Theories of Social Development Flashcards
Social Development
Development of children’s understanding of;
Others behaviours attitudes, and intentions
Relationships between the self and others
How to behave and interpret their social world
Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development
Pass through series of developmental stages
Encounter conflicts in a particular erogenous zone
Success/failure in resolving these conflicts affects development
Freud: The Unconscious
Id: unconscious pleasure-seeking drives
Ego: conscious, rational, problem solving
Supergo: internalized morality standards
Psychosexual Developmental Stages
Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital stages
Oral Stage
First year of life
Primary source of gratification and pleasure is oral activity (e.g. sucking and eating)
Id: instinctual drives, earliest and most primitive personality structure
Ruled by the pleasure principle
Ego: stands for reason and good sense
Emerges after the id to counter the immediate demand for gratification
Anal Stage
Second year of life
Maturation facilitates development of control over bodily processes (e.g. urination/defecation)
Phallic Stage
3-6 years
Focus of sexual pleasure migrates to own genitalia
Identify with same sex caregivers
Experience intense sexual desires
Superego: the conscience
Latency Period
Ages 6-12
Time of relative calm
Genital Stage
Advent of sexual maturation
Onset of puberty
Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development
Eight developmental stages, eight crises
Among the first to note adolescence as an important period of development
Trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs shame, initiative vs guilt, industry vs inferiority, identity vs role confusion
Basic Trust Vs. Mistrust
First year
Developing sense of trust in caregivers
If doesn’t develop at this stage, will have difficulty forming intimate relationships later in life
Autonomy Vs. Shame/Doubt
1-3.5 years
Achieve strong sense of autonomy while adjusting to increasing social demands
Foster independence
Newfound ability to explore environment on their own
If subjected to punishment or ridicule, may doubt their abilities
Initiative vs. Guilt
4-6 years
Children identify with and learn from parents
Industry vs. Inferiority
6 years to puberty
Crucial for ego development
Can I contribute to the world?
Master cognitive and social skills important in their culture
Success gives sense of competence, failure leads to feelings of inadequacy
Identity vs. Role Confusion
Adolescence to early adulthood
Dramatic physical changes and emergence of sexual urges
New social pressures
Discover their identity
Psychoanalytic Theories
Freud’s Psychosexual Development
Erikson’s Psychosocial Development
Learning Theories
Watson’s Behaviourism
Skinner’s Operant Conditioning
Social-Learning Theory
Theories of Social Contagion
Selman’s Stage Theory of Role Taking
Dodge’s Info Processing Theory of Problem Solving
Dweck’s Theory of Self Attributions & Achievement Motivation
Ecological Theories
Ethological & Evolutionary
Bioecological Model
Learning
Any durable change in behaviour or knowledge due to experience
Cat comes running when it hears can opener = learning
Pulling your arm back when you get burned = not learning
Instinctive reflexive behaviour does not equal learning
Watson’s Behaviourism
Development determined by child’s environment via learning and conditioning
Little Albert experience
Watson’s View on Children
Children as blank slates waiting to be conditioned by parents, teachers, society (no innate temperaments, experience is everything)
Treat children as young/little adults
Strict but kind child rearing was suggested
Little Albert Experiment
9 month old orphan
Exposed to a white rate and reacted positively to it
Pair rat with loud noise that frightened Albert
Albert became afraid of the rat
Classical Conditioning
Learning an association between two previously unrelated stimuli (Pavlov)
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): naturally evokes a behaviour without previous conditioning
Unconditioned response (UCR): response to an UCS
Neutral stimulus (NS): initially doesn’t elicit any response
Conditioned stimulus (CS): stimulus that now evokes a conditioned behaviour (previously NS)
Conditioned response (CR): response to a CS that wouldn’t have occurred prior to conditioning
Classical Conditioning & Little Albert
NS: white rat
UCS: loud gong sound
UCR: fear
CS: rat
CR: fear
Stimulus Generalization
CR extends to other stimuli similar to original CS
E.g. Little Albert became afraid of everything white and furry
Skinner’s Operant Conditioning
Whether a behaviour occurs is largely dependent on its perceived consequences
Intermittent reinforcement (only reinforce/punish some of the time)
Makes behaviours resistant to extinction, persistent
Reinforcement
Increases the tendency to make a response
Positive reinforcement (give good thing)
Negative reinforcement (remove bad thing)
Punishment
Decreases the tendency to make response
Positive punishment (give bad thing)
Negative punishment (remove good thing)
Operant Conditioning & Parenting
Everything we do in life is an operant response influenced by the outcomes of past behaviour
Advocated using operant conditioning in parenting and teaching of children
Attention as potent reinforcer for kids
Use operant conditioning to modify behaviou
Social Learning Theory (Social Cognitive Theory) - Bandura
Most learning is social in nature
Emphasizes observation and imitation
Bobo doll studies
Bandura & Bobo
Witness reinforcement/punishment administered to another organism and alter own behaviour accordingly
Saw adult perform aggressive acts to the doll
Either saw them receive rewards, punished, or have no consequences afterward
Those who saw the punishment imitated the behaviour less
All conditions learned and remembered what they had seen and could replicate it when incentivized
Boys more physically aggressive to dolls
Kids in reward or no consequence group acted more aggressive to doll when alone
Vicarious Reinforcement
Observing someone else receive a reward or punishment and learning from it
Reciprocal Determinism
Children have characteristics that lead them to seek particular kinds of interactions with the external world
Self Socialization
Children’s active shaping of their own development
Selman’s Stage Theory of Role Taking
Young children’s social cognition limited by their inability to engage in role taking behaviour
Stages 1-4
Role Taking
Ability to think about something from another’s point of view
Essential to understanding others’ thoughts, feelings, and motives
Selman’s Stage 1
6-8
Learn someone else can have a perspective different from their own
Assume is due to that person not possessing the same info they do
Selman’s Stage 2
8-10
Realize people can have differing views
Able to think about other people’s views
Selman’s Stage 3
10-12
Can systematically compare their own view with another’s
Selman’s Stage 4
12+
Adolescents attempt to understand another’s perspective by comparing it with that of a generalized other
Dodge’s Information-Processing Theory of Social Problem Solving
Emphasizes role of cognition in social behaviour especially in ambiguous situations
Dodge’s Info-Processing Study
Elementary age children were presented with stories involving child suffering because of another child’s actions (ambiguous intentions)
Children asked how they would respond and why
Hostile Attributional Bias
General expectation that others are antagonistic to them
Leads to search for evidence of hostile intent
Conclude retaliation is appropriate response to peer behaviour
React negatively to provocation
Becomes self fulfilling prophecy
Early harsh parenting predicts hostile bias
Dot Probe Task
Faces shown and then X
Have to tap side on which the X was shown
If have an attentional bias toward a particular emotion
You’ll spot the X faster when it appears in the location where your attention was pulled by that emotion
All children biased toward happy faces except children high in anxiety (bias to angry faces)
Dweck’s Theory of Self Attributions & Achievement Motivation
Achievement, incremental, entity orientations
Motivation patterns evident in preschool
Achievement Motivation
Motivation via learning or performance goals
Learning goals: seek to improve their competence and master new material
Performance goals: seek to receive positive assessments of competence or to avoid negative assessments
Incremental/Mastery Orientation
Belief that intelligence can be developed through effort
Enjoy challenge of hard problems and persist in solving
Entity/Helpless Orientation
Belief that intelligence is fixed
Base sense of self worth on approval from others
Seek out situations they can be sure of success
Entity Theory
Rooted in idea that intelligence is fixed and unchangeable
Belief that success or failure in academic situations depends on how smart one is
Reinforced by praise and criticism of enduring traits (e.g. you are so smart)
More likely to display hostile attributional bias
No change in math scores over two years
Incremental Theory
Rooted in idea that intelligence can grow as a function of experience/practice
Academic success is achievable through effort and persistence
Reinforced by praise and criticism for effort (e.g. you worked so hard)
Predictive of higher math scores over two years
Ethology
Study of behaviour within an evolutionary context
Understand behaviour in terms of adaptive or survival value
Infant has to encounter mother during sensitive period of life
Imprinting
Process by which newborn birds and mammals become attached to mother at first sight and follow her everywhere
Konrad Lorenz’s imprinting geese
Experience expectant process
Evolutionary Psychology
Darwinian concepts of natural selection and adaptation to human behaviour
Certain genes predisposed people to behave in ways to solve adaptive challenges
Play is evolved platform for learning
Parental Investment Theory
Parents motivated by drive to perpetuate their genes
Can only happen if offspring survive long enough to pass their genes on
Cinderella Effect
Maltreatment rates higher for stepparents
Important Human Adaptive Feature
The brain
Large size relative to body size
Because of this experience prolonged period of immaturity and dependence
Birth occurs earlier in development to accommodate for head size
The Bioecological Model
Treats child’s environment as set of nested structures
Each structure represents different level of influence on development
Every level impacts development
Microsystem
Activities and relationships in which the child directly participates
E.g. family, peers, teachers, etc
Bidirectional relationships
Mesosystem
Interconnections among microsystems
Exosystem
Settings the child may not be directly a part of but can still influence development
E.g. parental workplace
Macrosystem
General beliefs, values, customs, and laws of the larger society
E.g. cultural and class differences, laws
Chronosystem
Beliefs, values, customs, family structure, technologies that change over time
How Media Increases Aggression
Seeing aggression teaches aggression
Activates viewers aggressive tendencies
Heightened arousal makes more likely to react violently to provocation
Long term exposure to media violence leads to emotional desensitization
