Lecture 11

• Temperament


  inborn typical behavioral tendencies of how an individual deals with the world.
• Thomas & Chess (‘77): New York Longitudinal Study temperament

  ▪ Easy: often happy, easily comforted, regular eating and sleeping pattern (40%)

  ▪ Slow to warm up: needs time ‘to warm up’ and to adjust to new situations (15%)

  ▪ Difficult: often responds agitated, difficulty adjusting to new situations (10%)
• Temperament: Development, Continuity in childhood


  ▪ Difficult temperament (versus easy) in infancy predicts difficult temperament in childhood

  ▪ Higher risk of behavioral problems (e.g., temper tantrum)
• Temperament: Development, Discontinuity in adulthood


  • Adulthood adjustment little to do with temperament during infancy

  • Some temperament dimensions relate to later Big Five personality traits
• Temperament: Development, individual differences


  ▪ Easy children can also develop behavior problems

  ▪ Difficult children do not always develop behavior problems
• • Surgency/extraversion:


  active, confident, energetical approach of new experiences in an emotionally positive way → eagerly and actively engaged in life: enjoy interactions, smile and laugh a lot
• • Negative affectivity:


  sad, fearful, easily frustrated, irritable, difficult to soothe
• • Effortful control:


  focus and shift attention when desired, inhibit responses, and appreciate low-intensity activities (rapid development of self-control at age 3)
• Exuberance:


  entertaining with puppets: measure laughter/reservation
• Fear-eliciting condition


  child enters room filled with frightening toys
• Anger-eliciting condition:


  restrain child in car seat and rate frustration
• 1 in 5: Fearful, inhibited in new situations and when meeting new people


  ▪ Plus: Early signs of conscience; no discipline problem

  ▪ Minus: Shyness, fearfulness can persist into adulthood, making social encounters painful
• Later development: shy temperament

  ▪ Strong focus on threatening stimuli

  ▪ Risk for internalizing problems

  ▪ But: fear and inhibition usually decrease with age

  Parental advice: Refrain from overprotection
• Exuberant temperament, Happy, disinhibited, fearless in new situations and with new people

  ▪ Joyous; fearless; outgoing; adventurous

  ▪ Potential problems with conscience development; at higher risk for later

  “acting-out” behavior problems
• Exuberant temperament, later development

  Risk for externalizing problems

  Parental advice

  ▪ No use of ‘power assertion’ (screaming, hitting)

  ▪ Sensitive positive parenting & love

  ▪ Calm reasoning when whining

  ▪ Time-outs for defiant behavior
• Goodness of fit / person-environment fit


  ▪ Parenting style/environment is adapted to child’s temperament

  Example:

  ▪ Shy child in calm environment

  ▪ Exuberant child gets opportunities to run and explore
• Early childhood, emotional development


  • Year 1: joy, fear, anger

  • Year 2: more complicated, uniquely human emotions: pride and

  shame

  → Self-conscious emotions: child is becoming aware of having

  a self

  • Early conscience development improves from age 2 to 4

  • Important for socialization: Unwanted behavior is shown less

  • Child learns to regulate own behavior more and more
• Individual differences in self-regulation

  ▪ Differences in toddler self-control have genetic roots (temperamental

  traits)

  Kochanska et al (2001): Which child has internalized mother’s rules?

  ▪ Room with toys, instruction: “Clean up or do not play with them”, Mother leaves

  ▪ Improvement from age 2 to 4

  ▪ Fearful inhibited children more obedient

  ▪ Girls listened better

  ▪ Stability over time (1 → 4 years)
• Some temperament dimensions relate to Big Five personality traits:

  • Surgency/extraversion → extraversion, negative affectivity → neuroticism, effortful control → conscientiousness

  • Effortful-control dimension of temperament → Self-control or self-regulation in childhood

  → Conscientiousness later in life: good developmental outcomes
• Personalities change in response to parenting, cultural pressures, and life events

  • correlations between early childhood traits and adult traits usually quite small

  • children’s traits in elementary school years begin to predict adolescent and adult personality

  • some aspects of personality stabilize only in adolescence or even adulthood

  ➔ Roots of adult personality in childhood, but full personality formation takes many years
• Continuity and Discontinuity in Personality - Adulthood

  Maturity principle: People become:

  • more emotionally stable (less neurotic)

  • more cooperative and easy to get along with (higher agreeableness)

  • more disciplined and responsible (higher conscientiousness)

  → Shift particularly from adolescence to middle adulthood: linked to starting to work

  → Little systematic personality change from middle adulthood to later adulthood, more related to life experiences
• Personality affects development across the life-span development through adjustment:


  • Emotional stability and conscientiousness correlated with good physical and mental health

  • Personality affects reaction and coping with life events, particularly agreeableness and emotional stability (low in neuroticism)

  • Personality (both self-rated and judged by friends) predicts longevity
• Self concept - Infancy


  Infants born without sense of self, but quickly develop implicit, if not conscious, sense of self based on perceptions of their bodies and actions + interactions with caregivers
• Infants


  • Capacity to differentiate self from world becomes more apparent by around 2 or 3 months of age
  • Sense of agency
• Second half of first year

  1. They and their companions are separate beings

  2. Joint attention
• Recognize themselves visually as distinct individuals (self-recognition)


  18 months
• • Awareness of who they are: a physical self with a unique appearance and as a categorical self
  • Self-referring language


  18–24 months
• Self concept - Childhood


  • Self-concept formed from children’s experiences and associated

  emotions

  • In preschool age: concrete and physical (physical characteristics,

  possessions, physical activities, accomplishments, and preferences)

  • Psychological traits + inner qualities at most referred to in global terms

  (e.g., nice or mean and good or bad) → used more by age 8

  1. Enduring qualities (e.g., funny, sporty,…)

  2. Part of social groups (e.g., school, class, sports club…)

  3. Social comparison → how they compare with others to characterize and

  evaluate themselves
• Self concepts develop from childhood to adolescence and become…

  • less physical and more psychological (“I have brown eyes” vs. “I am

  lonely”)

  • less concrete and more abstract ( “I love sports” vs. “I am a truthful

  person” vs. “I am a liberal”)

  • more differentiated (different “selves” in different social contexts)

  • more integrated and coherent (notice and integrate discrepant self-perceptions)

  • more reflected upon (more self-aware, think more about the self, selfconscious
• Identity – emerging adulthood

  Integration of self-perceptions into a coherent sense of self → definition of who you are, where you are going, and where you fit into society
• Marcia (1966) : identity formation


  • Classification into one of four identity statuses based on progress toward an identity in each of several domains

  • Key questions:

  • Experience of a crisis (or has seriously grappled with identity issues and explored alternatives)

  • Commitment achieved (resolved the questions raised and settled on identity)
• Identity – emerging adulthood table


  Image:

  
• Identity achievement associated with

  • psychological well-being

  • high self-esteem

  • complex thinking about moral + social

  issues

  • willingness to accept and cooperate with

  other people

  • better mental health

  • other psychological strengths
• Factors influencing identity formation

  • Cognitive development

  • Personality

  • Quality of relationship with parents

  • Opportunities for exploration

  • Cultural and historical context
• “Midlife questioning”


  ▪ Markers of midlife crisis mostly tied to events, which can occur at any time and those reporting midlife crisis show more neurotic personality and showed crisis earlier in their life
• Midlife crisis, explanations


  ▪ First experiences of aging

  ▪ Evaluation of life + revision of goals

  ▪ Social norms and expectations

  ▪ Inverted u-shaped function of well-being: middle adulthood lowest point

  ▪ Life events (e.g., diseases, death of beloved people, divorce…)

  ▪ Cultural influence: youth-oriented cultures vs. “we become wiser when we get older”
• Positive self-image of older adults achieved by

  • reducing gap between ideal and real self

  • changing one’s goals and standards of self-evaluation

  • making social comparisons to other old people

  • avoiding negative self-stereotyping
• Preschool children distinguish only two broad aspects of self-esteem:

  • their competence (both physical and cognitive)

  • their personal and social adequacy (for example, their social acceptance)
• Children who lean toward internalizing problems (are anxious):

  • Low self-esteem, read failure into everything

  • Learned helplessness: feeling powerless to affect their fate

  • Failing due to lack of trying (as they think they will fail)
• Children who lean toward externalising problems:

  • Unrealistically high self-esteem: When failing they may blame others to

  preserve unrealistically high self-insight

  • Failing due to lack of self-insight/ ignore real problems