Transcript CHAPTER 14 ATTACHMENT AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS Learning Objectives • How do relationships with others contribute to • • • development? How did Bowlby explain the development of attachment? In Bowlby’s.

CHAPTER 14
ATTACHMENT AND SOCIAL
RELATIONSHIPS
Learning Objectives
• How do relationships with others contribute to
•
•
•
development?
How did Bowlby explain the development of
attachment?
In Bowlby’s model, how do nature and
nurture contribute to the development of
attachment?
What is the function of peer relationships in
childhood?
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•
•
Perspectives on Relationships –
Attachment Theory
Attachment theory was formulated by British
psychiatrist John Bowlby and elaborated by
American developmental psychologist Mary
Ainsworth
– Included concepts from ethological theory and
psychoanalytic theory
Bowlby defined attachment as a strong
affectional tie that binds a person to an intimate
companion
Attachment also is a behavioral system through
which humans regulate their emotional distress
when under threat and achieve security by
seeking proximity to another person
•
Perspectives on Relationships –
Attachment Theory
The ethological concept of imprinting was
incorporated into attachment theory
– An innate form of learning in which the young will
follow and become attached to a moving object
(usually the mother) during a critical period early in
life
• According to more recent research,
– The “critical” period is more like a “sensitive”
period
– Imprinting can be reversed
– Imprinting does not happen without the right
interplay of biological and environmental
factors
•
Perspectives on Relationships –
Attachment Theory
Both adults and infants have behaviors that
promote the formation of attachments
– Babies will
• Follow (proximity-seeking behavior)
• Suck and cling
• Smile and vocalize
• Express negative emotions such as fretting
and crying
– Adults respond to infants’ signals
• The hormone oxytocin promotes
attachment
•
•
Perspectives on Relationships –
Attachment Theory
Attachment is the product of nature and nurture interacting
over time
Bonding is a more biologically-based process in which
parent and infant form a connection in the first hours after
birth when a mother is likely to be exhilarated and her
newborn highly alert
– Klaus and Kennell (1976) highlighted the importance of
early bonding through skin-to-skin contact immediately
after birth
• Subsequent research has shown that early contact
is not necessary for a secure attachment to form
(witness adopted parents and their children) and
does not seem to have as much significance for
later development as originally believed
•
Perspectives on Relationships –
Attachment Theory
Bowlby proposed that through their interactions with
caregivers, infants construct expectations about
relationships in the form of internal working models
– Cognitive representations of themselves and other
people that guide the processing of social information
and behavior in relationships
• Securely attached infants who have received
responsive care will form internal working models
suggesting that they are lovable and that other
people can be trusted to care for them
• Insecurely attached infants subjected to insensitive,
neglectful, or abusive care may conclude that they
are difficult to love, that other people are unreliable,
or both
•
Perspectives on Relationships –
Peers and the Two Worlds of Childhood
Some theorists believe there are “two social worlds of
childhood”
– One world involves adult-child relationships
– The other involves peer relationships
•
– The two worlds contribute differently to development
A peer is a social equal, someone who functions at a similar
level of behavioral complexity, often someone of similar age
– Peer relationships have developmental value
•
•
Peers help children learn that relationships are reciprocal
•
Peers contribute to social-cognitive and moral
development in ways that parents cannot
Peers force children to hone their social perspectivetaking skills
•
Perspectives on Relationships –
Peers and the Two Worlds of Childhood
NeoFreudian theorist Henry Stack Sullivan believed
that social needs change as we get older and are
gratified through different kinds of social relationships
at different ages
– Until about age 6, the parent-child relationship is
central for providing tender care and nurturance
– Then peers become increasingly important
• At first, children need playmates
• Then they need acceptance by the peer group
• Then around age 9 to 12, children begin to
need intimacy in the form of a close friendship
•
Perspectives on Relationships –
Peers and the Two Worlds of Childhood
Sullivan stressed the developmental significance
of these chumships, or close childhood
friendships
– Having a close friend or chum teaches
children to take others’ perspectives, validates
and supports children, and can protect them
from the otherwise harmful effects of a poor
parent-child relationship or rejection by the
larger peer group
– Chumships also teach children how to
participate in emotionally intimate relationships
and can pave the way for romantic
relationships during adolescence
Learning Objectives
• In what ways are infants emotional beings?
• How are infants’ emotions socialized and
regulated?
The Infant – Early Emotional Development
•
Researchers have traced the development of primary emotions
– At birth, babies show contentment (by smiling), interest (by
staring intently at objects), and distress (by grimacing in
response to pain or discomfort)
– By approximately 3 months of age, contentment becomes
joy or excitement at the sight of something familiar such as a
big smile in response to Mom’s face
• Interest becomes surprise, such as when expectations
are violated in games of peek-a-boo
• Distress soon evolves into a range of negative emotions,
such as disgust (in response to foul-tasting foods) and
sadness
– As early as 4 months, angry expressions appear
– As early as 5 months, fear is displayed
The Infant – Early Emotional Development
•
The secondary or self-conscious emotions
require an awareness of self and begin to
emerge around 18 months of age
• At 18 months, infants begin to show
embarrassment
• Around age 2, when they are able to judge
their behavior against standards of
performance, the self-conscious emotions of
pride, shame, and guilt emerge
– Feel pride if they catch a ball or feel guilty if
they spill milk
• Caption: The emergence of different
emotions. Primary emotions emerge in the
first six months of life, secondary or selfconscious emotions emerge starting about
18 months to 2 years.
The Infant – Early Emotional Development
•
Primary or basic emotions such as interest and fear
seem to be biologically programmed
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These emotions emerge in all normal infants at
roughly the same ages and are displayed and
interpreted similarly in all cultures
The timing of their emergence is tied to cognitive
maturation
Basic emotions probably evolved to help our
ancestors appraise and respond to new stimuli
Babies’ emotional signals prompt caregivers to
respond
The Infant – Early Emotional Development
•
Nurture also contributes to emotional
development
• Caregivers help shape infants’ predominant
patterns of emotional expression
– Mothers serve as models of positive
emotions and elicit positive emotions from
their babies
– Mothers also respond selectively to their
babies’ expressions: they become
increasingly responsive to their babies’
expressions of happiness, interest, and
surprise and less responsive to negative
emotions
The Infant – Early Emotional Development
– At approximately 1year, infants begin to use social
referencing
• They monitor their companions’ emotional reactions in
ambiguous situations and use this information to
decide how they should feel and behave
– If their mothers are wary when a stranger
approaches, so are they; if their mothers smile at
the stranger, so may they
– Infants are able to understand what triggered their
mother’s emotions and to regulate their behavior
accordingly
– Infants are especially attentive to stimuli that
provoke negative emotional reactions such as fear
or anger in their caregivers, as if they know that
these emotions are warning signals
The Infant – Early Emotional Development
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•
Infants must develop strategies for emotional
regulation
– The processes involved in initiating, maintaining,
and altering emotional responses
Infants develop the capacity for emotional
regulation over time
– Very young infants are able to reduce their
negative arousal by turning from unpleasant
stimuli or by sucking vigorously on a pacifier
– By the end of the first year, infants can also
regulate their emotions by rocking themselves,
moving away from upsetting events, or actively
seeking attachment figures who will calm them
The Infant – Early Emotional Development
•
By 18 to 24 months, toddlers will try to control the actions
of people and objects (for example, by pushing the
offending person or object away)
– They are able to cope with the frustration of
waiting for snacks and gifts by playing with toys
and otherwise distracting themselves
– They have been observed knitting their brows or
compressing their lips in an attempt to suppress
their anger or sadness
– Finally, as children gain the capacity for symbolic
thought and language, they become able to regulate
their distress symbolically (for example, by repeating
“Mommy coming soon”)
The Infant – Early Emotional Development
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The development of emotion regulation skills is influenced by
both an infant’s temperament and a caregiver’s behavior
When infants are very young and have few emotion regulation
strategies of their own, they rely heavily on caregivers (who
can stroke or rock them when they are distressed)
With age, infants gain control of emotion regulation strategies
first learned in the context of the parent-child relationship and
can regulate their emotions on their own
Children who are not able to get a grip on their negative
emotions tend to experience stormy relationships with both
caregivers and peers and are at risk to develop behavior
problems
Learning Objectives
• What types of attachment relationships can
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•
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develop between infants and caregivers?
What infant, caregiver, and contextual factors
determine the quality of early attachments?
How do early relationships relate to later
development?
What are the consequences of early social
deprivation?
The Infant – An Attachment Forms
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•
The caregiver forms an attachment to the infant
– Often before birth
– Because the infant possesses a repertoire of
behaviors such as sucking, grasping, rooting,
and smiling
– Because babies are responsive
• Caregivers and infants develop
synchronized routines in which they take
turns responding to each other
Parent-infant synchrony contributes to a secure
attachment relationship and to later selfregulation and empathy
The Infant – An Attachment Forms
•
The infant forms an attachment to the caregiver in the following
phases
– Undiscriminating social responsiveness (birth to 2 or 3
months)
• Infants respond to voices, faces, and other stimuli,
especially humans
• They do not yet show a clear preference for any one
person
– Discriminating social responsiveness (2 or 3 months to 6 or 7
months)
• Infants begin to express preferences for familiar
companions, but they are still friendly toward strangers
– Active proximity seeking or true attachment (6 or 7 months to
about 3 years)
• Infants form their first clear attachments, most often to
their mothers
– Goal-corrected partnership (3 years and older)
• Children adjust their behavior in order to maintain
proximity to the attachment figure
The Infant – An Attachment Forms
•
Infants experience attachment-related fears
– Separation anxiety
• Once attached to a parent, a baby often becomes
wary or fretful when separated from that parent
• Separation anxiety normally appears when infants
are forming their first genuine attachments, peaks
between 14 and 18 months, and gradually becomes
less frequent and less intense
– Stranger anxiety
• Once attached to a parent, a baby often experiences
a wary or fretful reaction to the approach of an
unfamiliar person
• Anxious reactions to strangers become common
between 8 and 10 months, continue through the first
year, and gradually decline in intensity over the
second year
The Infant – An Attachment Forms
• The formation of an attachment to a caregiver
facilitates exploratory behavior
– The attachment figure serves as a secure
base for exploration
• A point of safety from which an infant can
venture and to which she can return for
affection and security
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
• Ainsworth and her associates developed the
Strange Situation as a procedure for
measuring the quality of an attachment
– Infants are subjected to eight episodes of
gradually escalating stress as adult
strangers approach and as a caregiver
departs and returns
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
• On the basis of an infant’s pattern of behavior
during the Strange Situation, the quality of
attachment to a parent can be characterized
as one of four types
– Secure
– Resistant
– Avoidant
– Disorganized-disoriented
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
•
Secure attachment
– About 60-65% of 1-year-olds in our society are
securely attached to their mothers or primary
caregivers
– The securely attached infant actively explores
the room when alone with his mother because
she serves as a secure base
– The infant may be upset by separation but
greets his mother warmly and is comforted by
her presence when she returns
– When his mother is present, the securely
attached child is outgoing with a stranger
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
•
Resistant attachment (also called anxious/ambivalent
attachment)
– About 10% of 1-year-olds show a resistant attachment, an
insecure attachment characterized by anxious, ambivalent
reactions
– The resistant infant does not venture off to play even when
his mother is present, probably because she is not a secure
base for exploration
– Yet this infant becomes distressed when his mother departs,
perhaps because he is uncertain whether she will return
– When his mother returns, the infant is ambivalent: he may try
to remain near her but seems to resent her for having left,
may resist if she tries to make physical contact, and may
even hit and kick her in anger
– Resistant infants are also wary of strangers, even when their
mothers are present
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
•
Avoidant attachment
– Up to 15% of 1-year-olds have avoidant
attachments
– They seem uninterested in exploring, show little
apparent distress when separated from their
mothers, and avoid contact or seem indifferent
when their mothers return
– Insecurely attached infants are not particularly
wary of strangers but sometimes avoid or ignore
them, much as they avoid or ignore their mothers
– Avoidant infants seem to have distanced
themselves from their parents
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
•
Disorganized-disoriented attachment
– Up to 15% of infants (more in high-risk families) display a
disorganized-disoriented form of attachment
– This form of attachment seems to be associated with
later emotional problems
– When infants with disorganized-disoriented attachment
are reunited with their mothers after a separation, they
may act dazed and freeze or lie immobilized on the floor
– Alternatively, they may seek contact but then abruptly
move away as their mothers approach them, only to
seek contact again
– Infants with a disorganized-disoriented attachment
appear to have been unable to devise a consistent
strategy for regulating negative emotions such as
separation anxiety
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
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•
Early learning theorists believed that an infant
learns positive emotional responses to her mother
by associating her with food
In the classic study conducted by Harry Harlow
and Robert Zimmerman (1959), infant monkeys
were fed by a wire “mother” or by a cuddly, clothcovered “mother”
– All the infant monkeys demonstrated preference
for the foam rubber and terrycloth “mother,”
even when their food came from the wire
mother
Harlow’s research demonstrated that contact
comfort is a more powerful contributor to
attachment in monkeys than feeding
• Caption: The wire and cloth surrogate
“mothers” used in Harlow’s classic research
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
• Styles of parenting strongly influence the
infant attachment styles
– Securely attached infants have parents who are
sensitive and responsive to their needs and
emotional signals
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
• Styles of parenting strongly influence the
infant attachment styles (continued)
– Babies with a resistant pattern of attachment often
have parents who are inconsistent in their
caregiving
• They may react enthusiastically or indifferently
and are frequently unresponsive
• Mothers who are depressed often have
difficulty responding sensitively to their babies’
signals and do not provide the comforting that
helps babies regulate their negative emotions
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
• Styles of parenting strongly influence the
infant attachment styles (continued)
– Infants with an avoidant attachment have
parents who tend to provide either too little
or too much stimulation
• The parents may be rejecting or
impatient, unresponsive, and resentful
when the infant interferes with their
plans
• Some parents may provide intrusive,
overzealous levels of stimulation
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
•
Styles of parenting strongly influence the infant
attachment styles (continued)
– The disorganized-disoriented style of
attachment is evident in as many as 80% of
infants who have been physically abused or
maltreated
– It is common among infants whose mothers are
severely depressed or abuse alcohol and drugs
– The parents of infants with a disorganized
attachment pattern have been described as
frightening and frightened
• They are fragile and fearful adults who are
not up to the challenge of caring for an infant
and create an unpredictable, scary
environment for their babies
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
•
Infants contribute to the formation of the
attachment relationship, too
– Infants must acquire some concept of person
permanence (a form of Piaget’s object
permanence concept) before they can form an
attachment
– An infant’s temperament influences attachment
• Attachments tend to be insecure when
infants are by temperament fearful, irritable,
or unresponsive
– The caregiver’s style of parenting and
the infant’s temperament often interact to
determine the attachment outcome
The Infant – Quality of Attachment
•
The broader social context affects how infant and
caregiver respond to each other and influences
the formation of attachment
– Poverty and marital difficulties are stressful,
can interfere with parents’ abilities to provide
sensitive care, and may contribute to insecure
attachments
– The cultural context also influences parenting
and the meanings of attachment
• In Western, individualistic cultures, such as
Germany, optimal development means
becoming an autonomous being
• In Eastern, collectivist cultures, such as
Japan, the goal is to become integrated into
the group
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
•
Some infants experience social deprivation and never
have an opportunity to form an attachment
– Researchers have found that infants who spent
their first 6 months or more in deprived orphanages
displayed eating problems and medical problems
and showed delays in physical, cognitive, and
social-emotional development
• Rapid recovery was evident once the children
were adopted, and some children overcame
their developmental problems
• However, many children institutionalized for
more than 6 months never achieved normal
levels of cognitive development, possibly
because they lacked the intellectual stimulation
necessary for normal brain development
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
• Studies of Romanian children who
experienced early deprivation showed that the
longer the deprivation, the less likely were they
to form secure attachments and the more
likely they were to show a disturbed pattern of
behavior called disinhibited attachment
– Involves indiscriminate friendliness, lack of
appropriate wariness of strangers, and
difficulty participating in real, reciprocal
social interactions
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
• Research supports Bowlby’s claim that infancy
is a sensitive period for the formation of
attachments
– A meta-analysis of many studies of
institutionalized and otherwise maltreated
and neglected children concluded that those
who are adopted before one year of age are
likely to become as securely attached to
their caregivers as nonadopted children, but
that high rates of insecure and disturbed
attachment are observed in children
adopted after their first birthday
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
• What is it about deprived early environments
•
that damages development?
– Lack of stable caregivers and stable
attachment relationships
– Lack of proper nutrition, hygiene, and
medical care
– Lack of stimulation
The negative effects of living in a large
residential institution can be prevented by
placing institutionalized children in small
groups with a few, consistent caregivers who
interact with the children in a caring manner
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
•
Many infants experience separation from their
caregivers
– Infants who are permanently separated from a
caregiver normally recover if they are able to
maintain or form an attachment with someone
else
• The earlier the separation takes place, the
better
– Children who experience a series of
separations from caregivers (such as children
in foster care) may be permanently affected by
their repeated experiences of loving and losing
people
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
• More than 60% of mothers in the U.S. work
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outside the home, and many of their children
are in daycare or family care homes
The best source of evidence about the effects
of alternative care upon attachment is the
major longitudinal study supported by the
National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development (NICHD) and involving teams of
researchers in 10 U.S. cities – the Early Child
Care Research Network (ECCRN)
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
•
Results from the NICHD ECCRN study include the
following
– Infants who experienced routine care by
someone other than their mothers were not
much different than infants cared for almost
exclusively by their mothers in the various
developmental outcomes studied
– Infants who received alternative forms of care
(even 20+ hours per week) were no less
securely attached to their mothers overall than
infants who were tended by their mothers
– Quality of parenting was a much stronger
influence on these infants’ attachment security
and development than daycare experience
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
•
Results from the NICHD ECCRN study include the
following (continued)
– Children’s developmental outcomes were
affected by the quality of their daycare, as
measured in terms of sensitive caregiving and
cognitive and language stimulation
• Children who spent a good deal of time in
quality daycare performed better than homereared children on measures of cognitive
and language skills and some measures of
social skills
• However, they also tended to display more
behavior problems
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
• Results from the NICHD ECCRN study include
the following (continued)
– “Quality” daycare is characterized by for a
reasonable child-to-caregiver ratio (up to
three infants, four toddlers, or eight
preschoolers per adult); caregivers who
have been well trained and who are warm
and responsive; little staff turnover so that
children can become attached to their
caregivers; and planned, age-appropriate
stimulation activities
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
•
Results from the NICHD ECCRN study include the
following (continued)
– The home environment interacts with quality of
the daycare environment to influence outcomes
• For example, infants fared poorly if their
mothers were insensitive and unresponsive
and they were subjected to poor-quality
daycare, too
• Infants who received either good parenting
or good daycare were usually securely
attached
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
•
Do early attachment experiences make a difference
later in life?
– Securely attached infants turn into preschool
children whom teachers describe as curious, selfdirected, and eager to learn
– Insecurely attached children are less independent
– Children who had been securely attached as
infants are also more socially competent – more
able to initiate play activities, sensitive to the needs
and feelings of other children, and popular
– Secure attachment in infancy is linked to positive
emotional development and the capacity to cope
with stress and regulate emotions in childhood
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
•
Are the effects of attachment in infancy
permanent?
– Researchers found that children who enjoyed
secure relationships with their parents continue
to be well adjusted in late childhood and
adolescence
– In a longitudinal study, Simpson and colleagues
(2007) linked secure attachment in the Strange
Situation at 12 months of age to the quality of a
child’s peer relations in elementary school,
which in turn predicted quality of friendships in
adolescence, which in turn predicted the
emotional quality of romantic relationships in
early adulthood
•
Caption: Simpson et al. (2007) found that
relationship quality at each step in development
affects relationship quality at the next step
The Infant –
Implications of Early Attachment
•
Are the effects of attachment permanent
(continued)?
– Affectionate ties to fathers or other family
members can compensate for insecure motherinfant relationships
– Attachment quality changes, and early
attachments may have no long-term
consequences if they change later – if stressful
life events such as divorce and illness convert
secure attachments into insecure ones, or if
positive life changes make insecure
attachments more secure
– Internal working models are subject to revision
based on later social experiences
Learning Objectives
• What features characterize peer relations and
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friendships at different points of the lifespan?
What different types of play evolve during the
first few years of life?
What are the developmental benefits of play?
What factors contribute to peer acceptance
and popularity, or to peer rejection, during
childhood?
The Infant – First Peer Relations
• Infants show an interest in other babies from
•
an early age and show capacities for sharing,
cooperation, and sympathy in their first year
Infants begin to interact with peers in earnest
in about the middle of the first year
– Smile or babble at their companions,
vocalize, offer toys, and gesture to one
another; may share toys nicely or may
squabble
– Can relate meaningfully in groups of three
The Infant – First Peer Relations
•
•
By about 18 months, infants are able to engage
in simple forms of reciprocal, complementary
play with peers
– Can adopt and reverse roles in their play: the
toddler who receives a toy may immediately
offer a toy in return, or the one who has been
the chaser will become the chasee
Toward the end of the second year, infants have
become proficient at turn-taking and reciprocal
exchange, especially if they are securely
attached to their parents
The Child – Parent-Child Attachments
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•
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According to Bowlby (1969), during childhood, parent-child
attachment becomes a goal-corrected partnership
– Parent and child accommodate to each other’s needs,
and the child becomes a more sensitive partner and
grows more independent of the parent
Young preschool children want separations to be
predictable and controllable
– Will negotiate with their parents to make sure that
certain rituals such as the reading of a favorite book
occur before bedtime
During the elementary school years, children continue to
perceive their parents as available to them, and turn to
them when they really need comfort, but rely on their
parents less and less frequently as they get older
The Child – Peer Networks
• In toddlerhood, about 10% of social
•
interactions are with peers
In middle childhood, about 30% of social
interactions are with peers
– Research indicates that peer groups
typically contain children of different levels
of competence
– Gender segregation – play with same-sex
companions – becomes increasingly strong
with age
The Child – Play
• Play generally is defined as activities that do
•
not have an obvious or direct purpose or use
Scholars recognize four types of children’s
play
– Locomotor play (games of tag or ball)
– Object play (stacking blocks, making
crafts)
– Social play (mutual imitation or playing
board games)
– Pretend play (enacting roles)
The Child – Play
• The years from age 2 to age 5 are called the
•
play years
Between infancy and age 5, play undergoes
two changes
– It becomes more social
– It becomes more imaginative
The Child – Play
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•
According to Parten (1932), from age 2 to age 5,
play becomes increasingly social and socially
skilled
Parten developed a classification system for the
play of preschool children from the least to the
most social
– Unoccupied play – children stand idly, look around, or
engage in apparently aimless activities such as pacing
– Solitary play – children play alone, typically with
objects, and appear to be highly involved in what they
are doing
The Child – Play
• Parten’s classification system (continued)
– Onlooker play – children watch others play,
take an active interest, perhaps talk with
the players, but do not directly participate
– Parallel play – children play next to one
another, do much the same thing, but they
interact little (for example, two girls might
sit near each other in the sandbox but do
not talk)
The Child – Play
•
Parten’s classification system (continued)
– Associative play – children interact by
swapping materials, conversing, or following
each other’s lead, but they are not united by
the same goal (for example, the two girls may
share sandbox toys and comment on each
other’s sand structures)
– Cooperative play – children join forces to
achieve a common goal; they act as a pair or
group, dividing their labor and coordinating
their activities in a meaningful way (for
example, the two girls collaborate to make a
sand castle)
•
•
•
The Child –
Play Becomes More Imaginative
The first pretend play occurs around age 1
– Play in which one actor, object, or action
symbolizes or stands for another
In the earliest pretend play, the infant
performs actions that symbolize familiar
activities such as eating, sleeping, and
washing
Between the ages of 2 and 5, pretend play
increases in frequency and in sophistication
•
The Child –
Play Becomes More Imaginative
Children combine their capacity for social play
and their capacity for pretense to create social
pretend play
– Play in which children cooperate with
caregivers or playmates to enact dramas
– Social pretend play requires a good deal of
social competence, including the theory-ofmind or people-reading skills
– Social pretend play is universal
– The quality and content of preschoolers’ play
is influenced by their culture (individualistic or
collectivist characteristics)
•
•
•
The Child –
Play Becomes More Rule-Governed
After they enter school, children engage less
frequently in pretend play
According to Piaget, when children enter
concrete operations around age 6 or 7, they
become capable of cooperation to follow the
rules of games
As children enter formal operations at the age
of 11 or 12, they have a more flexible concept
of rules and recognize that the rules can be
changed as long as all the players agree
The Child – Peer Acceptance and Popularity
•
Researchers study peer-group acceptance
through sociometric techniques
– Methods for determining who is liked and who
is disliked in a group
– In a sociometric survey, children in a
classroom may be asked to nominate several
classmates whom they like and several whom
they dislike or to rate all of their classmates in
terms of their desirability as companions
• Determining who is liked and who is
disliked allows researchers to classify
children into categories of social status
The Child – Peer Acceptance and Popularity
•
Using sociometric techniques, children may be
classified into the following categories of social
status
– Popular – well liked by most and rarely disliked
– Rejected – rarely liked and often disliked
– Neglected – neither liked nor disliked (isolated children
who seem to be invisible to their classmates)
– Controversial – liked by many but also disliked by
many (the fun-loving child with leadership skills who
also bullies peers and starts fights)
– Average – in the middle on both the liked and disliked
scales
The Child – Peer Acceptance and Popularity
• Popularity is affected by personal
characteristics that a child typically cannot
change
– Physical attractiveness
– Intelligence
– Social competence (successful use of
social-cognitive skills in initiating social
interactions, responding positively to peers,
resolving interpersonal conflicts smoothly)
– Well-regulated emotions
The Child – Peer Acceptance and Popularity
•
•
Rejected children may be characterized by the
following
– High levels of aggression
– Tendency to social isolation, submissiveness,
over-sensitivity to teasing, seen as “easy to
push around”
Neglected children may be characterized as
– Having reasonably good social skills
– Nonaggressive
– Tendency to be shy, withdrawn, and
unassertive
The Child – Peer Acceptance and Popularity
• Controversial children often show good social
skills and leadership qualities, like popular
children, but they are also viewed as
aggressive bullies, like many rejected
children
The Child – Peer Acceptance and Popularity
•
What are the outcomes of childhood social
status?
– Children who are neglected by peers often
gain greater acceptance later
– Socially withdrawn children whose social
anxiety keeps them from interacting with peers
and exposes them to victimization by peers
are at risk for a variety of negative outcomes
– Children who are rejected, usually because of
aggressive behavior, are likely to maintain
their rejected status from grade to grade
The Child – Peer Acceptance and Popularity
•
What are the outcomes of childhood social status
(continued)?
– Rejected children may end up even more
poorly adjusted as a result of the experience
of being rejected
• Their self-esteem suffers, they lose
opportunities to learn social skills, they
develop negative attitudes toward others,
they are negatively influenced by the other
antisocial children they end up hanging out
with, and their academic performance
suffers
The Child – Friendships
•
Friendships have developmental importance for children
– Having friends increases the odds that a child will be
happy and socially competent
• If the peers are well adjusted and supportive
– Having friends reduces the odds that a child will be
lonely and depressed
• But not if the friends are antisocial or depressed
– Chumships pave the way for romantic relationships
in adolescence
– Friends provide social support and comfort that can
help children weather stressful events such as
parents’ divorce
– True friends become attachment figures
Learning Objectives
• How do relationships with peers and parents
•
change during adolescence?
How do peers and parents influence
adolescents’ lives?
The Adolescent – Attachment to Parents
• If adolescents are to become independent,
autonomous individuals, they need supportive
parents to provide both security and
encouragement to explore
– A balance of exploration and attachment is
the key to successful development at this
age
The Adolescent – Attachment to Parents
• Adolescents who enjoy secure attachment
relationships with their parents generally have
a stronger sense of identity, higher selfesteem, greater social competence, better
emotional adjustment, and fewer behavioral
problems than their less securely attached
peers
The Adolescent – Friendships
•
•
•
Friendships change qualitatively with age, being
based upon
– Enjoyment of common activities in early childhood
– Mutual loyalty and caring in late childhood
– Intimacy and self-disclosure in adolescence
Teens form friendships with peers who are similar to
themselves
– The same ethnic background
– Similar psychological qualities (interests, attitudes,
values, and personalities)
In adolescence, friends are like-minded individuals
who confide in each other
The Adolescent – Friendships
•
In a study of 5th to 11th graders, Sharabany and
colleagues (1981) found that
– Same-sex friendships were reported to feature
aspects of intimacy such as spontaneity, trust,
loyalty, sensitivity to the other’s feelings, and
attachment
– Cross-sex friendships did not attain a high
level of intimacy until 11th grade
– These findings support Harry Stack Sullivan’s
view that the lessons children learn about
intimate attachments in their same-sex
chumships are later applied in their
heterosexual relationships
The Adolescent – Friendships
• Sharabany and colleagues (1981) found
that
– Girls tended to report higher degrees of
intimacy in their friendships than boys
did
– Girls achieved emotional intimacy in
their cross-sex relationships at earlier
ages
The Adolescent – Changing Social Networks
•
Dunphy (1963) described five stages of change in peergroup structures during adolescence in preparation for
dating relationships
– In late childhood, boys and girls become members of
same-sex cliques, or small friendship groups, and
have little to do with the other sex
– Boy cliques and girl cliques then begin to interact
• Same-sex cliques provide a secure base for
romantic relationships (for an adolescent boy,
talking to a girl at the mall with his friends and her
friends is far less threatening than doing so on his
own)
– The most popular boys and girls form a heterosexual
clique
The Adolescent – Changing Social Networks
•
Dunphy (1963) described five stages of change in peer-group
structures during adolescence in preparation for dating
relationships (continued)
– As less popular peers also form mixed-sex cliques, a new
peer-group structure, the crowd, completes its evolution
• The crowd is a collection of several heterosexual
cliques
• The crowd is central to arranging organized social
activities, such as parties, and provides opportunities
to get to know members of the other sex as friends
and as potential romantic partners
– Couples form, and the crowd disintegrates in late high
school
• The crowd served its purpose of bringing boys and
girls together
The Adolescent – Changing Social Networks
•
•
•
Peers typically do more to foster positive
behavior among teens than to encourage
antisocial behavior
– But it depends upon the nature of the crowd to
which a teen belongs
Around age 14 or 15, teens are very dependent
upon their peers and may “go along with the
crowd” to take risks they might not take when
alone
Troublesome conformity to peers is much less
likely among adolescents who have secure
attachments to warm, authoritative parents who
are neither too strict nor too lax
The Adolescent – Dating
•
According to Brown (1999), adolescent relationships evolve
through four phases
– Initiation phase – in early adolescence, the focus is on the self
• To see oneself as a person capable of relating to members
of the other sex in a romantic way
– Status phase – in mid-adolescence, having a romantic
relationship with the “right kind” of partner is important for the
status it brings in the larger peer group
– Affection phase – in late adolescence, the focus is on the
relationship
• Romantic relationships become more personal, caring
relationships
– Bonding phase – in the transition to early adulthood, the
emotional intimacy achieved in the affection phase is connected
to a long-term commitment to create a lasting attachment bond
The Adolescent – Dating
•
How does dating affect adolescent adjustment and development?
– Dating typically has more positive than negative effects on
development
• It can compensate for a poor relationship with parents
• Involvement in a steady relationship is good for selfesteem (although breakups hurt self-esteem and can lead
to depression)
• Adolescents who date tend to be better adjusted overall
than those who do not
– However, dating at an early age appears to have more
negative than positive effects on social and emotional
adjustment
• Troubled adolescents start dating early
• Early daters get hurt and/or become involved in problem
behavior such as drinking and drug use before their time
Learning Objectives
• How do social networks and friendships
•
•
change during adulthood?
How do these connections affect adult
development?
How do early attachment styles relate to
romantic relationships?
The Adult – Social Networks
•
Researchers have proposed that each of us has
a social convoy – a social network and support
system that accompanies us during our life
– Provides social support in the form of aid,
affection, and affirmation
– In the beginning, our convoy consists of our
parents
– The convoy expands over the years as others
(family, partners, colleagues) join it but then
typically shrinks in later life
The Adult – Social Networks
•
Social interaction patterns vary across adulthood
– Young adults form romantic relationships and
friendships
• Young women form closer friendship ties than men
do
• Young adults, especially single ones, tend to have
more friends than middle-aged and older adults do
– Throughout adulthood, social networks shrink
• The trend toward smaller social networks with age
can be seen in many ethnic groups
– From early adulthood on, African-American
adults’ networks tend to be smaller, to be more
dominated by kin, and to involve more frequent
contact than those of European Americans
The Adult – Social Networks
• Older adults are satisfied with their
relationships
– Two theoretical explanations
• Socioemotional selectivity
• Positvity effect
The Adult – Social Networks
•
According to Carstensen (1992), the shrinking social
convoy of adulthood is explained by socioemotional
selectivity theory
– A choice older adults make to better meet their
emotional needs once they perceive the time left to
them as short
– The perception that one has little time left to live
prompts older adults to put less emphasis on the goal
of acquiring knowledge for future use and more
emphasis on the goal of fulfilling current emotional
needs
• Consequently, older adults actively choose to
narrow their range of social partners to those who
bring them emotional pleasure, usually family
members and close friends, and they let other social
relationships fall by the wayside
The Adult – Social Networks
•
•
According to research, older adults lead rich and
rewarding emotional lives and are able to
experience and express their emotions fully and
regulate them effectively
Older adults’ achievement of their emotional
gratification goals may be explained an element
of information processing, the positivity effect
– Paying more attention to, better remembering,
and putting more priority on positive
information than on negative information
The Adult – Romantic Relationships
•
Explanations for mate selection
– Evolutionary theorists suggest that men are
more likely than women to emphasize physical
attractiveness in a partner, whereas women
put more emphasis then men on a potential
mate’s resources and social status
• Attractiveness may have signaled our
ancestors that a woman is healthy and able
to reproduce and raise children
• Signs of wealth, dominance, and status in
the community may signal that a man can
support and protect a wife and children
The Adult – Romantic Relationships
•
Explanations for mate selection (continued)
– Filter theories suggest that mate selection is a process in
which we progress through a series of filters leading us from
all possible partners to one partner in particular
• Early in an acquaintance, similarities in physical
appearance, race, education, socioeconomic status,
religion, and the like serve as the first filters and provides
a basis for dating
• At the next level of filter, partners may disclose more
about themselves and look for similarity in inner qualities
such as values, attitudes, beliefs, and personality traits
• If they continue to find themselves compatible, their
relationship may survive; if not, it may end
– However, scholars do not agree on how many filters there
might be in mate selection
– Also, mate selection does not appear to unfold in a stagelike
manner as filter theories suggest
The Adult – Romantic Relationships
•
Explanations for mate selection (continued)
– According to researchers, the greatest influence
on mate selection is homogamy, or similarity
• Once homogamy is assured, people may also
prefer partners who complement them in some
way, bringing strengths to the relationship that
compensate for their own weaknesses
• The saying “birds of a feather flock together”
has far more validity than the saying “opposites
attract” when it comes to mate selection
• Partner choice works similarly in gay and
lesbian relationships as in heterosexual
relationships
The Adult – Romantic Relationships
•
•
•
•
Sternberg (1988, 2006) developed the triangular
theory of love to explain different types of love
based upon the strength of the three components
of passion, intimacy, and decision/commitment
Passion – sexual attraction, romantic feelings,
and excitement
Intimacy – feelings of warmth, caring, closeness,
trust, and respect in the relationship
Decision/commitment – involves first deciding
that one loves the other person and then
committing to a long-term relationship
The Adult – Romantic Relationships
•
•
Types of love can result depending on whether
each of the three dimensions of love are high or
low (love can take a variety of forms)
– Consummate love – high levels of passion,
intimacy, and decision/commitment
– Companionate love – high intimacy and
commitment but not much passion
Sternberg’s work suggests that relationships are
likely to fare best if partners have similar
balances of passion, intimacy, and
decision/commitment
• Caption: The three components of love in
Sternberg’s triarchic theory of love
• Caption: Internal working models of self and
other people arising from early experiences
in relationships
The Adult – Attachment Styles
•
Researchers have used attachment theory and the concept of
the internal working model of relationships to examine adult
romantic relationships
– Four attachment styles may result, according to whether the
self is either positive or negative and the view of other
people is either positive or negative
• Secure
• Preoccupied
• Dismissing
• Fearful
– Attachment styles can also be described in terms of two
dimensions
• Anxiety – extent of concern about the availability and
responsiveness of partners
• Avoidance – extent of discomfort being intimate with and
depending on a partner
The Adult – Attachment Styles
• Adults with a secure working model feel good
about both themselves and others
– They are not afraid of entering intimate
relationships or of being abandoned once
they do
• People with a preoccupied internal working
model have a positive view of other people
but feel unlovable
The Adult – Attachment Styles
• Adults with a dismissing style of attachment
•
have a positive view of self but do not trust
other people and dismiss the importance of
close relationships
Adults with a fearful internal working model
resemble infants with a disorganizeddisoriented attachment
– They take a dim view of both themselves
and others and display a confusing,
unpredictable mix of neediness and fear of
closeness
The Adult – Attachment Styles
•
Hazan and Shaver (1987) demonstrated that
adults’ styles of attachment are related to the
quality of their romantic relationships
– Adults with a secure attachment style
experienced a good deal of trust and many
positive emotions in their current love
relationships, and their relationships tended to
last longer than those of adults with insecure
attachment styles
– Avoidant lovers feared intimacy
– Resistant individuals tended to be obsessed
with their partners
The Adult – Attachment Styles
•
According to research studies, internal working models of
self and other formed on the basis of parent-child
interactions affect the quality of later relationships
– Adults who had experienced sensitive maternal care in
infancy had more positive mental representations of
their romantic relationships than did other adults
– The quality of the parent-child attachment, especially
after infancy, predicted the quality of an adult’s
romantic relationship
– A secure attachment at 1 year of age was linked, in
turn, to social competence in childhood, close
friendships in adolescence, and an emotionally positive
romantic relationship in early adulthood
The Adult – Attachment Styles
•
•
Researchers find that adults’ internal working models also
can predict the quality of relationships
– The internal working model predicts the extent to which
adults have the confidence and curiosity to explore and
master their environments
• A secure attachment style in adulthood is
associated with strong achievement motivation and
a focus on mastering challenges as opposed to
avoiding failure
• Securely attached adults also enjoy their work and
are good at it
Internal working models also affect an adult’s capacity for
caregiving, particularly for being a sensitive and
responsive parent
The Adult – Attachment Styles
•
Researchers find that adults’ internal working models
also can predict the quality of relationships
(continued)
– Attachment styles have been shown to have a
bearing on adjustment in old age
• Older adults who recall loving relationships with
their parents during childhood tend to have
better physical and mental health than those
who recall unsupportive relationships
• Attachment styles affect how older adults (and
people of any age) react to loss of an
attachment figure; bereaved people with a
secure attachment style appear to fare best
The Adult – Friendships
•
The quality and nature of friendships varies across
adulthood
– Young adults typically have more friends than
older adults do
– Even very old adults usually have one or more
close friends and are in frequent contact with their
friends
– Men and women generally have similar
expectations of friends, but women tend to place
greater emphasis on these intimate relationships
– Friendships can become strained as older adults
begin to develop significant health problems and
disabilities
The Adult – Friendships
•
•
The quality and nature of friendships varies
across adulthood (continued)
– In late life, significant health problems and
disabilities can result in one friend needing
help more than the other
Equity, the balance of contributions and gains, is
an important influence upon satisfaction in
relationships
– A person who receives more than he gives is
likely to feel guilty
– A person who gives a great deal and receives
little in return may feel angry or resentful
The Adult – Friendships
•
•
•
Consistent with equity theory, involvement in
relationships in which the balance of emotional
support given and received is unequal is
associated with lower emotional well-being and
more symptoms of depression than involvement
in more balanced relationships
Overbenefited, or dependent, friends are often
more distressed than underbenefited, or supportgiving, friends
Being able to help other people, or at least to
reciprocate help, tends to boost the self-esteem
and reduce the depressive symptoms of elderly
adults
The Adult – Friendships
• Men who have a strong desire to be
independent react especially negatively to
receiving help
• Older adults usually call on family before
friends when they need substantial help
• Friends and family do best to provide help
unobtrusively in order to minimize the
development of the sense of inequity
•
•
•
•
The Adult – Adult Relationships
and Adult Development
Meaningful social relationships foster normal
cognitive, social, and emotional development in
adulthood
A person’s sense of well-being or life satisfaction is
affected by the quality – rather than the quantity – of
her social relationships
Perceived social support is more important than the
social support actually received
The size of an adult’s social network is not nearly as
important as whether it includes at least one
confidant
– A spouse, relative, or friend to whom the individual
feels especially attached and with whom thoughts
and feelings can be shared
•
The Adult – Adult Relationships
and Adult Development
Meaningful social relationships (continued)
– Social support, especially from family members,
has positive effects on the cardiovascular,
endocrine, and immune systems, improves the
body’s ability to cope with stress and illness, and
contributes to better physical and cognitive
functioning and a longer life, especially in old age
– Research by Cacioppo and others (2008)
concluded that humans have evolved to be with
other people and that isolation and loneliness
wear the body down, affecting genes, stress
hormones, and the brain in ways that speed the
aging process