Topic 3.6 Social-Emotional Development Across the Lifespan: explain attachment styles, parenting styles, temperament, Erikson's psychosocial stages, Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning, and ecological systems theory.

What this topic is asking

Topic 3.6 covers social and emotional development across the whole lifespan. The College Board wants attachment (Harlow, Ainsworth's styles), parenting styles, temperament, Erikson's eight psychosocial stages, Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning, and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory.

Attachment

Ainsworth's styles:

• Secure: explores with the caregiver present, distressed at separation, easily comforted on reunion.
• Avoidant (insecure): little distress, avoids the caregiver on reunion.
• Anxious / ambivalent (insecure): intense distress, hard to soothe.
• Disorganized: confused, contradictory behavior.

Parenting styles and temperament

Erikson's psychosocial stages

Erik Erikson proposed eight stages across the lifespan, each posing a psychosocial crisis:

• Trust vs. mistrust (infancy), autonomy vs. shame and doubt (toddlerhood), initiative vs. guilt (preschool), industry vs. inferiority (childhood), identity vs. role confusion (adolescence), intimacy vs. isolation (young adulthood), generativity vs. stagnation (middle adulthood), and integrity vs. despair (late adulthood).

The adolescent stage, identity versus role confusion, is the one the exam asks about most often.

Kohlberg's moral development

Lawrence Kohlberg proposed three levels of moral reasoning:

• Preconventional: morality based on rewards and punishments ("I won't get caught").
• Conventional: morality based on social approval and law and order ("it's against the rules").
• Postconventional: morality based on abstract ethical principles ("it violates human rights").

Ecological systems theory

Urie Bronfenbrenner placed the developing person inside nested environments: the microsystem (immediate settings like family and school), mesosystem (links between microsystems), exosystem (settings that affect the child indirectly, like a parent's workplace), macrosystem (the broader culture), and chronosystem (changes over time).

This is the densest topic in the unit, and the exam rewards naming the exact stage or style rather than gesturing at it. The connective idea is that social-emotional growth is layered: a child's inborn temperament meets a caregiver's parenting style to shape an attachment pattern; that early bond feeds into Erikson's lifelong sequence of psychosocial crises; moral reasoning matures on its own Kohlberg track; and all of it sits inside Bronfenbrenner's nested systems. A scenario about a teenager forming a sense of self is identity versus role confusion; one about judging right by the rules is conventional reasoning; one about a parent's job affecting the child is the exosystem. Precision is the whole game here.

Try this

Q1. Describe authoritative parenting and one typical outcome. [2 points]

• Cue. High warmth combined with firm, reasonable limits; associated with self-reliant, socially competent children.

Q2. Identify the conflict of Erikson's adolescent stage. [1 point]

• Cue. Identity versus role confusion, the task of forming a coherent sense of self.