Childhood: Developmental Psychology – Lecture 2 (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM)

There are three definitions of emotion:

• Emotion refers to a motivational construct characterized by changes in feelings, physiology, cognition and behaviour.
• Emotion refers to an intense mental state, positive or negative, internally or externally induced, expressed in physiological responses, behaviour, and/or conscious experience.
• Emotion refers to a psychological state characterized by physiological responses, subjective feelings and cognitions related to these feelings.

Cognition and motivation are two central components of emotions. Emotions can change the environment which alters the probability of experiencing a certain emotion. Emotions consist of three key features:

1. Emotions arise when an individual attends to a situation and understands it as being relevant to one’s current goals.
2. Emotions are multifaceted and involve changes in subjective experience (1), behaviour (2) and peripheral physiology (3) (e.g. it gives rise to subjective experience).
3. Emotions are malleable (i.e. it gives rise to response tendencies that can be changed).

The James-Lange theory of emotion states that an environmental stimulus leads to a bodily response. This response leads to the experience of a bodily response and this experience of a bodily response is the same thing as experiencing an emotion. There are several issues with this theory:

• Emotions can occur without physiological responses.
• Physiological responses do not always lead to emotions (e.g. higher heart rate does not always lead to the experience of emotion).
• There is a lot of physiological overlap between emotion (e.g. increased heart rate with both fear and anger).
• The theory does not take the object of emotion into account (i.e. what is the emotion aimed at).

The Schachter-Singer theory states that there is an environmental stimulus that triggers physiological arousal. The interpretation of this arousal is the emotion (e.g “I am afraid because I saw a bear and my heart is beating like crazy”). However, the attribution of arousal is not essential for the experience of emotion.

Appraisal theories of emotion hold that cognition does not need to be conscious in the appraisal of an emotion. According to these theories, there is a stimulus and this is appraised. This appraisal leads to an action tendency, which, in turn, leads to a physiological response. This leads to behaviour and the labelling of emotion. All these aspects contribute to the emotional experience, meaning that there is not necessarily a sequence in the experience of emotions as they can occur simultaneously. These theories state that the meaning and interpretation people give to a stimulus is crucial in the experience of emotion.

Reappraisal refers to changing a situation’s meaning in such a way that there is a change in the person’s emotional response to the situation. This typically leads to decreased negative emotion experience and expressive behaviour and does not interfere with other ongoing cognitive processes.

Emotions can be measured in several ways:

• Physiological measures (e.g. skin conductance; heart rate).
• Behavioural measures (e.g. observation).
• Subjective experience (e.g. self-report).

There is a lot of overlap between behavioural measures of emotion and self-report of emotion. However, there is less overlap with physiological measures.

According to Darwin, emotions are universal and are the result of evolution as they have an adaptive function for survival. Evidence for this comes from the universality of basic emotions (e.g. happiness) across cultures. Emotions may facilitate adaptation by readying behavioural responses (1), enhancing memory for important events (2) and guide interpersonal interactions (3).

The development of joy has several steps:

1. Experience of satisfaction (first weeks)
2. Social smile (2 – 3 months)
3. Goal-oriented (6 – 7 months)

In the musical experiment, children were able to control the music by turning it on and off. This demonstrated the development of anger and sadness:

1. At first, there is undifferentiated distress.
2. There is frustration as a result of the loss of control.
3. There is the acquisition of control, which reduces anger and/or sadness.
4. There is extinction (i.e. the pattern between controlling the music and the distress is reduced), partial extinction or non-contingency (i.e. loss of control which leads to more frustration and anger).

The development of anxiety occurs after 6 or 7 months. This is characterized by a fear of strangers. This is part of normal development, though there is a lot of variation in this (e.g. as a result of attachment experiences). The feeling of anxiety is reduced by proximity to the parents (1), the relationship between the parent and the stranger (2), the environment (3), the appearance and behaviour of the stranger (4) and as a result of exposure (5). The experience of separation anxiety increases from 8 months till 16 months and then gradually decreases until the child is between 3 and 5 years old.

Complex emotions (e.g. shyness; shame; guilt; pride) occur later in development (i.e. between 3 and 6 years of age). These complex emotions are more likely to be social emotions (e.g. they have a socializing function). The expression of these emotions is strongly influenced by others:

• A focus on negative aspects of a child (e.g. “you are worthless”) leads to a lot of shame and little pride.
• A focus on positive aspects of a child (e.g. “you are smart”) leads to a lot of pride and little shame.

Excessive positive evaluation or expectations could lead to narcissism. However, it could also lead to anxiety in children with low self-esteem. It may be useful to praise the effort of children rather than fixed qualities.

The expression of emotions in a social context depends on conventions (i.e. culturally determined rules). Conventions influence:

• The expectations of emotion regulation per situation (e.g. it is okay to be sad during a funeral but not during a birthday).
• The expectations of emotional intensity.
• The expectations of intensifying certain emotions over others (e.g. anger is applauded while sadness is looked down upon).
• The categorization of emotions.

The family climate influences emotional expression within a culture. A family climate that is characterized by low emotional intensity will lead to more internalizing behaviour whereas a climate that is characterized by high emotional intensity will lead to more externalizing behaviour.

The emotional dialogue includes the socially shared emotion and naming of emotions (e.g. “I notice that you are sad”). This promotes self-perception (1), emotional sensitivity (2) and helps with emotion regulation (3). Naming negative emotions and feelings put a break on the levels of negativity. It reduces the stress response and effects on the immune response.

Emotionally relevant stimuli attract attention (e.g. spiders are noticed sooner than flowers). Evidence for this comes from visual search tasks. Emotions also influence how ambiguity is interpreted. The combination of imagining, sounds (or music) and pictures could lead to mood induction (e.g. feeling something brush your leg in dark water could lead to anxiety).

Emotion regulation refers to all the processes people use to influence what emotions they have when they have those emotions and how they experience and express those emotions. Emotion regulation can be conscious or unconscious. Intrinsic emotion regulation refers to regulating one’s own emotions. Extrinsic emotion regulation refers to regulating the emotions of somebody else (e.g. regulating the emotions of a child). Emotions can be down-regulated (i.e. lower intensity of emotions) or up-regulated (i.e. greater intensity of emotions).

The process model of emotion regulation consists of several steps:

1. Situation selection
   This includes choices that are made in view of future emotional experiences (e.g. avoid situations where you can meet your ex because of the prospect of anxiety).  However, memory and vision of the future are not perfect.
2. Situation modification
   This refers to efforts to modify the situation (i.e. external environment) directly to alter the emotional impact.
3. Attentional deployment
   This refers to focusing attention on certain aspects of the situation to regulate emotions. This is an internal version of situation selection. It includes physical withdrawal of attention (1), internal redirection of attention (2), responding to external redirection of attention (3), distraction (4) and rumination (5).
4. Cognitive change
   This refers to changing one or more appraisals in a way that alters the situation’s emotional significance (e.g. change how one thinks about the situation; change how one thinks about one’s capacity to manage the demands of the situation). Reappraisal changes the whole emotional response.
5. Response modulation
   This includes changing the response to an emotion and this is believed to influence the physiology (1), experience (2) and subsequent behaviour (3).

People tend to remember the peak and end of pain and not the duration and people tend to overestimate the intensity of negative emotions in the future. This makes that situation selection is typically a short-term solution.

Expressive suppression refers to attempts to decrease emotion-expressive behaviour. Behavioural expressions of emotion may discharge emotion (i.e. hydraulic model). This may lead to a spillage of the effects of emotion somewhere else (e.g. heightened physiological response). Behavioural expressions of emotions may also amplify the experience of emotion. Suppression has social and cognitive costs (e.g. partners of suppressors report less comfort and ease with interaction partner; worse memory of the emotional event). The facial feedback hypothesis states that people infer emotions from their facial expression. This would mean that a poker face reduces the emotion experience.

Antecedent-focused emotion regulation refers to emotion regulation focused before appraisals give rise to emotional responses (e.g. control situation before you get mad). Response-focused emotion regulation refers to emotion regulation that occurs after the responses are generated (e.g. attempt to feel less angry).

People may differ in emotion regulation strategies because they differ in emotion regulation goals. People may also differ in their beliefs regarding emotion and emotion regulation (e.g. incremental beliefs; entity beliefs). Individuals with incremental beliefs make flexible, contextual interpretations of events and make assertive attempts at self-regulation in the face of challenge. For people who hold entity beliefs, self-regulation may be attempted less often and there may be more failure of emotion regulation.

The emotion regulation of infants is very dependent on parents (i.e. extrinsic emotion regulation). Social referencing refers to using other people’s expression to interpret new emotional situations.

Preschool children need to learn the social rules to properly develop emotion regulation. They need to learn how to distinguish between what one feels and what one shows. This development is demonstrated by these children exaggerating pain or grief and faking emotions. The development of cognitive emotion regulation depends on direction attention away (1), thinking about something else (2) and the interpretation of the situation (3).

Emotion regulation tends to become better and more specialized with age. Others become important in regulating emotions as well. For example, adolescents showing emotions to friends but not to parents). This differentiation and the development of emotion regulation does not stop at adolescence.

A chronic deficit in emotion regulation contributes to psychopathology. This indicates the importance of the development of emotion regulation. Depression may disrupt emotional responding in three ways:

1. Depression involves diminished emotional reactivity to positive situations.
2. Depression involves increased negative emotional reactivity.
3. Depression leads to pervasive disengagement which leads to diminished levels of positive and negative emotional reactivity (i.e. emotion context insensitivity).