Socioemotional Processes and Development: Emotional Development, The Self, Identity, and Personality

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A Topical Approach to
Life-Span Development 6e

Chapter Ten:

Emotional Development

John W. Santrock

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Exploring Emotion

• What are emotions?
• Feeling or affect in a state or interaction characterized by
• Behavior that reflects pleasure or displeasure
• Conscious feelings: specific, intense
• Physiological arousal

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Exploring Emotion

• What are emotions?
• Biological roots…but shaped by culture and relationships
• Facial expressions of basic emotions
• Biological nature; same across cultures
• When, where, and how to express emotions are not culturally universal

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Exploring Emotion

• Regulation of emotion
• A key dimension of development
• Effectively managing arousal to adapt and reach a goal
• Involves state of alertness or activation
• States (e.g. anger) can be too high for effective functioning

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Exploring Emotion

• Regulation of emotion
• External sources regulate in infancy, childhood
• Shift to internal, self-initiated regulation with increasing age
• Better at managing situations
• Selects more effective ways of coping
• Wide variations in children’s abilities; adolescents have difficulty managing emotions

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Exploring Emotion

• Regulation of emotion
• Parents’ roles in helping children
• Emotion-coaching approach
• Monitor child’s emotions
• Negative emotion is a coaching opportunity
• Emotion-dismissing approach
• Deny, ignore negative emotions
• Linked to poor emotional regulation in child

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Emotional Competence Skills

• Has awareness of own emotional state
• Detecting others’ emotions
• Using the vocabulary of emotional terms in socially and culturally appropriate terms
• Having empathic, sympathetic sensitivity to others
• Recognizing inner emotions do not reflect outer ones
• Adaptively coping with negatives; self-regulatory
• Aware of emotions’ major impact on relationships
• Seeing oneself as feeling the way one wants to feel

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Development of Emotion

• Infancy
• Primary emotions
• Present in humans and animals
• Humans: appears in first six months of life: surprise, joy, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust
• Self-conscious emotions
• Self-awareness; emerges at 18 mos. or earlier
• Empathy, jealousy, and embarrassment

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Development of Emotion

• Emotional expression and social relationships
• Infants: Two types
• Crying – Most important for communication
• Basic cry: Rhythmic pattern
• Anger cry: Variation of basic cry
• Pain cry: Long, sudden initial loud cry
• Smiling: has powerful impact on caregivers
• Reflexive smile: Innate origins
• Social smile: Response to external stimuli

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Development of Emotion

• Emotional expression and social relationships
• Fear: First appears about 6 mos.; peaks at 18 mos.
• Stranger anxiety: Fear and wariness of strangers; intense between 9 and 12 mos.
• Affected by social context, stranger’s characteristics
• Individual variations
• Separation protest — Crying when caregiver leaves; peaks about 15 months of age

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Figure 10.4 - Separation Protest in Four Cultures

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Development of Emotion

• Emotional regulation and coping
• Infants use self-soothing strategies for coping
• Controversy: how caregivers should respond
• By age 2: language allows defining of emotions
• Contexts influence emotional regulation

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Development of Emotion

• Early childhood
• Young children experience many emotions
• Self-conscious emotions
• Pride, shame, embarrassment, and guilt
• First appear about age 18 months
• Ability to reflect on emotions increases with age

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Development of Emotion

• Early childhood
• Ages 2 to 4: increased number of ways and terms to describe emotions
• Learn about causes, consequences of feelings
• Ages 4 to 5: increased ability to reflect on emotions
• Middle and late childhood
• Marked improvement in understanding, managing emotions

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Developmental Changes In Emotions During Middle and Late Childhood

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Development of Emotion

• Coping with stress
• Older children have more coping alternatives and use more cognitive coping strategies
• Intentional shifting of thoughts
• By age 10, most use cognitive strategies
• Unsupportive families, traumatic events may lessen abilities

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Development of Emotion

• Middle and late childhood
• Recommendations for helping children cope
• Reassure children of safety and security
• Allow retelling and discussion of events
• Encourage discussion of feelings
• Help children make sense of events

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Development of Emotion

• Adolescence
• Time of emotional turmoil (“storm and stress”) but not constantly
• Emotional changes instantly occur with little provocation
• Girls more vulnerable to depression
• Adolescent moodiness is normal
• Hormonal changes and environmental experiences involved in changing emotions

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Figure 10.5 - Self-Reported Extremes of Emotions by Adolescents and Their Parents

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Development of Emotion

• Adulthood and aging
• Adapt more effectively when emotionally intelligent
• Developmental changes in emotion continue through adult years
• Older adults have more positive emotions, report better control of emotions
• Feelings mellow; fewer highs and lows
• Positive connections with friends and family

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Figure 10.6 - Changes in Positive & Negative Emotion Across the Adult Years

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Development of Emotion

• Adulthood and aging
• Socioemotional Selectivity Theory
• Older adults become more selective about their social networks
• Emotional satisfaction is highly valued, positive emotional experiences maximized
• More frequent association with neighbors
• More motivated to achieve; gain knowledge

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Figure 10.7 - Model of Socio-emotional Selectivity

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Temperament

• Temperament
• Tendencies reflecting behavioral style and characteristic way of responding
• Describing and classifying temperament
• Chess and Thomas: three basic types
• Easy child — generally positive mood
• Difficult child — negative reactions, cries often
• Slow-to-warm — low intensity mood and activity levels; somewhat negative

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Temperament

• Describing and classifying temperament
• Kagan’s behavioral inhibition
• Inhibition to unfamiliar
• Shy/avoidance, subdued, timid child
• Extremely uninhibited
• Extraverted, social, bold child
• Inhibition shows considerable stability from infancy through early childhood

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Temperament

• Describing and classifying temperament
• Rothbart and Bates’ Classification
• Extraversion/surgency
• Positive anticipation, impulsivity
• Negative affectivity
• Easily distressed, fear and frustration often
• Effortful control (self-regulation)
• Attentional focusing, more cognition used

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Temperament

• Biological Foundations and Experience
• Physiological characteristics are associated with different temperaments
• Heredity is aspect of temperament’s biological foundations (twin and adoption studies)
• Attributes become more stable over time as self-perceptions, behavioral preferences, and social experiences form personality

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Developmental Connections

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Temperament

• Developmental contexts
• Gender may be important factor that influences fate of temperament
• Many aspects of child’s environment encourage or discourage persistence of temperament characteristics
• Goodness of Fit
• Match between child’s temperament and environmental demands

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Temperament

• Goodness of fit and parenting
• Some temperament characteristics pose more challenges than others
• Management strategies that worked for one child may not work for next one
• Be sensitive to individual characteristics of child
• Structure environment to be as good a fit as possible
• Avoid labeling as “difficult child”

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Attachment and Love

• Attachment
• Close emotional bond between two people
• Social orientation in infants
• Face-to-face play: infant-caregiver interactions
• Still-face paradigm: shows infants react differently to people than objects
• Ages 1 to 2: more locomotion, social play with peers, independence, goal-directed motivation

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Attachment and Love

• Social referencing
• Child reads emotional cues in others, reacts
• By second year of age: much better at this
• Social sophistication and insight reflected in infant’s perceptions of others
• Advanced social cognitive skills are expected to influence attachment awareness

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Attachment and Love

• Theories of attachment
• Freud: infants attach to person or object providing oral satisfaction
• Harlow’s study proved otherwise
• Erikson: first year of life is critical time for attachment development
• Sense of trust or mistrust sets later expectations
• Physical comfort plays a role in development

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Attachment and Love

• Theories of attachment
• Bowlby: stresses importance of attachment in first year and responsiveness of caregiver
• Develops in series of phases
• Phase 1: birth to 2 months
• Phase 2: 2 to 7 months of age
• Phase 3: 7 to 24 months of age
• Phase 4: 24 months and older

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Attachment and Love

• Individual differences in attachment
• Ainsworth and the “strange situation”
• Measure of infant attachment to caregiver
• Requires infant to move through a series of introductions, separations, and reunions
• Securely attached or insecure
• Criticisms:
• May not reflect real world behavior
• Culturally-biased to Western children

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Ainsworth’s Attachment Categories

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Figure 10.11 - Cross-Cultural Comparison of Attachment

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Attachment and Love

• Interpreting differences in attachment
• Secure attachment important in first year; provides foundation for healthy development
• Some developmentalists believe too much emphasis on attachment bond in infancy
• Ignores the diversity of socializing agents and contexts that exists in an infant’s world
• Ignores highly resilient and adaptive infants

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Caregiving Styles and Attachment

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Attachment and Love

• Mothers and fathers as caregivers
• Dramatic increase in stay-at-home fathers
• Many have career-focused wives
• Fathers have ability to nurture, be as sensitive and responsive as mothers
• Maternal interactions: mostly child-care centered
• Paternal interactions: more likely to include play, engage in rough-and-tumble acts

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Attachment and Love

• Child care
• Most U.S. children have multiple caregivers
• Parental concerns: reduced emotional attachment to parents, harm to cognitive development, improper socialization
• About 2 million children currently receive formal, licensed child care
• Types of child care vary extensively in United States

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Attachment and Love

• Parental leave
• Far more extensive in other countries than United States
• Europe led the way: paid fourteen-week maternity leave
• Most countries: restrictions as to minimal employment period before leave taken
• In the United States: twelve weeks unpaid leave to care for newborns

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Attachment and Love

• Parental leave
• In most European countries:
• Working parents get 70% or more of wages and paid leave averages 16 weeks
• Gender-equality family leave policies in Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden)
• Sweden: most liberal of all — 18 month leave with benefits for full and part-time workers

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Attachment and Love

• Five types of parental leave from work
• Maternity leave: before and after birth
• Paternity leave: more important if second child born
• Parental leave: allows either parent
• Child-rearing leave: supplements maternity leave but typically paid at much lower level
• Family leave: covers reasons other than birth
• United States does not have paid leave policy

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Attachment and Love

• Variations in child care
• Many factors affect child care:
• Age of child
• Type of child care
• Quality of program — this makes a difference
• Number of hours per week the child is in care
• High quality may not erase negative effects
• SES or families with few resources

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Attachment and Love

• Variations in child care
• Ongoing national study in U.S. (NICHD)
• Patterns of use: infants being placed sooner
• Quality of care: lower for low-income families
• Amount of child care: extensive time lessened attachment sensitivity to mother, more behavioral issues
• Family and parenting influences are important

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Attachment and Love

• Variations in child care
• Child care strategies for parents
• Quality of parenting is key to child development
• Make decisions that enhance good parenting
• Monitor child’s development
• Take time to find the best child care

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Attachment and Love

• Adolescence
• Secure attachment to both parents positively related to peer and friendship relations
• Types of attachment to parents
• Dismissing/avoidant: caregiver rejection
• Preoccupied/ambivalent: inconsistent parenting
• Unresolved/disorganized: high fear due to traumatic experiences

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Attachment and Love

• Adolescence
• Dating and romantic relationships
• Spend lots of time dating or thinking about it
• Form of recreation
• Source of status or achievement
• A way to learn about close relationships
• Function for mate selection

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Attachment and Love

• Adolescence
• Dating and romantic relationships
• Younger adolescents getting involved
• Comfort in numbers; youth “hang out” in groups
• More time in mixed-gender peer groups
• Dating involvement linked to later adjustment
• Sociocultural contexts influences dating and role expectations

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Attachment and Love

• Adulthood and attachment
• Adults count on romantic partners to be a secure base to which they can return and obtain comfort, security in stressful times
• Childhood attachment patterns can impact here
• Influences choices and behaviors
• Secure, avoidant, anxious attachments
• Other factors like communication can impact

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Attachment and Love

• Adulthood and romantic love
• Also called passionate love or eros
• Strong components of sexuality and infatuation
• Complex intermingling of emotions
• Often predominates early part of love relationship
• Affectionate love or companionate love
• Have deep, caring affection for person

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Attachment and Love

• Adulthood
• Sternberg’s triangular theory of love
• Stresses three main components/dimensions
• Passion: physical, sexual attraction
• Intimacy: warmth, closeness, and sharing
• Commitment: intent to remain together
• Varying combinations create qualitatively different types of love

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Figure 10.15 - Sternberg’s Triangle of Love

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Attachment and Love

• Adulthood
• Falling out of love
• Collapse of close relationship
• Tragic feelings initially
• Over time — happiness and personal development may benefit
• One-sided relationships are harmful

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The End