This is the Chapter 12 of the book How Children Develop (Robert Siegler, 1st Edition). Which is content for the exam of the Theory component of Module 2 (Social Behaviour) of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands.

Ch. 12: Influence of family on development children

Family structures:

Number of relationships and members of households

• Increase number of single parents --> tendency to be found below the poverty line
• Older parents --> increased financial resources
• Grandparents present household --> negative effects on development
• Decreased family size --> increase birth control, women’s work ambitions, and divorce
• Teenager pregnancies --> weak parenting skills -->
  
  • Disorganized attachment style
  • Weak impulse control
  • Delay cognitive development
  • Increased chance of delinquent behaviour and sexual behaviour

Parents same sex:

Children don’t differ in terms of adaptation, personality, relationships with peers and academic performance

• Adaptation influenced by:
  • Family dynamics
  • Parent-child relationship
  • Bond parents
  • Parents support
  • Regulated discipline
  • Degree parent stress

Divorce:

• Changes: increased financial problems, new family structure, ….
• Indirect effect on:
  
  • Decreased positive upbringing, decreased fine family interaction
• Positive when high levels of conflict prior to divorce
• Long/short term problems --> depression, decreased self-esteem, …
• Predictors of suffering:
  
  • Stress and parental conflict
  • Age of the child at time of divorce
  • Degree contact with unjustified parent (the one to “blame” for the divorce)

Step-fathers:

• Remarriage: decreased contact with real father --> difficulties of adaption to “new” family
• Stepfather’s tendency to feel less attached to their stepchildren
• Increased conflicts in stepfamilies
• Stepmothers increased difficulty with stepchildren than stepfathers
• Increased success stepfamily when:
  
  • Real parent and stepparent have a supportive relationship

Family Dynamics:

The way the family interacts with each other through different relationships --> interdependence and mutual influence

• Child-rearing function: parenting function that ensures survival of the child

Parenting style:

• Socialization: process in which individuals learn values, norms, skills, knowledge, behaviours that are seen as appropriate to your current and future role in culture
• Important aspects of upbringing:
  
  • Discipline: set of strategies and behaviours that children are thought so they can behave appropriately
    
    • Internalization: process where the child learns and accepts the desired behaviour
    • Other-oriented induction: when the child thinks about the consequences of the behaviour for others
    • Punishment: negative stimulus that follows undesired behaviour --> adds psychological pressure, which reduces the effectiveness of internalization
    • Parenting style: behaviours and attitudes in parenting which determine emotional climate for parent-child interaction (degree parental warmth, support and acceptance/ degree

This is the Chapter 9 of the book Introduction to Kassin, S., Fein, S., Markus, H.R. (2021) Social Psychology, International Edition (11th edition). Which is content for the exam of the Theory component of Module 2 (Social Behaviour) of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands.

Ch.9: Attraction & close relationships

Need to belong:

• Social Anxiety Disorder: intense discomfort when social situations are observed
  • Public-speaking Anxiety: stage of fright when public speaking

Affiliation:

• Need for affiliation: desire to establish and maintain rewarding relationships. When do we need affiliation?
  • Stress --> increase need for affiliation, specially if others face same threat
    • Cognitive clarity about threat danger
    • Unity
  • Feeling lonely
  • Lack of power

Loneliness:

Deprivation feeling about existing social interactions. Types:

1. Intimate: when wanting significant other, but not having

2. Rational: when lack of occasional help from others

3. Collective: loneliness from social identity we derive from (e.g. group common interest and having and useful identity towards that interest, would make us feel less lonely)

Initial attraction:

Familiarity:

• The Proximity Effect: physical proximity predictor of attraction
• The Mere Exposure Effect: increase exposure --> increase positive evaluation

Physical attractiveness:

• Group Attractiveness Effect: increase physical attractiveness of members of group when they’re together
• Averaged Faces: prototypically face-like (with few distinctive features) --> face seen as more familiar, and it is easier to process
• Beauty importance:
  
  • Beauty as rewarding --> presence of beautiful people in group --> increase average-looking beauty of group
  • What-is-beautiful-is-good stereotype: physical attractiveness associated desirable personality characteristics
    
    • Self-fulfilling Prophecy: expectations people have on someone, can “create” attractive people (e.g. children of beautiful movie stars)

First Encounters:

• Similarity of demographics, interests, values, attitudes, …
  • Two-stage Model of Attraction Process: when contact with someone else is continued after --> 1. Both are not dissimilar/2. Both are high in similarity
  • Matching Hypothesis: we attract others that are similar to us in terms of physical attractiveness
  • Complementary Hypothesis: states that opposites attract --> this theory has been criticized
  • Reciprocity: when there is mutual exchange of what is given and what is received
• Hard-to-get Effect: tendency to prefer others with selective social choices (when they are hard to get)

Male selection:

• Men:
  • Seek to propagate widely
  • Conspicuous consumption: purchase for the purpose of displaying their wealth
  • Sexual Infidelity: issue of concern more than women
• Women:
  
  • Seek to propagate wisely
  • Emotional infidelity: issue of concern more than men

Close relationships: