The Influence of Social Psychology on Development in Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence

This report discusses the influence of social psychology on the development of infants, children, and adolescents. It explores various aspects such as emotional development, stranger wariness, self-awareness, cultural context, social context, socio-economic context, decision making, and career consciousness.

Social, Personality and
Developmental
Psychology

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
Identifying the social psychology influence the development in infancy....................................3
Evaluating the effect of social psychology in childhood ............................................................4
Assessing the impact of social psychology on adolescence........................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Social psychology is scientific study of people thoughts, feelings and behaviour
influenced by actual,imagination or presence with others and the study of attitudes is main topic
in social psychology (Anderson and et.al., 2019). This explains human behaviour as result of
interaction of mental states. This bridges the gap between psychology and sociology to the extent
and this scientific study of how human is feeling and behave in its life. In this it is being
discussed about the how social psychology influences the development in infancy, childhood and
adolescence and many different observation are there that support the effect.
MAIN BODY
Identifying the social psychology influence the development in infancy
Psychology development occurs as children from the relationship, interaction with others
and understanding and managing the feelings. This emotional attachment is very important and
major milestone of infancy. In some followings ways social psychology effect the development
of infants and how this has become essential part of this stage are as follows-
 Emotional Development- This exhibit two emotional responses such as attraction and
withdrawal. At around two months they indulge in social engagement in way of social
smiling and got positive attention. Infants also the feel reactive pain and pleasure to
complex pattern of socio emotional awareness that is transits from basic feelings into
learned responses.
 Stranger wariness- This reflects the brain development and improving cognitive abilities
have taken place as infants memory is developed, they now able to separate the people
that they know. They tend to recognize by their facial expression and that could be
expressed in terms of smiling and crying. They usually catches the different faces and
make it realize in short period of time (Barranti, Carlson and Côté, 2017).
 Self-awareness- This is indicates the second year of life, as children begin to recognize
themselves as they achieve the senses of self-object. This concern with individual
realization of one's mind, body and activities that is distinct from those of other people.
They were able to understand the feelings and actions that were used to feed and bathe
him and make it more easy to interact with others and ensure good communication.

Evaluating the effect of social psychology in childhood
In childhood the there are many influences that used to contribute to child development
and also leads to psychological problems during childhood. This stage is very important role in
course of rest of life and and also greater role in development (Wilson and Wixted, 2018). Some
of the context in child psychology are as follows-
 Cultural context- This concern with the set of values, customs, shared assumptions ans
way of living that influence majorly on the development throughout the lifespan. This
depends on the type of culture in which children is brought up and type of education that
they receive. It impact deeply as it relates with somewhere with spirituality and values
that become the roots of future life and stay for so long.
 Social context- This refers to the relationship with friends and adults has also impact the
development of childhood thinking, learn and develop their personality. Families, schools
and peers are important part of social context (Vallacher, Read and Nowak, 2017). The
surroundings in environment depends the behaviour and attitude in childhood and hugely
influence it overall personality. If they were not with good company, then this will impact
the life in negative way and if this is positive environment socially then it will improve its
development in childhood stages.
 Socio economic context- Social class has also play major role in child development and
it based on the numbers of different factors that includes the how much education they
have and how they are earnings. Children raised in household with greater socio-
economic status tend to have greater access to opportunity and exposure and those who
has raised in lower socio-economic will lead to less access to such things like education,
healthcare, quality nutrition. These factors has major impact on the child psychology.
Assessing the impact of social psychology on adolescence
Social psychology used to impact the adolescence in very different way and that leads to
certain development in the growth of this stage, As, this is crucial stage that has various changes
and leads to many diversification in this time period. Some of the impact of social psychology in
adolescence are as follows-
 Decision making- This is main factor that impact the psychology of adult as they were
able to take important decision in their life and leads to certain changes. Some important
differences were define by past decisions and knowledge. In this stage, they were able to

take active decisions and also leads to success in many times and sometime they used to
fail in their decisions. Their generally take immature decisions and that sometimes will
create the problems in their life (Verkuyten, 2018).
 Career consciousness- This concern with the developing of feeling for the career and
that makes an individual impact so much on the development of adolescence. Social
psychology has come with different terms and needs to be treated accordingly. Adults
were become very curious about career and take many decisions to be successful in
nature.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is concluded that Social psychology is human behaviour that
results to mental state and social changes, studying the condition under thoughts, feelings and
behaviour. In this report it has been discussed about the impact on infancy such as Emotional
development, Stranger Wariness, Self-awareness. Social psychology effect the childhood in
Social context, Socio-economic context and cultural context as this is learning period of
individual so it hugely influence by such factors. Apart from that in the stage of adolescence the
factors of social psychology has impact the in some ways like becoming career consciousness
and Decision making.

REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Anderson, C. A. and et.al., 2019. The MTurkification of social and personality
psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 45(6). pp.842-850.
Barranti, M., Carlson, E. N. and Côté, S., 2017. How to test questions about similarity in
personality and social psychology research: Description and empirical demonstration of
response surface analysis. Social Psychological and Personality Science. 8(4). pp.465-
475.
Vallacher, R. R., Read, S. J. and Nowak, A. eds., 2017. Computational social psychology.
Routledge.
Verkuyten, M., 2018. The benefits of studying immigration for social psychology. European
Journal of Social Psychology. 48(3). pp.225-239.
Wilson, B. M. and Wixted, J. T., 2018. The prior odds of testing a true effect in cognitive and
social psychology. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. 1(2).
pp.186-197.

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