By the time Damon captured the attention of the popular press with his book "The Moral Child: Nurturing Children’s Natural Moral Growth" (1990), he had written and edited seven scholarly books on the social and moral development of children. His early works include "The Social World of the Child" (1977), and "Social and Personality Development: Infancy through Adolescence" (1983). These studies focused on how the conduct of children and adolescents plays out in real social situations. Damon emphasized that thinking and behavior develop in dynamic relationship with family, peers, teachers, and the larger social world. Moral emotions (such as empathy, shame, and guilt) and the principles of distributive justice (which can be seen in sharing) flourish, or may be smothered, within these relationships.