Emotions & Temperament Flashcards
Emotion
An evolutionary adapted set of physiological, neural, cognitive, behavioral and subjective reactions, triggered by the detection of a personally significant event
Emotion Regulation
Processes that change the occurrence, valence, intensity, duration, and timing of emotional reactions
Temparament
Biologically based individual differences in emotional, attentional, and motor reactions & their regulation
Theoretical Issues: Differential Emotions Theory
Different emotions reflect discrete, hardwired systems
- Each has an expression, a neural signature, and a physiological state that can be reliably observed/measured
Theoretical Issues: Differentiation-oriented perspectives
Emotions pretty global in infancy (positive/negative affect) and eventually become more discrete
Theoretical Issues: Functionalist perspectives
Emotions function to energize behavior to attain goals
- Emote to communicate needs
- Positive emotions sustain involvement/learning
Theoretical Issues: Dynamic Systems
Nested components interact with each and environment across development
The Emotions
Primary or basic emotions
- Surprise, interest, joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust
Secondary or “self-conscious” emotions: require sense of self & other
- Embarrassment, envy, pride, shame, guilt
- Non-evaluative: embarrassment, envy (sense of self & other)
- Evaluative: shame, pride, guilt (societal standards, rules)
Basic Emotions
Begins in the womb
- Cry-face seen from ~20weeks gestation
Happiness
- Sees first social smiles by 2 months
- Laughing from 3-4 months
Anger & Sadness
- Elicit anger by remove interesting object/events
- Sadness elicited in similar situations as anger
Fear
- First signs by 7 months
- Stranger Anxiety: fear of strangers
- Separation Anxiety: fear of caregiver leaving
Surprise
- Present by ~6months
Disgust
- To bitter tastes at birth
- Generally only disgusted at bad taste until age of 4 when a broader sense emerges
Self-Conscious Emotions
- Begin to appear 18~24 months
- Shame/embarrassment: eyes lowered, head hung, hiding face
- Guilt: reparations
- Pride after success: not until 2+
Understanding emotions
8-10 months olds begin to engage in social referencing: use others’ emotional reactions to appraise a novel situation
Emotional Regulation
Strategies for adjusting our emotional states to a comfortable level of intensity
- Young babies can’t do this, parents do it for them (co-regulation)
Babies do some self-regulation, increases over development
- Fall asleep if overwhelmed
- Look away from aversive stimuli (4months)
- Self-soothe via physical sensations (6months)
- Increasingly able to distract themselves
All relative: toddlers generally not considered well-regulated
Lack display rules: knowledge of when it’s ok to express which emotions
Parental Depression/Anxiety
Flat affect: frequent still-face
Infants of depressed mothers
- Flat affect, sleep issues, less attentive to surroundings
- Increased attention to happy and less attention to sad faces (suggests positive expressions novel)
- Less positive/ more negative during interactions with mom and stranger; attachment issues
Infants of anxious mothers
- Become more wary of strangers over time
- Less able to look away from angry faces
Temperament
Stable individual differences in reactivity (quickness & intensity of emotional arousal, attention, motor action) and self-regulation
- Present from infancy and (somewhat) stable across childhood
- Influenced by environment
Temperament model, 6 dimensions:
- Activity level
- Attention span/persistence
- Fearful distress
- Irritable distress
- Positive affect
- Effortful control
Temperament develops
- Increases in attentional control with age
- Environmental influences (parenting, broader cultures) may promote stability or promote change
- Most children can flourish if put in the right environment and suffer in the wrong environment
Cultural Differences
- East Asians infants tend to be less activity, less vocal, less irritable, more easily soothed by self & others, more fearful and less emotionally expressive than NA/EU infants
Behavioral Inhibition
20% of 4mos can be characterized as “inhibited” (upset by novelty)
- More likely to end up shy children
40% of 4mos “uninhibited” (delighted by novelty)
- More likely to end up sociable children
Infant behavioral inhibition predicts personality and social outcomes three decades later
- Stability due to ability to choose one’s environment (niche picking)
- Parents reinforcing shyness/overprotection
