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Emotional Intelligence is shown in:
- – motivating oneself and persisting
- – controling impulses & delaying gratification
- – understaing one's own & others' feelings
- – one's moods
- – expression of emotion in social interactions
- – empathize with others' emotions
- is a better predictor of intelligence than IQ
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emotion
motivational force or action tendency & changes in physiology, feelings, and behavior
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two main theories on the nature/emergence of emotion:
- 1) discrete emotions theory
- 2) the functionalist approach
-research supports both perspectives to some degree; no one theory has emerged as definitive
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1) Discrete Emotions Theory
– emotions are innate & discrete; each emotion occurs in conjuctions w/ specific set of reactions
- -assumes that there are 7-10 core emotions: happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, and fear
- -theory states that said emotions are biological emotional responses across cultures
- -also repetitive emotional experiences during childhood result in traits & biases that govern interpersonal relationships during adulthood
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2) The Functionalist Approach
- • emphasizes environment's effects on emotional development
- • emotions function as a means of promoting action to achieve a goal
- • emotions are not discrete from one another; they vary
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Positive Emotions: Smiling
- • 6 to 7 weeks: social smiling occurs
- • 7 months: bebe smiles at people in general
- • 3/4 months: bebe smiles & laughs during a variety of activities
- • 2 y/o: clown around & are delighted when they can make other people laugh
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Negative Emotions
- • generalized distress: 1st negative emotion
- • 2 months: facial expressions of anger or sadness can be
- differentiated from distress/pain
- • 2 y/o: EASY to differente between infants' anger and other negative emotions
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Distress
- • sometimes infants show negative emotions that don't fit with the situation at hand
- • undifferentiated distress occurs in the place of ANY negative emotion
- • anger & distress/pain are not differentiated in most contexts
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Fear
- • emerges at 6 or 7 months
- • children are afraid of strangers until ~ 2 y/o
- • ~7 months: fear other things; irrational ones tend to decline after 12 months
- -can be different for different children (ex, children who grew up with dogs)
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Separation Anxiety
- • distress that children (esp. infants and toddlers) experience when they are separated from primary caregivers
- • is a salient and important type of fear
- • increases from 8 to 13/15 months & then declines
- -chinese bebes cry more
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Self-Conscious Emotions
exs: guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride
- • emerge at 2 y/o
- • at ~15-24 months children show embarrassment when they're the center of attention
- • at ~3 y/o children's pride is tied to how well they do something
-there are cross-cultural differences
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Guilt/Shame
•guilt: empathy for others; feelings of remorse; regret & desire to make amends
•whether children experience guilt or shame depends on parental practices
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Normal Emotional Development in Childhood come from:
- • acceptance by peers and achieving goals as important sources of happiness and pride
- • school-age children's related to real-life important issues
- • early school years, children's perceptions of others' motives and intentions determine anger
- • people should get less intense and less emotionally negative with age
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adolescence is a time of:
- -greater negative emotions
- -incidences of depression increase
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Depression in Adolescence
- • less than 3% of children are clinically depression before to adolescence
- • 15% (or higher) of 15-18 y/o's are clinically depressed
- - it's frequently paired with behavior problems
- - can be caused by: genetic factors, maladaptive belief symptoms, feelings of powerlessness, negative beliefs/ self-perceptions, family factors or lack of social skills
- - often is a combination of personal vulnerability & external stressful factors
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Gender & Depression
- • girls show higher rates of clinical depression than do boys
- – stem from concerns about body image, early puberty,
- worries about peer acceptance
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The Development of Emotional Regulation
- • initiating, inhibiting, or modulating internal feeling states, physiological processes, cognitions or behaviors
- • its emergence is a long, slow process
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Shift from Caregiver Regulation to Self-Regulation
- • 1st months: parents help regulate mostly
- • 6 months: averting their gaze sometimes by self-soothing
- • 1-2 y/o: infants turn attention to non-distressing objects or people to distract themselves
- • later, children rely on themselves to delay gratification
- - use language to: 1) manage emotional arousal & 2) regulate expression of negative emotions
- • self-regulation improves b/c of: maturation of nervous system, as well as:
- - adults' expectations of children increase
- - improvement in ability to inhibit motor behavior (due to increased age)
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Older Children:
- - employ cognitive strategies to control negative emotions
- - younger children mostly use behavioral strategies (to control negative emotions)
- - better cognitive coping mechanisms develop with age to deal with emotionally difficult situations
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Children Select Appropriate Regulatory Strategies By:
- • knowing the difference between stressors that can be controlled and those that cannot be
- • choosing the most effective strategies
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social competence
the ability to achieve personal goals from social interactions
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temperament
• individual differences in emotional, motor, attentional reactivity and self-regulation
• consistency across situations & relative stability over time
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infant temperament
- - Stella Chess & Alexander Thomas: did longitudinal research on infant temperament; found:
- • easy babies (40%): adjusted readily to new experiences
- • difficult babies (10%): slow to adjust to new experiences
- • slow-to-warm-up babies (15%): somewhat difficult at 1st; became easier over time
- • contemporary psychologists:
- –assess positive and negative emotion as separate components of temperament
- –differentiate among types of negative emotionality
- –assess different types of regulatory capacity
- • recent research indicates 6 dimensions of temperament:
- 1) fearful distress
- 2) irritable distress
- 3) attention span and persistence
- 4) activity level
- 5) positive affect
- 6) rhythmicity
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Temperament Stabilizes Over Time
- • behavioral inhibition in infancy: there's a tendency to be fearful and restrained when dealing with novel or stressful situations
- • fear in novel situations at 2 y/o, but there are elevated levels of social inhibition at age 4.5
- • some aspects of temperament = more stable than others
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temperament and social adjustment in childhood affects behavior later in life:
- • negative, impulsive, and unregulated young children had
- more problems as young adults with adjustment- temperaments are associated with problems of adjustment
- – goodness of fit: how children’s temperament fits with the demands/expectations of the environment
- – child's temperament and parents' socialization efforts affect each other over time
• temperament can be measured using: a parent or adult report, lab observations, or physiological measures (heartrate, EEG, cortisol levels)
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personality
- behavioral & emotional propensities, beliefs and interests, and intellectual capacities; wrapped up with:
- • a person's temperament & interactions with the social and physical world
- • children's relationships with their parents & their parents' socialization practices
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Quality of Child's Relationships w/ Parents
- • leads to a sense of security & determines how they feel about themselves & other people
- -shapes a child's: emotionality, understanding of emotion, emotional self-regulation, & emotional responses to people/events in the world
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Socialization
- how individuals (through experience w/ others) develop skills & ways of thinking/feeling, as well as standards
- and values
- - is how people adapt to a group & live w/ others
- - socialization occurs with: parents, teachers, & other adults as well as other children, the media, & social institutions
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Parents' Expression of Emotion
- • the emotions to which children are exposed can affect their level of distress & arousal
- • influences children's views about themselves & others in the social world
- • children conversly influence the expression of
- emotion in the home
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parents' reactions to children's emotions
- • dismissing/criticizing children’s feelings tell them their feelings aren't valid
- • these children become less emotionally & socially
- competent than children w/ emotionally supportive parents
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The Role of Culture in Expressing Emotions
•cultures promote or discourage specific emotions to differing degrees; these differences are often reflected in parents' socialization of emotion
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Childrens' Ability to Identify Others' Emotions
- • 1st step in the development of emotional knowledge = the recognition of emotions in others
- – 4 to 7 months: infants can distinguish emotional
- expressions, ex. happiness & surprise
- – 8 to 12 months: children demonstrate social referencing (?)
- – 3 y/o: children can identify a narrow range of emotions
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when identifying the emotions of others, children:
- • are best at labeling happiness
- • expressing different negative emotions is easiest to differentiate betwee in late preschool/early school years
- • fail to express more complex emotions until early-to-mid-elementary school
- • respond appropriately to their own/others' emotions if they can discriminate and label different emotions
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Causes & Dynamics of Emotions
- • at 2 y/o, children can identify happy situations in stories; can also mention emotions in appropriate ways in everyday discussions
- • not until 4 y/o can children identify sad situations
- • children get more skilled at explaining causes of emotion during preschool & school years
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Children's Understanding of Real & False Emotions
- • understanding of the difference between real and
- false emotions improves from age 3 to 5
- • over the preschool and elementary school years, children develop more refined understanding of emotional display rules
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Display Rules
- • children in 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 10th grade listened to stories that were supposed to elicit display rules
- • then they were asked to predict and explain what the story protagonists would say & what facial expressions the protagonists would make in emotion-laden situations
- • children's knowledge of how and when to control emotional displays increased between grades 1-5 and then leveled off after that
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personality
the pattern of emotional and behavioral tendencies, beliefs & interests, and intellectual capabilities that characterize an individual
-it has its roots in temperament but is shaped by the environment
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self-conscious emotions
emotions that relate to an individual's sense of self and an awareness of others' reactions
-happiness, anger and saddness are NOT examples of self-conscious emotions
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goodness of fit
the degree to which an individual's temperament is suited to their particular environment
- even a child with a difficult temperament can thrive if the environement is satisfactory in terms of its 'goodness of fit'
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discrete emotions theory
the view that emotions are distinct from one another and are evident from early in life
-researchers holding this view would disagree with the statement 'infants only experience excitement and distress, and the must learn how to express these emotions'
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social referencing
infants' use of a caregiver's facial or vocal cues to interpret a novel or ambigous situation
-when infants begin to do this at about 8-12 months of age, it is an indication that they can relate to each others' emotional expression to events in the environment
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temperament
differences in aspects of emotional, motor, and attention reactivity and self-regulatoion that are apparent from early in life
-children who have a high activity level, intense reactions to negative stimuli, & are not easily distracted differ in temperament from children who are generally cheerful/easy to calm
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emotion
characterized by a motivational force, subjective experience, change in physiology, & cognitions
-theorists disagree about the extent to which emotions involve cognition as well as whether the experience of this is entirely innate or partially learned
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socialization
the indirect and direct influence of parents, teachers, and other aspects of the environment on children's standards, values, and ways of thinking/feeling
-parents' expression of emotion with their children and parents' reactions to their children's emotional expression are two examples of how parents accomplish socialization
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behavioral inhibition
a dimension of temperament that involves fearful distress, particularly in novel situations
-infants who are high in this tend to be less social and less positive at 4 y/o
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separation anxiety
feelings of distress that infants experience when separated from an attachment figure
- a child who crawls AWAY from his caregiver is probably less likely to experience this than a child whose caregiver leaves the room
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social competence
the ability to achieve one's goals in social situations while maintaining positive relations with others
-children with this are good at regulating their emotions, tend to use cognitive methods to control emotions, & tend to be able to delay gratification
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display rules
a social group's informal norms about when, where and how much one should show emotions
-examples include: those with a prosocial motive, when one doesn't want to hurt another's feelings, and those with a self-protective motive, when one doesn't want to look bad in front of others
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emotional intelligence
a set of abilities that are key to competent social functioning
- this predicts how well individuals do in life to a GREATER extent than IQ does
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emotional self-regulation
the process of controlling one's emotions, including the associated subjective feelings, physiological processes, behaviors and cognitions
-young children who must rely on caregivers to settle them down have not fully developed emotional self-regulation
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social smiles
smiles that are directed at people
-these emerge as early as 6-7 weeks of age & do NOT refer to happiness experienced as a result of being able to control an object
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functionalist approach
the view that the purpose of emotions is to promote action toward a goal
-functionalist researchers holding this view would point to the association between anger and an individual's movement to eliminate obstacles
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young infants tend to smile at:
- people! interesting objects! when they can control an event!
- EVERYTHING?!?!?!!?
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Thomas & Chess labeled babies who were generally cheerful, who adjusted to new situations wihtout much trouble, & who were regular in their routines AS:
- EASY
- (peasy pumpkin squeezy)
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children high in fearful distress, particularly in novel or stressful situations, are considered to be:
behaviorally inhibited
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at 9 months, an infant who has habituated to pictures of happy people but is then presented a picture of an angry person can:
DISHABITUATE to the new picture AND comprehend the emotional meaning of the facial expressions
-NINE MONTHS
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social referencing inolves infants':
both EMOTIONAL and BEHAVIORAL responses to ambiguous events
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this is NOT an example of the use of a display rule:
ex: Ross is excited about making a mess in his playroom but gets upset when his mother comes in the room and gets aNGRY
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this display of a child's emotions is the MOST difficult for other children to understand:
Mia, who feels disappointment at getting a sweater for her birthday, but who puts on a happy face anyway
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