Chapter 6

• Personality


  Relatively consistent blend of emotions, temperament, thought, and behavior that makes a person unique.
• Psychosocial development


  Personality development that are intertwined with social relationships
• Emotions


  Subjective responses to experience (sadness, joy, fear)
• Emotional reactions


  Develop during infancy. They are a basic element of personality.
• Emotions are associated with


  Psychological changes and behavioral changes. (Changes inside and out)
• Physiological changes


  Blood pressure may rise, pulse may increase, sweat and perspiration may occur.
• Behavioral changes


  Acting fearful or angry. Expressions depend on culture and personality.
• Crying


  One of the first signs of emotions.
• Upset newborn


  Piercing cries, flailing limbs, stiff bodies
• Cry types


  Hunger, pain, frustration
• Newborns and happiness

  More difficult to tell when a newborn is happy because they aren't able to display that emotion.
• 1st month emotions


  Baby becomes quiet at the sound of human voice, being picked up, and smiles when gently moved.
• Involuntary smiles


  Appear at birth. Result of sub-cortical brain activity. They are just reflexes.
• Waking smiles


  Considered more social. Elicited through gentle jiggling, tickling or kissing. (2nd month of life)
• Laughter


  Smile-linked vocalization (4-12 months)
• Anticipatory smiling


  Intentional communication to the partner of object. (Smile at object, continue to smile while gazing at parent) (8-10 months)
• True emotions


  Joy, surprise, sadness, disgust etc... Reactions to events that have meaning.
• Self-emotions


  Self- awareness, self-consciousness, self-evaluative emotions
• Self-awareness


  Realization that ones existence is separate from others.
• Self-consciousness


  Depends on having self-awareness. (Embarrassment and empathy)
• Self-evaluative emotions


  Requires self-awareness and knowledge of socially accepted behaviors. (understanding what is and isn't appropriate)
• Examples of self-evaluative emotions


  Pride, shame, guilt
• Differentiation of basic emotions


  Begins as the cerebral cortex becomes functional (birth-3months)
• Altruistic behavior


  Acting out of concern for a stranger with no expectation of reward.
• Empathy


  Ability to put oneself in another's place.
• Empathy requires


  Social cognition (understanding that others have feelings and thoughts) ideas about others feelings are used to gauge own behavior.
• Egocentrism


  Absence of empathy
• Mirror neurons


  Neurons that fire when a person does something but also when he or she observes someone else doing the same thing (mirroring)
• Social cognition


  Ability to understand that others have mental states and to gauge their feelings and intentions.
• Temperament


  (The how of behavior, but not the what) biological predisposition of reactivity. Highly heritable and stable.
• 3 styles of temperaments

  Easy, slow to warm up, difficult.
• Easy temperament


  Generally happy, respond well to change.
• Slow to warm up temperament


  Generally mild reactions. Hesitant to change and new experiences.
• Difficult temperament


  More irritable and harder to please. Irregular biological rhythms and intense in expressing emotion.
• Temperament is inborn and


  Hereditary. But environment influences it through development.
• Goodness of fit


  Key to hereditary adjustment. Match between child's temperament and the environmental demands and constraints child must deal with.
• Adjustments easiest when


  Childs temperament matches the situation physically, socially, and culturally.
• Inhibition to the unfamiliar


  How boldly or cautiously child approaches unfamiliar objects and situations. Associated with certain biological characteristics.
• Harry Harlow


  Rhesus monkeys. Separated from mother 6-12 hours after birth. Newborns were placed with a wire, or a cloth foster mother.
• Cloth foster mother


  Did not offer food to the newborns, but offered comfort.