What social and emotional factors influence children's behavior?

I believe one of the primary factors in a child's development is his interaction with peer groups and family. This can influence everything from his mentality to his emotions to his behavior.

The child begins to learn, socially, what is and isn't acceptable behavior through interaction with their parental figures. Through positive, emotional reinforcement he begins to learn how to behave.

On the other hand, children also pick up social dysfunctions this way. Things like racism and sexism are negative behavioral traits that can be learned at a young age through social interaction and positive emotional reinforcement from a peer group or family member who maintains such mentalities.

I believe it is natural for humans to want to fear rejection by their groups. Part of peer acceptance, however, sometimes includes sharing a strong base belief amongst the group, such as religious beliefs, political beliefs and so forth. In the case where an individual comes to disagree with a base belief the rest of his group deems important, he may begin to feel inner-turmoil surrounding the risk of rejection from his peer group. This may also include some conflicting feelings about his own disagreement with what he had originally been socially and emotionally lead to believe was correct.

Many children and people who have been strongly raised to emotionally and socially behave or think in a certain mannerism may have more difficulty in seeing other perspectives, and can become quite stubborn or aggressive when confronted with a new way of behaving or thinking.

This is because they may have already come to associate their current actions and thinking as socially and emotionally positive. A force to change or alter these may lead to behavioral problems of lashing out, frustration or depression, as they may feel confused or angry.

For example, a child who has always been given negative reinforcement whenever talking in public might grow to be withdrawn from social situations due to associating that behavior with negative social feedback and bad feelings.

Where as a child who has rarely been made to wait for their turn in a conversation may grow to develop the tendency to constantly interrupt people, which is a behavioral and social issue.

I feel that the best course of action, when developing a child's behavioral skills and mentality is to focus on flexibility and acceptance of change within a social and emotional setting. One way to accomplish this is to provide firm behavioral lessons while slowly showing the exceptions in a positive way so that he understands that there is not just one positive way of behaving.

Hope that was what you were looking for. Sorry if it isn't.