Emotional Development

In their first two years, infants progress from reactive pain and pleasure to complex patterns of social awareness (see At About This Time) (Lewis, 2010). This is a period of “high emotional responsiveness” (Izard et al., 2002, p. 767), expressed in speedy, uncensored reactions—crying, startling, laughing, raging—and, by toddlerhood, in complex responses, from self-satisfied grins to mournful pouts.

Early Emotions

At first there is pleasure and pain. Newborns are happy and relaxed when fed and drifting off to sleep. They cry when they are hurt or hungry, tired or frightened (as by a loud noise or a sudden loss of support). Some infants have bouts of uncontrollable crying, called colic—probably the result of immature digestion. About 20 percent of babies cry “excessively,” defined as more than three hours a day, for more than three days a week, for more than three weeks (J. S. Kim, 2011).

Smiling and Laughing

Soon, additional emotions become recognizable (Lavelli & Fogel, 2005). Curiosity is evident as infants (and people of all ages) respond to objects and experiences that are new but not too novel. Happiness is expressed by the social smile, evoked by a human face at about 6 weeks. Preterm babies smile a few weeks later because the social smile is affected by age since conception.

Smiles All Around Joy is universal when an infant smiles at her beaming grandparents—a smile made even better when the tongue joins in. This particular scene took place in Kazakhstan in central Asia, an independent nation only since 1991.

CHRISTOPHER HERWIG/GETTY IMAGES

Infants worldwide express social joy, even laughter, between 2 and 4 months (Konner, 2007; Lewis, 2011). Laughter builds as curiosity does; a typical 6-month-old laughs loudly upon discovering new things, particularly social experiences that have the right balance between familiarity and surprise, such as Daddy making a funny face. They prefer looking at happy faces over sad ones, even if the happy faces are not looking at them (Kim et al., 2013).

Anger and Sadness

The positive emotions of joy and contentment are soon joined by negative emotions, which are expressed more often in infancy than later on (Izard, 2009). Anger is evident at 6 months, usually triggered by frustration, such as when infants are prevented from moving or grabbing. It is usually easy to see when an infant is angry.

To learn how infants responded to frustration, researchers “crouched behind the child and gently restrained his or her arms for 2 minutes or until 20 seconds of hard crying ensued” (Mills-Koonce et al., 2011, p. 390). “Hard crying” is not infrequent: Infants hate to be strapped in, caged in, closed in, or even just held in place when they want to explore.

In infancy, anger is a healthy response to frustration, unlike sadness, which also appears in the first months. Sadness indicates withdrawal and is accompanied by an increase in the body’s production of cortisol, the primary stress hormone.

This conclusion comes from experiments in which 4-month-olds were taught to pull a string to see a picture, which they enjoyed—not unlike the leg-kicking study to move the mobile, described in Chapter 6. Then the string was disconnected. Most babies reacted by angrily jerking the string. Some, however, quit trying and looked sad (Lewis & Ramsay, 2005); as a consequence, their cortisol increased. This suggests that anger relieves stress but that some babies learn, to their sorrow, to repress their anger.

Since sadness produces physiological stress (measured by cortisol levels), sorrow negatively impacts the infant. All social emotions, particularly sadness and fear, probably shape the brain (Fries & Pollak, 2007; M. H. Johnson, 2011). As you learned in Chapter 5, experience matters. Too much sadness early in life correlates with depression in later years.

Fear

Fear in response to some person, thing, or situation (not just being startled in surprise) is evident at about 9 months and soon becomes more frequent and obvious (Witherington et al., 2004). Two kinds of social fear are typical:

• separation anxiety An infant’s distress when a familiar caregiver leaves; most obvious between 9 and 14 months.

  Separation anxiety—clinging and crying when a familiar caregiver is about to leave

• stranger wariness An infant’s expression of concern—a quiet stare while clinging to a familiar person, or a look of fear—when a stranger appears.

  Stranger wariness—fear of unfamiliar people, especially when they move too close, too quickly

Separation anxiety is normal at age 1, intensifies by age 2, and usually subsides after that. Fear of separation interferes with infant sleep. For example, infants who fall asleep next to familiar people may wake up terrified if they are alone (Sadeh et al., 2010). Some babies become accustomed to a “transitional object,” such as a teddy bear or blanket that comforts them as they transition from sleeping in their parents’ arms to sleeping alone.

Transitional objects are not pathological; they are the infant’s way of coping with anxiety. However, if separation anxiety remains strong after age 3 and impairs the child’s ability to leave home, go to school, or play with friends, it is considered an emotional disorder. Separation anxiety as a disorder can be diagnosed up to age 18 (DSM-5, 2013), although some clinicians find it can appear in adulthood as well (Bögels et al., 2013).

Strangers—especially those who do not resemble or move like familiar caregivers—merit stares, not smiles, at age 1. This is a good sign: Infant memory is active and engaged.

Many 1-year-olds fear not only strangers but also anything unexpected, from the flush of the toilet to the pop of a jack-in-the-box, from closing elevator doors to the tail-wagging approach of a dog. With repeated experience and reassurance, older infants might enjoy flushing the toilet (again and again) or calling the dog (and might cry if the dog does not come).

Every aspect of early emotional development interacts with cultural beliefs, expressed in parental actions. There seems to be more separation anxiety and stranger wariness in Japan than in Germany because Japanese infants “have very few experiences with separation from the mother,” whereas in German towns, “infants are frequently left alone outside of stores or supermarkets” while their mothers shop (Saarni et al., 2006, p. 237).

Developmentally Correct Both Santa’s smile and Olivia’s grimace are appropriate reactions for people of their age. Adults playing Santa must smile no matter what, and if Olivia smiled that would be troubling to anyone who knows about 7-month-olds. But why did someone scare this infant by putting her in the grip of an oddly dressed, bearded stranger?

© SUZANNE PLUNKETT/REUTERS/CORBIS

Toddlers’ Emotions

Emotions take on new strength during toddlerhood (Izard, 2009). For example, throughout the second year and beyond, anger and fear become less frequent but more focused, targeted toward infuriating or terrifying experiences. Similarly, laughing and crying are louder and more discriminating.

The new strength of emotions is apparent in temper tantrums. Toddlers are famous for fury. When something angers them they might yell, scream, cry, hit, and throw themselves on the floor. Logic is beyond them; if adults respond with anger or teasing, that makes it worse. Soon sadness comes to the fore, and then comfort (not acquiescence or punishment) is helpful (Green et al., 2011).

Social Awareness

Temper can be seen as an expression of selfhood. So can new toddler emotions: pride, shame, embarrassment, disgust, and guilt (Stevenson et al., 2010; Thompson, 2006). These emotions require social awareness, which emerges from family interactions, shaped by the culture (Mesquita & Leu, 2007).

For example, many North American parents encourage toddler pride (saying, “You did it yourself”—even when that is untrue), but Asian families typically discourage pride. Instead, they cultivate modesty and shame (Rogoff, 2003). Such differences may still be apparent in adult personality and judgment, as some criticize people who brag but others criticize those who are too self-deprecating.

Disgust is also strongly influenced by other people and age. According to a study that involved many children of various ages, many 18-month-olds (but not younger infants) express disgust at touching a dead animal. None, however, are yet disgusted when a teenager curses at an elderly person—something that parents and older children often find disgusting (Stevenson et al., 2010).

Self-Awareness

In addition to social awareness, another foundation for emotional growth is self-awareness, the realization that one’s body, mind, and activities are distinct from those of other people (Kopp, 2011). Closely following the new mobility that results from walking is an emerging sense of “me” and “mine” that leads the infant to develop a new consciousness of others at about age 1.

Glad to Meet You She enjoys meeting another baby, even if that baby is herself in the mirror. Later, at about 18 months, she will realize that the mirror image is herself.

STEPHEN CHIANG/GETTY IMAGES

Very young infants have no sense of self—at least of self as most people define it, but self-awareness grows during toddlerhood with

In a classic experiment (Lewis & Brooks, 1978), 9- to 24-month-olds looked into a mirror after a dot of rouge had been surreptitiously put on their noses. If they reacted by touching the red dot on their noses, that meant they knew the mirror showed their own faces. None of the babies younger than 12 months did that, although they sometimes smiled and touched the dot on the “other” baby in the mirror.

However, between 15 and 24 months, babies became self-aware, touching their noses with curiosity and puzzlement. Self-recognition in the mirror/rouge test (and in photographs) usually emerges at about 18 months, along with two other advances: pretending and using first-person pronouns (I, me, mine, myself, my) (Lewis, 2010).