Emotion Flashcards
What is emotion?
A strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood or relationships with others
What is the traditional view of emotion?
It is an internal state is are expressed behaviourally in line with display rules
What is the functionalist perspective of emotion?
Emotions are used to communicate during social interactions and to create changes in the environment
When is emotional behaviour present from?
Birth - the very first feed
Describe a study that shows emotion is present from a very early age.
- Newborns responses to their first feed were videotaped within a double blind setting
- Where they were either given a sweet or sour liquid
- It was found that babies produced 2 distinct facial expressions
- Sweet: slight smile
- Bitter: Mouth corners down, pursed lips
- The observers could judge whether or not the babies like or disliked the liquid
How do the facial expressions of children change as they get older?
They are more easily differentiated and distinguished
Describe a study about how children’s facial expressions become more distinguished and differentiated.
- Longitudinal study was done to examine infants expressions during a vaccination
- Ranged from 2 - 7 months old
- The younger babies showed generalised distress
- Older babies showed a distinctly angry expression
When are children said to show a full range of emotions?
3 years old
When are the primary emotions present within a child?
Within the first 6 months
What are the primary emotions known for/characterised by?
Being biologically based and universal
What are the positive primary emotions?
Joy, happiness, contentment
What are the negative primary emotions?
Sadness, anger, disgust, fear
When do secondary emotions develop and is this the same for everyone?
With cognitive maturity, but they vary across individuals and cultures
What are secondary emotions?
Self-conscious emotions: acing on awareness of others’ attention
What are some examples of earlier secondary emotions?
Bashfulness, coyness
What are some examples of later secondary emotions?
Guilt, pride, shame
What do primary emotions contribute towards?
Cognitive development
What is required for secondary emotions to development?
Basic cognitive development from the primary emotions
What evidence is there that secondary emotions are developed earlier than 2 years?
- Infants were videotaped for 30 mins for 7 - 20 weeks
- All of the infants showed coy smiles which were similar to adults or younger children
- Shows that coyness is promoted by onset of social attention
What evidence is there that infants are able to distinguish and then react appropriately to the emotional expressions given from others?
- 10 week old infants were interacting with their mothers
- Mothers showed either a happy, sad or angry face
- Found babies responded differently to different face. If the mother looked angry they looked angry, same w/ happy etc.
What is social referencing?
Process characterised by the use of one’s perception of another person’s interpretation of the situation to form one’s own understanding of the situation
When can social referencing happen in infants?
If the situation is particularly distressing or ambiguous, the infant may look to caregiver to gauge an emotional reference point
When can social referencing happen in infants?
If the situation is particularly distressing or ambiguous, the infant may look to caregiver to gauge an emotional reference point
Describe a study that shows mothers being a social reference point for their child and the results of it.
- Visual Cliff Experiment
- The visual cliff was created with a glass table top with a checker-board pattern underneath with a deep drop off point.
- Mother stood on opposite side and was told to adopt wither a happy or fearful face
- Found that infants were more likely to cross if mothers looked happy
- Out of 19 infants 14 crossed if mother looked happy
- Out of 17, 0 crossed with fearful face
What type of emotion expression is universal?
Primary
What type of emotion expression is universal?
Primary
What evidence is there that primary emotions are universal?
- Infants are able to read parents facial expressions
- Cross cultural recognition (Himba & Western)
What are cultural display rules?
Cultural rules that dictate when. where and how one should express emotion
Describe a study that shows display rules cross-culturally related to disgust.
- Japanese and Americans
- Watched a highly stressful video in 2 conditions, one with experimenter one without
- Japanese participants showed disgust both times
- Americans showed disgust alone and smiled when experimenter was present
How does saying no differ in the USA to Japan?
USA are more straight up: - Won't work - We can't do that Japanese less so: - Thats interesting - We would like to think about that
How does the cultural differences effect emotion that is written?
- There are many english words e.g. unwinding that don’t have an equivalent in other languages and vice versa.
What are they dual influences of emotion?
- Universal, biologically innate factors
2. Culturally specific, learned display rules
What is emotion regulation?
The process of initiating, maintaining, modulating or changing the occurrence, intensity, or duration or internal feelings started and emotion-related psychological processes, often in the service of accomplishing ones goals
Why is acquiring emotion regulatory skills a major task for children?
It allows for the transition of the relative passive/reactive emotions which allows the child to start regulating its behaviours, this improves with age
Give some examples of individual differences within children
- Genger
- Temperament
- Neurobiological systems
- Cognitive components
What is an external influence on a child?
The social environment, e.g. parenting
There are links between parenting and what?
Disruptive behaviour
Through regular interactions parents provide infants with what?
A repertoire of emotion regulation skills
What do infants learn to associate caregivers with?
They learn to associate between caregivers and particular behaviours, which lead to changes in their state of arousal
What current research is there into child emotion regulation?
- Longitudinal study
- 136 infants
- 15 months - 37 months
- Child is presented with a novel interactive toy, it is then taken away and put behind a plexiglass screen
- This process is repeated with different levels of mother involvement; not involved, verbally involved, freely involved
- From this they can see how emotion regulation develops over time
- The differences in the child’s reactivity and emotion regulatory behaviours with and without mother
- The quality of the interaction that she provides
What are some previous research and predictions in regards to emotion regulation?
- Emotion regulation improves with age
- Infants distress with decrease with age, and regulatory strategies will increase
- Infants distress will decrease with maternal involvement, whilst he use of regulatory strategies will increase
When are secondary emotions said to appear in children?
2 years old
