exam 1 notes Flashcards
Erikson versus Freud
Erikson - the foundational theory for developmental psychology, is discontinuous and qualitative, continues for all of life, we keep building from stage to stage (8-9), we have psychosocial crises at each stage
Freud - believes in the sexist theory that focus on sexual drives not biology, an emphasis on early childhood experiences, the theory that we like our mothers and fathers based on “biological” drives
how are Erikson and Freud similar
- they both study the stages of life -> that development in life occurs in stages
- both show that childhood plays an important role in shaping adult personality
biggest difference between Freud and Erikson
Freud believes in psychosexual development, and Erikson believes in a psychosocial development
Nature
genetics and where we come from, by genetic inheritance and biological factors.
- focus on genetic hormonal, and neurochemical explanations for behavior
- nature is more than just genes, even when we know someone genes anything can happen
- Statistically most of the time if two good athletes have kids most of the time they will have athletic kids, but not always. Same goes for ugly people maybe having beautiful kids and vice versa.
nurture
is like an influence of outside factors like the environment, and the exposure or experiences of an individual
- all behavior is learned from the environment through conditioning
- with nurture the idea is that a child’s environment may influence they way they grew up, and who they grow to be.
- you can’t necessarily take a child and turn them into whomever you want them to be
what are all of the steps of the research method/research papers?
identifying a research question
reviewing existing literature
developing a hypothesis
designing the study collecting data
analyzing data
interpreting results
drawing conclusions
and writing the research paper (which includes an introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion sections)
why is development lifelong
development is lifelong because it occurs for the entire life, and takes on all forms
multi-dimensional development
has many different domains; physical, cognitive, emotional, social, etc.
multi-directional development
know that development happens in many directions. Kids shape their parents and siblings shape each other.
- kids personalities and mannerisms can change parents. Sometimes children change a parent the parent may decide they do not want children anymore. We all shape each other
plasticity in development
neuroplasticity - the brain’s ability to change and adapt dependent on physical damage, hard experiences, psychological and emotional trauma.
- our learning and experiences change our brains.
growth in development
the ability to learn new things, have new abilities, and grow as a person
maintenance in development
the ability to maintain the abilities you have and hold steady. This is the same for cognitive and physical abilities. It’s good to grow but sometime all we can do is maintain
loss in development
it happens, how we deal with it, come back from it, and learn from it
multi-disciplinary development
- being able to unlock all of the mysteries of development throughout various stages of life
- medicine, chemistry, history, ecology, communication, etc
contextual development
our growth and development is very specific to our own circumstances and aspects of our lives
- exposures to things, experiences, people, lives, languages/cultures, locations, etc.
continuity
continuity: we get older, we get taller, we become more of what we are, we change in
weight, we change in verbal development
discontinuity
- things like cognitive development (brain shifts in the way you think; may not
be more of something but a different stage shift where the brain does something different.
Not always learning more, but learning in a different way) Ex: addition is hard but then
learning the concept of subtraction. Puberty: disrupts everything and changes so much
nature
nature is more of the genetics and where we come from, by genetic inheritance and biological factors.
- focus on genetic, hormonal, and neurochemical explanations of behavior
nurture
Nurture is like an influence of outside factors like the environment, and the exposure or experiences of an individual
- all behavior is learned from the environment through conditioning
what happens with just nurture
◦With nurture the idea is that a child’s environment may influence the way they grow up, and
who they grow to be. “That you can take a child and turn them into whomever and however
you want them to be” not necessarily true.
what happens with just nature
◦With just nature people may assume that only environment matters, and if you grew up with a bad parent you may be a bad parent. Or if parents don’t teach us right that we will be destined to not do well.. Maybe even that only people who are genetically fit should possess
the ability to reproduce.
- can lead to us not to think about experiences on top of genes. Make us not realize that genetics and a person’s experiences influence their personality
Scarr’s passive interaction
‣ Passive -> not your own genes but your parents genes. Your context and abilities are
based partially on your parents genes. You environment was shaped by the environment
and behaviors based on your genes.
Scarr’s evocative interaction
‣ Evocative -> based on who you are from the very start each person has their own unique
way of interacting with the world. Some evoke different responses. Pretty babies are
more likely to get a different and more reactions than that of a uglier baby. Those that
may be more interactive, make eye contact, and look around from the start as a baby
may get more reactions and responses from people around them.
Scarr’s active (niche Picking) interaction
‣ Active (niche-picking) -> Based on genes but a combination of evocative and passive
interactions by around middle school you start getting into active. By this time this is
when people start niche-picking and not only finding who they are, but if they are an
athlete, nerd, leader, or what they do.
Robert Plomin
◦Age, race, gender, family income, what school you go to, where you live.
‣ This is the shared environment in families.
◦What really makes sense are the non-shared environments in families
‣ Who’s the favorite child, age differences, behaviors. These small differences ex:
individual is a good athlete, but the older sibling is an even better athlete. the small
differences do better at showing who we are.
- believes that the analysis of DNA can help predict individual characteristics
- Plomin argues that genes largely shape our personalities and that the latest science is too compelling to ignore
brofenbrenner’s microsystem
family, health services, school, peers, church group,
neighborhood play area. Things you may see every day or on a regular basis
* If something is not on a regular basis it may not be part of the microsystem. if it is
this scenario it may more likely be your
Brofenbrenner’s mesosystem
relationships between the things in the microsystem
and the exosystem. Interactions between parents/guardian with teachers, relationship
parents have with each other or relationship of a parent with a child’s friends parents.
Brofenbrenner’s exosystem
These are less direct and are things that are in relation with the mesosystem. Links between a social setting in which the individual does
Friends of family, neighbors, mass media, social welfare services,
legal services. Things out there that kind of influence you but aren’t very important to daily life.
Brofenbrenner’s macrosystem
The attitudes and ideologies of the culture. Things that are not common in all parts of the world.
the culture in which an individual lives
in Erikson’s theory what does each stage have
each stage has a crisis which is later resolved in some way before moving on to the next stage
skinner’s positive and negative reinforcement
positive - something is given to make the behavior keep going or make it better
- giving a baby positively reinforces their behavior and teaches them that if they want a pacifier they should cry
negative - when we increase something happening by taking something away
- for a parent this may be: the baby won’t stop crying so the parent gives them a pacifier and they stop
in operant conditioning what is reinforcement defined by
an increase in behavior
in operant conditioning what is punishment defined by
- anything that can decrease behavior
- anything that stops the behavior, but doesn’t teach the proper one
- positive -> spanking
- negative -> timeout corners
rules for operant conditioning
- always use reinforcement first
- think positively
- never use a punishment without reinforcement first
- make sure reinforcement is more common than punishment
- use social rather than tangible reinforcers
- make them social and/or small
- make consequences consistent
schedules of reinforcement - continuous
giving something every single time something happens, but can sometimes backfire because people can learn to manipulate this
schedules of reinforcement - intermittent
every once in a while doing something, but on a schedule
- every 5 times
schedules of reinforcement - random
the person never know when it will happen but you do
implications for personality
language choices
- we make random sounds and people reinforce this to turn it into words. We learn from this
emotional expressions
- often if a boy cries they are asked if they are mad. If a girl cries they are asked if they are sad or scared
habits and preferences
- we manipulate these from a young age
avoidant behavior and phobias
- if something bad happens of we fear something we may avoid is more. the more it is avoided the more negatively reinforced it gets. May turn into a phobia
the three goals of psychology
describe
predict/control
explain
