PS370: Theory, Family Systems, Methods

Socialization

Process by which children acquire the beliefs, motives, values, and behaviors considered appropriate by their culture

Process

What is happening in the family and why

What is a theory?

Set of ideas about how something works

Why is theory important?

Roadmap for research

Structural functionalism theory

• Social groups like families…

  • have established structure that allow the group to function cohesively

  • comprised of equally important ‘pieces’ of the structure

• Helpful in understanding why systems and hierarchies exist despite changes in the environment.

• Not well adapted to account for complex processes that occur in families.

Social constructionism theory

• Individual perspectives and experiences are shaped by our own culturally-influenced beliefs.

• How do our socially constructed views of education or race influence our families?

• Provides a framework for family therapists to resolve conflict within the family and to alter family dynamics.

• Work to integrate those things that are socially constructed.

Attachment theory

• Provides a framework for understanding how the early parent-child relationship influences the formation of subsequent relationships, including family relationships.

• Internal working models carried forward to influence mate selection, parenting, and other social ties.

• Integration of psychoanalytic, ethological, and evolutionary perspectives

• Heavy emphasis on the influence of parents and parenting

Family systems approach

• Wholeness and order

  • Cannot understand a part of the family without understanding the full structures

• Hierarchical Structure

  • Family is composed of subsystems that are systems in and of themselves

• Adaptive self-organization

  • Family is an open and living system that can adapt to changes and challenges.

Families are developing systems

• Individuals develop within the family system

• The family system influences and is influenced by these developments

  • Maternal parenting is influenced by father’s behavior

  • Children’s responses are influenced by siblings

  • Father’s behaviors are influenced by a visit from the in-laws

  • Parent interactions influence the children

Bioecological theory

• Person

  • Genetics, physiology, temperament

  • How do qualities of the individual impact family relationships?

• Process and context

  • Immediate environment

  • Interactions between immediate influences

  • External forces

  • Sociocultural influences

• Microsystem: immediate relationships

• Friends, family, teachers

• Mesosystem: interaction between parents and teacher that influences interactions with the person, so interactions between microsystem

• Exosystem: politics

• Macrosystem: frameworks that influence culture you live in

Cause and effect

• Cause

  • Non-redundant and sufficient predictor (single cause/set)

    • HOWEVER you can have redundant conditions and also things that seem necessary and sufficient but aren’t (confounds)

• Molar cause

  • Descriptive look at associations

• Molecular

  • Explain the causal relationship

• Effect

  • Counterfactual → comparison between what happened and what would have happened

Proximal and distal causes

• Ex. What causes a child to misbehave in school?

  • Proximal: close

    • New teacher who is terrible at behavior management

• Distal: far away

  • Kids parents lost job, state has no resources for families experiencing poverty, stress at home, therefore cannot sleep well

Validity

• The approximate truth of an inference

• Validity is a property of an inference

Reciprocal causation

• Directionality of influence works both ways

• Student gets low grade → does not feel academically competent → perceived incompetence makes the student perform poorly on subsequent tests

Theory

a set of concepts and propositions designed to describe and explain certain phenomena

Hypothesis

a specific prediction generated by a theory

Research questions

• Needs to be neither broad nor too specific

  • “How do children develop over time?”

  • "How do children develop emotionally over time?”

  • “How do children learn to control their emotions over time?”

• Past successful research questions

  • How does mother-infant bed sharing affect child development?

  • What are the effects of corporal punishment on children’s behavior?

  • What are the effects of parenting on vocabulary development?

Sample selection

• What is a sample?

  • The participants in the study

• Population

  • The defined group of individuals from which a sample is drawn

• What do I need it for?

• What are considerations when selecting a sample?

  • Random selection?

  • Representative of the population?

• Many samples in developmental research are not representative

  • Consequences?

Important features of experiment

• Manipulation of independent variable

• Dependent variable is expected to change as a function of change in the independent variable

• Random assignment to experimental conditions

• Control group (experimental group and control group)

  • Experimental group: receives treatment

  • Control group: does not receive treatment

Experimental design

• Advantages: can identify causes

• Disadvantages: many variables in human development cannot be experimentally manipulated, results from experiments may not generalize to “real world” due to amount of manipulation in the study, more control the further away you get from the population you are interested in

Correlational design

• Establishes relationships between things, cannot establish causes among variables

• No attempts to manipulate environments

• Advantages

  • Addresses many questions in lifespan development

  • Ex. how factors operate together in the real world

• Disadvantages

  • Cannot establish causation

  • Correlation may be due to a third variable

Correlation coefficient

• Numerical measure of how closely two factors are interrelated

  • -1 to 1

• Positive correlation

  • More time studying → better grade

• Negative correlation

  • More depression → less optimism

• Correlation of zero

  • No relationship between 2 variables

Experimental control

• Correlation does not equate causation

• Trade-offs: control ← → generalizability

• Need experimental and control groups to infer causality

Cross-sectional design