Emotional Development and Temperament

Emotion in Psychology

Introduction

  • Today's topic is emotional development. To understand this, we need to define emotion in psychology, explore different theoretical perspectives, including cognitive and dynamic systems approaches, discuss emotional regulation in childhood, and examine temperament's impact on development.

What is Emotion?

  • Thought experiment: Two twin sisters, Connie and Diana, go on a roller coaster ride.
    • Connie enjoys the ride, recalling past experiences and anticipating the drop with excitement.
    • Diana dislikes the ride, focusing on safety concerns and wishing it were over.
    • Afterward, Connie wants to ride again, while Diana refuses.
  • Similarities: Twins, same ride, shared sensory experiences (sun, wind, view).
  • Differences: Varying emotional experiences.

Six Components of Emotion

  1. Physiological Experiences: Sensory perceptions (touch, taste, smell, vision, sound) and subconscious experiences (heart rate, breathing rate, sweating, goosebumps, pupil dilation).
    • Both Connie and Diana perceived the sun and wind.
  2. Neuro Responses: Release of endorphins and adrenaline which are similar for both twins.
  3. Cognitions: Thoughts, memories, and awareness associated with the emotional experience.
    • Connie: Remembering wanting to ride, looking for her house.
    • Diana: Disliking heights, concerns about safety.
  4. Emotional Expressions: Facial expressions, posture, tension, voice volume, depth, and tone.
    • Essential for communicating emotions and needs.
    • Happy expression: Things are going well.
    • Scared expression: Need help.
    • Connie: Giggling and squealing.
    • Diana: Grimacing, closing eyes, holding breath.
  5. Desires or Motivations to Take Action: Emotions drive desires.
    • Continue, change, or stop events.
    • Important for survival and social bonding.
    • Shared desire leads to cooperation.
  6. Subjective Feelings: Vary in intensity, salience, duration, and interpretation.
    • Connie: Excitement.
    • Diana: Fear.
  • All six components comprise emotion, but theories differ on their importance and relationships.

Theoretical Models of Emotion

  • Four established models: discrete, functionalist, cognitive, and dynamic.

Discrete Models

  • Emotions are distinct and comprise different profiles of physical, cognitive, neuro, motivational, and subjective experiences.
  • Analogy: Different colored and shaped emoji faces.
  • Each emotion has specific physical and cognitive components.
  • Everyone experiences emotions the same way.

Functionalist Model

  • Emotions drive interaction with the environment.
  • Happy: Continue the event.
  • Curious: Start the event.
  • Angry/Sad/Scared: Stop the event.
  • Room for individual differences in experiencing emotions.

Cognitive Approach

  • Emotions emerge in response to an event, focusing on cognitive appraisal.
  • Main part of the experience is cognitive, appraising environment around the person.
  • Considers the person's role in the experience.
  • Connie's example will be used to illustrate this model.

Dynamic Model

  • All components of emotion interact, and their relationships matter as much as the components themselves.
  • Like dynamic system models discussed in previous lectures.
  • Diana's experience will be used as an example.
  • Models are not necessarily mutually exclusive, except perhaps for discrete and dynamic models.

Cognitive Model of Emotion: A Detailed Look

  • Emphasizes emotion as a cognitive process.
  • Begins with an antecedent. (prior event that triggers)
  1. Primary Appraisal: Assessing what's happening using cognitions, physiological experiences, and neuro responses.
    • What is happening to me now?
    • Immediate attention.
  2. Secondary Appraisal: Determining options and resources.
    • What can I do about it?
    • Thoughts about strategies available , how I feel about it, my desire.
  3. Actions: Expressing emotions, using strategies, communicating feelings.
    • Aligns with the intended outcome.
    • Consequences (events continuing, stopping, or changing).
  4. New Actions Become New Antecedent: Triggering the pathway again.
    • Emotion isn't momentary.
    • Can be brief or extended period.
    • Emotions can change as new antecedents form.
  • Connie's experience:
    • Antecedent: The ride starting.
    • Primary appraisal: Pride, feeling the sun and wind, enjoying the experience.
    • Secondary appraisal: Cherishing the moment, wanting the ride to continue.
    • Actions: Giggling, squealing, wanting to ride again.
  • This approach presents emotion as a narrative sequence of events, informing how we appraise the environment, respond to stimuli, and make decisions.

Dynamic Systems Model: A Comprehensive View

  • Emotion is a system, with the six components as elements.
  • Each component is its own system.
  • Components are strongly related; a change in one affects the entire emotional experience.
  • Diana's experience:
    • Physiological experiences: Heart racing, breathless, dizzy, sweating.
    • Cognitive thoughts: Concerns about safety, height, and duration.
    • Desires: Wanting to avoid, stop, or change the situation.
    • Emotional expressions: Grimacing, gripping the safety belt, closing eyes, holding breath.
    • Subjective feelings: Fear, panic, shame, excitement.
  • Some elements persist, repeat, intensify, or extend in duration.
  • The more these co-occur, the more integrated and associated they become.
  • If one element changes, the entire experience shifts as well.
  • Example: Diana feeling proud despite being scared.
  • Each person's experience of emotion can vary greatly.
  • Emotions become more complex over time through experience and co-development of components.
  • Emotions develop alongside self-concepts, social cognition, and other complexities.

Emotional Regulation

  • How we monitor and change our behavior to meet our needs.
  • One important form of self-regulation.
  • Conscious and unconscious processes to monitor, modify, and modulate emotional experiences and expressions.
    • Monitor: Check our emotionality.
    • Modify: Change our emotions.
    • Modulate: Adjust the intensity of emotions.
  • Expression is what is shown to others, experiences are internal feeling, cognition.
  • Change expression to communicate different things.
  • Helps to foster positive relationships with others.
  • Two boys working together, building a sand castle expressing a similar level of enjoyment that facilitates the interaction.
  • Not innate; develops over time alongside self-concept, cognitive and social cognitions.

Development of Emotional Regulation

  • Infancy: Mostly self-soothing or averting gaze.
    • Purely own emotional experiences.
    • Reliant on caregiver.
  • Toddlerhood: Adjust behavior to help/comfort others, responding to other people's emotional expressions.
    • Aware of the person's mental state and their own abilities and limitations.
    • Experience new emotions and paired with an inability to regulate these emotions can lead to challenges.
  • Childhood: Distraction, self-play, understanding others' emotions, starting conversations, articulating experiences, and complying with requests.
    • Children regulating emotions during classroom activites.
  • Late Childhood: Using values in emotional regulation and assesses event values.
    • Awareness of their impact on others.
    • Manipulate behaviors for shared goals.
    • Differentiate between stressors within and outside their control.
    • Children working towards shared goals.
  • Adolescence: New challenges, neurological and hormonal changes (puberty).
    • Heightened arousal, fluctuating levels, motivating changes, and risk taking.
    • All of this together affects the abiity to control emotion.

Temperament

  • More than just an emotional response; a person's characteristic way of feeling and responding to emotion.
  • Persists over time.
  • Informed by reactivity (emotional arousal levels, motor activity, attention levels) and self-regulation.

Thomas and Chess: Four Temperament Patterns (1970s-80s)

  • Based on nine dimensions:
    • Approach/withdrawal:
    • Adaptability
    • Mood
    • Activity level
    • Emotional reactivity
    • Responsiveness to soothing
    • Rhythmicity
    • Distractibility
    • Attention Span
  1. Easy Temperament (40%): Willing to approach new situations, good adaptation, positive mood, appropriate level of response, regular rhythmicity.
    • Healthy development.
  2. Difficult Temperament (10%): Withdraw from new situations, slow adaptability, negative mood, intense emotional reactivity, difficult to soothe, irregular sleep patterns, lower distrability, high attention span.
    • Negative developmental outcomes and risk factors.
  3. Slow to Warm Up Temperament (15%): Tendency to withdraw, slow adaptability, negative mood, low activity levels, low intense emotional reactivity, low distractibility.
    • Negative developmental outcomes; not as much for difficult ones.
  4. Mixed Pattern (35%): No clear pattern.
    • No predictable outcomes/associations.
  • Need to disentangle this group more.
  • Even within temperament styles, infants differ across the nine dimensions.
  • Multidimensional aspect of each person.

Australian Temperament Study

  • Longitudinal study in Australia/New Zealand.
  • Three generations (parents, infants, and their children).
  • Focuses on temperament development throughout life.
  • Relatively stable over time but can be modified if identified early.
  • Increased family support can help.
  • Difficult temperaments can lead to developmental problems (adjustment, mental health, learning issues).
  • Early interventions can reduce these issues.

Bioecological Model of Development

  • Developed to acknowledge non universal developmental experiences.
  • Development occurs withing the cultural context of the child.
  • Every developmental aspect is is supported and constrainted by the child's cultural context
  • System:
    • Microsystem.
    • Mesosystem.
    • Exosystem.
    • Macrosystem.
    • Chronosystem.
  • Scenario: A child trying to negotiate bedtime.
    • The microsystem: Parents support her and try to look out for her but they're trying to create rules in regards to sleep.
    • The mesosystem: Parents relationship with day care such as timing in the morning for the next day schedule.
    • The exosystem: Parent's workplace and what they need to wake up for tomorrow as a result of their work schedule.
    • The macrosystem: Electricity and television that might the the house not feel like the environment of encouraging to to happen.
    • The chronosystem: Availability of electricity and it changing societal way of thinking about patterns of nighttime and sleep.