PSY170 MOD6

• Erikson’s Theory | Self and Emotions

  Initiative vs. Guilt (early childhood)

  • Children assert themselves and take initiative to engage in a variety of activities and behavior
  • Guilt develops in environments of criticism, suppression, and control

  Industry vs. Inferiority (middle/late childhood)

  • Developing capability and competence
  • Feelings of inferiority develop from failure and disappointment
• Self-understanding | Self and Emotions

  Self-concept

  • domain-specific evaluations of the self

  Self-esteem

  • global evaluations of the self
  • reflects perceptions that do not always match reality
  • related to attachment and quality of relationships with parents
  • low self-esteem is associated with negative outcomes

  Self-efficacy

  • belief that one can master a situation and produce favorable outcomes
  • Influences choice of activities
  • Those with high self-efficacy are more likely to put in effort and persist in a learning task
• Understanding Other (Early childhood) | Self and Emotions

  • Children begin to perceive others in terms of psychological traits
  • Understanding joint commitments
  • Understanding of others’ emotional states can be enhanced when parents and teachers talk to children about them
  • Emotion coaching parents - monitor their children’s emotions, view their children’s negative emotions as opportunities for teaching, assist them in labeling emotions, and coach them in how to deal effectively with emotions
  • Emotion dismissing - deny, ignore, or change negative emotions
• Understanding Others (Middle & Late)

  Perspective taking improves

  • Requires cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility
  • Associated with social competence

  Children begin to understand that others may have a different perspective due to different access to information because some people have more access to information

  Children become more skeptical of others’ claims, less trusting, better at explaining doubt
• Coping with Stress


  As children get older, they can more accurately appraise situations and their level of control over them

  Older children generate more coping alternatives for stressful conditions and use more cognitive coping strategies

  • Intentionally shifting their thoughts
  • Reframing

  Reflect: What strategies did your parents use to help you develop emotion regulation skills?
• Moral Development


  Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors regarding rules and conventions about what people should do in their interactions with other people.
• Moral feelings


  Anxiety, guilt, empathy, sympathy, admiration
• Empathy


  responding to others’ feelings with echoes of the others’ feelings

  • Requires perspective taking
• Conscience


  Internal regulation of standards of right and wrong

  • Young children are aware of right and wrong, have the capacity to show empathy toward others, experience guilt, indicate discomfort following a transgression, and are sensitive to violating rules
• Guilt


  can motivate reparative behavior and cooperative behavior
• Sympathy


  other-oriented emotional response in which an observer experiences emotions that are similar or identical to what the other person is feeling
• Moral Reasoning (Piaget)

  Heteronomous Morality (4-7 years old)

  • Justice and rules are unchangeable
  • Actions and consequences are considered and not intentions
  • Immanent justice

  Transition Period

  • Mix of heteronomous and autonomous features of moral reasoning

  Autonomous Morality (10 years old)

  • Rules and laws are created by people
  • Intentions and consequences both matter
  • Punishment occurs only if someone witnesses the wrongdoing; punishment is not guaranteed
• Preconventional (before age 9): Moral Reasoning (Kohlberg)


  1.Avoiding punishment

  • Moral reasoning is based on direct consequences

  2. Mutual benefit

  • Actions are seen in terms of rewards rather than moral value
• Conventional (early adolescence): Moral Reasoning (Kohlberg)


  3. Good boy/girl attitude

  • Good behavior is about living up to social expectations and roles

  4. Law and order

  • Moral reasoning considers societal laws
• Postconventional (adulthood): Moral Reasoning (Kohlberg)


  5. Social contract

  • Rules are seen as social agreements that can be changed when necessary

  6. Universal principles

  • Moral reasoning is based on universal ethical principles and justice
• How does moral reasoning develop?

  • Through further maturation of cognitive skills

  • Through peer interactions

  Connect: Both Piaget and Kohlberg argue that peer interactions are crucial in advancing moral development of children. Why might this be?
• Criticisms of Kohlberg’s Theory

  • Too much emphasis on moral reasoning but not actual moral behavior

  • Assumes moral thought is deliberative but for many morality is intuitive

  • Underestimated the role of emotions

  • Cultural bias (theory was developed using a sample of well-oU boys in Western context)
• Gender and Care Perspective (Gilligan)


  • An alternative to Kohlberg’s justice perspective

  • Views people in terms of their connectedness with others and emphasizes interpersonal communication, relationships with others, and concern for others
• Domain Theory: Social conventional reasoning


  • Conventional rules that have been established by social consensus to control behavior and maintain the social system
  • Rules are arbitrary
  • Punishment will be doled out when breaking rules but these sanctions can also be changed by consensus
• Domain theory


  Moral reasoning focuses on ethical issues and rules of morality

  • Moral rules are not arbitrary
  • Obligatory, widely accepted, and somewhat impersonal

  Personal domain not governed by moral reasoning or social norms
• Moral Behavior (Cognitive-Behavioral)


  • Moral behavior develops through the processes of reinforcement, punishment, and imitation

  • Situation also influences behavior

  • Delaying gratification and self-control are important in the development of moral behavior
• Gender


  Characteristics of people as males and females
• Gender identity


  A sense of one’s own gender, including knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of being male or female
• Gender roles


  Sets of expectations that prescribe how females or males should

  think, act, and feel
• Gender typing


  Acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role
• Gender stereotypes


  Broad categories that reflect general impressions and beliefs about females and males
• Chromosomes: Biological and Evolutionary Perspective


  The 23rd pair consists of a combination of X and Y chromosomes, usually two X chromosomes in a female and an X and a Y in a male
• Hormones: Biological and Evolutionary Perspective


  • Estrogens, such as estradiol, influence the development of female physical sex characteristics
  • Androgens, such as testosterone, promote the development of male physical sex characteristics
• Adaptation


  during human evolution produced psychological differences between males and females

  • Men adopted short-term mating strategies - violence, competition and risk-taking
  • Women adopted offspring care strategies - parenting, choosing successful mates who can provide resources and protection
• Biological and Evolutionary Perspective


  • Evolutionary psychology is mostly speculative

  • Does not account for cultural and individual variations in gender differences
• Social role theory


  Gender differences result from the contrasting roles of women and men
• Social cognitive theory of gender


  Observing and imitating what other people say and do, and being rewarded and punished for gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior
• Gender schema theory


  Gender typing emerges as children gradually develop gender schemas of what is gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate in their culture

  • A gender schema organizes the world in terms of female and male. Children are internally motivated to perceive the world and to act in accordance with their developing schemas.

  Reflect: What are some ways you have been socialized into your gender?
• Gender Differences


  Physical development

  • Boys - Tend to be taller, more likely to develop physical and mental disorders
  • Girls - More body fat, longer life expectancy

  Brain structure

  • Boys - Larger brains, more intrahemisphere connections
  • Girls - Smaller brains, more interhemisphere connections

  Cognition

  • Better visuospatial skills
  • Better verbal, reading, and writing skills

  School performance

  • Boys - More likely to drop out of school
  • More likely to be assigned in remedial/special classes
  • Girls - Better grades, higher rates of high school completion
  • More likely to be engaged and attentive in class
• Gender differences

  Aggression

  • Boys - More physically aggressive
  • Girls - Relational aggression comprises a greater percentage of girls’ overall aggression

  Emotion

  • Boys - Report more anger
  • Lower self-control and emotional regulation
  • Girls - More emotionally expressive
  • Better at decoding emotion
  • Better emotional regulation
  • More positive emotions

  Prosocial behavior

  • Boys - N/A
  • Girls - More prosocial behavior (especially for kind and considerate behavior)
• Parenting Styles

  Authoritarian

  • Restrictive, punitive style

  Authoritative

  • Encourages children to be independent but still places limits and controls on their actions

  Neglectful

  • Uninvolved

  Permissive/indulgent

  • Highly involved but places few controls

  
• Issues with Theory of Parenting Styles

  • Do not capture reciprocal socialization and synchrony

  • Many parents use a combination of techniques rather than a single technique, although one technique may be dominant

  • Concept of parenting style may be too broad and that more research needs to be conducted to “unpack” parenting styles by studying various components that compose the styles

  • Much of research has involved mothers and not fathers
• Peer Status

  • Popular children are frequently nominated as a best friend and are rarely disliked by their peers.

  • Average children receive an average number of both positive and negative nominations from their peers.

  • Neglected children are infrequently nominated as a best friend but are not disliked by their peers.

  • Rejected children are infrequently nominated as someone’s best friend and are actively disliked by their peers.

  • Controversial children are frequently nominated both as someone’s best friend and as being disliked.
• Sensorimotor play: Types of Play (Bergen)


  Pleasurable behavior of infants exercising their existing sensorimotor schemas
• Practice play: Types of Play (Bergen)


  Involves repetition of behavior when new skills are being learned or when physical or mental mastery and coordination of skills are required for games or sports