Problem 2: Emotions Flashcards
Emotions
→ Emotions, such as joy and anger, are
- Subjective reactions to the internal or external environment.
- Usually experienced as either pleasant or unpleasant.
- Generally accompanied by some form of physiological arousal.
- Often communicated to others through deliberate or unintentional behaviors or actions. (consciously or unconsciously)
Functions of emotions
- Emotions help to organize and regulate behavior.
- A person will show different behaviors when they are happy or angry.
- Emotions influence cognitive processes:
- Thoughts and ideas are strongly related to the emotion a person experiences.
- Emotions can be used to begin, maintain or end an interaction with others.
- Emotions help us adapt to the environment, and emotions ensure survival.
Primary emotions
→ Primary emotions - such as fear, joy, disgust, surprise, sadness, and interest - emerge early in life and do not require introspection or self-reflection.
Secondary emotions
→ Secondary emotions, or self-conscious, emotions - such as pride, guilt, shame, jealousy, and embarrassment - emerge late in development and depend on our sense of self and our awareness of other individuals’ reactions to our actions.
The genetic-mutational perspective of emotions (biological)
→ Emotions are products of biological factors.
→ All children go through a similar and predictable sequence but the speed of these sequences depends on each child.
→ Individual differences in temperament play a central role in how intensely children react to emotionally arousing situations and in how well they are able to regulate their reactions.
→ It can differ in different cultures - conflicting evidence.
→ Twin studies are a key source of evidence.
- Identical twins show greater similarity than fraternal twins in both the earliest times of their first smiles and the amount of smiling in which each engages - Innate.
→ The interplay between genetics and the environment accounts for the timing and form of the behavior.
The learning perspective
→ Different emotions and the way children express them, have different ages of onset, frequencies, and intensities in different children
→ The frequency with which a child smiles and laughs seems to vary with the nature of the environment in which they are raised.
→ Three sources of learning: rewarding/punishing, operant conditioning, and observation of others.
Functionalist perspective
→ Assumes that the purpose of emotion is to help us achieve goals. Goals arouse emotions. It also assumes that emotions are relational and not internal.
→ Emotions have an important social component: we use the information provided by others’ emotional signals to guide our own behavior.
→ Cognitive processing: emotional reactions can lead to learning (essential for survival), evident in performance anxiety, emotions can powerfully affect memory.
→ Social behavior: children’s emotional signals powerfully affect the behavior of others, and the emotions of others regulate children’s social behavior, with age, emotional expressions become a way for infants to communicate and babies monitor the emotional expression of others to assess their intentions and perspectives.
→ Health: emotions influence children’s physical well-being.
→ Social cues and past experiences.
Development of primary emotions: birth onwards
- Laughing: reflex laughs (spontaneous and arise from internal stimuli)
- Caregivers experience this as pleasant and encourage them to cuddle and talk to the baby.
- It has an adaptive value
Development of primary emotions: 4-6 months
- Smiles at external stimuli
- Includes social stimuli such as faces, voices, light, touch, and gentle up and down movements.
Development of primary emotions: 2-6 months
- People, faces and high-pitch voice provokes laughter.
- They can distinguish between doll faces and human faces and will laugh at human faces exclusively
- 2-month-old - looks at the eyes
- 3-4 months old - looks at the mouth
- Laughs at similar faces selectively.
- Social role which suggests pleasure and not arousal
Development of primary emotions: 4 months
- Skilled at laughing and maintaining well-being
- Becomes a sign of pleasure and is seen as a positive emotion
- Important for caregiver interaction
Development of primary emotions: 7 months onwards
- Laughs at visual, tactile, auditory, and social stimuli.
- After 7 months, response to visual stimuli increases.
- Duchenne smile: big smile for mother
- Anticipatory smile: anticipating social contact with caregiver
Development of primary emotions: End of first year
- Respond more to social games, visual displays, and other activities they can participate in. (peek-a-boo)
Development of primary emotions: second year
- Smiles more in response to events they create themselves.
- Aware of the meaning of social smiling.
Development of primary emotions: Gender
- Girls generally show more spontaneous smiles than boys.
- Girls are more genetically prepared for social interactions as their smiles draw others to them. This view supports the genetic-maturation perspective.
- Parents elicit that they expect more emotions from girls than boys, which suggests that both genetic and environmental factors need to be considered as well.
