Lecture 4 Flashcards
According to the developmental perspective, what are the 4 areas of explanation about emotional reactions to stressors
Temperament
Conditioning
Emotional development
Cognitive development
What is temperament?
Temperament is generally known as innate but personality involves behaviours (learnt habits), emotions (shaped via social relationships) and patterns of thought (cognitive development). Children tend to be flexible, feisty or cautious. Adults generally follow the big 5; neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and open to experience. Education links with conscientiousness and people with mental health issues/physical illness seem to have lower levels of it.
Discuss coping strategies and it’s effects
We learn coping strategies, but how we learn them depends on our genes, our upbringing (parenting) and our socioeconomic factors. If our coping strategies are bad then it’s often associated with unhealthy habits. Also, socialisation patterns can directly impact our immune system/cardiovascular function. We can also get unhealthy habits due to conditioning; operant, classical and social learning theory.
Discuss emotional development
We all have the same basic emotions but we regulate them differently because of our upbringing. For example, the caregiver’s ability to cope with the child’s temperament or mothers going to work in the day.
There are two theories; the attachment theory and the emotion regulation theory.
Discuss the attachment theory
This theory focuses on infant caregiver bonds but understands that this attachment elaborates onto other relationships later in life, e.g. Romantic partners. There are three types; anxious attachment (hyper activation in response to a threat), attachment avoidance (deactivation in response to a threat) and attachment security (low anxiety and low avoidance). It predicts how people seek support and how able people are in providing support. People with secure attachment have a large range of coping behaviours compared to insecure attachment. Insecure tend to seek short term fixes that create long term problems; anxious/ambivalent seek attention whereas avoidant suppress their problems/emotions.
Discuss the emotion regulation theory
In early family life, infants learn to form ties with others. From this they develop social skills and emotion regulation. When growing up in an environment that isn’t comforting, a child may become deficient in emotion regulation. It involves initiating, inhibiting and modulating our emotions. Additionally, harsh families increase a child’s stress levels which can increase the likelihood of substance abuse, poor diet, lack of exercise etc. They don’t learn to regulate emotions as their parents are overtly aggressive and neglectful. Also, low socio-economic status can put stress on a child as it can affect parenting. Genes can be inherited to cause negative emotional states which affects your emotion regulation. All of these factors can mean children can’t: recognise their emotions, recognise others’, manage their emotions appropriately etc. This can then lead to anxiety, depression and hostility. This lack of emotional regulation causes unpopularity, aggression and social withdrawal.
Discuss cognitive development briefly
This viewpoint believes that your attitudes and beliefs develop via interactions with your environment. Genetics impact one’s propensity to learn but it’s mainly about environment. Two examples of this is scaffolding and perspective taking.
Discuss prenatal experiences and stress
People have done longitudinal experiments. One involved exploring a pregnant mother’s stress due to an ice storm. Most of them experienced significant stress and some were even as extreme as PTSD. They then observed the children when they were 2 years old. These children had reduced cognitive development scores and their word use was significantly less.
Why do we have coping strategies?
We have them to regulate stressful emotions and to alter our environment in order to remove the distress.
What causes us to use coping strategies?
Our appraisal of the environment, when our goals are threatened, when our appraisal is characterised by negative emotions, core emotions causing quick fixes to problems, secondary emotions leading to repetitive actions resulting in stress and when you experience positive emotions in reaction to stress.
How do we use coping strategies?
We firstly try and reduce our negative emotions that cause stress, then we use emotions as an outcome of coping, to respond to new emotions and to reappraise the situation. If this coping mechanism is successful then we end up with positive emotions.
Discuss a negative quick fix to stress and a positive long term fix
Negative quick fix: fight/flight response to an immediate situation which increases blood flow, blood pressure and muscle tension.
Positive long term fix: The broaden and build theory which believes that we use positive emotions like joy, interest and love to broaden our awareness and encourage novel thoughts about the situation.
What is the difference between coping strategies and emotion regulation?
Coping is associated with regulation during a stress response.
Emotion regulation is the management of emotional states which can happen via cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression or other theories. Cognitive reappraisal involves adapting behaviour to suit another point of view. This can only happen when we have emotional maturity. It results in positive emotions and good psychological health unlike expressive suppression. Expressive suppression involves modifying your behaviour without reducing your negative emotions. This happens late in the response process and results in negative feelings of self and the impediment of emotionally close relationships.
When do we usually have cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression?
Cognitive reappraisal usually occurs when we anticipate the event, however, expressive suppression usually occurs when we don’t anticipate the event. A study supported this, they found that when the participants were given prior information about an emotionally charged film, their physiological measures lowered whereas in the suppression condition, their physiological measures increased.
What are the three types of coping strategies?
This is the stress-appraisal-coping triad; emotion focused, problem focused or avoidant.
Emotion focused strategies involve emotional expression, blame, rumination (deep thinking) and wishful thinking. Social support is also involved to act as a buffer for physiological effects of stress, a social system with mutual obligations are best. Social support can be emotional, informational or practical support.
Problem focused strategies involve solving the problem either independently or with the help of others. It also involves cognitive restructuring.
Avoidant and disengagement strategies involve active or cognitive distraction, denial/emotional containment, humour and drug use.
