Emotional Development & Temperament

1. Emotional Development&Temperament Modules 9-2 & 9-3

2. Emotional Development • Basic emotions are universal • They include happiness, fear, anger, surprise, sadness, disgust, interest, etc. • Facial expressions (also universal) are the most reliable cues

3. What is an emotion? • Emotions are responses, including physiological responses • Sense or experience of feeling • Leads to expression, behavior; can be a motive • Related to thoughts and beliefs as well as immediate experience

4. Functionalist view of Emotion • What is their purpose? • Emotions are means of communicating and play a role in relationships. • They are also linked to an individual’s goals and motivation toward progress and overcoming obstacles. • Subjective evaluation of good and bad; comparable to pain in the physical realm

5. Emotional Competence - Sarnii • Awareness of emotional state • Detecting other’s emotions • Using emotional vocabulary appropriately • Empathy and sympathy • Realizing that inner emotional states do not always correspond to expression • Awareness that emotional expression plays a large role in relationships • Adaptively coping with negative emotions

6. What is emotional intelligence (EQ)? • Gardners “interpersonal intelligence” • Salovey & Mayer (1990): ability to perceive and express emotion accurately • MSCEIT (2002) Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test • Daniel Goleman (1995) Published a book, “Emotional Intelligence”

7. What is emotional intelligence (EQ)? Salovey & Mayer (1990): ability to perceive and express emotion accurately, including: taking perspective understanding the roles of emotion in relationships using feelings to facilitate thought managing emotions such as anger

8. Emotions Gone Awry • . . . Are the basis for some mental disorders. • Clinical depression • Bipolar disorder • Anxiety disorders • Intermittent explosive disorder • Antisocial personality disorder

9. Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory of Infant & Toddler Personality • Basic Trust vs. Mistrust • 1st year of life • Quality of the caregiver’s behavior • Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt • 2nd year of life • Reasonable expectations for impulse control

10. Emotional Development in Infancy • Primary emotions • Emerge early in life (first year) • Are culturally universal • Include • Surprise Sadness • Joy Fear • Anger Disgust

11. Emotional Milestones Birth attraction & withdrawal 2-3 mos. Social smile, respond to facial expression 3-4 mos. Laugh at active stimuli 6-8 mos. Anger, fear, attachment 8-12 mos. Social referencing 18-30 mos. Self-conscious emotions (shame, guilt, pride)

12. Fear • Appears in the 2nd half of the 1st year • Intensifies & remains until 18+ months • Stranger anxiety is the most frequent expression of fear • Stranger & situational characteristics • Separation protest also appears • Partially depends upon temperament and experiences

13. Anger • Appears about 6-8 months • Generalized distress is present in young infants • Anger in older babies may be in response to frustration

14. Social Referencing • Reading others’ emotional cues to determine how to respond to a situation • Infants become better at this in the second year of life • We still do this as adults, e.g., panic, riots, looting, helping behavior

15. Regulation of Emotions • Key dimension of development • Ability increases with age & development • Shifts from external to internal in infancy • Individuals develop strategies for this • With age children develop greater capacity to: • Modulate arousal • Select & manage situations • Finding effective ways to cope with stress

16. Emotional Self-Regulation • Strategies used to adjust one’s own emotional state to a comfortable level • Young infants turn away, suck, are easily overwhelmed • Ability to self-regulate increases with brain development, experience, ability to shift attention and to move • Older infants distract themselves, leave the situation

17. Emotions and the Self • Self-conscious emotions: • Do not appear in animals • May not be universal • Require self-awareness • Emerge later (1 ½ - 2 ½ years)

18. Self-conscious Emotions • Include empathy, embarrassment, envy, pride, shame, guilt • Involve injury to or enhancement of the sense of self • Appear as the sense of self emerges • Require adult instruction in when to feel proud, ashamed or guilty

19. Self-conscious Emotions • Shame, pride & guilt • Pride most often occurs in response to successful achievement • Shame is a global response to a threat to the self, also other-directed; reflects inability • Guilt is in response to specific failure, reflects culpability • These emotions serve to regulate the child’s behavior

20. Emotional DevelopmentSelf-conscious emotions • By age 3, these are clearly linked to self-evaluation • Parents should give feedback about performance, not the worth of the child. This causes intense self-conscious emotional experience.

21. Self-conscious emotions • Beginning in early childhood, shame is associated with feelings of personal inadequacy, withdrawal and depression, anger and aggression. • Underuse shame in our culture • Guilt is related to good adjustment. • Reasons for guilt or shame must be considered.

22. Emotional Development – Ages 2-4 • Emotional vocabulary expands rapidly • Come to understand causes, consequences, and behavioral signs of emotion • Emphasize external factors • Can predict what people will do based on emotion

23. Emotional Development – Ages 2-4 • Small children do not deal well with conflicting cues (mixed emotions). • Securely attached children are advanced in emotional understanding. • Emotionally negative children experience more peer rejection.

24. Maternal Depression & Child Development • Babies of depressed mothers are irritable and have attachment difficulties • They sometimes withdraw into depression, or imitate parental anger • They can become impulsive & antisocial • They develop a negative world view, lack self-confidence, & perceive others as threatening

25. Middle & Late Childhood • Increasing • awareness of the need for emotional management • ability to understand complex emotions • tendency to take events, situation into account • Improved ability to conceal negative emotions • Use self-directed strategies to redirect feelings: distractions, denial, redirection

26. Gender Differences – Emotional Expression • Elementary School • Boys hide emotions like sadness more • Girls hide disappointment • Adolescence • Girls feel more sadness, shame, guilt • Boys deny their emotions

27. Adolescence • Moodiness and extreme, but fleeting emotions • 5th to 9th grade, 50% decrease in being “very happy” • Environmental circumstances may be more important than hormones to this process

28. Emotions in Adulthood • Older adults report: • Fewer negative emotions • Better emotional control • More positive emotions • More selective social relationships • May have to do with the passage of time

29. Temperament • Stable individual differences in quality and intensity of emotional reaction, activity level, attention, and emotional self-regulation • New York Longitudinal Study (1956), Thomas & Chess, most comprehensive study of temperament to date • 141 children followed from infancy into adulthood

30. Temperament • NYLS findings • Temperament is related to whether a person will experience psychological problems • Parenting practices can modify children’s emotional styles considerably

31. Temperament - Dimensions • Activity level • Rhythmicity • Distractibility • Approach/withdrawal • Adaptability • Attention span/persistence • Intensity of reaction • Threshold of responsiveness • Quality of mood

32. Temperament - Types • Easy (40%) – quickly establish regular routines, generally cheerful, adapts well to new experiences • Difficult (10%) – irregular, slow to accept new experiences, reacts negatively and intensely • Slow-to-warm-up (15%) – mild reactions, adjusts slowly to new experience • (35% not classified)

33. Measuring Temperament • Parental interviews or questionnaires. • Convenient • Depth of knowledge • Biased & subjective • Behavior ratings by pediatricians, teachers, and others • Observation

34. Is Temperament Biological? • It is often believed to be biological. • Identical twins have more similar temperaments than fraternal ones. • There are consistent ethnic and sex differences. • These may be explained by parenting differences as well as genetic differences.

35. Is Temperament Biological? • However, it only has low to moderate stability from one developmental period to the next. • Temperament develops with age. • It can be modified by experiences, but not from one extreme to the other.

36. Temperament: Continuity with Adulthood • Easy babies well adjusted in early adulthood • Difficult babies have social problems • Men – less education • Women – marital problems • Patterns of inhibition & emotional control also appear to persist

37. Temperament & Goodness-of-Fit • Creation of child-rearing environments that recognize temperament and encourage adaptive functioning. • Difficult children are at risk for adjustment problems because they withdraw and react negatively. • Western parents tend to resort to angry, punitive discipline. The child responds with defiance/disobedience. Parents give in and model inconsistency.

38. Kagan’s Behavioral Inhibition • Shy, subdued, timid child • Vs. • Sociable, bold, extraverted child • Inhibition to the unfamiliar • Begins about 7-9 months of age • Shyness is considered a negative in American culture (social anxiety).

39. Biological Inhibition Pattern • High, stable heartrate • High cortisol levels • High activity in right frontal lobes