The Peer Social Defense Framework is an evolutionary-developmental conceptual model of children’s strategies for coping with interpersonal threat in the peer group. Beginning in middle childhood and continuing through adolescence, navigating the ubiquitous conflict, competition, and complex group dynamics of the peer group increasingly takes center stage as a principal developmental task. Individuals vary widely in their ability to cope with these normative challenges and difficulties in dealing with peer conflict, aggression, and rejection represent substantial sources of risk for school adjustment problems and psychopathology. PSDF seeks to understand variability in coping strategies in relation to the function of the social defense system. From this perspective, individual’s responses to peer threat are adaptive, functional strategies that serve to reduce the child’s exposure to threat in the moment. Moreover, PSDF is novel in positing distinct strategies or types of coping with peer threat that help to determine who is at risk for particular forms of psychopathology following peer threat exposure, and why.
For more details, see Social Defense: An Evolutionary-Developmental Model of Children’s Strategies for Coping with Threat in the Peer Group
BEHAVIORAL SYSTEMS THEORY
PSDF is guided by a behavioral systems framework and the motivations underlying social behavior across development. From this perspective, behavior is viewed as heavily influenced by implicit goal systems, each organizing a distinct set of affective and psychological processes (Davies & Martin, 2013). The behavioral systems framework has been useful in understanding a range of relationship process, from romantic love to parental caregiving (e.g., Davies & Martin, 2013; George & Solomon, 2008; Hilburn-Cobb, 2004; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2012).
The following behavioral systems are proposed to be salient organizers of social behavior in childhood and adolescence:
(Table adapted from Davies & Sturge-Apple, 2007)
The attachment system supports a sense of security by increasing proximity to and care from an attachment figure (e.g., parent, romantic partner, close friend) when distressed. Attachment behaviors include proximity-seeking and distress expressions.
The social defense system supports a sense of security by minimizing individuals’ exposure to interpersonal threat (e.g., aggression, rejection). Social defense behaviors include fight, flight, freeze, camouflaging, and social de-escalation strategies.
The exploratory system promotes skill acquisition and mastery by motivating approach to novelty and exploration. As such, the exploratory system is foundational for autonomy development and learning.
The affiliative system supports the acquisition of resources through the formation of close bonds and cooperative partnerships. Affiliative behaviors include warmth, social engagement, play, affection, and humor.
The dominance system supports the acquisition of resources by increasing and maintaining a dominant position in the social hierarchy. Dominant behaviors include a wide range of power-assertion strategies, from aggression to leadership behavior.
The caregiving system serves to protect offspring and allies through the provision of safe haven and secure base. As such, the caregiving system places a central role in empathy development and parenting.
As children interact in and across their social networks, they are continuously balancing these and other motivations.
At the core of our research is the contention that maintaining a sense of safety and security is a fundamental human need. When security is threatened (such as when children and adolescents are exposed to family conflict and violence, peer rejection, and bullying), the attachment and social defense systems become the predominant organizing systems. Although this can be adaptive in allowing the threatened individual to maintain security, over time persistent concerns for security can occur at the expense of a balanced investment in other systems and goals – all of which are important for healthy development. Therefore, prolonged insecurity – characterized by highly sensitive and hyperactive social defense and/or attachment systems - can have cascading negative consequences for development across multiple domains of adjustment.
WHAT IS INTERPERSONAL THREAT?
The Social Defense System functions to reduce the individual’s exposure to conspecific (i.e., same species) threat. “Threats” refer to social signals, including verbalizations and gestures, that signal the potential for direct physical or psychological harm. These signals often include expressions of anger (e.g., angry face, loud voice) and dominance (e.g., sticking one’s chest out). Translating this to the peer group, threats are likely to include overt expressions of peer hostility (e.g., physical, verbal, or relational aggression), rejection (i.e., ignoring a play bid, refusing to allow the target child to join group), and victimization. Threat signals may be expressed through facial expressions, posture or gestures, physical acts of aggression, physically turning away, or verbally attempting to undermine a child’s social position (e.g., spreading rumors, getting other peers to say they don’t like that child).
PATTERNS OF SOCIAL DEFENSE
PSDF developed from the application of the reformulation of emotional security theory (EST-R; Davies & Sturge-Apple, 2007; Davies & Martin, 2013), which was developed to understand children’s responses to conflict between their parents, to peer relationships. Accordingly, individual differences in the functioning of the social defense system are proposed to be parsimoniously captured by four prototypical social defense strategies (specialized SDS phenotypes) which could be flexibly adopted depending on characteristics of the social environment: Secure, Mobilizing, Dominant, and Demobilizing. Each of these patterns has a unique function, affective profile, behavioral response set, proposed ecological precursors, and specific psychological consequences (both strengths and vulnerabilities).
The table below briefly outlines the prototypical patterns proposed by PSDF. For more details, see Social Defense: An Evolutionary-Developmental Model of Children’s Strategies for Coping with Threat in the Peer Group
LINKS TO PSYCHOPAHOLOGY & ADJUSTMENT
Secure Profile. A secure response to peer threat is likely to attract peers, supporting associations with social status, popularity, and/or social acceptance. The balanced response and expectations for safety tip the balance of limited resources towards investment in the exploratory, affiliative, dominant, and caregiving systems compared with insecure children. Therefore, secure children may be more likely to evidence problem-solving abilities, social skills, cooperation, popularity, empathy, and prosocial orientations toward others in need, as well as low levels of psychopathology. It is important to note, however, that social defense will influence the child’s broader pattern of resource control and approach-motivated behavior only indirectly through its influence on the relevant behavioral systems. Although secure children may be more apt, by virtue of greater investment in affiliative, exploratory, or caregiving goals, to exhibit healthy adjustment across a range of domains, resources may be just as likely to be allocated towards the functioning of the dominance system, as manifested in relatively moderate or even high levels of aggression. Consistent with developmental psychopathology notions of multifinality, adopting a secure social defense profile may set the stage for a number of unfolding developmental processes, leading to a range of possible outcomes.
Mobilizing Profile. In contrast to a secure profile, mobilization is characterized by heightened concern for and attention to threat. The hypersensitivity to potential interpersonal threat, preoccupation with impression management, and reflexive adoption of overly vulnerable, submissive, or appeasing (e.g., coy) behaviors, provides the foundation for anxiety problems, attention difficulties, and perhaps even symptoms of borderline personality (e.g., unstable sense of self, interpersonal dependency, emotional lability). Despite these vulnerabilities, mobilizing may also confer a relatively strong social engagement motivation, potential for empathy, and openness to intimacy.
Dominance Profile. A tendency to suppress vulnerable emotions and devalue close relationships may support the function of the dominant system to defeat threat, but are especially likely to promote hostile views of the social world, callousness, aggressiveness. Thus, dominant children may be at greatest risk for developing conduct problems and antisocial behavior. At the same time, this same pattern may also foster a relatively high degree of self- confidence, agency, and boldness, particularly relative to other insecure profiles.
Demobilizing Profile. The combination of anxiety, dysphoria, rumination, and reductions in approach-motivation are, not surprisingly, likely to set demobilizing children on a course towards heightened internalizing symptomatology. These same characteristics are likely to limit motivations associated with affiliation, exploration, and caregiving, leading demobilizers to exhibit impaired social skills and agency. However, the ability to camouflage by actively masking or suppressing internal experiences of distress may also represent effortful control skills that could simultaneously promote inhibitory control and limit the development of disruptive and oppositional behavior problems.
The Peer Social Defense Framework (PSDF) is an application of the reformulation of Emotional Security Theory (EST-R) to peer relationships. For more information on EST-R and the Behavioral Systems Theory, check out the following:
Davies, P. T., Martin, M. J., Sturge-Apple M. L., Ripple, M. T., & Cicchetti, D. (2016). The distinctive sequelae of children’s coping with interparental conflict: Testing the reformulated emotional security theory. Developmental Psychology, 52, 1646-1665.
Davies, P. T. & Martin, M. J. (2014). Children’s coping and adjustment in high conflict homes: The reformulation of emotional security theory. Child Development Perspectives, 8, 242-249.
Davies, P. T., & Martin, M. J. (2013). The reformulation of emotional security theory: The role of children's social defense in developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 25, 1435-1454.
Davies, P. T. & Sturge-Apple, M. L. (2007). Advances in the formulation of emotional security theory: An ethologically-based perspective. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 35, 87-137.
George, C., & Solomon, J. (2008). The caregiving system: A behavioral systems approach to parenting. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd edition, pp. 383-416). New York: Guilford Press.
Hilburn-Cobb, C. (2004). Adolescent psychopathology in terms of multiple behavioral systems: The role of attachment and controlling strategies and frankly disorganized behavior. In L. Atkinson & S. Goldberg (Eds). Attachment issues in psychopathology and intervention (pp. 95–135). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Mikulincer, M. & Shaver, P. R. (2012). Attachment theory expanded: A behavioral systems approach to personality. In K. D. M. Snyder (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology. New York Oxford University Press.