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Psychology, 5/e Wortman, Loftus & Weaver | |||||
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Psychology, 5/e Wortman, Loftus & Weaver | |||||
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Social development refers to how a person’s interactions and relationships with others change as that person grows older. Personality development is the emergence of distinctive styles of thought, feeling, and behavior which make each human being unique.
Freud believed that adult personality and social relations can be understood by knowing how sexual and aggressive urges were managed during childhood. The theory underlying these beliefs is called psychoanalytic theory (or psychosexual approach). Indeed, Freud maintained that childhood memories can influence behavior throughout adulthood even if they are not consciously accessible (Theme 3). Erik Erikson, who focused less on sexual urges and more on social settings, has proposed a series of eight stages of psychosocial development in his psychosocial theory. Each of these stages involves the resolution of a particular challenge. How a person resolves the challenges determines the development of the personality. Theorists who take a social learning perspective view social and personality development as a consequence of modeled behaviors combined with rewards and punishments. The cognitive developmental perspective focuses upon how a child’s understanding of the world changes with age. The biological perspective focuses upon the influence of biological and inherited characteristics and their influence on development.
The infant acquires social competence, the ability to interact with others in a reciprocal fashion, through development guided by inherent tendencies. Infants reinforce adult attention with looking, cooing, and the social smile, which is triggered by the sight of a human face and which develops when infants are a week old.
Temperament (relatively stable behavioral disposition) forms the basis of interaction between parent and infant. Parents influence the child’s temperament through their responses, and the child’s basic temperament influences the parents’ behavior. This interaction is called a bi-directional influence. Both social competence and temperament show how biological tendencies are modified by experience. Reaction range refers to the range of possibilities within which hereditary tendencies can vary due to environmental influences.
Early in development, a baby will form an attachment (or emotional bond) to his or her principal caregivers. Harlow used newborn monkeys separated from their mothers at birth to demonstrate that need satisfaction alone was not enough to cause the development of attachment. Indeed, when placed in a cage with a wire milk-giving surrogate (mother substitute) and a terrycloth non-milk-giving surrogate, the baby monkeys showed attachment preferences for the terrycloth surrogate.
Children form attachments at about the same age to both parents. The quality of the attachment is influenced by parental behavior. Secure attachment, which leads to good adjustment in later life, is the result of prompt and consistent attention to the child’s needs. Anxious attachment results when the caregiver is slow and ineffective in responding to the child’s needs. Anxious attachment can result from a number of interacting factors including the child’s temperament, the parents’ personalities, and the amount of stress in the family. Insecurely attached children tend to have mothers who score low on measures of emotional stability/maturity and empathy toward others, who experience a decline in marital satisfaction following the birth of their child, who view their child as becoming more difficult with age, and who view their social environment as unfriendly and unsupportive.
By the time a child is two years old, he or she has begun to develop a sense of self. The parental role now changes from caregiver to teacher and disciplinarian. Diana Baumrind has identified three basic parenting styles. Authoritative parents are nurturing and responsive but set firm limits. Their children are energetic, emotionally positive, curious, self-reliant, and self-controlled. Authoritarian parents are unresponsive, inflexible, and harsh. Their children are moody, apprehensive, passively hostile, and either negative in social relations or socially withdrawn. Permissive parents are nurturing but fail to set limits or require appropriate behavior. Their children are impulsive, under-controlled, low in self-reliance, but cheerful and somewhat resilient.
About two million cases of child abuse are reported in the U. S. every year, and many more go unreported. Abused children are at risk for insecure attachments, blunted emotions, low self-esteem, depression, heightened aggressiveness, suicide, and drug addiction, among other negative consequences. People who abuse their children tend to be ambivalent about being a parent, to have high stress in their lives, to have been abused themselves as children, and to be socially isolated.
About half of all babies born in the U.S. today will spend at least some of their childhood in a one-parent home. Children who have more difficulty coping with divorce are usually those who experience more stress and turmoil. Also children with difficult temperaments tend to be more vulnerable, as are those with low self-esteem, overdependence, and a tendency to blame themselves.
Studies of identical and fraternal twins have demonstrated that personality is somewhat determined by hereditary factors. According to one study, heredity may explain as much as 50% of the variability in personality traits, especially in sociability, emotionalism, and general activity level. Environment influences personality development as well, but the effects of family life seem to be experienced differently by each child in a family, both because parents treat each child differently and because different children respond differently to the same treatment.
Gender roles are patterns of behavior that are either masculine or feminine. Some gender role differences are present at a very early age, indicating a possible biological basis. For example, newborn boys are more active than newborn girls, and boy toddlers tend to cry more and sleep less than girls of the same age. Sex hormone differences may predispose boys to behave more aggressively than girls in certain situations. Biological differences, however, interact with environmental factors. The importance of learning is clearly seen in cross-cultural comparisons, which identify widely varying gender roles that exist in different cultures.
According to Freud, gender roles develop as a result of the Oedipus conflict which occurs between the ages of three and six. At this age, children see themselves as rivals of the same-sex parent for the affection of the opposite-sex parent. Anxiety develops from the ensuing conflict, and eventually the child identifies with (assumes the gender role of) the same-sex parent. Identification is an important part of gender role acquisition.
Social learning theorists reject the notion of the Oedipus conflict and believe that gender role acquisition is a gradual learning process shaped by parents and society. This theory rests on the assumption that parents treat their sons and daughters differently, an assumption supported by research. It is also quite possible that parents interpret the same behavior differently, depending on whether it is displayed by a son or a daughter.
Cognitive development theorists believe that once a child recognizes himself as a boy or herself as a girl, the child will automatically be motivated to imitate behaviors observed in members of the same sex. Cognitive psychologists argue that sex-typed behavior and modeling becomes more pronounced as the understanding of gender matures.
Parents typically attempt to teach their child society’s rules and values in a process called socialization, which involves learning the expectations and values of one’s society. The basic goal of socialization is internalization, the acceptance of others’ views and actions as appropriate and right.
Moral development involves learning the rules of conduct by which people judge their own and others’ behavior. Freud believed a child’s moral code is established during the resolution of the Oedipus conflict through which the child develops a superego, or conscience. Research, however, indicates that moral development is a more gradual process than Freud’s theory suggests.
Social learning theorists view moral development as a product of reinforcement and punishment patterns. Research shows that children often imitate both generous and aggressive behavior they see in adults and that power-assertive techniques of punishment tend to be associated with low levels of moral development whereas reasoning with children appears to be associated with high levels.
The cognitive developmental view proposes that a child goes through stages of moral development. According to Kohlberg, moral development occurs across three levels. First, the preconventional level involves a child adhering to the rules of society because he or she fears the consequences of breaking them. Second, the conventional level involves a child adhering to rules to win the approval of others. Finally, the postconventional level involves recognizing universal ethical principles which may transcend societal laws. Adults tend to be more advanced in their moral reasoning than children, but few adults function at the postconventional level. Maturity in moral stages coincides with the maturing cognitive ability to take the perspective of another. The more advanced stages of moral development relate to the ability to take a broader view. Kohlberg’s theory has been criticized because it does not always predict moral behavior and because it does not consider cultural or sex-related differences in values.
The period of adolescence is marked by the onset on puberty, the period of sexual maturation. Primary sexual characteristics, those characteristics directly related to reproduction, emerge as the sex organs develop. As an example, menarche, the menstrual cycle, begins in young women. Secondary sexual characteristics, such as facial hair in boys and breasts in girls, also appear.
Boys who mature early may have an advantage because they can excel in athletic activities due to increased strength. Early maturation for girls tends to be less of an advantage and may cause considerable stress.
The major concern of adolescence is to establish an independent identity; adolescents must establish themselves as separate from their parents. Erikson states that they must accomplish this by establishing a sense of personal continuity by trying out different roles. Some adolescents have a difficult time achieving this goal. Adolescence is also a time when intimacy with others develops, first with same-sex peers and later with members of the opposite sex. Sexual activity is significant for adolescents, particularly because peers become important during this stage. Even though peers become important sources of influence during adolescence, parental influence remains fairly high, especially with regard to basic values.
Some psychologists, such as Freud, believe that personality development ceases in adulthood. However, recent research has indicated that an individual’s outlook continues to change as he or she passes through adulthood. Early adulthood is typically a period of action, in which commitments are made and responsibilities assumed. Today, this period poses special challenges to women, since their roles in our society are undergoing marked change. Around age 30, a crisis often develops in which the person questions the future direction of his or her life--called the age-thirty crisis.
The next stage of adulthood is characterized as an extremely productive period. At about age 40, the mid-life transition begins. During this crisis, people question past accomplishments and outline future goals. This questioning is consistent with Erikson’s seventh stage of social and personality development. The challenge of this stage is to reach out and become concerned with the well-being of future generations, which Erikson called generativity. Upon resolution of this crisis, middle adulthood emerges. It is characterized by stability, increased importance of personal relationships, and the awareness that life is finite. However, even though stage theories suggest that adults experience common milestones, people’s lives do unfold in unique and different ways.
Effective coping with changes in late adulthood and satisfaction with life have been related to several factors. Satisfaction with job choice, spouse, and health, among other factors at the age of 30, is predictive of satisfaction at age 70. Involvement in rewarding activities in old age seems to improve satisfaction and coping ability.
Costa and McCrae have argued that personality is quite stable over time (Theme 1).
As a growing number of women have gone to work outside the home, interest in the effects of day care on the emotional development of infants has increased. Research has shown that good-quality day care does not disrupt normal attachment and later development; poor-quality day care can. Generally, placement in poor-quality day care can lead to behaviors like avoidance of the mother in stressful situations, anxiety, and hostility. Two factors seem especially important in the quality of day care: active involvement of the caregiver with the children and consistent use of the same caregiver or care givers.
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