EAR-20 Chapter 10: EAR-20 - Chapter 10
Keenan Lieu
Spring 2020
Child Growth and Development
Chapter 10: Emotional Development
● Function of Emotions:
○ Emotions are useful because they help people adapt to their environments
○ Fear leads to avoiding danger
○ Happiness strengthens relationships
○ Disgust keeps people away from things that make them ill
● The Development of Emotions:
○ Emotions: combination of physiological and cognitive responses to thoughts or
experiences.
○ Emotions have several components:
■ 1) neural responses
■ 2) physiological factors
■ 3) subjective feelings
■ 4) emotional expressions
■ 5) the desire to take action
● Theories on the Nature and Emergence of Emotion
○ Discrete emotions theory:
■ Argues that emotions are innate and are discrete from one another from
very early in life & each emotion is packaged with a specific and
distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions
■ Emotions responses are largely automatic & not based on cognition
■ Evidence to support that emotions are innate:
● Infants express a set of recognizable, discrete emotions, well
before they can actively taught about them.
○ Functionalist Perspective:
■ Argues that individuals experience emotions in order to manage the
relationship between themselves and the environment
■ Maintains that emotions are not discrete from one another and vary
somewhat based on the social environment
■ Emphasizes the role of the environment in emotional development
■ Proposes that the basic function of emotions is to promote action toward
achieving a goal
■ This table provides examples of goals of emotion, goal meanings, and the
actions they may precipitate
■ These appraisal processes usually occur at the subconscious level in
children & adults
● The exception to this occurs when children realize that people can
fake emotions & that faking emotions could be a way to reach their
goal
○ What is something that these 2 perspective agree on?
■ They both agree that cognition and experiences shape emotional
development
● The Emergence of Emotions
○ 7 basic emotions: happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and disgust
Document Summary
Emotions are useful because they help people adapt to their environments. Disgust keeps people away from things that make them ill. Emotions: combination of physiological and cognitive responses to thoughts or experiences. Theories on the nature and emergence of emotion. Argues that emotions are innate and are discrete from one another from very early in life & each emotion is packaged with a specific and distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions. Emotions responses are largely automatic & not based on cognition. Evidence to support that emotions are innate: Infants express a set of recognizable, discrete emotions, well before they can actively taught about them. Argues that individuals experience emotions in order to manage the relationship between themselves and the environment. Maintains that emotions are not discrete from one another and vary somewhat based on the social environment. Emphasizes the role of the environment in emotional development.
