CHFD215 American Military Wk 6 Emotional and Moral Development Discussion How do genetic and environmental factors work together to influence emotional and

CHFD215 American Military Wk 6 Emotional and Moral Development Discussion How do genetic and environmental factors work together to influence emotional and moral development? What can parents do to ensure healthy emotional and moral development with their children? This week you’re going on a field trip – an internet field trip! Please do a search online for a current event that relates to the material in the reading this week. Give a brief summary of what you found and explain how it fits in with what you learned this week. Don’t forget to cite your source! C H F D 2 1 5
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L E S S O N
6
Emotional Development and Moral
Development
This week we will explore the functions of emotions, the development of emotional expression
and emotional understanding, the role of temperament, and the development and significance of
attachment. Additionally, we will study moral development. Topics involving moral
development will include the study of morality as the adoption of societal norms, morality as
social understanding, moral reasoning of young children, the development of self-control, and
the development of aggression.
Topics to be covered include:
• Stages of Emotional
• Moral Development
Development
Emotional Development
Emotion is defined as a rapid appraisal of the personal significance of a situation that prepares us
for action. When you experience something that is personally relevant, there is physiological
response in your body that causes a behavioral response. If you get into an argument, someone
you love smiles at you, or you accomplish a challenging task, you feel a surge of emotion. Your
behavioral responses to your emotions is part of what makes you unique!
EMOTIONS DEFINED
Theorists with a functionalist approach to emotion believe that emotions play an integral role in
cognitive processing, social behavior, and physical health. They believe that the purpose of
emotions is to motivate behavior aimed at accomplishing personal goals. If you have a goal in
mind, the anticipation of the outcome, as well as the outcome itself, triggers emotions that help
dictate your response. As an individual interacts with his or her environment and situations
change, emotions change.
We see how cognition and emotions work together when we consider the impact of anxiety on
performance. When anxiety levels rise, thinking skills are often impacted, as attention given to
mental processing is now occupied with thoughts of worry. In addition, children who become
distressed tend to better recall that particular experience, showing emotion is linked to memory.
We also previously learned that two childhood growth disorders, nonorganic failure to thrive and
psychosocial dwarfism, result from emotional deprivation.
SOCIAL SITUATIONS
Individuals use emotions to gauge how to respond in social situations. Even infants
begin to pick up on the emotion information provided by others. Through the process
of social referencing (checking the emotions of others), young children learn how to
act in certain situations. This is bidirectional. Children use the emotional responses of
others to regulate their own behavior, and their own emotional signals affect how
others respond to them.
SELF-AWARENESS
In addition to learning to respond to others, emotions also support the development of
self-awareness. This helps children forge a sense of self-efficacy, or confidence in
their own ability to control events in their surroundings. Children with a strong sense
of efficacy are more likely to be intrinsically motivated to accomplish challenging
tasks and recover more rapidly when experiencing obstacles.
HEALTH
Finally, researchers have found a link between emotions and health. If a child is
consistently experiencing stress, anxiety, or anger, there are a variety of healthy
problems that can occur. This includes elevated blood pressure, decreased immune
response, gastrointestinal difficulties, and continued stress.
Emotional Expression
The progression of emotional expression occurs with age. In early infancy, happiness is
displayed through smiles and laughter, often as a reaction to parental affection or the
achievement of sensorimotor goals. Infants also begin to experience anger (as a result of not
being able to control their surroundings as expected) and fear (typically as a result of being
around unfamiliar adults). Angry reactions increase with age into the second year, which
motivates caregivers to ease the baby’s distress. Fear, on the other hand, arises in the second half
of the first year but eventually decreases. The initial rise in fear also keeps traveling babies safer
when exploring their environment.
SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS
Toddlers begin to display higher-order, self-conscious emotions, such as guilt, shame,
embarrassment, envy, and pride as they grow in self-awareness. These types of emotions involve
injury to our sense of self and begin to appear at the end of the second year. Learning to manage
these emotions comes with the support of adults, whose feedback encourages or discourages the
emotions in specific settings and situations. This, again, varies widely from culture to culture. As
emotional management develops, young children become increasingly sensitive to praise or
blame from caregivers and emotions become associated with self-evaluation. How adults handle
feedback is important to a child’s developing self-esteem.
Self-Regulation of Emotions
Over time, children must learn to control their own emotions and emotional responses, a concept
known as emotional self-regulation. The ability to adjust an emotional state depends on several
cognitive strategies, including attention focusing and shifting, inhibiting certain thoughts and
behaviors, and making a plan to relieve stress. This regulation is influenced by both adult
instruction and cultural expectations and is an important part of adapting to the physical and
social environment in which a child is raised.
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INFANCY
In infancy, babies mainly use social referencing to evaluate situations. In other
words, they observe how others react to determine if a situation is positive or
negative. Babies learn to turn away from unpleasant situations or engage in
self-soothing strategies when upset. Sympathetic rather than impatient parental
responses make babies easier to soothe and encourage self-calming strategies.
EARLY CHILDHOOD
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In early childhood, the skill of social referencing further develops as cognition
skills improve and social experiences become more frequent and complex.
Toddlers often adapt their emotional expressions to benefit their own needs,
such as crying to receive a cookie. They also tend to amplify their feelings to
those around them. They begin to talk about their feelings with others using
basic vocabulary words, but often experience temper tantrums due to
frustrations at learning to manage and communicate complex emotions.
Conversations that prepare children for emotional situations can help foster
self-regulation.
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By middle childhood and early adolescence, children greatly improve at
regulating emotions, as their strategies become more adaptable and refined.
They better manage the balance between feeling and expressing an emotion and
begin to communicate with themselves as they reflect on what they are feeling.
Most children move between problem-centered coping (appraising a situation
as changeable, identifying the difficulty, and deciding what to do) and emotioncentered coping (internal, private, and aimed at controlling stress when little
can be done about the outcome). These strategies develop as they encounter
new emotional challenges, as the school years bring expanded experiences with
others. Furthermore, while toddlers show basic awareness of empathy (the
ability to take another person’s emotional perspective), it increases over the
elementary school years as children recognize a wider array of emotions and
take numerous cues into account when evaluating the feelings of others.
Typically, empathy leads to sympathy, or feelings of concern for another’s
predicament.
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
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TEMPERAMENT
Temperament is defined as early-appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and
self-regulation. Both temperament and parenting play a role in the development and
expression of empathy. It makes sense that children who are friendly, confident, and
successful at self-regulation are more likely to empathize with others than children who
are antagonistic and struggle with regulation of emotions.
Let’s review some models and influences of temperament.
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Thomas and Chess’s model of temperament helped identify three types of children: easy,
difficult, and slow-to-warm-up. These types were based on nine dimensions of
temperament, including activity level, rhythmicity, distractibility, adaptability, quality of
mood, threshold of responsiveness, intensity of reaction, attention span and persistence,
and approach/withdrawal. Children who are considered difficult are typically at risk for
behavioral problems in early and middle childhood, while slow-to-warm-up children may
eventually show extreme apprehension in academic and social situations. It is important
to note that some children display a combination of all three types of temperament.
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Mary Rothbart developed a second model of temperament. She combined several of
Thomas and Chess’ traits with those of other researches and created a list of six
dimensions. Overall, her model represents three essential components of temperament:
emotion, attention, and action. It considers each child’s uniqueness in terms of effortful
control, the self-regulatory aspect of temperament, which involves suppressing a
dominant response in favor of a more adaptive one. Variations in this skill account for a
child’s ability to focus and shift attention, constrain urges, and cope with negative
emotions.
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Methods for measuring temperament include interviews or questionnaires given to
parents or observations by researchers in the home or laboratory. Most neurobiological
research has focused on children who fall at opposite extremes of the positive-affect and
fearful-distress dimensions of temperament (highly sociable or extremely shy children).
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Temperament develops with age, therefore long-term prediction for early temperament is
best achieved after the age of three, when children begin to really practice effortful
control. Still, some children remain stable in their temperament, while others change.
Several factors can influence and sometimes change temperament. While genetics is
predetermined, environment and cultural practices can also play a significant role. For
example, persistent nutritional and emotional deprivation profoundly alters temperament,
resulting in maladaptive emotional reactivity.
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In addition, the goodness-of-fit model describes how temperament and environment work
together to produce results. If adults create an environment that both recognizes a child’s
specific temperament and encourages improved responses, a child’s negative
temperament can be positively affected. Parents who provide sensitive, supportive
environments with clear expectations and boundaries can help counteract emotional and
social difficulties linked to poor temperament.
Attachment
Attachment is the strong affectionate tie that develops between infants and the familiar people
who respond to their needs. Infants grow attached to those around them who give them what they
need. Bowlby’s ethological theory of attachment recognizes the infant’s emotional tie to the
caregiver as an evolved response that promotes survival. He also proposed that the quality of this
attachment affects the child’s long-term emotions and ability to form trusting relationships. As
attachment develops, we observe babies displaying separation anxiety when the primary
caregiver leaves. Children, on the other hand, depend less on the physical proximity of
caregivers because they are aware of the emotional bond even during separation. Instead, an
image of the caregiver serves as an internal working model, which becomes a vital part of the
child’s personality, guiding future close relationships. An internal working model is a set of
expectations about the availability of attachment figures, their likelihood of providing support
during times of stress, and the self’s interaction with those figures.
Through Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation technique (an experiment that takes the baby
through eight short episodes in which brief separations from and reunions with the caregiver
occur) and other tools for measuring the quality of infant attachment, researchers have identified
a secure attachment pattern and several patterns of insecurity (avoidant, resistant, and
disorganized/disoriented).
Attachment security is influenced by several factors, including opportunity for attachment,
quality of caregiving, infant characteristics, family circumstances, and the parents’ own internal
working models. Sensitive caregiving by fathers, similar to mothers, predicts secure attachment;
however, typically mothers devote more time to care and affection, while fathers are more prone
to playful interaction. The evidence regarding the relationship between secure attachment in
infancy and later cognitive, emotional, and social competence is contradictory, but steadiness of
caregiving seems to be a significant element in this relationship. As we continue to see a shift
towards more mothers entering the workforce, we begin to look at quality of care beyond that of
the parent-child relationship. Evidence suggests that quality of care is critically important.
Standards for developmentally appropriate child care exist, but the United States and Canada
both fall behind European nations in providing child care that is nationally regulated and
adequately funded.
AVOIDANT
Avoidant attachment is when the infants are generally unresponsive to the parent when present or
absent. They are typically not distressed with a strange caregiver and do not actively seek
attention from the parent upon his or her return.
RESISTANT
If infants display resistant attachment, they cling to the parent before the separation occurs. After
experiencing distress at separation, they display angry behavior upon the parent’s return.
DISORGANIZED/DISORIENTED
Disorganized/disoriented attachment reveals high levels of insecurity. When parents return, the
infants show random, conflicting behaviors, such as looking away from parents, displaying
confused expressions, crying out unexpectedly after seeming calm, and so on.
Case Study
Analyzing research studies in the area of emotional development can assist in understanding of
key concepts of emotions. The first case study illustrates the effects of early and later maternal
sensitivity on children’s social development. The second case study examines the relationship
between identity status and romantic attachment style in adolescence, including developmental
differences between younger and older adolescents.
STUDY 1
A Longitudinal Study of Maternal Sensitivity and Adopted Children’s
Social Development
Sensitive caregiving is moderately related in attachment security in both biological and adoptive
mother–infant pairs and in diverse cultures and SES groups. To examine the effects of early and
later maternal sensitivity on children’s social development, Jaffari-Bimmel and colleagues
(2006) followed 160 internationally adopted children from infancy to age 14. All of the children
were placed in adoptive families by age six months, and the families were predominantly
middle- or upper-middle class.
The researchers collected the following information:
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When the children were five months old, their adoptive mothers rated their health
condition on arrival (that is, at the time of adoption)—birth weight, incidence of
prematurity, and health problems.
When the children were 12 months old, attachment security was assessed using
Ainsworth’s Strange Situation.
At ages 12, 18, and 30 months, maternal sensitivity was assessed at home and in the
laboratory. While the children and their mothers completed age-appropriate tasks like
putting together puzzles and building with blocks, trained researchers coded for
emotional support, respect for the child’s autonomy, structure and limit setting,
hostility, and quality of instruction.
At ages seven and 14 years, maternal sensitivity was again assessed in the home. While
the children and their mothers worked on a difficult, age-appropriate puzzle, trained
researchers coded for supportive presence, intrusiveness, and sensitivity, timing, and
clarity of instruction.
When the children were ages 12, 18, and 30 months and ages seven and 14 years, their
adoptive mothers completed an attachment questionnaire. In infancy, the researchers
were primarily interested in mood and resistance. In middle childhood and adolescence,
the researchers focused on aggression, reactivity, and restlessness.
When children were ages seven and 14 years, adoptive mothers and teachers
completed a measure of social development. The questionnaire focused on social
acceptance, social rejection, pro-social competence, friendliness, and social esteem.
When the children were ages seven and 14 years, their adoptive mothers reported on
the degree to which the family had experienced stressful life events during the past two
years. The instrument included physical health problems of relatives, bereavement,
unemployment, divorce, financial problems, marital problems, problems at work, and
conflict with relatives and/or neighbors.
Results
Findings indicated that developmental history and sensitive caregiving in infancy and middle
childhood predicted social development at age 14. That is, participants who were healthy at the
time of adoption and experienced few stressful life events and received sensitive caregiving in
both infancy and middle childhood were rated higher in social development (by adoptive
mothers and teachers) than peers who were unhealthy at the time of adoption, experienced a
large number of stressful life events, and received less-sensitive caregiving in infancy and middle
childhood. Another important finding was that maternal sensitivity in middle childhood and
adolescence helped buffer against the negative effects of a difficult temperament. Children with a
difficult temperament who experienced high levels of maternal sensitivity in middle childhood
and adolescence had more favorable social development at age 14 than children with a difficult
temperament who experienced insensitive caregiving. Finally, consistent with previous studies,
attachment security in infancy was moderately related to social development at ages seven and
14. Compared to their insecurely attached counterparts, secure children scored higher in social
acceptance, pro-social competence, friendliness, and social esteem. Taken together, these
findings show that both early and later maternal sensitivity is important for children’s social
development.
Morality
All cultures promote morality through a predominant social design that stipulates rules for proper
conduct. Morality includes emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components, as people think and
feel morally significant thoughts, but may or may not act in accordance with them. Truly moral
individuals have developed compassionate concerns and ideals of good conduct.
PERSPECTIVES ON MORALITY
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Let us consider the biological perspective on morality. Morality is grounded in
our genetic heritage, perhaps through pre-wired emotional reactions.
Ethologists have found evidence that ethical behaviors are rooted in our
evolutionary history. We share many morally relevant behaviors with other
species, as many animals have been observed instinctively coming to the aid of
other animals, particularly those within their species or family groups. In
humans, areas within the prefrontal cortex are vital for emotional sensitivity to
the distress of others. Adults with damage to this area of the brain have
difficulty reacting with empathy or following social models for morality.
However, we must look beyond human nature and consider that many selfconscious emotions develop out of the support of loving caregivers and
advanced cognitive development.
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PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE
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The psychoanalytic perspective on morality considers that moral development is a …
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