Temperament, Emotion, Self, & Personality

Question 1

Overview

Answer 1

• temperament: initial bedrock/disposition for personality development via interpretations
• emotion: development influenced by expression, understanding, and regulation of this
• self: the portion that remains constant, the world’s interpretation revolves around this
• Personality development is an inclusive construct that incorporates a variety of psychobiological, conceptual, social, and contextual influences that self organize to constitute developing individuality through the life course
• Temperament, emotion, and self, however, are three of the earliest foundations to developing individuality to provide a basis for personality growth

Question 2

dimensions of temperament

Answer 2

o activity level
o self-regulation
o emotionality

Question 3

defining characteristics of temperament

Answer 3

1.Constitutional in nature, biologically-based
2. Temperament is expected to be relatively stable over time
3. Temperament interacts with the environment as an influence on development
o Common to think of temperament as having a direct influence on attachment, sociability, adjustment etc. but it is more often mediated by environmental characteristics
• Cultural considerations of how parents view different temperaments

Question 4

Differential susceptibility hypothesis (temperament)

Answer 4

negative temperamental characteristics render children more susceptible to positive as well as negative environmental influences

Question 5

Reactivity & Self-regulation

Answer 5

conceptualizing temperament in these terms mirrors the dynamic interaction between excitatory and inhibitory nervous system processes
o Gives researchers better ability to map the psychobiological components of temperamental individuality

Question 6

Temperament as predictor

Answer 6

• Temperament has greater predictive power after infancy
• Associations between temperament assessments and long-term outcomes are or weak and inconsistent
• Temperament becomes the foundation for personality as attributes become consolidated and incorporated into a stable personality structure
o people increasingly choose partners and create lifestyles characteristics that are compatible with their own

Question 7

emotion vs temperament

Answer 7

The effects of emotional reactions can be enduring or brief, in contrast to temperament

Question 8

Emotional development

Answer 8

Associated with psychobiological maturation, self understanding and the understanding of others, social interaction, self-control
• The preschooler is more self-aware emotionally has begun to understand the consequences of emotional experiences and the influence of emotions on social self understandinginteraction
• By middle childhood children have become more reflective and strategic in their emotional lives
o capacity for genuine empathy
o greater emotional understanding
• Adolescents – acutely sensitive to the psychological basis of emotion and others
o able to feel strongly in response to symbolic as well as directed elicitors of emotion
• It is increasingly clear that emotional development is shaped by cultural beliefs about emotion

Question 9

Emotion perception

Answer 9

o Capacity to accurately perceive emotions in others
o Infants categorizing facial expressions
o 1 to 2 years – emotional meaning underlying adult facial and vocal expressions – “social referencing”
The baby “reads” the meaning of the adult’s emotional expression and its relevance to the unfamiliar event

Question 10

Emotional understanding

Answer 10

Theory of mind enables young children to appreciate how much emotion is linked to satisfaction or frustration of desires, and to beliefs
o Middle childhood – children able to conceive of emotional processes, how intensity dissipates, how emotions are related to the antecedent causes
o By age 9 or 10 – begin to understand how multiple emotions can be simultaneously evoked by the same event
o Cultural influences – because of how emotions are perceived and interpreted to young children by parents and others, children from different cultures derive different understandings of the antecedent causes of emotion, and the appropriate emotions to experience and express in different social situations
o Conversations between young children parents provide a forum for learning about emotion and its causes
• Adults not only clarify that socialize emotional knowledge convey expectations about appropriate emotional behavior
o Girls
• Parents discuss more sadness and anger
• Attribute emotions to social-relational causes
• Resolve negative emotions to reassurance and reconciliation
o Boys
• Parents discuss anger more often and sadness
• Attribute emotions to autonomous causes
• Less likely to discuss resolution of negative emotions

Question 11

Emotion and the growth of self-understanding

Answer 11

2 to 3 years – more physically and psychologically self-aware
o Emerging reactions of pride, guilt, shame, embarrassment, and other self-conscious emotions
o Dependent on growth of self-awareness but also appreciation of standards of conduct

Question 12

Understanding and use of “display rules”

Answer 12

o Understanding and applying social rules regarding the display of emotion in social settings
o People use emotional display rules to mask the expression of true feelings with the more appropriate emotional expression to protect self-esteem, avoid hurting others’ feelings, and preserve relationships
o It is not until middle childhood that conceptualization of the meaning of emotional display rules is acquired
o Display rules are susceptible to the same cultural and potential variability as other features of emotional development

Question 13

Emotion Regulation

Answer 13

The management of emotional experience
o **Whereas display rules regulate emotional expressions, strategies of emotion regulation influence emotion itself
• e.g. stress management, motivation, elicit support, affirm relationships
o Emotion regulation is social – earliest forms are caregivers trying to manage emotions of babies
o Neurobiological basis for development of emotional regulation
• lower emotion centers (e.g. amygdala) and higher regulatory centers (PFC) have mutually influential continuing interactions
o Growth of emotion regulation reflects both the significance of developing self-control over basic emotional reactions and also the complexity of the processes underlying emotional arousal

Question 14

Emotion as social / developmental process

Answer 14

o The elicitors of emotion, the meaning of emotional arousal, and the understanding of emotional experience and its expression are each deeply social processes
o Research increasingly shows that emotion regulation is a more complicated developmental process than is often assumed, involving a deeper interaction between the “activation” and the “regulatory” features of emotion

Question 15

Self-awareness

Answer 15

Self-awareness is qualitatively different for infants, young children, adolescents, young adults, and older people because of the changes in self representation, autobiographical personal narrative, and self evaluative processes that occur over time.

The developing self is the core of developing individuality and the growth of personality

Question 16

Self: Infancy

Answer 16

o Infants have surprising capabilities for assembling the consistent frame of reference that eventually develops intersubjective self-awareness
o Development of efforts to achieve joint attention – implicit awareness that others have subjective states that can be altered by the child’s efforts
o 2-3 years
• Verbal self-reference
• Early signs of conscience
• Beginning to exercise self-control
• Rapidly expanding self-awareness and self representation
o Social referencing becomes more predominant, caregivers as sources of relational influence
o Many researchers regard the secure parent-infant attachment as crucial foundation for the growth of healthy self-regard because of its influence on the young child’s developing self representations
• attachment theory→” internal working models”

Question 17

Self: Early Childhood

Answer 17

o “Working models” become further elaborated in consolidated in the relational experiences of the childhood
o Expanding comprehension of internal psychological states
• Aids to understand others and themselves – theory of mind
o Self-representation strongly influenced by how children believe they are regarded by others
• Incorporation of parental standards into their own self-evaluations
• Autobiographical personal narrative aided by sharing experiences with adult – interpretive framework and organization/structure provided by adult, also provied a richer emotional language
• Children’s psychological self-representations are very similar to how their parents regard them
o At later ages children become mnemonically more skilled and less reliant on shared conversations with parents to retain autobiographical events
o In general, children perceive themselves as highly capable
• Difficulty distinguishing between their desired and their actual performance
• When children compare their competency to younger ages, they feel positive and optimistic
• When social comparison information comes through school years, there is a progressive decline in judgment of their own competency

Question 18

Self: Middle Childhood

Answer 18

o Self-understanding changes considerably in the school years as children develop more differentiated, realistic, and sophisticated forms of self representation self-evaluation
o Growth of spontaneous social comparison enlisted into self-evaluation
o Able to distinguish between various domains of competency
o Able to see themselves in the context of the multiple roles they assume in middle childhood – as family member, student, teammate etc.
o Awareness that differences in ability are not easily changed
o More realistic and self-critical self assessments affect self-esteem
o Emotion regulation, situation-specific appropriate behavior and self-control, reflects greater insight into their social selves, and provides a foundation for further advances and self understanding of adolescents

Question 19

Self: Adolescence and beyond

Answer 19

o Abstract thought enables teenagers think of themselves and others much differently than before
o Ability to contrast their personal characteristics with the attributes of an idealized self and wonder whether they can narrow the gap
o Intensification of gender identity
o Departing from childhood roles, beginning to enter into adult roles and activities
o Self-esteem changes in various ways for different domains of self perceived competence (similar to middle childhood)

Question 20

Temperament: Conclusions

Answer 20

Biologically-based but developmentally evolving future behavior
o Attributes become increasingly more consistent as individuality is enveloped into the network of self-perceptions, behavioral preferences and social experiences that together shape developing personality