【Psychology】Chapter 12— Section Review/Main Points
* All the following abstractions are excerpted from <Psychology>, Peter O. Gray, 5th edition
Chapter 12 — Social Development.
Section 1 — Infancy: Using Caregivers as a Base for Growth
Infants develop emotional attachment bonds with the caregivers on whom they depend.
— Attachment to Caregivers.
Harlow found that infant monkeys became attached to a cloth surrogate mother but not to a wire one, even if the latter provide milk. They turned to the cloth "mother" for contact comfort and explored the environment more fully in its presence.
Bowlby found that human infants also exhibit attachment behaviors, such as expressing distress when their mothers leave them. He considered attachment to be a universal, evolution-based human phenomenon.
The strange-situation test is commonly used to determine whether an infant's attachment to a caregiver is secure or insecure (e.g., avoidant).
A caregiver's attentive, responsive, emotionally sensitive behavior toward the infant promotes secure attachment.
Secure attachment to caregivers in infancy and high-quality day care are both correlated with positive behaviors later in life (e.g., greater sociability).
— Infant Care in Different Cultures
Co-sleeping with infants and young children, which is unusual in North America, is the norm in non-Western cultures and is associated with positive social and emotional development.
Hunter-gatherer societies such as the !Kung treat infants with extraordinary indulgence, keeping them in nearly constant physical contact, permitting nursing at will, and responding quickly to signs of distress.
The indulgent approach taken by hunter-gatherers does not appear to produce demanding or overly dependent individuals but rather strong interdependence and group loyalty.
Section 2 — Childhood I: Continuing Interactions with Caregivers
The child's inborn drives and emotions, and interactions with caregivers, promote social development.
— The Beginnings of Morality
Young children have an inborn predisposition to give; they give objects spontaneously to others beginning near the end of their first year.
The development of empathy during the second year of life causes the child, increasingly, to base actions of giving, helping, and comforting on an understanding of and concern for others' needs and feelings.
Empathy-based guilt emerges as children connect their own actions with others' pain or sorrow. Such guilt provides a foundation for moral development.
— Styles of Discipline
Hoffman contends that the style of parental discipline referred to as induction is most conducive to the child's moral development.
Baumrind found that children of parents with an authoritative disciplinary style were happier, friendlier and more cooperative than children of parents with either authoritarian or permissive styles.
Though Baumrind's study was correlational, experimental research also supports Baumrind's and Hoffman's ideas about effective disciplinary styles.
Section 3 — Childhood II: Roles of Play and Gender in Development
The child's development is affected by play with other children and by gender.
— Developing Through Play
Children everywhere play in ways that promote the development of skills needed for their survival. These include culture-specific skills, acquired by observing adults, as well as universal skills.
Piaget contended that children learn about rules and become better moral reasoners through play, and Vygotsky contended that children develop self-control through play. Contemporary research supports these ideas.
Age-mixed play appears to be less competitive and more conducive to teaching, learning, and development of nurturing skills than is play among age-mates.
— Gender and Social Development
Adults treat girls and boys differently beginning at birth, at least partly on the basis of socially grounded beliefs about gender. This may help to create or widen some gender differences.
Once gender identity is established, by age 4 or 5, children attend to and mimic the culturally appropriate behaviors for their gender. They also exaggerate gender stereotypes and play increasingly with same-sex peers.
In their peer groups, boys and girls can be thought of as inhabiting different subcultures. Boys tend to play competitively, in relatively large, hierarchical groups. Girls play more cooperatively, in smaller, more intimate groups. These differences may be muted in age-mixed play.
Section 4 — Adolescence: Breaking Out of the Cocoon
Adolescence is a period of breaking away and developing an adult identity.
— Shifting from Parents to Peers
Adolescent conflict with parents generally centers on the desire for greater independence from parental control.
Increasingly, adolescents turn to one another rather than parents for emotional support.
Adolescent peer groups serve to break down the gender barriers of childhood and lead to romantic relationships.
Peer pressure can have positive as well as negative influences.
— Recklessness and Delinquency
Risky and delinquent behaviors are more frequent in adolescence than in other life stages.
Segregation from adults may promote delinquency by allowing adolescents few positive adult ways to behave or by creating an adolescent subculture divorced from adult values.
Risky and delinquent behavior is especially common in young males. It may serve to enhance status, ultimately as part of competition to attract females.
— The Moral Self
In Kohlberg's theory, moral reasoning develops in stages, progressing in breadth of social perspective. Rapid advancement in moral reasoning often occurs in adolescence.
A study of morally committed adolescents suggests that their moral actions were rooted in their self-images as moral persons who set good examples for others.
— Sexual Explorations
Across cultures, rates of teenage pregnancy are inversely related to the availability of sex education and contraceptives.
Sex differences in eagerness to have sex can be explained in terms of parental investment.
An evolution-based theory, supported by correlational research, suggests that the presence of absence of a father at home may affect the sexual strategy — restraint or promiscuity — chosen by offspring.
Section 5 — Adulthood: Finding Satisfaction in Love and Work
Love and work are the major themes of adulthood.
— Love
Romantic love has much in common with infant attachment to caregivers. The attachment style developed in infancy — secure, anxious, or avoidant — seems to carry forward into adult attachments.
Happy marriages are generally characterized by mutual liking and respect between partners, individual commitment to the marriage, and constructive arguing.
Wives are generally better than husbands at perceiving and responding to their spouse's unspoken needs, so marital happiness often depends on the husband's developing those abilities.
— Employment
Jobs that permit considerable self-direction are enjoyed more than other jobs. Workers with such jobs become more self-directed in their overall approach to life and may, through their parenting, pass this trait on to their children.
When husbands and wives both work outside the home, wives generally enjoy the out-of-home work more, and husbands enjoy the at-home work more. Perhaps the non-stereotypical task seems more a matter of choice, which promotes greater enjoyment.
— Growing Old
The elderly generally report greater life satisfaction than do middle-aged and young adults, despite the objective losses that accompany aging.
Elderly people focus more on the present and less on the future than do younger people. They also attend to and remember emotionally positive stimuli more than negative ones.
Though various theories make general statements about what people do as they approach death, it is really a highly individual matter.