Basic Emotions
- Happiness, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness, fear, interest
- Experienced universally
- Subjective feeling
- Physiological change (blood rush to face)
- Overt Behaviour (facial expression)
Development of basic emotions
- One month: infants smile; pleasant vs unpleasant
- 2-3 months: social smiles
- 4-6 months: anger
- 6 months: fear
Which basic emotion is least understood
Disgust
Stranger wariness
Distress in presence of an unfamiliar adult
- starts around 6 months
Complex emotions
- Self-conscious or secondary emotions
- pride, shame, guilt, embarrassment
- involve feelings of success when standards or expectations are met; failure when they are not
- 18-24 months because it requires development of self-concept
Later development of emotions
- Complexity increases
- Regret and relief develop around age 9
- Context in which emotions are experienced varies: shame and guilt for actions that younger children do not feel
Cultural differences in emotional development
- Same emotions experienced universally
- Cultures differ in extent to which expression is encouraged - Asian cultures favor restrain
- Variation in what triggers pride, embarrassment and shame based on cultural contexts
Recognizing emotions
By 6 months: differentiate happy from sad face
Social referencing
in unfamiliar situations, infants look to their caregiver
Regulating emotions
ways in which one controls own emotions
Regulating emotions in infants
Infants show some regulation
- Thumb-sucking or holding security blanket
-looking away from disturbing events
- 2 way communication system develops in which infant signals distress, and when caregiver responds, distress is reduced
- infants with secure attachments have better emotion regulation
Emotional regulation through attention
Divert attention to other less emotional stimuli, thoughts, feelings
Temperament
Infants emotional reactivity & regulation
- Categorized on 9 dimensions
Easy temperament
usually happy, cheerful, adjust well to new situations, regular routines for eating, sleeping and toileting
Difficult temperament
unhappy, irregular in eating/sleeping, respond intensely to unfamiliar situations
Slow-to-warm-up
Often unhappy, but not upset by unfamiliar situations
- Subcategory of difficult temperament
Rothbarts 3 Dimensions underlying temperament
- Extraversion: happy, active, seeks intersting stimulation
- Negative affect: angry, fearful, frustrated, shy, not easily soothed
- Effortful control: Focus attention, not readily distracted, can inhibit response
Support for rothbart (2011)
- Cross-cultural evidence supports biologically based differences in determining temperament
- Parenting applications match the temperament of your baby
Heredity of Rothbart dimensions
- Negative affect more influenced by heredity
- Temperament in childhood shows higher heritability than in infancy
DRD4 Gene
- Implicated in regulating attention, motivation and reward, novel-seeking in adults
- Systems likely involved in temperament
- Some variants of DRD4 gene make individuals more susceptible to environmental effects
Kitayama et al. DRD4 gene independent vs interdependent social orientation
- Genes mediate the effect of culture on cognitive development
- Greater sense of independence in European Americans
- Greater sense of interdependence
- more pronounced in gene carriers
Attachment
Social-emotional relationship between baby and caretaker
John Bowlby: Preattachment
0-8 weeks
- recognize mother’s smell and sound
- smiles and cries to engage with caregiver
John Bowlby: Attachment in the making
6-8 weeks to 6-8 months
-Infants behave differently to familiar vs unfamiliar adults
