Lifespan Social / Personsality And Temperament Flashcards
(42 cards)
Temperament refers to
Temperament refers to “genetically based but also environmentally influenced tendencies to respond in predictable ways to events that serve as the building blocks of personality” (Sigelman & Rider, 2015, p. 336). Research investigating the stability of temperament over time has generally found low to moderate stability, with temperament becoming more stable after three years of age (e.g., Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000).
Thomas and Chess:
Thomas and Chess (1977) conceptualize temperament as a behavioral style that can be described in terms of nine dimensions (e.g., activity level, distractibility, adaptability, intensity of reaction) and that most infants can be categorized on the basis of these dimensions into one of three groups: Easy Children, Slow-to-warm-up children, and difficult children.
Thomas and Chess easy children tend to
They tend to have a positive mood, adapt easily to new people and situations, can tolerate frustration, and have regular feeding and sleeping routines.
Thomas and Chess Slow-to-warm-up children have a
They have a mildly negative mood, take time to adapt to new people and situations, have low levels of activity, and have moderately regular feeding and sleeping routines.
Thomas and Chess difficult children have a
They have a negative mood, cry frequently, respond negatively to new people and situations, are very active, and have irregular feeding and sleeping routines.
Thomas and Chess’s goodness-of-fit model proposes
Proposes that a child’s behavioral and emotional outcomes are affected by the match between the child’s temperament and the demands of his/her social environment. For example, infants with a difficult temperament can become less difficult and more adaptable if their parents provide them with a stable environment and allow them to respond to new experiences at a slow pace.
Rothbart describes temperament as
As “constitutional differences in reactivity and self-regulation, with ‘constitutional’ seen as the relatively enduring biological makeup of the organism influenced over time by heredity, maturation, and experience” (Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981, p. 37). Reactivity refers to the responsivity of underlying biological processes and is determined by the latency, duration, and intensity of attentional, affective, and motor responses to positive and negative stimuli. It consists of two factors – surgency/extraversion and negative affectivity.
Rothbart’ s Surgency/extraversion
Surgency/extraversion is characterized by a high activity level, intense pleasure seeking, and a low level of shyness
Rothbart’ s negative affectivity are characterized by
negative affectivity is characterized by mood instability and a tendency to be sad, fearful, and irritable
Rothbart’ s Self-regulation refers to processes
Self-regulation refers to processes that facilitate, maintain, and inhibit reactivity and consists of one factor – effortful control – which is the ability to “inhibit a dominant response … in order to perform a subdominant response” (Rothbart, 2011, p. 57). Rothbart and her colleagues have developed several questionnaires that are used to assess temperament over the lifespan.
Kagan (1989) focused on
The temperamental characteristic of behavioral inhibition (BI), which he described as the tendency to respond to unfamiliar people and situations with negative affect and withdrawal. with high levels of this characteristic.
Longitudinal research has produced evidence of both continuity and discontinuity in BI from infancy to adolescence
with greater continuity being found for individuals with high levels of this characteristic. Studies have also found that BI is associated with an increased risk for anxiety (especially social anxiety), depression, and poorer social functioning in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood and that parents of children with BI had higher rates of childhood anxiety disorders themselves as well as continuing anxiety disorders in adulthood (Svihra & Katzman, 2004; Tang, Crawford, Morales, Degnan, Pine, & Fox, 2020).
Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development consists of
Consists of five stages that begin at birth and end in adolescence. It proposes that libido (sexual energy) is focused in a different area of the body in each stage and that excessive gratification or frustration of a child’s impulses during a stage can result in fixation at that stage, which affects the child’s outcomes. For instance, libido is focused on the mouth during the oral stage, and fixation at this stage can result in thumb-sucking in childhood and chain smoking and excessive dependence on others in adulthood
Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial development emphasizes
Emphasizes social and cultural influences on personality and views personality development as continuing throughout the lifespan. It distinguishes between eight stages that each involve a different psychosocial conflict and proposes that, the more successful the resolution of the crisis at each stage, the better the outcomes. For the exam, you want to be familiar with the names and ages associated with Freud’s psychosexual stages and the names, ages, and successful outcomes (virtues) associated with Erikson’s psychosocial stages.
What are Freud and Erickson stages
Age
Freud’s
Psychosexual Stages
Erikson’s
Psychosocial Stages/Virtues
birth-1 year
oral
trust vs. mistrust/hope
1-3 years
anal
autonomy vs. shame and doubt/will
3-6 years
phallic
initiative vs. guilt/purpose
6-12 years
latency
industry vs. inferiority/competence
adolescence
genital
identity vs. role confusion/fidelity
young adulthood
intimacy vs. isolation/love
middle adulthood
generativity vs. stagnation/care
late adulthood
integrity vs. despair/wisdom
Effects of Parenting Style on Children’s Personality and Behavior:
Baumrind (1975) and Maccoby and Martin (1983) distinguish between four parenting styles that represent different combinations of two parenting dimensions: demandingness, which is also known as control, and responsiveness, which is also known as acceptance and warmth.
Authoritative parents are
Are high in both demandingness and responsiveness. They establish clear rules for their children, expect them to comply with the rules, but respect their children’s opinions and seek their input when making rules. These parents are warm and affectionate and encourage their children’s independence and individuality. Children of authoritative parents have the best outcomes: They’re self-confident, independent, and cooperative, and have good social skills. Authoritative parenting has also been linked to high levels of academic achievement, but the strength of this link may be affected by culture. For example, there’s evidence that the positive impact of authoritative parenting on academic achievement is not as strong for Asian American and African American students as it is for European American students.
Authoritarian Parents are
Are high in demandingness and low in responsiveness. They have many rules for their children, emphasize parental control and respect for authority, and often resort to harsh forms of punishment when their children disobey. These parents provide their children with little nurturance and affection and discourage their autonomy. Their children tend to be insecure, moody, and dependent, are easily annoyed, and have poorer social skills and lower levels of academic achievement than children of authoritative parents do. This parenting style has also been linked to an increased likelihood that a child will bully others or be the victim of a bully, with the risk for bullying others being greater than the risk for being the victim of a bully.
Permissive parents are
Low in demandingness and high in responsiveness. These parents rarely attempt to control their children, they encourage them to express their feelings, and they’re extremely accepting and supportive of their children’s behaviors, even aggression and other undesirable behaviors. Children of these parents tend to be self-centered, immature, and rebellious, and they have poor impulse control and social skills and low levels of academic achievement. They are also at increased risk for bullying others and being the victim of a bully, with the risk for being the victim of a bully being greater than the risk for bullying others.
Uninvolved parents are also referred to as
Are also referred to as rejecting-neglecting parents and are low in both demandingness and responsiveness. They’re uninvolved in their children’s lives and unaware of their needs, and they rarely consider their children’s opinions when making decisions and are more concerned about their own needs than those of their children. Children of uninvolved parents tend to have the worst outcomes: They have low self-esteem and self-control, tend to be moody and irritable, are noncompliant and demanding, have poor social skills and low levels of academic achievement, and are prone to drug use and antisocial behavior.
Personality Changes in Adulthood:
Personality changes over the lifespan are often measured in terms of rank-order stability, which indicates the relative positions of several personality traits over time, and mean-level change, which indicates changes in the levels of specific personality traits over time.
The studies have found a
high degree of rank-order stability over the lifespan but predictable mean-level changes for some personality traits in middle and late adulthood (Nagi, Froidevaix, & Hirschi, 2019).
studies investigating mean-level changes in the “Big Five” personality traits have found that
during adulthood, neuroticism decreases, extraversion and openness to experience remain relatively stable or decrease slightly, and agreeableness and conscientiousness increase (McCrae et al., 2000; Soto et al., 2011).
Sex differences in personality regard to
With regard to sex differences in personality, a study by Costa, Terracciano, and McCrae (2001) found that differences were relatively small but consistent across different cultures, especially individualistic (versus collectivist) cultures: Their results indicated that, on a self-report measure, women had higher scores on neuroticism, agreeableness, warmth, and openness to feelings, while men had higher scores on assertiveness and openness to ideas.
