D.P. Chapter 9

how humans are influenced by other people; focuses on the individual & on immediate perceived social situation

• •how aspects (ex. emotion, personality, attachment, self, morality, gender) of our social life develop
• •we'll discuss 4 theories:
• 1) psychoanalytic theories
• 2) learning theories
• 3) theories of social cognition
• 4) ecological theories of development

•dominated by Freud and Erikson

• • development occurs as a result of needing to satisfy basic
• biological drives
• • there's a continuity of individual differences early experiences, aka a series of universal developmental stages

the biologically based, instinctual drives that motivate behavior, thoughts, and feelings

areas of the body that become erotically sensitive in successive stages of development

divided into 3 parts:

1) Id: the biological drives, the earliest and most primitive, unconscious and operates with the goal of seeking pleasure

2) Ego: (starts at a year old); rational, logical, problem-solving component

3) Superego: (seen in ages 3-6); internalization of the parents' beliefs, and standards

(first year); the primary source of satisfaction and pleasure is oral activity; during this stage, the mother is established as the strongest love-object

(1-3 years old); the primary source of pleasure comes from POOPING

(3-6 years old); characterized by the localization of pleasure in the genitalia

(6-12 years); characterized by the channeling of sexual energy into socially acceptable activities

(12+ years); sexual maturation is complete and sexual intercourse becomes a major goal (!!!!!!!!!!)

• •Oedipus complex: psychosocial conflict in which a boy experiences sexual desire for his mother and wants an exclusive relationship with her
• •Electra complex: Freud thought girls experience a similar but less intense conflict involving erotic feelings toward the father, resulting in their developing a weaker conscience than boys do

• • his theory includes the influence of other factors such as culture and contemporary issues
• • includes 8 age-related stages (5 during childhood & adolescence); each stage = a specific crisis

1) Trust vs. Mistrust: (Infancy, 0-18 months); Feeding happens; children develop a sense of trust when caregivers provide reliabilty, care, and affection; lack of this leads to mistrust

2) Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt (early childhood, 2-3 years); toilet training happens; children develop personal control over physical skills & independence; success leads to autonomy; failure = feelings of shame and doubt.

3) Initiative vs. Guilt (preschool, 3-5 years); exploration happens; children assert control & power over the environment; success leads to a sense of purpose; children who exert too much power experience disapproval, resulting in guilt.

4) Industry vs. Inferiority (6-11 years); school happens; children cope with social and academic demands; success = sense of competence; failure = inferiority.

5) Identity vs. Role Confusion (adolescence, 12-18 years) social relationships 'happen'; teens develop a sense of self and personal identity; success = ability to stay true to yourself; failure = role confusion & weak sense of self

• Freud's:
• 1) emphasis of early experience and emotional
• relationships
• 2) recognition of the role of subjective experience and
• unconscious mental activity

Erikson's: search for identity in adolescence

• • external factors (through reinforcement & punishment) shape personality and social behavior
• • contemporary learning theorists also recognize the influence of cognitive factors & the active role

inspired by Watson; combines positive reinforcement with the presentation of the feared object; therefore person is desensitized to whatever they're afraid of

• •viewed attention as a powerful reinforcer
• •showed there's difficulty extinguishing a behavior that's been previously reinforced
• •behavior modification

• •demonstrated that the learning of new behaviors happened by observing others
• •included vicarious reinforcement
• •observing someone else receive a reward or punishment for behavior affects the subsequent reproduction of the behavior
• •boys = more aggressive than girls
• • girls increased their level of imitation (aggression) when rewarded

reinforcement that occurs when you imitate the behavior of someone who has been reinforced for that behavior; ex. avoiding hot water after seeing another person burned by it

concept that child-environment influences operate in both directions (a person's behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment); Bandura's theory

people's beliefs about their capabilities to produce ideal outcomes or perform well on tasks levels that influence how they actually perform said events

• -Study: half people were told they did really well on a test, and half were told they did poorly
• -the first group who was told they performed poorly did much worse on the second test
• -if you perceive yourself as doing well, it affects your own performance later on in a positive way

• to think and reason about their own and other people's thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors
• -emphasizes the process of self-socialization: ???

• -role taking: ability to adopt the perspective of another person
• -Selman theorized that the process of role taking helps a child develop socially
• -they'll pay more attention to what people do/say in a normal situation; become more observant
• -Selman saw role taking as a simulation for social situations in real life (getting ready for an active participation in real life)

1) 6-8 yrs: another person can have a different perspective from their own, but they attribute this to the other person not having the same information they do

2) 8-10 yrs: they're able to think about the other persons' POV

3) 10-12 yrs: Children can systematically compare their own and the others' points of view

4) 12+ yrs: adolescents can compare another person!s perspective to that of a generalized other

• • cognitive processes in social behavior
• • aggression as a problem-solving strategy
• • highly aggressive children seem to have a hostile attributional bias

a tendency to perceive hostile intent on the part of others, even when it is really lacking

• • emphasized the role of self-attributions in academic
• achievement; described two possible orientations

• 1) entity/helpless orientation: attribute failure with attributes of themselves
• -tend to base self-worth on degree of approval they get from other people
• -if society values you, you feel better about yourself
• -these children are less likely to try out things; in order to feel good about themselves, they only do what they know they'll be good/successful at
• -Dweck suggested that this reflects individuals' beliefs that intelligence is a fixed trait & can't be changed

• 2) incremental/mastery orientation: failure is a result of the amount of effort put into something
• -such people are more likely to put more energy into something they failed at the first time around
• -these people are more successful in life; try new things and if they fail will try again but with new resolve!

• -children as inheritors of genetically based abilities and predispositions
• -aspects of human development are presumed to be based on our evolutionary heritage
• -species-specific behavior: innate behaviors that can be seen by almost all the members of a species

stresses the effect of context on development & child's active role in selecting and influencing those contexts

•study of animal behavior; evolutionary bases of behavior, attempting to understand behavior in terms of its adaptive or survival value (ex. imprinting)

-the larger the brain size of various primates, the longer their developmental period (takes longer to grow a big brain!)

-humans are a slow-developing big-brained species compared to other primates

• -evolutionary basis of many aspects of parental behavior
• -females’ parental investment is much greater than that of males (both before and after childbirth)

• -poineered byUrie Brofenbrenner: a child's environment is composed of a series of nested structures
• 1) microsystem: ex. family
• 2) mesosystem: ex. family & peers
• 3) exosystem: ex. parents’ workplace
• 4) macrosystem: ex. laws
• 5) chronosystem: ex. digital age

• • serious threats to child development in the US
• •less secure relationships with parents = less empathy, less self-esteem
• -more conflicts with peers and difficulties with
• academics in elementary school
• •increases risk for serious psychopathologies

in any other activity besides school and sleep

• -more than 60% of television programs contain violence
• -inevitably results in decreased physical activity if watching TV

observing another person receive a reward or punishment (Bandura)

the process of adopting one's parents rules and standards as one's own; allows for the formation of a superego!

FREUD's term for the biologically based instinctual drives that energize behavior, thoughts and feelings

-according to Freud, this initially focused on bodily needs but some of it becomes diverted and transformed into psychological needs and desires in later stages of development

Bandura's concept that children are affected by aspects of their environment, but that they also influence their environment (reciprocal)

a form of therapy based on OPERANT conditioning, in which reinforcement contingencies are changes to encourage more adaptive behavior

inconsistent response to the behavior of another person; Skinner found that this makes behaviors RESISTANT to extinction

in Dodge's theory, the expectation that others' ambiguous behaviors originate from a hostile intent

the belief that intelligence isn't fixed and can grow as a function of experience (opposite of entity theory)

-when evaluting their own performance, children with this belief tend to focus on effort/learning rather than outcome

belief that a person's intelligence is fixed and unchangeable (opposite of incremental theory...duh)

-when evaluting their own performance, children with this belief tend to focus on outcome rather than effort or learning

the interconnections among aspects of the immediate environment (in biological theory); level of the developmental context that includes parents' interactions with a child's peers

the larger cultural and social context within which all other system are embedded (in biological theory)

-includes the subcultural groups to which a child belongs as well as the laws and values of society

the study of behavior within an evolutionary context

the SETTINGS that influence a child's development but that a child does not directly experience (in biological theory)

-includes the school board & parents' workplace

the INTERMEDIATE environment in which an individual dIRECTLY participates (in biological theory)

-includes child's family and school

HISTORICAL cicumstances that change over time and influence the other systems (in biological theory; kronos = time)

-includes the age of a child when exposed to particular events (history-ish?)

the notion that children actively shape their own development; according to social cognitive theories, this involves a child's adoption of particular goals to guide their own behavior based on their knowledge and beliefs about themselves and others