Personality Development Exam 1

Even in identical twins environment often plays a noticeable role. We know this because....

For most mental disorders, the probability of identical twins being discordant for a disorder is greater than the probability of being concordant (one twin can be different from the other due to environmental differences). *Both twins are concordant 48% of the time and discordant 52% of the time.

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (10) Cross-Cultural Study

Investigates ethnic differences in levels of altruism by looking at italian, german, french, and swedish youth.

Psychoanalysts and social learning theorists believe that:

Stranger anxiety represents the child's fear of losing persons to whom he is attached.

John B. Watson was:

(1) A behaviorist (father of behaviorism). (2) A social learning theorist (3) A person who believed that all significant aspects of one's personality are learned and not due to genes.

Bandura believes that observational learning is more efficient than trial and error learning. Its prominent role is that its:

(1) Efficient and quick (2) Many complex behaviors are difficult to acquire in any other way (3) It explains a lot of incidental learning (that is when social models are not explicitly trying to instruct the child). Attention and motivation are important factors.

Young kids who engage much pretend play tend to be more creative and socially mature than kids who pretend little. But there are various signs of illogical thinking during the preoperational stage. These include:

(1) Egocentrism - the 3 year old assumes that everyone sees the world the same way he sees it. (2) The child's inability to solve conservation problems.

Freud's stages of psychosexual development include:

(1) Oral - birth to ½ (2) Anal - 1 ½ to 3 (3) Phallic - 3 to 6; sexualized attachment to parent of opposite sex. (4) Latency - 6 to 12; sexual and aggressive drives are still displayed but become a bit more submerged. (5) Genital - Puberty and beyond; full fledged genital sexuality is attained. *Fixations can occur especially at any of the first 3 stages. When one is fixated they are partially stuck at that stage. Freud said that the first prolonged social conflict between child and parents usually occurs during the anal stage when a contest of wills regarding toilet training may occur.

Piaget

(1) Sees cognitive growth as due to maturation and development of the brain in childhood and the presence of disequilibrium (where we need to reach cognitively to resolve this disequilibrium), and (2) uses the term schemas to refer to the intellectual structures that we create to represent, organize, and interpret our world.

Bandura believes......

(1) That the consequences we anticipate for performing some act are the primary determinate of our willingness to perform the responses we have learned through observing a model and (2) That most human behavior is regulated and maintained through self reinforcement. In this regard, he says that the main reason we strive to satisfy high performance standards rather than lower our expectations if they are at first difficult to achieve is because we feel especially proud and competent when we meet exacting standards.

In terms of social learning theory, it is important to note that preschoolers may be successful at delaying immediate gratification to obtain larger incentives if:

(1) They distract themselves from immediate gratification (2) Have been encouraged to view themselves as patient people who are able to wait for good things

Piaget's final stage 4 (formal operational stage) the teen and adult can:

(1) engage in hypothesis testing (2) explore all possible solutions to a problem (3) have an increased capacity to think logically and think about ideas (4) show a decrease in tendency to resort to trial and error learning

Id, Ego, Superego

(1)The id is the inherited structure, present at birth; it operates on the pleasure principle. (2)The ego operates on the reality principle. (3)The superego operates on morality principles; it strives for perfection and represents the internalized values of society and parents.

Piaget and other cognitive developmental theorists like Kohlberg believe that their cognitive stages of development represent an invariant (unchanging) developmental sequence which implies that:

(A) All kids progress through these stages in the same order or sequence (invariant sequence). (B) Stages can never be skipped. (C) Each stage builds on the stage before it (even though there are qualitative differences between the stages).

Two processes that kids use to try to make sense of the world are:

(A) Assimilation - Where the child incorporates new observations and data into pre-existing older schemas (often incorrectly), often causing him to interpret what impinges on him incorrectly. (B) Accommodation - Where you now modify and change pre-existing schemas to make them fit reality.

Cognitive Viewpoints of Personality Development include the view of Piaget. His view of intelligence:

(A) Clearly reflects his biological background. (B) Emphasizes intellectual activity as an adaptive process

Freud's psychoanalytic theory

(A) Rests on our assumption that most of our behavior most of the time is determined by unconscious processes (who we marry, what career we select). (B) Assumes we are born with a fixed amount of psychic energy that is redistributed among id, ego, and superego. Freud believed that these three structures were in conflict with one another (much like you see in sibling rivalry).

Bandura says that when a child learns by observing a model (someone else performing some action) the child acquires:

(A) The imaginal representational system involving formation of sensory images (mental visual images of the event); And (B) a verbal representational system (which involves translation of the event into summary verbal labels).

Bandura says that an observer may be unable or unwilling to reproduce a model's behavior if:

(A) The observer doesn't pay close attention to the model's behavior. (B) Observer fails to rehearse or practice the behavior. (C) The model is punished for his or her actions. (D) Observer fails to transform the model behavior into symbolic form (imaginal and verbal representational systems).

Among the first meaningful bits of evidence of young kids' attempts to regulate their emotions involve:

A 6 month old turning away her body from unpleasant stimulation (like a scary looking person). Strategies used by an 18 - 24 month old include attempts to control anger or sadness by compressing their lips or by knitting their brow and distracting themselves from unpleasant stimulation.

Erik Erikson

A Neo-Freudian and differs from Freud seeing (as do more modern psychoanalysis; mankind as active and adaptive rather than passive creatures at the mercy of their biological drives and environment). One recurring criticism is that Erikson described but did not explain development. *Erikson's stages encompass the entire lifespan rather than stopping at puberty (young adulthood as did Freud).

Gene/environment interaction

A gene/environment interaction occurs when people with different genes respond differently to the same environment. *Ted inhibits a predisposition towards severe depression, Fred does not. Both are in their mid twenties and both experience: A) Death of both parents, B) Two divorces, and C) Being fired from a well paying job. In response, Ted becomes suicidally depressed but Fred develops only temporary pessimism for 2 months.

Both extraversion and neuroticism (being irritable, tense, pessimistic, etc) tends to have:

A significant genetic component (the heritability level is about .50). This is true, also, for agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.

There is research evidence that supports the notion that:

A) Both serious depression and a tendency to experience particular stressful life events may be mediated by some of the same genes. B) Low levels of social support are associated with feeling depressed. C) Exhibiting depression seems to foster low levels of social support (depressed people may turn others off, even loved ones, by their behavior or even cause them to withdrawal).

Research on early parent-to-infant emotional bonding indicates that:

A) Early skin to skin contact is neither crucial nor sufficient for establishing secure emotional ties. B) Yet, parents may begin to form positive emotional relationships with their infants if they have close contact with them in the first 10-12 hours after giving birth.

**Problems in establishing close caregiver to infant attachments may stem from:

A) Infant prematurity B) Infant addiction to narcotic agents C) The infant having an unattractive face

In adolescence and adulthood, there is some level of equivalence of illogical thinking, two manifestations of it include:

A) Personal fable: A belief in one's own uniqueness and specialness. This may cause the teen to take unnecessary risks. B) Imaginary audience: Because the teen is so attuned to his own behavior he assumes that others are just as attuned (he believes he is an actor on stage and therefore has to be mindful of others reactions to him).

Common criticisms of all evolutionary theories is that:

A) They provide retrospective (or post hoc) explanations (looking at what already occurred and then after the fact, using their own theory to explain it rather than coming up with predictive explanations. B) They are difficult to falsify (to support or to refute based on use of the experimental method). Many of their ideas are not formulated in a way such that they are testable scientifically. C) They fail to generate testable predictions about future development.

Issues still actively debated today include: (2)

Activity vs Passivity: Activity - Some psychologists like Richard Bell believe in the biology of socialization. Not only do parents socialize them but kids socialize parents in return and play active roles in determining how parents will treat them. Passivity - Watson and skinner argued that kids are passive agents whose fate is determined by the environmental stimuli (love, punishment, neglect) that impinge upon them. *Today most psychologists believe that some kids to some extent are actively involved in creating the circumstance for their own growth. (If a kid is irritable and aggressive the formerly calm parent may become more aggressive and less loving in reaction to this).

Tryon, 1940

An earlier study that showed that maze learning ability in rats is genetically determined (a heritable attribute). Tryon bread maze bright (smart) rats only with other maze bright rats and maze dull (stupid) rats only with other maze dull rats. By the 18th generation, the worst performer in the maze bright group was better at maze running than the best performer in the maze dull group.

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (2) Case Studies

An in-depth investigation of a person over some period of time (Freud used this method a lot). You might study a therapy patient over two years of treatment through tests and observation; but since people agreeing to participate in a case study are usually smarter, healthier, and more long lived than average, you may have trouble safely generalizing your results to the population at large.

Issues still actively debated today include: (1)

Arguments about nature vs nurture (heredity vs environment). Which of these determines a given trait or condition? (today the tendency is to look at the way heredity and environment interact to bring about a given behavior). For example: whether someone turns out to be a violent psychopath generally depends on both heredity and environment (what you see in a majority cases of violent people is a person who was generically predisposed to impulsive aggressive behavior). This predisposition is combined w/parents or other caregivers who use a lot of physical punishment and are unloving. *Can heredity/genetics itself explain psychopathy/chronically violent behavior? In rare cases, yes. But usually a combination of heredity and environment

What does social learning theory encompass?

Behaviorism

Passive genotype/environment interaction

Bob's parents both play in an orchestra and take Bob with them to many musical events. They however, make to active attempt to push Bob to play an instrument or be interested in music. But due to genetic predisposition and Bob's overall exposure to musical events he takes up 3 instruments in high school and enjoys it.

Facilitated attachment

Both Freud and Erikson placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of activities as they facilitated attachment. Erikson saw the strength of an infant's attachment or attraction to the caregiver to be primarily a reflection of a sense of trust.

Kohlberg and Piaget believe:

Cognitive developmental theorists like Kohlberg and Piaget believe that infants are wary of strangers because of the infant's inability to explain who the stranger is and what he may want. This makes the infant very apprehensive. They say that infants most likely cry when separated from mom if child cannot explain where mom may have gone.

Unoriginal theories + ideas in psychology today (4)

Cognitive-Developmental theorists like Piaget and Kohlberg were heavily influenced by past theorists who emphasized the critical role of heredity (they believed, especially Piaget, that all humans go though the same stages of development in the same order and at about the same time). They tend to discount the role of culture and socialization, claiming that due to unfolding of genetic factors, all kids go though the same stages at about the same time (Freud believed this also - stages predetermined to occur in same order and at given age in childhood).

Issues still actively debated today include: (3)

Continuity vs Discontinuity: Continuity - Watson and Skinner and people who emphasize the role of operant conditioning; see development as like a slow motion basketball shot where one arm movement moves to the next (theorists emphasize quantitative change). Discontinuity - Piaget and Kohlberg see development as occurring in discrete discontinuous stages each of which is qualitatively different from the stage before an after it.

Hereditary differences as well as the non-shared environment both contribute significantly to:

Differences in personality amongst siblings.

Wolff's research on different types of infant cries revealed that:

Different cries conveyed different messages to both experienced and inexperienced moms (both of whom realized that the higher the pitch, the more serious and urgent the problem).

Evocative genotype interaction

Due to a person's genes and the way it affects his appearance and behavior, this person typically evokes a certain reaction from his teachers. Specifically, for example, Todd is a bully and is big and scary looking. As a result, his teachers tend to yell at him a lot, limit his privileges, and give him lower grades than he probably deserves (at the same time he has to deal with his high level of aggression which is genetically mediated).

Castration anxiety

During the phallic stage (3 - 6) castration anxiety is seen by Freud as terminating the oedipus complex (boys' sexualized attachment to mom). In order to be safe and not have dad hurt (castrate me) I have to stop competing with him; give up mom as a sexualized object and identify with dad (if I am him, he can't hurt me). For girls penis envy was seen as initiating the electra complex (girls' sexualized attachment to dad). Only gradually compared with a boy is this given up due to fear of losing mom's love.

A child who knows the circumstances under which it is acceptable (or not acceptable) to display certain emotions like disappointment or anger is showing his knowledge of:

Emotional display rules; *Moms contribute to this by their tendency to display more positive than negative emotions and to respond more favorably to their child's own positive emotions. A child who grimaces or seems upset upon seeing a one-legged man and who avoids the man's attention has not yet learned emotional display rules. Probably the major reason that kids learn to comply with these rules is to avoid punishment and disapproval and maintain others' approval.

Even though we know that our temperament has a lot to do with our inherited predisposition, ___________ also often play a noticeable role.

Environmental influences; *For example, an irritable (difficult temperament) baby may become less irritable over time if raised by a mom who is patient, loving, calm, and well attuned to the infant's needs (easing the infant over the difficult, frustrating spots or experiences). This represents a high level in terms of goodness of fit. *A low level in regard to goodness of fit would be pairing a difficult temperament baby with a nervous, impatient, unempathic mother (the kid is then doubly shafted in that he inherited a tendency toward difficult temperament from a mom who ends up raising him.

Critical periods

Ethologists refer to the concept of critical periods (a period where an organism is maximally sensitive to certain stimuli or occurrences) to make this point. Thus, many feel that the critical period for attachment emotionally to others (especially a key figure like mom) is between 6 months and 3 years of age.

Tendencies to smoke are linked to traits like:

Extraversion, neuroticism and sensation seeking. All of which seem to have a noticeable genetic contribution. *An Australian study found that if 1 identical twin smoked cigarettes, he was 16 times more likely to have an identical twin who also smoked than an identical twin who did not smoke. The comparison figure for non-identical twins was a 7 fold increase.

Unoriginal theories + ideas in psychology today (1)

Freud's psychoanalytic theory adopts the doctrine of original sin (that we are born w/sexual and aggressive drives that need to be tamed or sinful behavior will result); and viewed the child as passive and inherently bad (however, modern psychoanalysts are likely to see the child as more active and adaptive than Freud did). But these concepts in PT were actually a reworking of Thomas Hobbes doctrine of original sin which said kids are innately bad and innately selfish egoists who need to be controlled/monitored by society.

Harry Harlow "The Nature of Love"

Harry Harlow in "The Nature of Love" said that feeding is not the primary determinant of attachment in monkeys. For the first two weeks of monkey life, it was temperature; after that contact comfort was the primary determinant (monkeys deprived of mom would drink milk from wire, coat hanger surrogate mom, but then cling to the soft, terrycloth mom even though it was not a source of food).

Unoriginal theories + ideas in psychology today (3)

Humanistic theorists like Carl Rogers and Abe Maslow adopted Rousseau's doctrine of innate purity (kids are born w/an intuitive conception of right and wrong). *That is often misdirected by society (if society did not screw up the works the kids would end up ok). *Rosseau saw kids as noble savages who should be given the freedom to follow these innately positive inclinations (In contrast to Freud who saw man as inherently bad by drives Rogers, Maslow, and Rousseau saw man as inherently good).

Adults can correctly decipher the meaning of babies':

Hunger, mad and pain cries; Infants both experience and convey distinct emotions to their caregivers.

Schaffer and Emerson's study of scottish infants

In Schaffer and Emerson's study of scottish infants, the child's discriminated separation protest (child becomes upset when mom leaves but not when a stranger leaves) was taken as evidence that the child had formed a primary social attachment. Prior to this, infants are apt to protest whenever anyone walks off and leaves them alone. Some kids and adults who have not formed a close primary attachment in infancy may well have trouble becoming close emotionally to others in a romantic relationship.

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (8) Cross-Sectional Studies

In developmental psychology you take a cross-section of people of different ages and measure them all at the same time on the same tract or behavior.

One basic tenet of ethological theory is that.....

Inborn behaviors characterizing a species have adaptive value (in that they increase person's and species' chances of survival). *John Bowlby believes that infants are biologically pre-programmed to let others know of their distress (for example by crying) and that caregivers are biologically predisposed to respond to these signals (cries, etc.).

Ethologists focus on.....

Inherited attributes that characterize a species. However, they as well as psychoanalysts believe that the events of early life can have long term effects on personality development.

Social referencing

Involves an infant's or child's tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli or situations by reading others' emotional reactions to these situations. *If mom gets upset when Jimmy skins his knee, he is more likely to cry than if she acts more neutral or encourages him to get up and continue playing. By the end of the first year of life, infants are likely to avoid unfamiliar toys if a nearby stranger or mom displays a look of concern (so that infant is using stranger's or mom's expression as a cue for what to do).

A common criticism of the behavioral genetics approach is that:

It is a highly descriptive account that fails to explain how developmental change comes about.

What is the role of a theory in science?

It is to aid in interpreting data and generating hypotheses (your best hunch as to causes for the behaviors being studied).

Unoriginal theories + ideas in psychology today (2)

John B. Watson and BF Skinner are identified w/social learning theory. They believed in the doctrine of Tabula Rasa (infants at birth are a blank slate or empty book). These notions are actually a reformulation of earlier idea put forth by John Locke in his idea of Tabula Rasa (Watson, Skinner, and Locke all believed that development depends completely on how they are raised and input from their psychological and social environments - heredity doesn't count).

Active genotype/environment interaction

John inherits a predisposition to be good musically. Even though his parents are poor, John at age 3, actively presses them to buy a piano, which they do. By 4 ½ he is pushing for music lessons which he gets. He has sought out his own niche in the world and is following his dream. One implication of this is that genes influence the kinds of life experiences that people are likely to seek out.

Klaus and Kennell's "Sensitive Period" hypothesis

Klaus and Kennell's "Sensitive Period" hypothesis dictates that moms can become emotionally bonded to their infants within hours after giving birth. It places primary emphasis on the timing of close contact between mom and infant.

Babies of clinically depressed mothers and other main caregivers often:

Match their mom's depressive behavior and symptoms when interacting with them. Attachment to mom, thus, becomes difficult and problematic when: A) Mom is clinically depressed, B) Caregivers have preconceived notions of how their kids should be raised and rigidly stick to these strategies even if child's first reaction is negative (mom refuses to rethink the notion of "spare the rod and spoil the child"), and C) Moms have not planned their pregnancy.

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (9) Longitudinal Study

Measures age change by repeatedly measuring the same person or people as they get older. It is difficult safely to generalize results to people in the the at large population because subjects who agree to come back for retesting tend to be smarter, healthier, and longer lived than average.

Observational learning involves.....

Modeling your behavior after someone you saw behaving this way. This observational learning occurs without any direct reinforcement.

Yet ethologists explain infant's fear of strangers by arguing that strange faces are:

Natural cues or clues to danger. Mom helps overcome fear of separation from her or fear of strangers by serving as a secure base for exploring the environment. Ethologists say that separation anxiety should gradually lessen as the exploring child initiates separations and becomes more tolerant of them. Ethologists also say that infants are unlikely to cry when separated from mom if the separation was initiated by the child.

Cognitive (thinking-related) processes in social learning

Neither Watson or Skinner emphasized cognitive (thinking-related) processes in social learning and merely talked about the increase or decrease in strength of some habit due to reward or punishment. However, Bandura's Social Learning Theory places strong emphasis on cognitive processes in social learning and by the belief that most learning occurs without any direct reinforcement (but he doesn't reject the concepts of reinforcement or extinction).

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (7) Quasi-experiment

No random assignment or control group

One key concept in Piaget's theory is.....

Object constancy (also sometimes called object prominence). While this is not fully established until around 18 years of age, you can detect emerging signs of it earlier than this. Thus, Piaget says that when an infant searches for a hidden object where it was previously found even though infant saw mom place it somewhere else this time, this represents an infant's emerging sense of object constancy and is typical among 8 to 12 months old infant. *Piaget interprets this behavior as indicating that this infant believes that her (infant's own) behavior determines the doll's location. By age 18 months the child will go to where the object is last placed. If she can't find it she will look all over the room figuring the toy must be somewhere. The development of object constancy (object permanence) is thought to be an especially important prerequisite for the child formation of close emotional attachments.

Criticisms of Freud's psychoanalytic theory

One strong criticism of Freud's theory is that young oedipal aged kids are often not aware of the anatomical differences between the sexes. We are indebted to Freud for his emphasis on unconscious factors that influence behavior and the importance of early experiences on personality development. Criticisms: (1) Freud's concepts are difficult to to measure objectively. (2) The data from which his theory arose may not necessarily generalize to people at large (he used his own pathology and the problems of just a few patients to come up with his conclusions).

Specific types of genotype/environment interaction include:

Passive genotype/environment interaction, Active genotype/environment interaction, and Evocative genotype interaction

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (4) Naturalistic Observation

People are observed in common settings where the observer tries not to let these people know they're being observed. Drawbacks: presence of observing may cause subjects behavior to change and you cannot unequivocally assign causality.

Illogical thinking can be resolved during:

Piaget's stage 3 (the concrete operational stage; 7-12). While the child is now capable of reversible and can understand the concepts of time, space, number, volume, and gender, and thus can correctly arrange 3 wooden blocks of size he (according to Piaget) can't decide, which is biggest where X > Y which is bigger than Z.

One way to make necessary separations more tolerable for toddler and reduce his separation anxiety is to:

Provide the child with a brief explanation of where mom is going and when she is likely to return. A complex explanation is too discrepant from (different from) the normal circumstances of mom talking with toddler. Separations can be less painful for older infants and for toddlers if they are given some reminder of the home setting (like a teddy bear, blanket, or picture of mom to carry around).

A baby's first smiles are probably:

Reflexive responses rather than true social signals. A "so called" smile from a one month old may imply indigestion or gas or suggest that he is having a bowel movement, but the apparent smiles of a two month old are often social signals (true smiles).

Secure (healthy) attachments

Relationships in which the people involved are motivated to interact frequently, enjoy interacting, and are motivated to maintain proximity or closeness to one another. Yet at times, they are able to function and manage on their own.

Embarrassment, guilt, shame, and pride are examples of:

Relatively complex emotions that seem to require self-recognition before they can be experienced.

B.F. Skinner

Said that most of our behavior involves freely emitted operant responses that are controlled by external stimuli (back in 1963 Weisberg found that infant babbling was increased in frequency by smiles from others [mom, dad, etc]). The smiles were reinforcing to the infant. *While rewards increase the frequency of some behavior, punishments decrease it. B.F. Skinner did not feel that punishment was very effective in socializing kids because it merely suppressed or weakened ongoing responses rather than getting rid of them permanently. He emphasized the key role of reward in fostering desired behavior.

Social anxiety

Some people believe that social anxiety has adaptive value in that it causes us to be sensitive to how others may want us to behave and thus increase our chances of being accepted by the group as a whole (chances of being fed and protected by others).

When does stranger anxiety first appear?

Stranger anxiety first appears at 7 or 8 months of age (even earlier in some cultures where baby is less often separated from mom). It peaks during the latter half of the first year of life. Infants show less fear of strangers when the infant controls the pace of the interaction.

Even by age 7 many kids are still not able to recognize:

That people can experience more than one reaction to the same event (e.g., getting married may make you feel both happy and nervous about the event).

One prime achievement of Piaget's first stage (The Sensorimotor stage lasting from birth to age 2) is:

That the child understands that objects continue to exist even when they can't be seen, located or detected with any of the 5 senses.

A common criticism of social learning theorists is:

That they largely ignore the biological and genetic bases for individual differences

"Conditioned anxiety" hypothesis

The "conditioned anxiety" hypothesis says that an infant's separation anxiety results from associations between separation and hunger, pain, and other discomforts

One human attribute that evolutionary theorists believe to have originated from is......

The Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest is a capacity for empathy (being able to put one's self in another person's shoes emotionally and understand how he is feeling). *If you can empathize with others you will be able to sense their mood or emotion. This may save your life if you sense, for example, that someone else wants to hurt you. Also, people are more likely to be drawn to others who are empathetic. When others are drawn to you they can protect you (versus what it would be if you were left alone).

Infant smiling can be influenced by:

The behavior of caregivers (if they smile infant is often likely to smile back). Infant smiles can may reinforce caregiver's behavior and make her more likely to smile at infant in the future.

The major advance of Piaget 2nd stage (The Preoperational stage; ages 2-7) involves:

The child's much increased use of mental symbols. Piaget views symbolic play (you might pretend that your pillow is the family dog) as: (A) A way to practice one's cognitive skills, (B) An adaptive method of resolving conflicts and emotional cases, and (C) A way of representing experiences on thinking about or comparing objects that are no longer present.

Shortcomings of Piaget's theory

The major shortcoming of Piaget's theory is that it fails to explain how kids progress from one stage of cognitive development to the next. It is viewed by many developmental psychologists as lacking explanatory power and is not elaborating on the role of motivation or emotion in kids' intellectual development.

Socialization

The process through which a person acquires the beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes considered appropriate by a given society (there is a focus on the ways in which these are transmitted and by whom and what).

Contrary to popular opinion in the 1960s.....

There is very little evidence that any similarities in personality between siblings are significantly due to aspects of the environment that they share.

Self-recognition

This ability to recognize one's self in the mirror or in a photo of herself with other people ("that's me"). On average, self-recognition ability appears at around age 18 months.

As a woman has more children, she is likely:

To develop more negative attitudes towards children. Also, a poor marital relationship often interferes with a parent's attachment to their infant (where you do not get sufficient emotional support, you may have a limited ability to give the infant what it needs emotionally).

Kids from different cultures may be more likely......

To have certain temperaments because they come from relatively separate gene pools (as you see in China). Chinese infants tend to be more calm and placid and less irritable and reactive than caucasian infants.

Individual genotypes (genes)

We know that individual genotypes (genes) play a role in some attribute (such as IQ or extroversion) if adopted kids show greater resemblance to their birth parents than to their adoptive parents, and also if identical twins reared apart are more similar on this attribute than fraternal twins reared together.

Interactional synchrony

When an actual meshing of parental and infant behavior occurs during face to face interactions, this is called interactional synchrony (infant may break out in a smile or laugh and this results in mom spontaneously smiling and laughing back at him).

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (3) Clinical Method

When investigating the reason for a child's responses to his cognitive test items, the questions Piaget asked the kids were all determined by the answer to the question that was the last question asked (therefore, rarely were any two kids asked the same question in the same order).

Heritability coefficients

When we discuss heritability coefficients we are referring to an index used to estimate the amount of variation in a trait (like IQ) that is attributable to heredity factors.

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (1) Structured Interview

Where each person is asked the same questions in the same order (in a standard format). One drawback - person being interviewed may not answer honestly.

Richard Bell

Wrote articles on the bidirectionality of socialization (mom socializes the infant; her treatment of him, shapes his behavior AND the infant socializes mom. While mom was initially calm and laid back she has become less affectionate, playful, and calm in response to her unsmiling baby who cries most of the night).

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (6) Experimental Design

You are able to determine a cause-effect relationship because: (1) the subjects are randomly assigned to different experimental and control groups, and (2) the only thing between groups is whether or not they're exposed to the independent causal variable and no there differences.

Ways of gathering data about personality + its development: (5) Correlational Study

You look are the numerical relationship between two variables like smoking and lung cancer, but you cannot for sure determine the cause.

Socialization is....

a) A means of regulating behavior b) The social order (from one generation to the next) c) A means of promoting social growth

Good scientific theories are:

a) Heuristic: capable of generating research and testable hypotheses (behavioristic and learning theory is better at this than psychoanalytic theory). b) Parsimonious: using a few principles to account for a lot of data. c) Falsifiable: capable of making predictions (guesses as to the outcome of research and upcoming events that can be either supported or not supported).