1. PSYC 206
Lifespan Development
Bilge Yagmurlu 1

2. Chapter Overview Aggression, self-regulation
Socialization (acquire the standards, values, and knowledge of society)
Personality formation (develop own unique patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving)
Identity (Erikson: identification and initiative vs. guilt)
Sex-role identity (psychodynamic, social learning, cognitive-development, gender schema)
Prosocial behaviors
Aggression, self-regulation

3. Understanding Aggression
Two basic categories of aggression:
Hostile aggression:
intended to hurt someone in some way
Instrumental aggression:
intended to achieve a particular goal

4. Forms of Aggression Physical aggression
Verbal aggression (e.g., teasing)
Relational aggression: Harming others through purposeful manipulation, hurting others’ friendships or social status

5. Aggression and Age
Similar levels of verbal and physical aggression till 18 months
After age 2, more likely to tease siblings than hurt them physically

6. Aggression and Age Age and form of aggression
Better regulation skills; ability to control negative emotions (anger, frustration etc.)
Effortful control: ability to suppress a dominant response and elicit a subdominant response
Delay of gratification (e.g. wait for a reward)
Better linguistic skills: e.g., expressive language, pragmatics

7. Gender Differences Boys: Girls More often use physical aggression
More often use relational aggression
Indirect aggression aimed at excluding a child or harming their friendships

8. Aggression and Gender
Observational studies do not provide valid results on aggressive behavior
Experiments: Children were shown a series of pictures depicting hypothetical conflict situations.
Different scenarios
the act causes some harm to the child or his/her toys
ambiguous as to the intention
Children were asked what they would do (offer solutions)

9. Ambiguous Conflict Scenario

11. Ambiguous Conflict Scenario
Problem Definition: “What do you think is happening in this story?”
about intent attribution
Response Selection: “What would you do if you were in this situation and he/she did that to you?”
about solution offering

12. Social Information Processing Skills
Boys
attributed more hostile intent
offered more hostile solutions to conflicts with ambiguous causes
compared to girls.

13. Aggression and Gender Gender differences are larger after age 2-3.
Implications of this finding:
Parenting: boys receive more harsh parenting
Temperament: boys have more “difficult” temperament, more negative affect, more reactive etc.
Differential gender role socialization after age 1
Parental socialization related to temperament

14. Aggression and Gender Gender differences are larger after age 2-3.
Implications of this finding:
Developing self-concept and gender identity
As preschool children learn to label gender reliably, girls’ aggressive behavior dramatically decreases, but boys’ aggressive behavior does not change.

15. Aggression, Social Exclusion and Gender
Peer-group expectations are powerful in shaping behaviors. Any deviation from the peer group norms draws negative comments.
Which forms of aggression are rejected by peers?

16. Aggression and Emotion
Emotional correlate of aggression
Anger: an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury and rage
It is accompanied by physiological and biological changes:
heart rate and blood pressure go up, as do the levels of your energy hormones, adrenaline, and noradrenaline.

17. Controlling and Understanding Emotion Expressions
Socioemotional competence:
The ability to behave appropriately in social situations that evoke strong emotions.
interpreting emotion states of oneself and others
manage own emotions
emotion knowledge and regulation

18. Emotion Regulation
Processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions, especially their intensive features, to accomplish one’s goals.

19. Emotion Regulation Minimization of negative emotions:
Is the question one of maximizing good emotions and minimizing bad ones?
manage own emotions
mask feelings when necessary

20. Emotion Regulation Is more regulation better regulation?
“.. Emotions need to be regulated for individuals to function within their environments”
Dysregulation: when the person is inflexible to respond to environmental changes.
Concerns with over-regulation

21. Effortful Control
the ability to inhibit a dominant response to activate a subdominant response
includes abilities of
- voluntarily focusing and shifting attention (attentional control)
- inhibiting behavior (inhibitory control)
- activating behavior whenever needed (activational control)

22. Effortful Control
High EC is linked to variety of social outcomes such as empathy-related responding and committed compliance
It emerges in the frontal cortex at the end of the first year with the development of anterior attention system, shows marked improvement in preschool years and continues to develop throughout childhood.

23. Child Psychology Lab
Center for Social Development