Developmental E

Primary and secondary emotion

• primary (basic) emotions
• > at birth: contentment, interest, distress, disgust
• > 4-8 weeks: pleasure/social smile
• 2-7 months: anger, sadness, surprise, fear
• secondary (complex) emotions: end of second year and beyond
• > embarrassment, shame, guilt, envy, pride

Understanding emotions

• when children start to speak about emotions and use their emotional words, we have better knowledge of their emotional understanding
• emotional words used as young as 18 months, with increase in first year
• however, this could be that children learn scripts for how to behave/react
• emotional conflicts (mixed emotions) not understood at 6 years old

Emotional display rules 1

• learnt rules
• acceptable vs. unacceptable
• change over time
• how do they develop?
• > social training - mothers display positive emotions in play, adults respond selectively to babies' emotional displays

Emotional display rules 2

• results of social training: socially acceptable emotional displays shaped from early on
• > takes time to learn emotional display rules
• > 3 year olds have some ability to disguise…