3. The basic emotions
-joy, interest, surprise, distress, sadness, fear, anger
-2 reasons why these are called basic emotions:
-each emotion comes with its own little “package” with 3 things:
-internal physiological reaction
-a subjective experience
-overt behaviour (facial expression, body language, etc.)
-these emotions are experienced by all humans
4. Development of emotions: methodological challenge
-we must look at babies
-emotions are subjective
-must rely on their facial expressions, body language, and body context in which these expressions
happen because you cannot ask babies how they feel
-we’re not born experiencing all possible emotions; we either feel good or bad
-the negative emotions aren’t differentiated from each other (fear, sadness, anger)
-when we’re born, when we’re sad, afraid, or angry, there is no differentiation; we just feel bad
5. Positive Emotions
-smiling babies at 2-3 months don’t necessarily have to be in response to what’s around them
-3 month olds smile more to people than to a puppet
-smile is a bond between the baby and the caregiver; it is important that we form bonds with caregivers
very early on
-humans develop very slowly in the early stages of life (takes a very long time to walk); so if parents
don’t take care of us during this time, we would not survive
-7 months = formation of a preference (smile selectively at parents rather than strangers) 7. Anger
-start seeing anger face between 4-8 months
-1 year old = express anger to other people
-anger outbursts peak at age 2 (“terrible 2’s”)
8. Fear
-starts at 4 months in the presence of unfamiliar objects or events
-stranger anxiety
-6-7 months = babies begin to show fear of strangers (intensifies until age 2)
-older babies show more fear than younger (13-month more than 9-month old)
9. Separation anxiety
-until 8 months old, babies are ok left alone
-8-9 months = babies begin to show distress when mother leaves
-15-20 months = separation anxiety begins to fade
10. Separation anxiety
-shows up around the same age in all cultures
11. Expressions “make sense”
-5-6 months = babies make happy expressions when interacting with happy mothers; make angry
expressions when mother is distracted or handles baby roughly
12. Testing whether expressions are learned: blind babies
-do babies learn expressions by watching other make expressions? NO! (seen in blind baby studies)
-2 months = blind babies smile when they hear their mother’s voice -therefore, expressions don’t need to be seen to be learned
-because they can’t see that mom smiles back, the smile fades because there is no way for the mom or
dad to communicate they are happy to the baby
-parents of blind babies b
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