Feelings

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Feelings!

• Feeling and managing emotions.

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Attachment and Emotional Development

• Developing an enduring emotional bond between
  caregivers and children support healthy emotional
  development.

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Attachment - Theory Current research on
parent-child interactions

• Young infants instinctively seek proximity to
  their primary caregiver due to the evolutionary
  advantage that this safety provides
• If older infants feel secure they will be
  willing to explore their environment and begin to
  separate from the mother

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Attachment - Theory

• As infants mature they develop cognitive models
  of their relationships with their primary
  caregivers and these then guide behavior
  throughout life
• Attachment styles can be passed down through
  generations due to parenting behaviors that are
  guided by the attachment style

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Attachment - History

• Evolutionary Psychology
• Harlows work with monkeys showed that infant
  monkeys prefer warmth even to food.

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Attachment - History

• John Bowlby
• came from psychoanalytic tradition - emphasized
  early infant-caregiver relationships as source of
  adult personality
• BUT - he felt that actual events, not fantasy,
  were crucial

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Attachment - History

• John Bowlby
• adopted ethological theory and approach - the
  study of animals in their natural environment -
  based on evolution
• studied effects on infants of separation from
  their mother in hospitals and orphanages

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Attachment - History

• Mary Ainsworth - Extended Bowlbys theory
• observed infant-mother pairs in Uganda -
  suggested the quality of an infants attachment
  is modulated by the sensitivity and
  responsiveness of the mother
• emphasized the interplay of safety and
  exploration

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Facts about Attachment

• Attachment is in full force at 7 months
• Evidenced by stranger anxiety
• Important physiological milestones
• Infants can regulate their own emotions
  attachment bonds depend on and build on those
  skills
• Interaction between caregivers and infants set up
  expectations.
• Multiple caregivers
• Networks of caregivers can support emotional
  development.
• Bond is used for emotional support and
  development throughout childhood and adolescence.

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AttachmentThe Strange Situation

• Developed by Ainsworth
• Mother and child are left alone, and then later
  joined by a stranger.
• Mother leaves infant with stranger, then
  returns.
• Both mother and stranger leave infant alone.
• Mother and stranger return.

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AttachmentThe Strange Situation

• Categorizing children based on the Strange
  Situation
• Insecure - avoidant
• Insecure - resistant
• Disorganized and Disoriented
• Secure

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Attachment A few results

• parent-child attachment relates to child-peer
  aggression, sociability, social competence, and
  peer popularity (Belsky Cassidy, 1994)
• violent husbands, as opposed to non-violent
  ones, were more likely to be insecure in their
  attachment style. They showed more anxiety about
  abandonment and more discomfort with closeness.
  They also were more preoccupied with thoughts
  about their wife, were more jealous, and had less
  trust in their wife. (Holtzworth-Munroe et al,
  1997)

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Emotional Temperament and Personality

• Temperament
• Constitutional ways of responding to emotional
  events and novel stimulation and regulating
  impulses.
• Personality
• Characteristic way of an individual person
  behaves, thinks, and feels.

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The BIG 5 Personality Dimensions

• Extraversion (shy)
• active, assertive emotionally expressive,
  talkative, enthusiastic, and socially outgoing
• Agreeableness
• Warm responsive, generous, kind, sympathetic, and
  trusting
• Conscientiousness
• Attentive, organized, and responsible.
• Neuroticism
• Anxious, fearful, self-pitying.
• Openness
• Curious, artistic exploring, and imaginative.

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Group Differences

• Emotional experiences are highly socialized.
• Gender and Culture Differences
• Socioeconomic Differences (SES)