It is curious that common people so thoroughly enjoy such smutty talk, and that it is a never-lacking activity of cheerful humor. Shame, sorrow, and other sentiments in a cultural vocabulary become abilities and resources of individuals through socialization processes. How do people learn to interpret sensations and gestures as a sentiment, as a socialized feeling which has been raised by thought and intercourse out of its merely instinctive state and become properly human? Affective socialization had been neglected by sociology and psychology. Empathy is not only the simple emotional contagion, but also a self-conscious effort to share and accurately comprehend another person’s feelings, thoughts, and their causes. Because family and friendship groups promote entering into sharing the minds of others, sentiments are socialized within primary groups. Intimacy, self-disclosure, small size, and enduring interaction facilitate empathy among members. A rudimentary empathy can be observed in newborn infants who will cry upon hearing another baby crying. An emotional contagion of crying often sweeps through maternity wards and nurseries. This arousal is an unself-conscious empathy. Infants have not differentiated self from other people; therefore, they respond to crying as though they themselves were in distress. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

Newborn infants hearing tape-recorded crying were most likely to cry when the recording resembled their own cry. This developing empathy is important in the emotional contagion, and probably also is a basis for spontaneous feeling within enduring sentiments. By one year of age, the child is cognitively aware of other people as distinct physical entities, but self remains merged with others affectively. The toddler who encounters a crying child may seek to be comforted by his or her own mother instead of trying to help. If the toddler does help, he or she egocentrically offers whatever he or she oneself finds most comforting, such as a favorite toy or bringing over his or her own mother. The toddler’s interest in the other child is transitory and inconsistent. Children express their growing self-control by climbing, touching, exploring, and trying to do things for themselves. Parents can foster a sense of autonomy by encouraging children to try new skills. However, the child’s first efforts can be made crude. Often, they result in spilling, falling, wetting, and other accidents. Wetting the bed might be normal for a child, but as an adult it is considered a dishonorable discharge. Thus, parents who ridicule or overprotect their children may cause them to doubt their abilities and feel shameful about their actions. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

The looking-glass self includes the imagination of our appearance to the other person, the imagination of the child’s judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification. Leo, who just turned one a few months ago brushes his own hair on occasion. In addition, the vestiges of guilt first appear at four or five years of age when children use speech—first aloud, then covertly—to discuss and regulate their own actions. A child’s first fears are over darkness, loud noises, and other material threats, but these are supplanted by social fears, such as shame and embarrassment. Self-feeling becomes extended to objects as a sense of appropriation organized around concepts of mine and my. This sense of possession is basic to the development of jealousy and envy as self-related sentiments. As children view themselves as someone who arouses definite feelings and thought in other people, the child reflects upon one’s impulses and thoughts. The child considers how others would react to them when expressed, and shapes them so as to arouse a desired response from the other. Introspection develops from this selective communication with a view to the other’s response, while also reacting one’s own impulses and thoughts from the other’s standpoint. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

The child gradually learns to take into account the relations that other people have with one another. This occurs by playing organized games, in which the child has to keep in mind the roles of all other players, including their potential responses toward one another. The parallel affective development is the awareness that the other person has sentiments in life circumstances that transcend the immediate situation and that may differ from the child’s own sentiment. Thus, the child can understand that two of his or her best friends dislike each other, or that his or her sibling is jealous about a new romantic relationship. Heightened capacities for imagination and reasoning allow the adolescent to feel sentiments toward abstract objects, such as patriotism for nation, reverence for a deity, or compassion for the plight of a class of people. Children may also feel sentiments for persons with whom they have not interacted. However, young children cannot comprehend the irreversible permanence of death, or the special tragedy of permanence, reversibility, and contingency. Persons who fail to develop a sense of identity suffer from role confusion, an uncertainty about who they are and where they are going. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

A child learns sentiments be learning to see them as social objects from the standpoint of other person in the family or friendship groups. One process is a complex type of learning in which one aspect of a sentiment (such as a gesture or feeling) is learned as being consistent with other aspects (such as a situation or the sentiment’s name). To be told “You do not sound like you are sorry,” or “Now that is acting more like a friend” can be gradually inferred. We know our own emotions by observations of our gestures and actions, but more importantly, perhaps, by what other people observe and report to us, directly or indirectly by their responses and gestures to the gestures we have made. There is a quality called generativity, which is expressed by caring about oneself, one’s children, and future generations. Generativity may be achieved by guiding one’s own children or by helping other children (as a teacher, clergy member, or coach, for instance). Language allows us to convert the brute quality of feelings into conscious emotions. Only as emotions are presented through some symbol system do they become communicable and hence social. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

 Childhood amnesia, our lack of memory about many early experiences, may result from our lack of language in our earliest years. For want of categories, affective and other experiences are soon filtered out of memory. A person who has lived fully and responsibly develops a sense of integrity (self-respect). This allows people to age with dignity. No one wants to regret previous life events because they will experience despair (heartache and remorse). Life is not supposed to feel like failure nor a sense of knowing it is too late to reverse what has been done. Aging should not become a source of fear and depression. That is why people who are not able to do what they want in life, at the moment, find things to focus on so they are being productive and can look back over their time and see it as a period of enrichment. If we follow the Holy Spirit, we will become humble, meek, agreeable, patient, full of love and able to endure suffering. Having faith on the Lord; having a hope that you shall receive eternal life; having the love of God always in our hearts, that we may be lifted up on the last day and enter into his rest. And may the Lord grant unto you repentance, that you may not bring down his wrath upon you, that you may not be bound down by the chains of hell, that you may not suffer the second death (Alma 13.29-30).” #RandolphHarris 6 of 6