Social cognition and self-regulation: Change in outcome expectations and aggressive behaviour over time

There is emerging interest in the past decade in the integration of moral development and a social-cognitive view of aggression (Guerra, Nucci, & Huesmann, 1994). Social-cognitive theories have emerged as one of the most prevalent conceptual frameworks in understanding developmental psychopathology, but the self-regulatory aspects of children’s functioning were not originally emphasized within these models. Social information processing and moral domain models have developed in relative isolation from one another (Arsenio & Lemerise, 2004). Guerra et al. (1994) propose that certain social cognitions act as moral cognitions that are apparent as children’s moral development occurs. This chapter will explore the relation between children’s social-cognitive processes and their emerging abilities to selfregulate their aggressive behaviour.