Chapter 9 - Social Development Flashcards
1
Q
3 theories of social development
A
- learning theories (behaviourist and social)
- theories of social cognition
- ecological and evolutionary theories (ethology/evolutionary and bioecological)
2
Q
behaviourist learning theories
A
- Emphasize the role of external factors in shaping personality and social behaviour. ex. Reinforcement/punishment (operant conditioning); Associations (classical conditioning)
- Whether/how frequently we exhibit a behaviour is based on past outcomes (positive outcome increases behaviour; negative outcome decreases it)
- It’s much harder to extinguish a behaviour that’s intermittently reinforced (If parents give in sometimes, children will be more persistent)
- Reinforcement comes in many forms. Attention is a powerful reinforcer.
- Tools parents (and others) can use to alter behaviour include systematic desensitization and praising something good rather than criticizing something bad
3
Q
Systematic desensitization
A
- based on associations
- Aka deconditioning
4
Q
social learning theories
A
- Emphasizes observation and imitation rather than purely reinforcement (but can include direct teaching as well)
- Learning can be influenced by vicarious reinforcement (ie. Whether the person whose actions they observed was rewarded or punished)
- Social learning can be selective (who is the best person to learn from?)
5
Q
theories of social cognition
A
- Emphasizes how children think about their own and others thoughts, feelings, motives, intentions, expectations, and behaviours
- Focus on internal/cognitive factors more than external factors
- Ex. Dodge’s info-processing theory, Dweck’s theory of self-attributions and achievement motivation
6
Q
Dodge’s info-processing theory
A
- Emphasized cognitive processes (such as interpretation)
- Eg. Hostile attribution bias (when people think that everything other people do to them was done to purposely harm them), self-fulfilling prophecies
7
Q
Dweck’s theory of self-attributions and achievement motivation
A
- Emphasizes the role of self-attributions
- Children with an entity/helpless/fixed orientation attibute success/failure to enduring aspects of the self and tend to give up in the face of failure
- “helpless” children tend to base their self-worth on the approval they receive from others
- To be assured of praise, they avoid situations in which they are likely to not be successful
- Children with an incremental/mastery/growth orientation attribute success/failure to the amount of effort expended and persist in the face of failure
8
Q
ethological and evolutionary models
A
- Just as evolution influenced our physical traits it no doubt influenced our behavioural traits
- Certain genes predispose individuals to behave in a way that increases survival, mating, and reproduction. These genes are passed on
- Focus on the adaptive or survival value of behaviour and their evolutionary and biological origins
9
Q
evolutionary psychology: parental investment theory
A
- Parental-investment theory stresses evolutionary bases of many aspects of parental behaviour, including the extensive investment parents make in their offspring
- Parents genes are perpetuated only if their offspring their survive and reproduce
- dark side to this: Stepfathers much more likely to murder their stepchildren than biological fathers are
10
Q
bioecological model
A
- Bronfenbrenner proposed that children learn and are influenced by gender at every level (all systems) eg. A room they live in, occupations/genders of neighbours, media, belief systems of the culture, time period
- microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, chronosystem
11
Q
TED Talk: Dweck’s social cognition theory of mindset
A
- Growth mindset: responding to new challenges positively, engage deeply with errors and challenges, focus on the “yet”
- Fixed mindset: responding to new challenges negatively, running away from errors and challenges, focus on the “now”
- How to build the bridge to yet: praise wisely – praise the process/effort/strategies/perseverance/improvement rather than the results or global traits like intelligence and talent
- By praising the process rather than the results, it puts kids in a growth mindset
12
Q
according to Dweck’s theory, what can parents do to help kids?
A
- praise children for working hard, which supports an incremental/mastery orientation
- avoid offering global praise and criticism focused on enduring traits that can lead to an entity view and a helpless orientation -> ex. Saying “you’re a mean person”; “you never study” (instead, say “what you did was mean”; “you didn’t study for this test”, etc.)
13
Q
microsystem
A
immediate, bi-directional environment that a person experiences (ex. family, school, friends)
14
Q
mesosystem
A
connections among various microsystems (ex. parent-teacher conferences)
15
Q
exosystem
A
environmental settings that the person does not experience directly but that can affect the person indirectly (ex. school board, extended family, healthcare or legal services)
