Pop Culture and Child Psychology - Essay Example

Pop culture paper Introduction Child psychology as a field focuses on the studies relating to social, mental as well as emotional developmental behaviors of the child by looking at the development of the concern, starting at a tender age through adolescence,including language, personality, social growth among other developmental factors. Popular culture on the other hand may refer to the lifestyle and objects, which are well identified with and given general acceptation by people living at the same time. It is therefore vividly clear that the various variations of pop culture have great effects on the development of the child. For instance, parental warmth, if not carefully shown to a child may have negative psycho-social results, which may include depressive symptoms and bad behavior among others. This as the purpose of the paper shows the possible areas where child psychology emerges in popular culture today.This behavioral patterns may come for instance from media personalities on televisions, the internet and magazines or newspapers (Matas, Arend & Sroufe, 1978). The following are just but some of the examples of a website and magazines I think are appropriate in emphasizing the issue of child psychology and the pop culture today. To begin with is the website (http://psychology.about.com/od/early-child-development/a/experience-and-development.htm), whose topic is “psychology: experience and development” by Kendra Cherry has the main purposeof showing and making it fully aware that the interaction between life experiences of a child and his or her genetic make-up impacts greatly on the development and it helps in shaping up behavior and personality of the child. The website goes ahead to put forward the following claims relating to child psychology: classical conditioning as a mode of learning, learning by observations and lastly operant conditional learning. By first taking a closer look at classical conditional learning, which depends on stimulus responses and relating this to the child, we realize the reality beyond doubt that children tend to develop close association with the things in their environment in relation to the potential consequences. For instance, the child at his or her early age on seeing a baby bottle will normally relate it to the fact that the mother would wish to feed him or her. Secondly, through observations as a mode of learning, it puts it forward that a child would basically be able to learn from just a mere observation of what his or her parents, siblings as well as peers do. Furthermore, learning is also evidenced in what the child observes on televisions as well as on the internet. All these plays a great role in shaping the child’s thoughts and hence actions taken by the child. Finally, here comes operant condition as a mode of learning, which is based on the fact that a good behavior rewarded or a worst behavior punished influences the likelihood of the same behavior being displayed again by the child. In other words, a rewarded behavior will often be repeated by the child whereas a punished behavior will often be avoided as much as possible by the child. This is an argument backed-up by three scholars, Matas, Arend, and Sroufe (1978), in their article, “Continuity of adaptation in the second year: The relationship between quality of attachment and later competence.” Just to conclude on these, it is therefore upon every parent to ensure that what the child observes is appropriate in order for the child to adopt the best behavior and grow up a responsible childbesides motivating outstanding behavior displayed as well as allowing the nature of classical learning to play its part. According to The New York Times: SundayReview by Adam Grant on April 11, 2014 on “Raising a Moral Kid”puts it forward that a highly motivated and stronger work-oriented child is one whose parents praises for his or her efforts rather than ability. Most parents according to research don’t emphasize that much on success in spite of looking at the accomplishments. Their concerns are majorly developing helpful and caring children, rather than just mere achievements. Shaping the child to become caring is not an easy task. For instance, according to a study carried in Israel, parents who stress on such good values as caring, have high chances of failing to realize their dreams of raising children baring such values. Another issue raised in the papers is as to whether some kids are simply nurtured well or not. To understand this, we can take a look at the success of individuals who find it very easy to help others with no attachment of any string which of course, can also be seen in kids. The major question is as to how such generous behaviors are actually developed. A genetics-based study suggests some significant content of an individual propensity to share and care for another as inheritable. This nevertheless gives a lot of chances for nurture and how kids are raised alongside praises to excellent behavior and pardoning of bad behavior as well as making the child aware of good values (Werker, Pegg, & McLeod, 1994). The newspaper as well focuses on some emotional morals experienced by the child, which are majorly feeling dictated by what may be perceived to be either right or wrong. According to research, the outcomes are that praise is much more important in modeling a moral child than rewards, since it points out that the reward if withdrawn, the child may seize from showing the best behavior which might have led to the receipt of the award. But more importantly, the praise actually points it out very clearly to the child that sharing is excellently worthwhile not just for the sake of doing it.The praises should be child-based rather than action-based, for instance telling a child, “You are such a pleasing and useful person.” Rather than saying, “This is such a delightful or useful action.” This seems to be the best approach as supported by Werker, Pegg & McLeod (1994). Just to summarize, different factors such as the fear of doing something and of being avoided by others impact greatly on the child’s development of moral behaviors. For instance, this may make a child feel that he or she is actually a bad person, when the parent fail to punish him or her for the bad actions or behavior, but instead withdraws the love or even express anger on them. An opinion supported by three psychologists, Werker, Pegg, and MCLeod, (1994), in their article, “a cross-cultural investigation of infant preference for infant-directed communication.”They poin out that a child who has been denied the love and anger expressed towards and threatened of being punished feels shame instead of guilt. In conclusion, child psychology and its presentation in popular culture is an important issue as it impacts greatly on shaping of the child’s behavior as well as lines of actions. In other words, it determines the personality of the child in various ways as have learnt above, just to point out a few, for example the behavior of the child being dictated by perhaps what the child watches on media e.g. television or what he or she observes the parents do. Thus, it is very clear that a child’s personality is greatly influenced by the environment in which he or she is nurtured. References Werker, J. F., Pegg, J. E., & McLeod, P. J. (1994). A cross-language investigation of infant preference for infant-directed communication. Infant Behavior and Development, 17(3), 323-333. Matas, L., Arend, R. A., & Sroufe, L. A. (1978). Continuity of adaptation in the second year: The relationship between quality of attachment and later competence. Child development, 547-556. Read More