Question

What is the opinion of experts on infant socioemotional development, such as Jerome Kagan, on an infant's capacity to display emotions like guilt, pride, despair, shame, empathy, and jealousy in the first year?

Answer 1

Answer:

The structural immaturity of the infant brain makes it unlikely that such emotions can be experienced in the first year.

Explanation:

According Jerome Kagan, the brain of an infant under the age of one is still immature and, for that reason, incapable of feelings that require thought (such as, guilt, pride, despair, same, empathy, and jealousy). When a one-year-old responds to an emotional incentive, it is either with a biologically prepared response or with acquired habits. A three-year-old child, on the other hand, is capable of those feelings because she is now able to infer the state of others and to be aware of her own emotions.