Chapter 9 - Theories of Social Development

Freud thought very young children have a _____ nature that motivates their behaviour and influences their relationships.

sexual

erogenous zone

areas of the body that are erotically sensitive, in particular, the mouth, anus, and genitals.

id

• ruled by the pleasure principle where the goal is to achieve maximal gratification as quickly as possible.

• Id is apparent in selfish or impulsive behaviour where immediate gratification is sought with little regard for consequences.

oral stage

* primary source of gratification and pleasure is oral activity like sucking and eating.

ego

• arises out of need to resolve conflicts between id’s demands and external restrains.

• reason and good sense

• eventually develops into the individual’s sense of self

anal stage

* At age 2, the infant enters the **anal stage** (where the child’s erotic interests focus on the pleasurable relief of tension from defecation) until 3 years old.

phallic stage

• spans the ages of 3-6

• children become interested in their own genitalia and that of their parents and their friends.

• Freud believed children identify with same-sex caregivers at this time leading to gender differences in attitude and behaviour.

• He also believed young children experience intense sexual desires at this time.

superego

* consists of internalized moral standards to prevent children from acting in ways that would result in guilt.

latency period

• lasts from ages 6-12

• sexual desires are hidden away in the unconscious.

genital stage

* sexual energy is reawakened and directed towards peers with full force.

What happens if needs are not during the stages according to Freud?

• children may become fixated on them, always trying to satisfy them and resolve conflicts.

• Essentially, Freud believed that the child’s passage through these stages shapes the individual’s personality for life.

Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development

• Erikson accepted the basic elements of Freud’s theory but incorporate social factors like cultural influeces and contemporary issues into it.

• 8 age-related stages from infancy to old age, each characterized by a specific crisis the individual must resolve (only discussing first 5 stages).

first 5 stages of psychosocial development

1. basic trust vs mistrust

2. autonomy vs shame & doubt

3. initiative vs guilt

4. industry vs inferiority

5. identity vs role confusion

basic trust vs mistrust (1st year)

* If the ability to trust others when it is appropriate to do so does not develop, the person will have trouble forming intimate relationships later in life.

autonomy vs shame + doubt (ages 1-3.5)

* Children can explore the environment on their own, which changes family dynamics. In a supportive atmosphere where children achieve self-control without the loss of self-esteem, they gain a sense of autonomy, but if they are punished/ridiculed for their efforts, they may doubt their abilities.

initiative vs guilt (ages 4-6)

* In this period, children identify with and learn from their parents. Attachment is crucial in the development of conscience.

industry vs inferiority (ages 6-puberty)

• Ego development.

• Successful experiences give child a sense of comptence and failure can lead to excessive feelings of inferiority.

identity vs role confusion (adolescence to early adulthood)

• Critical for achivement of a core sense of identity.

• In this stage, children are caught between the past identity of a child and uncertainities of future, adolescents question who they really are and what roles to play as adults.

Freud’s emphasis on early experience and relationships has been influential in setting the foundation for _____________.

modern-day attachment theory and research

* Research in this area strongly suggests that the nature of infant’s relationships with parents affects behaviour in infancy and creates long-term effects on close relationship throughout life.

Erikson’s emphasis on quest for identitity in adolescence was so important for ______ on this aspect of adolescence.

modern research

weaknesses of both theories

• too vague to be testable

• many specific elements are highly questionable

• however, essence has been enormously influential

What do learning theorists focus on?

* the role of specific mechanisms of change which involve learning principles like reinforcement and observational learning.

Watson believed development is determined by the child’s environment through ___________

learning by conditioning

Watson believed psychologists should study __________, not the mind.

visible behaviour

Skinner believed that we tend to ____ behaviours that lead to favourable outcomes (reinforcement) and those that result in unfavourable outcomes (punishment).

repeat, surpress

intermittenly reinforced behaviour

behaviour that is sometimes rewarded, and sometimes not

• it makes it harder for behaviours to stop as the subject will believe they will eventually be rewarded and so continue to produce the behaviour

• ex. giving into whiny children only sometimes

behaviour modification

* a form of therapy where reinforcement is used to encourage adapative behaviour.

Social-learning theory

• attempts to account for social development in terms of learning mechanisms

• emphasizes observation and imitation

• argues most human learning is inherently social in nature and based on observation of behaviour of others

vicarious reinforcement

seeing someone else receive a reward or punishment influencing the child’s subsequent behaviour

bservational learning depends on:

attention to others’ behaviour, encoding what is observed, storing info in memory, and retrieving it later to reproduce it.

Bandura emphasized the _____ of children in their own development and described development as **reciprocal determinism** between children and their social environment where children are both affected by and influence aspects of their environment.

active role

Learning theories are based on _____ derived from experiments.

principles

They allow explicit predictions that can be ________ and they have inspired a lot of research about parental practices and how children learn social behaviours.

empirically tested

primary weakness of learning theories

• lacks attention to biological influences

• minimized impact of internal development (perceptual, motor, cognitive, and language)

self-socialization

* the idea that children play a very active role in their own socialization through their preferences and choices.

role taking

the ability to think about something from another perspective.

Selman’s Stage Theory

• 4 stages in thinking about others

• children become less egocentric and more capable of thinking of multiple perspectives as they age

Stage 1 (ages 6-8)

* Children learn someone else can have a perspective different from their own but they think it’s only because that person doesn’t know what they know.

Stage 2 (ages 8-10)

* Children can think about the other person’s perspective.

Stage 3 (ages 10-12)

* Children can compare their own perspective with another.

Stage 4 (ages 12+)

* Teenagers try to understand other perspectives by comparing them to a “generalized other”, trying to figure out whether that person’s view is the same of others in their group.

achievement motivation

* refers to whether children are motivated by mastering skills or by others’ views of their success.

entity/helpless orientation

children with this base their self-worth on other people’s views of their personal qualities.

incremental/mastery orientation

children with this base their worth on their own effort and learning instead of what others think about them.

Older children’s views of themselves are _____, without some having an entity theory of intelligence and others having an incremental theory of intelligence.

more complex

entity theory of intelligence

* a theory that a person’s level of intelligence is fixed.

incremental theory

the theory that a person’s intelligence can grow as a function of experience.

Most social cognitive theories have ____ to say about biological factors in social development.

very little

Ethology

* the study of the evolutionary bases of behaviour, and it attempts to understand behaviour in terms of its adaptive/survival value.

**Imprinting**

* a process where newborns of some species become attached to and follow adult members of the species, and while humans don’t imprint, they do have strong tendencies that draw themt o members of the same species.

According to Bowlby, attachment is an emotional version of ______.

imprinting

Evolutionary psychology applies the concepts of _______ to human behaviour.

natural selection and adaption

parental investment theory

* a theory that emphasizes that parents are motivated by the need to pass on their genes so they take care of their children so the children can grow and continue to carry on the genes.

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model treats the child’s environment as a set of nested structures where each structure represents a different level of ____ on development.

influence

microsystem

* the immediate environment a child experiences and participates in.

mesosystem

* the interconnections among settings.

exosystem

• environmental settings a child does not experience directly but they can affect it indirectly (ex. parental workplace policies regarding child care).

• Mass media, especially electronic media, has a major influence on child development.

macrosystem

* consists of larger cultural and social context within which the other systems are embedded (general beliefs, values, customs and laws of society).

chronosystem

• consists of historical changes that influence the other systems (beliefs, values, customs… that change over time).

• a factor in developmental disorders like ADHD as well.

The primary contribution of ethology and evolutionary psychology comes from the emphasis on children’s ________

biological nature.

Weaknesses

• many of the claims of evolutionary psychologists are impossible to test

• tend to overlook our capacity to transform our environments and ourselves

• there is a lack of emphasis on biological factors in Bronfenbrenner’s model.