The expression of self-conscious emotions and their motivational and communicative function in early development

Self-conscious emotions, such as embarrassment, guilt, shame and pride, play a central role in managing reputation and interpersonal relationships. They are thought to emerge in the first years of life, with children's developing cognitive capacities and their growing appreciation of social norms and rules. Recent years have seen a rapid increase in research on self-conscious emotions in early life, supported by advanced methods including manual and automated micro-coding of non-verbal behaviour, depth sensor imaging and physiological measures. In this narrative review, we summarize this emerging evidence from developmental science, which suggests that self-conscious emotions may be observed earlier than previously thought-within the first months and years of life-and that they seem to serve both motivational and communicative functions from early on. Specifically, they motivate socially appropriate behaviours, such as helping others, while communicating adherence to social norms and rules. Further, we highlight current limitations in the field and recommend more experimental and longitudinal studies especially in infancy and toddlerhood, the integration of multi-modal data and the use of naturalistic tasks to advance our understanding of self-conscious emotions in early development. This article is part of the theme issue 'Mechanisms, development, phylogeny and functions of emotional expressions'.