1. Emotional Development & Temperament
Modules 9-2 & 9-3

2. Emotional Development
Basic emotions are universal
They include happiness, fear, anger, surprise, sadness, disgust, interest, etc.
Facial expressions (also universal) are the most reliable cues

3. What is an emotion?
Emotions are responses, including physiological responses
Sense or experience of feeling
Leads to expression, behavior; can be a motive
Related to thoughts and beliefs as well as immediate experience

4. Functionalist view of Emotion
What is their purpose?
Emotions are means of communicating and play a role in relationships.
They are also linked to an individual’s goals and motivation toward progress and overcoming obstacles.
Subjective evaluation of good and bad; comparable to pain in the physical realm

5. Emotional Competence - Sarnii
Awareness of emotional state
Detecting other’s emotions
Using emotional vocabulary appropriately
Empathy and sympathy
Realizing that inner emotional states do not always correspond to expression
Awareness that emotional expression plays a large role in relationships
Adaptively coping with negative emotions

6. What is emotional intelligence (EQ)?
Gardners “interpersonal intelligence”
Salovey & Mayer (1990): ability to perceive and express emotion accurately
MSCEIT (2002) Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test
Daniel Goleman (1995) Published a book, “Emotional Intelligence”

7. What is emotional intelligence (EQ)?
Salovey & Mayer (1990): ability to perceive and express emotion accurately, including:
taking perspective
understanding the roles of emotion in relationships
using feelings to facilitate thought
managing emotions such as anger

8. Emotions Gone Awry . . . Are the basis for some mental disorders.
Clinical depression
Bipolar disorder
Anxiety disorders
Intermittent explosive disorder
Antisocial personality disorder

9. Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory of Infant & Toddler Personality
Basic Trust vs. Mistrust
1st year of life
Quality of the caregiver’s behavior
Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt
2nd year of life
Reasonable expectations for impulse control

10. Emotional Development in Infancy
Primary emotions
Emerge early in life (first year)
Are culturally universal
Include
Surprise Sadness
Joy Fear
Anger Disgust

11. Emotional Milestones Birth attraction & withdrawal
2-3 mos. Social smile, respond to
facial expression
3-4 mos. Laugh at active stimuli
6-8 mos. Anger, fear, attachment
8-12 mos. Social referencing
18-30 mos. Self-conscious emotions
(shame, guilt, pride)

12. Fear Appears in the 2nd half of the 1st year
Intensifies & remains until 18+ months
Stranger anxiety is the most frequent expression of fear
Stranger & situational characteristics
Separation protest also appears
Partially depends upon temperament and experiences

13. Anger Appears about 6-8 months
Generalized distress is present in young infants
Anger in older babies may be in response to frustration

14. Social Referencing
Reading others’ emotional cues to determine how to respond to a situation
Infants become better at this in the second year of life
We still do this as adults, e.g., panic, riots, looting, helping behavior

15. Regulation of Emotions
Key dimension of development
Ability increases with age & development
Shifts from external to internal in infancy
Individuals develop strategies for this
With age children develop greater capacity to:
Modulate arousal
Select & manage situations
Finding effective ways to cope with stress

16. Emotional Self-Regulation
Strategies used to adjust one’s own emotional state to a comfortable level
Young infants turn away, suck, are easily overwhelmed
Ability to self-regulate increases with brain development, experience, ability to shift attention and to move
Older infants distract themselves, leave the situation

17. Emotions and the Self Self-conscious emotions:
Do not appear in animals
May not be universal
Require self-awareness
Emerge later (1 ½ - 2 ½ years)

18. Self-conscious Emotions
Include empathy, embarrassment, envy, pride, shame, guilt
Involve injury to or enhancement of the sense of self
Appear as the sense of self emerges
Require adult instruction in when to feel proud, ashamed or guilty

19. Self-conscious Emotions
Shame, pride & guilt
Pride most often occurs in response to successful achievement
Shame is a global response to a threat to the self, also other-directed; reflects inability
Guilt is in response to specific failure, reflects culpability
These emotions serve to regulate the child’s behavior

20. Emotional Development Self-conscious emotions
By age 3, these are clearly linked to self-evaluation
Parents should give feedback about performance, not the worth of the child. This causes intense self-conscious emotional experience.

21. Self-conscious emotions
Beginning in early childhood, shame is associated with feelings of personal inadequacy, withdrawal and depression, anger and aggression.
Underuse shame in our culture
Guilt is related to good adjustment.
Reasons for guilt or shame must be considered.

22. Emotional Development – Ages 2-4
Emotional vocabulary expands rapidly
Come to understand causes, consequences, and behavioral signs of emotion
Emphasize external factors
Can predict what people will do based on emotion

23. Emotional Development – Ages 2-4
Small children do not deal well with conflicting cues (mixed emotions).
Securely attached children are advanced in emotional understanding.
Emotionally negative children experience more peer rejection.

24. Maternal Depression & Child Development
Babies of depressed mothers are irritable and have attachment difficulties
They sometimes withdraw into depression, or imitate parental anger
They can become impulsive & antisocial
They develop a negative world view, lack self-confidence, & perceive others as threatening

25. Middle & Late Childhood
Increasing
awareness of the need for emotional management
ability to understand complex emotions
tendency to take events, situation into account
Improved ability to conceal negative emotions
Use self-directed strategies to redirect feelings: distractions, denial, redirection

26. Gender Differences – Emotional Expression
Elementary School
Boys hide emotions like sadness more
Girls hide disappointment
Adolescence
Girls feel more sadness, shame, guilt
Boys deny their emotions

27. Adolescence Moodiness and extreme, but fleeting emotions
5th to 9th grade, 50% decrease in being “very happy”
Environmental circumstances may be more important than hormones to this process

28. Emotions in Adulthood Older adults report:
Fewer negative emotions
Better emotional control
More positive emotions
More selective social relationships
May have to do with the passage of time

29. Temperament
Stable individual differences in quality and intensity of emotional reaction, activity level, attention, and emotional self-regulation
New York Longitudinal Study (1956), Thomas & Chess, most comprehensive study of temperament to date
141 children followed from infancy into adulthood

30. Temperament NYLS findings
Temperament is related to whether a person will experience psychological problems
Parenting practices can modify children’s emotional styles considerably

31. Temperament - Dimensions
Activity level
Rhythmicity
Distractibility
Approach/withdrawal
Adaptability
Attention span/persistence
Intensity of reaction
Threshold of responsiveness
Quality of mood

32. Temperament - Types
Easy (40%) – quickly establish regular routines, generally cheerful, adapts well to new experiences
Difficult (10%) – irregular, slow to accept new experiences, reacts negatively and intensely
Slow-to-warm-up (15%) – mild reactions, adjusts slowly to new experience
(35% not classified)

33. Measuring Temperament
Parental interviews or questionnaires.
Convenient
Depth of knowledge
Biased & subjective
Behavior ratings by pediatricians, teachers, and others
Observation

34. Is Temperament Biological?
It is often believed to be biological.
Identical twins have more similar temperaments than fraternal ones.
There are consistent ethnic and sex differences.
These may be explained by parenting differences as well as genetic differences.

35. Is Temperament Biological?
However, it only has low to moderate stability from one developmental period to the next.
Temperament develops with age.
It can be modified by experiences, but not from one extreme to the other.

36. Temperament: Continuity with Adulthood
Easy babies well adjusted in early adulthood
Difficult babies have social problems
Men – less education
Women – marital problems
Patterns of inhibition & emotional control also appear to persist

37. Temperament & Goodness-of-Fit
Creation of child-rearing environments that recognize temperament and encourage adaptive functioning.
Difficult children are at risk for adjustment problems because they withdraw and react negatively.
Western parents tend to resort to angry, punitive discipline. The child responds with defiance/disobedience. Parents give in and model inconsistency.

38. Kagan’s Behavioral Inhibition
Shy, subdued, timid child
Vs.
Sociable, bold, extraverted child
Inhibition to the unfamiliar
Begins about 7-9 months of age
Shyness is considered a negative in
American culture (social anxiety).

39. Biological Inhibition Pattern
High, stable heartrate
High cortisol levels
High activity in right frontal lobes