Comprehensive Notes on Emotional Development and Developmental Psychology Theories
Overview of Major Developmental Theories
Psychoanalytic Theories: Freud and Erikson - Sigmund Freud’s Psychosexual Stages: - Proposes universal developmental stages tied to specific erogenous zones. - Oral Stage (): The primary focus is early nourishment; the id operates under the pleasure principle. - Ego Development: Emerges later in the first year, representing reason and mediation with reality. - Anal Stage (): Focuses on toilet training and control. - Phallic Stage (): Focuses on the genitals and the development of the Superego, which involves the internalization of parents’ standards for acceptable behavior. - Latency Stage (): A period of dormant sexual feelings. - Genital Stage (): Focuses on mature sexual interests. - Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages: - Identified stages, each associated with a specific crisis or conflict (e.g., Trust vs. Mistrust). - Theoretical Weaknesses: Both theories are often criticized for being too vague to be empirically tested. - Lasting Influence: Freud contributed to modern attachment theory, cognitive science, and neuroscience; Erikson remains influential in adolescent research regarding identity development.
Learning Theories - Watson’s Behaviorism: Demonstrated through the "Little Albert" experiment, showing how fear can be conditioned. - Skinner’s Operant Conditioning: Focused on reinforcement and punishment. - Attention as Reinforcement: Negative behaviors can be maintained by attention; "time outs" are used to remove this reinforcement. - Intermittent Reinforcement: Demonstrated by the supermarket example (giving in to a tantrum occasionally makes the behavior harder to extinguish). - Behavior Modification Therapy: The application of these principles to change behavior. - Social Learning Theory (Albert Bandura): Emphasized Vicarious Learning through observation, famously demonstrated by the Bobo Doll experiment.
Theories of Social Cognition - These theories emphasize self-socialization. - Selman’s Stage Theory of Role Taking: - Realizing others have different perspectives. - Realizing different perspectives are not always due to a lack of information. - Being able to systematically compare different perspectives. - Taking the perspective of the ‘generalized other’. - Dodge’s Information-Processing (IP) Theory of Social Problem Solving: - Analyzes the role of cognition on social behavior, particularly aggressive behavior and the hostile attributional bias (interpreting neutral actions as hostile). - Dweck’s Theory of Self-Attributions and Achievement Motivation: - Incremental/Growth Mindset: Focusing on learning goals. - Entity/Fixed Mindset: Focusing on performance goals. - Praising children differently leads to different achievement motivations.
Ecological Theories - Ethological and Evolutionary Theories: - Ethological View: Behavior patterns in animals (e.g., imprinting) are shaped by evolution just like physical traits. - Evolutionary View: Based on Darwinian concepts; adaptive genes shaped current behaviors. Large brains allow for high neural plasticity, leading to a tradeoff: a prolonged childhood. - Play: Serves as a platform for learning. - Parental Investment Theory: Includes concepts like the Cinderella Effect. - Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model: Five systems influence development: - Microsystem: Immediate environment (family, school). - Mesosystem: Connections between components of the microsystem. - Exosystem: Indirect environments (e.g., a parent’s flexible or remote working hours). - Macrosystem: Social and cultural values (e.g., national laws). - Chronosystem: Changes over time (e.g., the rise of technology use).
Emotional Development and the Marshmallow Test
The Marshmallow Test (Mischel, 2015) - A study on the ability to delay gratification. - Coping Strategies for Waiting: - Distraction Techniques: Talking, singing, making up games, or trying to sleep. - Focused Attention: Staring directly at the treat (often leads to failure to wait). - Findings: - Some children prefer a guaranteed, immediate reward over a larger future reward. - The ability to delay gratification is linked to self-control and willpower. - Longitudinal Success: Early self-control predicted success later in life. - Performance in the task predicted SAT scores () and higher educational levels (). - Conclusion: Emotions are basic to human experience, but learning to regulate them has long-term consequences.
Defining Emotions and Feelings
Distinguishing Terms (McLaren, 2024) - Emotion: A physiological experience or state of awareness that provides information about the world. - Feeling: The conscious awareness of the emotion itself.
Components of Emotion (Izard, 2010) - Emotions are combinations of physiological and cognitive responses to thoughts or experiences, consisting of five components: - Neural Responses: The brain processing information. - Physiological Factors: Heart rate, breathing rate, and hormone levels (e.g., a racing heart). - 3.** **Subjective Feelings:** The internal experience of fear or joy.\n - 4.** Emotional Expressions: Visible signs like raised eyebrows or a mouth pulled back. - 5.** **Desire to Take Action:** The urge to escape, approach, or change the environment (e.g., running away from a dog).\n- **Key Developmental Questions:**\n - Do we experience physiological reactions and then label them, or do we assess a situation cognitively first?\n - Are emotions innate or learned?\n - How does cognition influence emotional experience?\n\n# Theories of Emotional Development\n\n- **Discrete Emotions Theory**\n - Proposed by **Charles Darwin (1872)** in *The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals*.\n - Emotions are biologically and neurologically innate, evolved for adaptation.\n - Emotions are basic, automatic, and universal across all people, including infants.\n - **Definition:** Each emotion has a specific and distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions.\n - **Evidence:**\n - Infants express recognizable, discrete emotions before being taught them (Izard\,et\,al.,\,2010).\n - Facial expressions are similar worldwide (Ekman\,\&\,Cordaro,\,2011).\n - Vocalizations of basic emotions (anger, joy) are recognized across diverse cultures (Sauter\,et\,al.,\,2010).\n\n- **Functionalist View on Emotions**\n - Developed by researchers like **Campos et al. (19942006)**.\n - Emotions help individuals manage relationships with their environment.\n - Emotions are not discrete; they vary based on the social environment and are goal-driven.\n - **Role of Action:** The function of emotions is to promote actions that achieve goals.\n - **Examples:**\n - **Disgust:** Goal is avoiding contamination/illness; meaning is "this may make me ill"; action is rejection.\n - **Fear:** Goal is maintaining integrity; meaning is "this is threatening"; action is flight or withdrawal.\n - **Anger:** Goal is attaining an end state; meaning is "there is an obstacle"; action is forward movement to eliminate the obstacle.\n\n# The Emergence of Basic Emotions\n\n- **The Six Basic Emotions:** Happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and disgust.\n - These are universal, serve survival/communication, and emerge early in life.\n- **The AFFEX System:**\n - Used for coding basic emotions in infants by linking facial muscle movements to specific emotions (Izard\,\&\,Dougherty,\,1980).\n - **Specific Facial Indicators:**\n - **Sadness:** Mouth corners turned down, lips pressed/trembling, brow slightly furrowed.\n - **Surprise:** Eyes wide open, eyebrows arched, mouth in a round "O" shape.\n - **Happiness:** Smiling (open or closed mouth), raised cheeks causing squinting.\n - **Anger:** Furrowed brow forming an "X" shape, square-shaped mouth (sometimes teeth), flared nostrils.\n - **Disgust:** Wrinkled nose, flared nostrils, mouth wide open with lips pulled back, sometimes tongue sticking out.\n - **Fear:** Eyes wide open, brows raised in the center (triangle shape), mouth pulled back into a grimace.\n\n- **Developmental Milestones of Basic Emotions**\n - **Happiness:**\n - **First Month:** Smiles primarily during REM sleep or when stroked (reflexive, not social).\n - **3-8\,weeks:** Smiles in response to external stimuli (touch, high voices).\n - **3\,months6-7\,weeks):** **Social Smiles** directed toward people.\n - **3-4\,months:** Laughter during pleasurable activities like tickling.\n - **Fear:**\n - **First Months:** Little evidence of distinct fear reactions.\n - **7\,months:** Initial signs of fear and recognition of fear in others.\n - **Fear of Strangers:** An early adaptive form of fear; infants rely on parents for protection. Braungart-Rieker (20104\,months8\,months16\,months.\n - **Separation Anxiety:**\n - Emerges around 8\,months; involves distress when the caregiver leaves.\n - Tends to decline around 15\,monthsKagan,\,1976).\n - Universal across cultures (U.S., Israeli kibbutzim, !Kung San groups).\n - **Anger:**\n - Adaptive for self-defense and goal-directed behavior.\n - By 1st\,birthdayLemerise\,\&\,Dodge,\,2008).\n - Peaks at 18-24\,monthsCole\,et\,al.,\,2011).\n - Declines between 3-6\,yearsKopp,\,1992).\n - **Sadness:**\n - Occurs in situations similar to anger but is less frequent by preschool years. It helps draw support from caregivers.\n - **Surprise:**\n - Not a "startle" reflex (which is present at birth). Surprise requires cognitive understanding and emerges by 6\,months.\n - Often transforms quickly into other emotions like happiness.\n - **Disgust:**\n - Evolutionary purpose to avoid toxins. Children learn disgust by observing adults.\n - Before 3-4\,years, children use words like "yucky" since they don't understand the word "disgust."\n\n# Self-Conscious Emotions and Beyond\n\n- **Self-Conscious Emotions:**\n - Include guilt, shame, jealousy, empathy, pride, and embarrassment.\n - Unlike basic emotions, these require a sense of self as separate from others, typically emerging around 2\,years\,of\,age.\n - Represents **discontinuous growth** (a sudden shift).\n - Influenced by awareness of societal standards and how others judge them.\n- **Understanding Others' Emotions:**\n - **3\,months:** Infants distinguish happiness, surprise, and anger (demonstrated via **habituation paradigm**).\n - **7\,monthsKobiella\,et\,al.,\,2008).\n - **Social Referencing:** By 12\,months, infants use parental facial/vocal cues specifically to navigate ambiguous situations (staying close if parent shows fear, approaching if happy).\n- **Environmental Factors:**\n - Exposure to adversity (e.g., orphaned children in Sierra Leone) can enhance sensitivity to anger while decreasing recognition of sadness as an adaptation for self-preservation.\n - Low emotion recognition ability at 6\,years is linked to high levels of loneliness.\n- **Real vs. Fake Emotions:**\n - **Display Rules:** Informal norms about when and how to express or suppress emotions.\n - **3-year-olds:** Can attempt to mask negative emotions (e.g., hiding disappointment over a gift), though it is often obvious.\n - **5-year-olds$$:** Show significant improvement in understanding and producing false emotions for social politeness.