4. Theories of social development

Social Development

Development of children’s understanding of:

•others’ behaviors, attitudes, and intentions

•relationships between the self and others

•how to behave and interpret their social world

Core Elements of Freud’s Theory

The Unconscious’

•People’s experiences are often influenced by underlying psychological drives

•According to Freud, often in weird, metaphorical ways (e.g., dreams)

The Id, the Ego, and the Superego

•Id: Unconscious pleasure-seeking drives

•Ego: Conscious, rational, problem-solving

•Superego: Internalized morality standards

Psychosexual Developmental Stages

•As children age, being to seek pleasure from different ‘erotically sensitive areas’

•Erogenous zones

•Five stages and sources of pleasure:

1)Oral: mouth (sucking, eating)

2)Anal: defecation

3)Phallic: genitalia

4)Latent: period of calm, desires hidden

5)Genital: full-blown sexual maturation

Why care about freud?

Controversial, wacky, empirically unsupported ideas about development

•Nonetheless, introduced new language and new ways of thinking about development

Important new ideas:

•Not everything is consciously apparent to us!

•Human motivations are complex

•Early experiences matter!

•E.g., impact of childhood trauma

•Sexuality from a developmental perspective!

Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory

Eight developmental stages, eight crises

1)Trust vs. Mistrust

•Trust in intimate relationships

2)Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt

•Fostering of independence

3)Initiative vs. Guilt

•Healthy conscience development

4)Industry vs. Inferiority

•“Can I contribute to the world?”

5)Identity vs. Role-Confusion

•“Who am I? Where do I fit in?”

Introduced a ton of important ideas, influenced many later theorists

•Among the first to note adolescence as important period of development

•Take PSYC 2603 for more on adolescence!

Learning

Any durable change in behaviour or knowledge due to experience

•Studying and memorizing new definition = learning

•Cat comes running when it hears can-opener = learning

•Heart starts racing when you hear tattoo needle = learning

•Pulling your arm back when you get burned = not learning

Instinctive reflexive behaviour ≠ Learning

Classical conditioning terms

Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): naturally evokes a behaviour without previous conditioning

Unconditioned response (UCR): response to an UCS

Neutral stimulus (NS): initially doesn’t elicit any response

Conditioned stimulus (CS): stimulus (previously NS) that now evokes a conditioned behaviour

Conditioned response (CR):  response to a CS that wouldn’t have occurred prior to conditioning

John Watson

Saw children as blank slates, waiting to be conditioned by parents, teachers, society

•No innate temperaments (nature)

•Experience is everything (nurture)

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”

“Treat them as though they were young adults. Dress them, bathe them with care and circumspection. Let your behavior always be objective and kindly firm. Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning.”

Little Albert

Famous Case Study of “Little Albert”

•Showed him a white lab rat (NS)

•No fear

•Paired rat with loud gong sound (UCS)

•Fear (UCR)

•Quickly, rat alone (CS) provoked fear (CR)

•

•Albert became fearful other similar stimuli (rabbit, fur coat, Santa Claus mask)

•Stimulus generalization: CR extends to other stimuli similar to the original CS

Really, poor Albert was probably just traumatized by the experience

His fear probably “generalized” to everything

While this is a famous “study”, it was obviously totally unethical, and isn’t even informative

B.F. Skinner

Advocated using operant conditioning in parenting and teaching of children

•Reward good behaviours, punish bad ones

Attention as potent reinforcer for kids

•Common (attempted) application: Time-outs

•However: not always that effective!

The power of intermittent schedules

•Only reinforce/punish some of the time

•Increases resistance to extinction

Kids acting out in school or at home

Kid acting out in school or at home?

Often a bid for attention

•Getting yelled at is better than being ignored

•End up reinforcing behaviour (even though adult thinks they are punishing it)

Encouraging more positive behaviour requires a lot more than a loud voice

unishment and Parenting

Consequences for bad behaviour are incredibly important, but how children are punished is important to consider

Is being forced to stare at a wall or be by yourself a negative consequence?

Yeah, it sucks, but you don’t learn much about why what you did is bad or
how to be better next time!

Consequences for bad behaviour are essential, but need to be coupled with

 Other-Oriented Induction

Explicitly highlighting how child’s behaviour affects the feelings of others

Regulating emotions is hard; need lots of clear guidance to figure out how

COnditioning and attention

1)Attention is a powerful reinforcer!

2)Conditioning occurring by accident!

3)Intermittent reinforcement teaches learner to keep it up until they get a reaction!

Bandura and observational learning

Most human learning is social in nature

While directly receiving reinforcement and punishment is important for learning…

•Humans (esp. children) and some other animals can learn through observation and imitation

•Witness reinforcement/punishment administered to another organism…

•Alter one’s own behaviour accordingly

Famous demonstration Bandura’s Bobo doll studies

Bobo doll studies

Preschool kids watch adult assault Bobo

•Group 1: see adult rewarded

•Group 2: see adult punished

•Group 3: no consequences

When left alone with Bobo:

•Kids from Group 1 & Group 3 acted more violently

•Kids from Group 2 less so

Vicarious reinforcement:

Learning from someone else being rewarded/punished

However, when children were offered a prize to reproduce what they saw…

All groups acted violently

Even the kids who didn’t spontaneously act violently had learned from their observations

Effects of Exposure to Gun violence in movies on childrens interest in real guns

8-12 year-olds watched 20 mins of a PG-13 movie

•Group 1: Movie contained guns

•Group 2: No guns

Played in pairs in a room with 2 disabled handguns

•Time spent holding gun

•Trigger pulls (recorded via sensor)

•Aggressive play (coded from random subset)

Kids who saw violent movie:

•Spent more time playing with the gun

•Pulled the trigger more often

Quotes from kids:

Gun group:

“I told you don’t mess wit me b----!”

“Are you dumb as f---?”

No-Guns Group

“Uh-uh, uh-uh, no, no, no”

Video games and violence/aggression

Meta-analyses currently divided on the effects of video games on kids’ behaviour

•The effect sizes we see are usually small

•Most studies with sig. effects focused on small scale, short-term outcomes

•Vs. long-term outcomes like violent crime

Correlation does not equal causation!

•Children who are higher in aggression gravitate more to violent games!

There are tons of underlying factors,
contextual variables, and outcomes to consider!

Can’t just jump to conclusions!

Media consumption and actual criminal violence

Most studies find no relation between media consumption and actual criminal violence

People are very quick to draw unempirical connections between media and behaviour

These baseless assumptions often reflect people’s own biases and desires than truths about human psychology

Be a good empiricist and say:

“Show me the data!”

are children doomed? No! It’s a complex issue!

Kids do learn from what they see and we should be mindful of this, but
let’s not exaggerate either!

(People who try to scare you are
usually trying to sell you something

Social Information Processing

In ambiguous social situations:

•Some interpret events as accidental

•No big deals, mistakes happens

•Others interpret them as intentional

•Assume negative intent; “What a jerk!”

Hostile Attribution Bias (HABs)

•Tendency to assume people’s ambiguous actions stem from hostile intents

•Associated with reactive aggression

Attentional biases in childhood

HABs are associated with harsh parenting

•If a child is subject to constant punishment and criticism…

•Assume this is how all people think

Related to biases toward anger and fear

Dot Probe Task

Start with a fixation cross

+

Two faces will briefly appear then disappear

Next, an “X” will appear on one side of the screen

Put both hands down on your desk/lap

If the X is on the left, tap your left hand.

If the X is on the right, tap your right hand.

Go as fast as you can

Attentional Biases in the Dot Probe

If you have an attentional bias towards a particular emotion (happy or angry)…

•You’ll spot the X faster when it appears when it appears in the location where your attention was pulled by that emotion

Waters et al. (2010)

•All children biased toward happy faces

•Only children high in anxiety symptoms showed bias toward angry facesChanging how people interpret social stimuli
may play a part in interventions for mood disorders

(more research needed!)

Dwets self attributions and achievement

Kids vary in their achievement motivations

•Some motivated by performance goals

•Receiving praise

•Avoiding failure

•Others motivated by learning goals

•Improving their skills

Trying and mastering new tasks

What influences motivation

Entity Orientation

Attribute outcomes to innate abilities, individual differences

•Success: “I’m smart!”

•Failure: “I must be dumb…”

Self-worth: performance outcomes

Incremental Orientation

Attribute outcomes to hard work, persistence, commitment

•Success: “I earned this!”

•Failure: “I should try harder.”

Self-worth: self-improvement

Entity Theory of Intelligence “I’m bad at math, I’ll never be able to do this..”

•Belief that intelligence is innate and unchangeable

•No change in scores over 2 years

Incremental Theory of Intelligence “this is really hard, but if i practice i’ll get it!”

•Belief that intelligence grows with practice and experience

•Higher math scores over 2 years

Stereotypes → Entity Orientation → Outcomes

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Promoting Entity motivations vs incremental motivation

Praising positive traits may place too much emphasis on outcomes (despite best intentions) “great job you are so smart!”

“great job, you worked so hard” Reinforces motivation to improve skills, and to find gratification in self-improvement

That all sounds great!

…is there evidence to back it up?

Motivation isn’t everything

Dweck’s theory has generated lots of criticism from researchers who have failed to replicate her major findings

Cautious take: may have an impact in some contexts, but isn’t as important of a mechanism as Dweck originally claimed

Subject of lots of ongoing research!

Lots of factors influence achievement

•Many may not be easy to change through effort

•E.g., genetic component of intelligence

Can having an incremental orientation influence your fluid intelligence?

Probably not.

Can having an incremental orientation influence your crystallized intelligence?

That makes more sense!

Regardless of how big of an effect it has, encouraging incremental orientations is likely still a good idea!

But: don’t want kids blaming themselves for “not having the right mindset” whenever they don’t meet their goals!