Social and Personality Development in the Preschool Years

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Social and Personality Development in the
Preschool Years

• Chapter 8
• Robert S. Feldman

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Psychosocial Development Resolving the Conflicts

• INITIATIVE desire to act independently from
  parents and becoming autonomous
• GUILT guilt of unintended consequences
  resulting in shame and self-doubt
• 3 to 6 years

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Self- Concept

• Definition
• - Identity
• - Set of beliefs about ___________________________
  ________________________

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Preschooler Self-Concept

• Not accurate
• More optimistic
• Overestimates of abilities

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Cultural Influence

• View of self culturally bound
• Collectivist Orientation Asian
• Individualistic Orientation Western
• View of self family tied
• View of self individually directed

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Psychosocial Development

• Becoming their own person
• Making own decisions
• Shaping kind of person they are becoming

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Developing Racial and Ethnic AwarenessDevelopment
al Diversity

• Racial and ethnic identity begins to formalize
• Differences in skin color noticed early in life
• Cultural meaning attached to differences comes
  later

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Developmental Diversity

• By age 3-4 years many preschoolers
• Differentiate _________
• Mirror ________________

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Race Dissonance

• Minority children indicate preferences for
  ______________ values or people
• Result of powerful influence of dominant white
  culture
• NOT disparagement of own racial characteristics

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Ethnic Identity

• Emerges somewhat later than racial identity
• Usually less conspicuous than race
• Preschoolers who were bilingual, speaking both
  Spanish and English, are more apt to be aware of
  ethnic identity

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Gender Identity

• Sense of being male or female
• Well established by preschool years
• By age 2 years
• Consistently label themselves and others as male
  and female

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Gender Constancy

• Kohlberg (1966)
• By age 4-5, children develop understanding of
  gender constancy
• Belief that people are permanently males or
  females because of fixed, unchangeable biological
  factors
• Gender schemas occur well before gender constancy
  is understood

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Gender and Play

• Differences noted in play of male and female
  preschoolers
• Males
• More rough and tumble play
• Same sex playmate preference around 3
• Females
• Organized games and role playing
• Same sex playmate preference around 2

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Gender Expectations

• Expectations about gender-appropriate behavior
  more rigid and gender-stereotyped than adults up
  to 5 years
• Gender outweighs ethnic variables

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Snips, and snails.

• Preschoolers expect boys to demonstrate

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Sugar and spice...

• Preschoolers expect girls to demonstrate

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Theoretical Perspectives on Gender

• Biological
• Inborn, genetic factors produce gender
  differences
• Psychoanalytic
• Gender differences result of moving through
  series of stages related to biological urges

• Social learning
• Gender related behavior learned from observations
  of others behaviors
• Cognitive
• Gender schemes form lens through which world is
  viewed

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Psychoanalytic Perspective on Gender

• Males and females go through different
  identification process
• Identifying with same sex parents enables child
  to adopt parents gender attitudes and values

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Social Learning Perspective on Gender

• Gender related behaviors and expectations learned
  from observing others
• Books, media, television perpetuate gender
  related behavior and expectations

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Cognitive Perspective on Gender

• Gender schema or cognitive framework organizes
  relevant gender information
• Preschoolers begin developing rules about what
  is right and inappropriate for males and females

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Bem ThereDone That

• Sandra Bem and androgynous children
• Encouraged to follow gender roles that encompass
  characteristics thought typical of both sexes
• Male-appropriate and female-appropriate traits

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Preschoolers Social Lives

• Increased interactions with the world at large
• Peers with special qualities
• Relationships based on companionship, play,
  entertainment
• Friendship focused on completion of shared
  activities

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A Friend IndeedYou Cant Come to my Birthday
Party!

• View of friendship evolves with age and older
  preschoolers
• See friendship as continuing state and stable
  relationship
• Begin to understand concepts such as trust,
  support, shared interest

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Playing by the Rules The Work of Play

• Children are interested in maintaining smooth
  social relationships with friends
• Children try to avoid and/or solve disagreements

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Learning to Play Playing to Learn

• Play is critical to the overall development of
  young children
• Changes over time
• Becomes more sophisticated, interactive,
  cooperative
• Gradually more dependent on social and cognitive
  skills

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She loves me, he loves me not!

• Some children are more readily liked by peers
  than others
• Popular children
• Physical attractiveness, outgoing, social and
  speaking more, smiling more, empathetic
• Unpopular children
• Aggressive, disruptive, imposing, less
  cooperative, less turn-taking

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Categorizing Play

• Functional play simple, repetitive activities
  typical of 3-year-olds that may involve objects
  or repetitive muscular movements
• Constructive play activities in which children
  manipulate objects to produce or build something

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Buildinginside and out!

• By age four, children engage in constructive play
  that
• Tests developing cognitive skills
• Practices motor skills
• Facilitates problem solving
• Teaches cooperation

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Social Aspects of PlayParten (1932)

• ___________ Play
• Children play with similar toys, in a similar
  manner, but do not interact with each other

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Social Aspects of PlayParten (1932)

• ____________ Play
• Children simply watch each other play

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Social Aspects of PlayParten (1932)

• ____________ Play
• Children play by themselves

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Social Aspects of PlayParten (1932)

• ____________ Play
• Children interact with one another in groups of
  two or more
• Children share or borrow toys or materials, but
  do not do the same thing

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Social Aspects of PlayParten (1932)

• _____________ Play
• Children play with one another, take turns, play
  games, and devise contests

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The Smallest Great Pretenders

• Nature of pretend, or make-believe, play changes
  during the preschool period
• Becomes increasingly unrealistic and more
  imaginative
• Change from using only realistic objects to using
  less concrete ones

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What are you thinking, anyway?

• Preschoolers Theory of Mind
• Related to
• Brain maturation
• Hormonal changes
• Developing language
• Opportunities for social interaction and pretend
  play
• Cultural background

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Preschoolers Family Lives

• Increased number of single parent headed families
• Still most children do not experience upheaval
  and turmoil
• Strong, positive relationships within families
  encourage relationships with other children

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Effective Parenting Teaching Desired Behavior

• AUTHORITARIAN

• AUTHORITATIVE

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Types of Parenting and Discipline Patterns
(Baumrind, 1980)
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Effective Parenting Teaching Desired Behavior

• PERMISSIVE-INDIFFERENT

• PERMISSIVE-INDULGENT

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Types of Parenting and Discipline Patterns
(Baumrind, 1980)
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See how they grow

• Authoritarian parents withdrawn, socially
  awkward children
• Permissive parents dependent, moody, low social
  skilled children
• Uninvolved parents emotionally detached,
  unloved, and insecure children
• Authoritative parents independent, friendly,
  self-assertive, and cooperative.

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Child Abuse and Psychological Maltreatment

• Five children are killed daily by caretakers
• 140,000 are physically injured
• Three million are abused or neglected annually in
  U.S.

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True or False?

• Child abuse can occur in any home or child care
  setting!

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Stressful environments increase likelihood for
abuse

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What else?

• Vague demarcation between permissible and
  impermissible forms of physical violence
• Line between spanking and beating is not
  clear
• Spankings begun in anger can escalate into abuse
• Privacy of child care setting
• Unrealistic expectations

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So why then does abuse occur?

• Children are more likely to be victimized when
  they are
• Fussy
• Resistant to control
• Slow to adapt to new situations
• Overly anxious
• Frequent bedwetters
• Developmentally delayed

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It is crucial to remember

• Labeling children as high risk for abuse does not
  make them responsible for their abuse

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What do the experts tell us about causality?

• _____________________ HYPOTHESIS argues that
  abuse and neglect children suffer predisposes
  them as adults to be abusive

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Psychological Maltreatment

• Not all abuse is physical!
• Psychological maltreatment
• Occurs when parents or other caretakers harm
  childrens behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or
  physical functioning
• May take form of neglect in which parents may
  ignore or act emotionally unresponsive
• Not as easily identified without outward physical
  signs

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What are consequences of psychological
maltreatment?

• Some children survive and grow into
  psychologically healthy adults
• Others suffer long-term damage
• Low self-esteem, depression, suicide
• Lying
• Misbehavior
• Underachievement in school
• Criminal behavior

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Warning Signs for Child Abuse
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Three Cheers for the Survivors!A Closer Look at
Resilient Children

• RESILIENCE
• Ability to overcome circumstances that place
  child at high risk for psychological and/or
  physical damage
• RESILIENT CHILDREN
• Exhibit ability to overcome circumstances that
  place child at high risk for psychological and/or
  physical functioning

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Werner (1995)

• Resilient infants
• Temperaments that evoke responses from wide
  variety of caregivers
• Affectionate, easy going, good-natured
• Easily soothed as infants
• Able to evoke whatever support available in
  environment
• Resilient children
• Socially pleasant, outgoing, good communication
  skills
• Relatively intelligent, independent
• Realistic

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Becoming an Informed Consumer of Development

• Disciplining Children
• For most children in Western cultures,
  authoritative parenting works best
• Spanking is never an appropriate discipline
  technique
• Tailor parental discipline to the characteristics
  of the child and the situation
• Use routines to avoid conflict

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Moral Development

• Moral development childrens reasoning about
  morality, their attitudes toward moral lapses,
  and their behavior when faced with moral issues.
• Several approaches have evolved

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Moral DevelopmentThe case for right and wrong

• Changes in sense of justice and of right and
  wrong
• Changes in behavior related to moral issues

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Theoretical Approaches

• Piaget
• _________________________ MORALITY
• 4 to 7 years
• Initial stage of moral development
• Rules seen as invariant, unchangeable, and beyond
  childs control and/or influence
• Intentions not considered
• Believe in immanent justice (immediate punishment
  for infractions)

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Theoretical Approaches

• Piaget
• ____________________________STAGE
• 7 to 10 years
• Become more social and learn the rules
• Play according to shared conception of the rules

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Theoretical Approaches

• Piaget
• _____________ COOPERATION STAGE
• Beginning at 10 years
• Become fully aware that rules may and can be
  modified if people playing agree

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What do Piagets critics say?

• Accurate descriptions of how moral development
  proceeds
• Underestimates of age at which childrens moral
  skills develop

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Social Learning Approaches to Morality

• Focus on how environment produces prosocial
  behavior
• Moral conduct learned through reinforcement and
  modeling

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Do as I sayor as I do?

• Preschoolers more apt to model behavior of warm,
  responsive, competent, high prestige adults and
  peers

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More than mimicking

• Children do more than simply mimic unthinkingly
• By observing moral conduct, children are reminded
  of
• Societys norms about importance of moral
  behavior as conveyed by significant others
• Connections between particular situations and
  certain kinds of behavior

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Empathy and Moral Behavior

• Empathy lies at heart of some kinds of moral
  behavior
• Roots of empathy grow early
• Infants
• Toddlers
• Preschoolers

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Emotional Self-Regulation

• Preschool children improve in emotional control
• Around age 2,
• Talk about feelings and engage in regulation
  strategies
• Preschoolers,
• Develop more effective strategies and
  sophisticated social skills, learn to better cope
  with negative emotions
• Learn to use language to express wishes
• Become increasingly able to negotiate with others
  

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Aggression

• Intentional injury or harm to another person
  relatively stable trait
• Early preschool years, aggression
• Often addressed at attaining desired goal
• Declines through preschool years as does
  frequency and average length of episodes
• Extreme and sustained aggression is cause of
  concern

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Kinds of Aggression

• _____________________ aggression
• Motivated by desire to obtain a concrete goal
• Higher in boys than girls
• _________________ aggression
• Intended to hurt another persons feelings
  through non-physical means
• Higher in girls than boys

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Explanations for Aggressive Behavior Among
Children

• FREUD death drive leads aggressive actions and
  behavior
• LORENZ fighting instinct found in all humans
• SOCIOBIOLOGISTS strengthening species drives
  aggression

• SOCIAL-LEARNING prior learning shapes aggression
• COGNITIVE interpretation of others actions and
  situations influences aggression

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Effects of Video Game Playing on Children

• Positive

• Negative

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Becoming an Informed Consumer of Development

• Increasing Moral Behavior and Reducing Aggression
• Provide opportunities to observe others acting in
  a cooperative, helpful, prosocial manner
• Do not ignore aggressive behavior
• Help preschoolers devise alternative explanations
  for others behavior
• Monitor preschoolers television viewing,
  particularly the violence that they view

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