assessment tools to measure
preschoolers’ social and emotional competencies. Currently, she is collaborating with the Social-Emotional Development and Intervention Laboratory at
the University of Toronto in a research project on children’s social-emotional
development in contexts of peer exclusion and victimization.
SEBASTIAN P. DYS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Sebastian P. Dys is a PhD student in the Developmental Sciences Program
at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the cognitive and
affective mechanisms underlying the formation of children’s social and
moral emotions. In this work, he employs a multimethod approach, using
automated emotion recognition technology, eye tracking, physiological
instruments, and interviews. His overarching goal is to provide direction
to educators, program developers, and parents interested in specific strategies and practices aimed at promoting social-emotional and behavioral
development.
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