Chapter 13 Emotions, Attachment, and Social Relationships

Modified: 2025-07-03 11:26 AM CDST

I. Emotional Development (p. 406)

A. First Emotions and Emotion Regulation
B. Emotional Socialization in Childhood
- 1. As children get older, they:
- 2. Develop emotional competence
- 3. Patterns of emotional expression, greater understanding of emotion, and better emotion regulation skills
- 4. Learn about display rules for emotion
- 5. Cultural rules specifying what emotions should and should not be expressed under what circumstances
C. Adolescents’ Emotional Lives
- 1. Why do adolescents experience mildly negative moods more often than children?
- 2. Experience more negative life events
- 3. May not be as able as adults to regulate negative emotions
- 4. May choose to savor negative or mixed emotions at times
D. Emotions and Aging
- 1. Do older adults experience more negative emotions than younger adults?
- 2. Research findings
- 3. Older adults did not experience more negative emotions.
- 4. Emotions were not any less important.
- 5. They experienced emotions with similar intensity as younger adults.
- 6. Older adults seem to live more positive emotional lives.
- 7. Carstensen and colleagues
- 8. Overall emotional well-being increases with age.
- 9. Older adults also experienced:
- 10. Longer-lasting positive emotions
- 11. Fleeting negative emotions
- 12. Fewer emotional ups and downs per day
- 13. Socioemotional selectivity theory
- 14. Perception that one has little time left to live
- 15. Prompts more emphasis on the goal of fulfilling current emotional needs
- 16. Positivity effect: tendency for older adults to place more priority on positive information

II. Perspectives on Relationships (p. 412)

A. Attachment theory
- 1. Based primarily on ethology
- 2. Asked how attachment might have helped our ancestors adapt to their environment
- 3. Attachment:
- a. A strong affectional tie that binds a person to an intimate companion
- b. Babies’ behaviors ensure adults will love them and meet their needs.
- c. Sucking
- d. Smiling
- e. Cooing
- f. Crying
- 4. Adults hormonally prepared for caregiving
- 5. Oxytocin
- 6. Infants construct expectations about relationships via internal working models.
- 7. Cognitive representations of themselves and other people
- 8. Guide processing of social information and behavior in relationships
- 9. Securely attached infants will develop secure internal working models that they are loveable.
- 10. Insecurely attached develop models that they are difficult to love
B. Peers: The Second World of Childhood
- 1. Peer: a social equal
- 2. Learn that relationships are reciprocal
- 3. Force them to hone their perspective-taking skills
- 4. Contribute to their social cognitive and moral development
- 5. Chumships
- 6. Close childhood relationships teach children how to participate in emotionally intimate relationships.

III. The Infant (p. 414)

A. An Attachment Forms
- 1. The Caregiver’s Attachment to the Infant
- 2. Bonding at birth is neither necessary nor sufficient for a strong parent–infant attachment to form.
- 3. Over the weeks and months, caregivers and infants develop synchronized routines.
- 4. Four phases in forming attachments:
  - a. Undiscriminating social responsiveness (birth to 2 or 3 months)
  - b. Discriminating social responsiveness (2 or 3 months to 6 or 7 months)
  - c. True attachment (6 or 7 months to about 3 years)
  - d. Goal-corrected partnership (3 years and older)
- 5. Attachment-related fears
  - a. Separation anxiety
  - b. Baby becomes wary or fretful when separated from parent
  - c. Peaks between 14 and 18 months
  - d. Stranger anxiety
  - e. Wary or fretful reaction to the approach of an unfamiliar person
  - f. Peaks around 1 year of age
- 6. Explanatory behavior
  - a. Attachment figure serves as a
    - i. Secure base for exploration
    - ii. A safe haven
B. Quality of Attachment
- 1. Ainsworth and her associates created the Strange Situation, a now-famous procedure for measuring the quality of an attachment
  - a. Secure attachment
  - b. Resistant attachment
  - c. Avoidant attachment
  - d. Disorganized–disoriented attachment
- 2. Caregiver’s contributions
  - a. Contact comfort promotes human attachments.
  - b. Parents who are sensitive and responsive to baby’s needs and emotional signals promote secure attachment.
- 3. Infant’s contributions
  - a. Relationships between infant temperament and quality of attachment are often weak.
- 4. The Caregiver’s Caregiving
  - a. According to Freud, infants become attached to the individual who provides them with oral pleasure, and the attachment bond will be most secure if a mother is relaxed and generous in her feeding practices.
  - b. Contact comfort, the pleasurable tactile sensations provided by a soft and cuddly “parent,” is a more powerful contributor to attachment in monkeys than feeding.
- 5. The Infant’s Temperament
  - a. An infant’s temperament can also influence the quality of an attachment.
  - b. Infant temperament and quality of attachment are typically quite weak.
  - c. An infant’s genetic makeup
  - d. Many infants are securely attached to one parent but insecurely attached to the other.
  - e. Caregivers who are sensitive and responsive and adjust to their baby’s temperamental quirks are able to establish secure relationships.
C. Cultural and Social Context
- 1. Biological mother in attachment theory
- 2. Alloparenting distributes care among multiple caregivers such as aunts and uncles, grandparents, siblings, cousins, and neighbor women.
- 3. Individualistic cultures want their babies to take interest in objects, interact face-to-face with their parents, and explore independently.
- 4. Collectivist cultures keep their babies in physical contact all day and train them to stay close and do as they are told.
- 5. The cultural context in which caregiver and baby interact also colors their relationship.
- 6. In Germany, an individualistic culture, parents strongly encourage independence and discourage clingy behavior.
- 7. In Japan, children are rarely separated from their mothers early in life and are encouraged to be dependent on their mothers.

IV. Implications of Early Attachment

A. From Freud, secure parent–child relationship is critical in human development.
B. Studies of socially deprived infants
C. Studies of infants who experience separations from their caregivers
D. Studies comparing the later development of securely and insecurely attached infants
E. Deprived Institutions
- 1. What happens if an infant never has an opportunity to form an attachment?
- 2. Infants who spent their first several months or more in deprived orphanages
- 3. Poor growth
- 4. Medical problems
- 5. Delays and differences in physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development
- 6. After being adopted
- 7. 90% had clearly become attached to their adoptive parents
- 8. Many saw their parents as both comforting and threatening.
- 9. Separations
  - a. Infants go through a grieving process
  - b. Protest and search frantically for their loved one
  - c. Then become sad and listless once they give up
  - d. Sometimes then ignore or avoid their caregiver if she returns, only gradually warming up to her again
F. Day Care
- 1. Who experienced routine care by someone other than their mothers were not much different than infants cared for by their mothers.
- 2. Quality of parenting was a much stronger influence on these infants’ attachments and later development than whether they had day-care experience.
- 3. Later Development of Securely and Insecurely Attached Infants
- 4. Three main qualities distinguish children who were securely attached infants from children who were insecurely attached:
  - a. Intellectual competence: Children who were securely attached as infants are described by teachers as more curious, self-directed, and eager to learn.
  - b. Social competence: Children who had been securely attached as infants are more able to initiate play activities, are more sensitive to the needs and feelings of other children, and are more popular and socially competent.
  - c. Emotion regulation: Secure attachment in infancy is also linked to good emotion regulation and coping skills.
- 5. Relationship Quality
G. First Peer Relations
- 1. Infants show interest in other babies.
- 2. At 1 year of age:
  - a. Show capacities for sharing, cooperation, and empathy
- 3. At 18 months:
  - a. Infants are able to engage in simple forms of reciprocal, complementary play with peers

V. The Child (p. 422)

A. Parent–Child Attachments
- 1. At age 3:
  - a. Child grows more independent of the parent
  - b. Want separations to be predictable and controllable
- 2. Children:
  - a. Continue to seek attention and approval from their parents
  - b. Look more to peers for social and emotional support
B. Peer Networks
- 1. 10% of social interactions in toddlerhood are with peers.
- 2. 30% of those in middle childhood are with peers.
- 3. Cross-cultural research
- 4. U.S. children spend more time with same-age children.
- 5. May miss out on opportunities to learn from older and wiser children
C. Play
- 1. Children spend much time playing
  - a. Locomotor play
  - b. Object play
  - c. Social play
  - d. Pretend play
- 2. Two changes in play between infancy and age 5:
- 3. Becomes more social and more imaginative
- 4. Parten’s six categories of preschool play—from least to most social
  - a. Unoccupied play
  - b. Solitary play
  - c. Onlooker play
  - d. Parallel play
  - e. Associative play
  - f. Cooperative play
- 5. At age 1
- 6. First pretend play
- 7. Play in which one actor, object, or action symbolizes or stands for another
- 8. At ages 2 to 5
  - a. Pretend play blossoms
  - b. Social pretend play
- 9. At school age
  - a. Playing organized games with rules
  - b. Allows children to develop many skills
- 10. Associated with the development of motor, cognitive, language, social, and emotional skills
- 11. May contribute to healthy emotional development
D. Peer Acceptance
- 1. Researchers study peer-group acceptance through sociometric techniques.
- 2. Accepted (or popular): Well-liked by most and rarely disliked
- 3. Rejected: Rarely liked and often disliked
- 4. Neglected: Neither liked nor disliked; these children seem to be invisible to their classmates
- 5. Controversial: Liked by many but also disliked by many
- 6. Average: In the middle on both the liked and disliked scales
- 7. Why are some children more popular than others?
- 8. Physically attractive children are more liked.
- 9. Children who are relatively intelligent are usually more popular.
- 10. Social competence predicts popularity.
- 11. “Rejected” children:
- 12. Often highly aggressive
- 13. Some are socially isolated, submissive children
- 14. Neglected
- 15. Good social skills
- 16. Nonaggressive; tend to be shy and unassertive
- 17. Controversial children
- 18. Good social skills, leadership qualities, aggressive
E. Friendships
- 1. Study of 7- to 8-year-olds
- 2. 39% of children rejected by peers had at least one mutual or reciprocated friendship.
- 3. 31% of popular children lacked such a friendship.
- 4. Having at least one friend increases the odds that a child will be happy and socially competent.
- 5. Friendships change with age.
- 6. Early childhood
- 7. Enjoyment of common activities
- 8. Late childhood
- 9. Mutual loyalty and caring
- 10. Adolescence
- 11. Intimacy and self-disclosure

VI. The Adolescent (p. 426)

A. Parent–Adolescent Attachments
- 1. Adolescents
- 2. Need the security and encouragement to explore
- 3. Provided by supportive parents
- 4. Adolescents with secure parent–child attachments
- 5. Stronger sense of identity
- 6. Higher self-esteem
- 7. Greater social competence
- 8. Better emotional adjustment
- 9. Fewer behavioral problems
B. Friendships
- 1. Qualitatively change
- 2. Based on
  - a. Enjoyment of common activities
  - b. Mutual loyalty
  - c. Intimacy and Self-disclosure
C. Changing Social Networks
- 1. Dunphy: how peer-group structures change during adolescence
- 2. Late childhood: same-sex groups
- 3. Boy and girl cliques begin to interact
- 4. By age 11 or 12: popular boys and girls form mixed-sex cliques
- 5. Crowds then form
- 6. Late high school: crowds lessen as couples form
- 7. Sociometric Popularity and Perceived Popularity
- 8. Sociometric popularity, or peer acceptance in the sense of being liked by many peers
- 9. Perceived popularity, or being viewed as someone who has status, power, and visibility in the peer group
- 10. Cliques and Crowds
  - a. Dexter Dunphy’s five steps are still helpful today in understanding how peer relations lay the foundation for romantic attachments.
  - b. In late childhood, boys and girls typically become members of same-sex cliques and have little to do with the other sex.
  - c. Boy cliques and girl cliques then begin to interact.
  - d. In early adolescence, the most popular boys and girls lead the way and form a heterosexual clique.
  - e. The crowd completes its evolution during the high school years.
  - f. More and more couples form and the crowd disintegrates in late high school.
D. Dating
- 1. Percentage of adolescents reporting they have dates: 8th grade: 29%, 10th grade: 45%, 12th grade: 51%
- 2. Adolescent romantic relationships evolve through four phases:
  - a. Initiation
  - b. Status
  - c. Affection
  - d. Bonding
- 3. Dating has more positive than negative effects on development.

VII. The Adult (p. 430)

A. Social Networks
- 1. Each of us has a social convoy.
- 2. Social network and support system that accompanies us during our life’s journey
- 3. Trend toward smaller social networks with age
- 4. Older adults narrow their social networks to close family and friends.
B. Romantic Relationships and Love
- 1. Greatest influence on mate selection
- 2. Homogamy (similarity)
- 3. People may also look for complementarity.
- 4. Partners who are different from them but who have strengths that compensate for their own weaknesses
- 5. Sternberg’s triangular theory of love
  - a. Passion
  - b. Intimacy
  - c. Commitment
- 6. Consummate love
  - a. High levels of passion, intimacy, and commitment
- 7. Companionate love
  - a. High intimacy and commitment but not much passion
- 8. Erikson’s issue of intimacy versus isolation by finding a romantic partner
- 9. How do we choose our partners
- 10. What does love involve
- 11. How do the internal working models of self and others that we form starting in infancy affect our romantic attachments?
- 12. Partner Choice
  - a. Universally men prefer attractive, younger mates, and women prefer older men with financial resources.
  - b. Kindness, intelligence, health
C. Love
- 1. Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love
  - a. Passion involves sexual attraction, romantic feelings, and a sense of excitement.
  - b. Intimacy involves feelings of warmth, caring, closeness, trust, and respect. It is about emotional togetherness, attachment, and communication.
  - c. Commitment involves first deciding that one loves the other person and then committing to a long-term relationship.
D. Adult Attachment Styles
- 1. Adults’ styles of attachment are related to:
  - a. Quality of their romantic relationships
  - b. Well-being, physical and mental health in later life
  - c. Quality of the parent–child relationship that an adult experienced earlier in life predicts adult attachment style and romantic relationship quality.
E. Adult Relationships and Adult Development
- 1. Size of adult’s social network is not as important as whether it includes a confidant.
- 2. Spouse, relative, or friend to whom the individual feels especially attached
- 3. Men are particularly dependent on their spouses.
- 4. Benefits of having a confidant
- 5. Life satisfaction, physical health, cognitive functioning, and longevity

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