2.1 Flashcards
Emotion regulation
reflects changes associated with activated emotions and more specifically processes that facilitate reduction of distress. Young children rely on their mothers to assist in the regulation of their emotions before they acquire the skills to do so on their own
infants maintain emotional and physiological homeostasis after arousal by
being comforted by their mothers. To facilitate this, infants engage in behaviors that signal distress or request for help. Infants look to their mothers for help and in turn modulate their behavior depending on their mothers’ responses, in most cases displaying less distress.
The functionalist approach
emotion holds that facial expressions facilitate the individual’s relational goals as well as signify the individual’s internal state in the social environment. Thus, negative facial expressions serve instrumental purposes in a child’s social world.
Differential emotion theory
each distress emotion has a distinct adaptive social function and elicits particular reactions from a social partner:
-Anger expression: tell to withdraw or leave. Caregivers respond with discipline and feelings of annoyance or anger.
-Fear expression: communicates the cessation of activity, retreat or help.
-Sadness expressions: convey request for help, comfort or support and evoke interaction.
Sadness expressions seemed to be the least aversive and induced most positive responses of support.
The ability to modulate facial expression (preschoolers) develops
before the ability to understand this response. Also infants between 3 and 18 months decreased their expressions of pain and increased their expressions of other negative emotions, such as sadness, after inoculations.
Children learn to modulate their expressions through
face-to-face interactions with their mothers who reinforce certain expressions with contingent responding. Mothers start to socialize against anger expressions at a very early age by reacting negatively to them. Alternatively, sadness expressions, which seem to reflect better regulations by the child, are reinforced.
Evidence for Sadness During looks to mother
During looks to their mother, more likely to display sadness expressions than either anger or fear expressions during looks to their mothers and these expressions of sadness were more intense than expressions of anger or fear under the same circumstances. Sadness was more intense and more frequent during and after the look than before it. Toddlers were more likely to express sadness when they were looking at mother than when not looking at mother. It is argued that sadness was the most adaptive expression under frustrations episodes because directing anger towards the source of that anger would likely not result in a positive response.
Implications of Results
These results do not provide evidence for the intentional or effortful modulation of facial expressions but they raise the question of why toddlers displayed more sadness to mothers. The results support the functionalist theory of emotions and differential theory of emotions. To gain social support while feeling anger, therefore, children may change their expressions to sadness to serve this motivation best. However there is not yet evidence that fear expressions are less adaptive than sadness expressions in seeking help.
Limits
-These results do not provide evidence for the intentional or effortful modulation of facial expressions
-cannot be sure that observed changes in facial expression were not accompanied by internal feelings of sadness.
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Case of innate sadness
- cannot be sure that observed changes in facial expression were not accompanied by internal feelings of sadness.
- Authors argue then sadness would have been more frequent and intense before look to mother
- Evidence from anticipatory & reactive smiles
- Sadness less likely to precede look
Display rules
refer to the culture specific predictions about whom can show which emotions to whom and when. This could explain a mechanism by which toddlers use sadness expressions over other distress expressions. Even infants and young children modulate their facial reactions seemingly without abilities such as masking disappointment with a smile. School-age children have disclosed that they chose to express sadness when they expected comfort, soothing, and other positive reactions from their audience.
