PSYC 2450 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Twin, Maladjusted, Ethology
27 Jun 2018
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Chapter 12 Emotional Development, Temperament, and Attachment 1
Chapter 12
Emotional Development, Temperament, and
Attachment
Chapter 12 Outline and Summary
Emotional Development
1. Displaying Emotions: The Development (and Control) of Emotional Expressions
a. Sequencing of Discrete Emotions
Newborns show interest, distress, disgust, and contentment. Between the ages of 21/2 months
and 7 months the primary emotions of anger, sadness, joy, surprise, and fear emerge. Primary
emotions appear to be biologically programmed because they emerge in all normal infants at
approximately the same time, and they are displayed and interpreted in the same ways in
different cultures.
After the age of 1 secondary emotions begin to be displayed. These complex emotions
include embarrassment, shame, guilt, envy, and pride. However, toddlers and young
preschool children often display only self-evaluative emotions (such as pride or shame) when
adult observers are present. It is typically not until middle childhood that children display
self-evaluative emotions in the absence of an external observer. The later developing
emotions are called “complex” for a good reason. For example, preschool children may show
“evaluative embarrassment,” which stems from the negative evaluation of one’s
performance. Evaluative embarrassment is more taxing on the child than “simple”
embarrassment, which is caused by being the object of others’ attention. Moreover, emotions
like shame differ in subtle ways. Guilt tends to involve failing someone else; therefore, a
child who feels guilty might try to make amends with the offended party. On the other hand,
shame is self-focused, and causes children to regard themselves in a negative light. A child
who feels shameful might avoid other people instead of approaching them.
b. Socialization of Emotions and Emotional Self-Regulation
Emotional display rules specify the circumstances under which various emotions should or
should not be expressed; these display rules differ between cultures. To comply with
emotional display rules, children must first develop strategies to help them regulate their
emotional responses. Young infant boys have a more difficult time at regulating unpleasant
arousal than young infant girls. Toddlers have an exceptionally difficult time regulating fear.
As children move through infancy, toddlerhood, and the preschool years they develop more
effective ways of regulating their emotional responses. Effective regulation of emotions
involves the ability to suppress, maintain, or intensify emotional arousal.
However, regulating emotional reactions is only the first step in complying with social
emotional display rules. Often “unacceptable” emotional responses must be suppressed and
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Chapter 12 Emotional Development, Temperament, and Attachment 2
“acceptable” emotional responses must be exhibited. During the preschool years children are
not very skilled at disguising their true emotions; throughout the elementary-school years
children become much more skilled at following social emotional display rules. Girls are
more motivated and more skilled in complying with social emotional display rules than boys
are. The strength and timing of compliance with social emotional display rules is influenced
by culture; however, across cultures, children who tend to comply also tend to be viewed as
more likable and more competent by both their teachers and their peers.
The ability for children to regulate their behaviour continues to be refined throughout the
teenage years. The ability to control one’s own emotions may impact significantly on many
facets of adolescent life. Bandura et al. (2003) found that teenagers who rated themselves
high on managing the expressions of their emotions in public were also more prosocial,
empathic, and less likely to be swayed by peer pressure.
2. Recognizing and Interpreting Emotions
a. Social Referencing
Social referencing (the ability to monitor the emotional reactions of others and use that
information to regulate one’s own behaviour) is first evident in infants between the ages of 7
and 10 months. At around 1 year of age infants can use the television as a focus for social
referencing. Infants were shown to avoid to an object that had elicited a fearful reaction from
an adult on TV. During the second year toddlers often look to companions after they have
already appraised a new object or situation; this suggests that they are now using the
reactions of others to assess the accuracy of their own judgments.
b. Conversations about Emotions
Understanding and interpreting emotions in others is enhanced when preschoolers discuss
emotional experiences. Parents and other adults provide support for this development when
they ask children about their emotions and encourage children to verbalize their feelings.
c. Later Milestones in Emotional Understanding
By the age of 4 or 5 children can use expressive body movements to recognize emotional
states in others, and they are better at understanding that a person’s emotional state may stem
from current or past events. During elementary school children improve in their ability to
interpret emotional reactions and are more likely to consider internal factors, as well as
external factors, in their interpretation. By age 6, children begin to recognize that they can
experience multiple emotions of varying intensity, and by age 8, children begin to understand
that they can experience multiple emotions of varying intensity and valence. These changes
occur at about the same time as the ability to consider more than one piece of information at
once (remember the skills required to complete Piaget’s conservation tasks), suggesting that
they might be relying on the same advances in cognitive development.
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Chapter 12 Emotional Development, Temperament, and Attachment 3
3. Emotions and Early Social Development
Emotional displays in infants are adaptive because they help to promote social contact with
caregivers, and they also help caregivers to adjust their behaviour to the infant’s needs. Also,
social referencing helps children better understand the positive and negative aspects of the
world around them. The reactions of others can be used as guides about which events and
objects are enjoyable (and should therefore be approached) and which are dangerous or
unenjoyable (and should therefore be avoided).
Emotional competence has three components. (1) Competent emotional expressivity: a
person who has achieved this displays positive emotions frequently and negative emotions
infrequently. (2) Competent emotional knowledge: a person who has achieved this is able to
correctly identify why and how other people are feeling. (3) Competent emotional regulation:
a person who has achieved this is able to adjust his or her emotional arousal to an appropriate
level of intensity.
Temperament and Development
Temperament refers to an individual’s tendency to respond to environmental events in
predictable ways. It includes activity level (amount of gross motor ability), irritable distress (how
easily a person becomes upset, or the intensity of distress that an individual experiences),
positive affect (frequency of smiling, sometimes called sociability), fearful distress (wariness of
new or intense stimuli), attention span (length of time a child focuses on events of interest) and
rhythmicity (regularity of bodily functions such as eating and sleeping).
The first five of these components remain useful for describing behaviour into the preschool and
elementary years.
1. Hereditary and Environmental Influences on Temperament
a. Hereditary and Environmental Influences
From very early in infancy, identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins on most
dimensions of temperament. The heritability coefficients for most temperamental attributes
are modest, but it does appear that many components of temperament are influenced by
genetics. The strongest environmental contributors to temperament appear to be nonshared
environmental influences (NSE).
b. Cultural Influences
Some cultural influences also affect temperament. For example, Canadian children who are
shy are more likely to suffer from depression and adjustment problems due to the rejection
they encounter from their peer groups. Even when shy individuals avoid being maladjusted,
they tend to lag behind their more sociable peers in terms of getting married and establishing
careers. This pattern of development is a consequence of cultural influences because the
opposite pattern is observed in China, where the shy children are perceived as being more
mature than their boisterous peers.
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Document Summary
Emotional development: displaying emotions: the development (and control) of emotional expressions, sequencing of discrete emotions. Between the ages of 21/2 months and 7 months the primary emotions of anger, sadness, joy, surprise, and fear emerge. Primary emotions appear to be biologically programmed because they emerge in all normal infants at approximately the same time, and they are displayed and interpreted in the same ways in different cultures. After the age of 1 secondary emotions begin to be displayed. These complex emotions include embarrassment, shame, guilt, envy, and pride. However, toddlers and young preschool children often display only self-evaluative emotions (such as pride or shame) when adult observers are present. It is typically not until middle childhood that children display self-evaluative emotions in the absence of an external observer. The later developing emotions are called complex for a good reason. Evaluative embarrassment, which stems from the negative evaluation of one"s performance.
