Development psychology

8. Development psychology

Developmental Psychology study of behavioral changes and continuity from infancy to old age. Much emphasis in psychology has been given to the child and to the deviant personality. Developmental psychology is particularly significant, then, in that it provides for formal study of children and adults at every stage of development through the life span.

Developmental psychology reflects the view that human development and behavior throughout the life span is a function of the interaction between biologically determined factors, such as height or temperament, and environmental influences, such as family, schooling, religion, and culture. Studies of these interactions focus on their consequences for people at different age levels. For example, developmental psychologists are interested in how children who were physically abused by their parents behave when they themselves become parents. Studies, although inconclusive, suggest that abused children often become abusive parents.

Other recent studies have focused on the relationship between the aging process and intellectual competence; contrary to the traditional notion that a person’s intellectual skills decline rapidly after the age of 55, research indicates that the decline is gradual. American studies of adulthood, building on the work of Erik Erikson, point to stable periods with a duration of 5 to 7 years, during which energy is expended on career, family, and social relationships, punctuated by “transitional” periods lasting 3 to 5 years, during which assessment and reappraisal of major life areas occurs. These transitional periods may be smooth or emotionally stormy; the “midlife crisis” is an example of such a transition. Whether such transitions are the same for men and women, and whether they are universal, is currently under study.

9. Social psychology

Social Psychology branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the behavior of individuals as influenced, directly or indirectly, by social stimuli. Social psychologists are interested in the thinking, emotions, desires, and judgments of individuals, as well as in their overt behavior. An individual’s inner states can be inferred only from some form of observable behavior. Research has also proved that people are affected by social stimuli whether or not they are actually in the presence of others and that virtually everything an individual does or experiences is influenced to some extent by present or previous social contacts.

Development of Theory. Social psychology is rooted in the earliest intellectual probes made by individuals into their relations with society. Many of the major problems of concern to contemporary social psychology were recognized as problems by social philosophers long before psychological questions were joined to scientific method. The questions posed by Aristotle, the Italian philosopher Niccol Machiavelli, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and others throughout history are still asked, in altered form, in the work of present-day social psychologists.

The more recent history of social psychology begins with the publication in 1908 of two textbooks—each having the term social psychology in its title—that examine the impact of society on the development and behavior of individuals. One of these was written by the British psychologist William McDougall, and the other by the American sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross. McDougall framed a controversial theory of human instincts, conceived of as broad, purposive tendencies emerging from the evolutionary process. Ross, on the other hand, was concerned with the transmission of social behavior from person to person, such as the influence of one person’s emotions on another’s in a crowd, or the following of fads and fashions.

Another textbook on social psychology, published in 1924 by the American psychologist Floyd H. Allport, had an important influence on the development of social psychology as a specialization of general psychology. Allport extended the principles of associative learning to account for a wide range of social behavior. He thus avoided reference either to such mysterious social forces as were proposed by Ross or to the elaborate instinctive dispositions used by McDougall and his followers to account for social behavior. Through the remainder of the decade, the literature of social psychology continued to be devoted to similar discussions and controversies about points of view, and little empirical work, that is, work relying on experience or observation, of theoretical or practical significance was done.

Early Experimentation. In the 1930s empirical research was first undertaken on such matters as animal social behavior, group problem-solving, attitudes and persuasion, national and ethnic stereotypes, rumor transmission, and leadership. The German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin emphasized the necessity of doing theoretical analysis before conducting research on a problem, the purpose of the research being to clarify explanatory mechanisms hypothesized to underlie the behavior being studied. The theory proposes an explanation of certain behavior and allows the investigator to predict the specific conditions under which the behavior will or will not occur. The investigator then designs experiments in which the appropriate conditions are methodically varied and the occurrence of the behavior can be observed and measured. The results allow modifications and extensions of the theory to be made.

In 1939 Lewin together with two of his doctoral students published the results of an experiment of significant historical importance. The investigators had arranged to have the same adults play different leadership roles while directing matched groups of children. The adults attempted to establish particular climates—that is, social environmental conditions—of democratic, autocratic, or completely laissez-faire leadership. The reactions of the children in the groups were carefully observed, and detailed notes were taken on the patterns of social interaction that emerged. Although the experiment itself had many deficiencies, it demonstrated that something as nebulous as a democratic social climate could be created under controlled laboratory conditions.

The originality and success of this research had a liberating effect on other investigators. By the end of World War II, an outpouring of experimental research involving the manipulation of temporary social environments through laboratory stagecraft began. At the same time, important advances occurred in nonexperimental, or field, research in social psychology. The objective rather than the speculative study of social behavior is the current trend in social psychology.

Research Areas. Social psychology shares many concerns with other disciplines, especially with sociology and cultural anthropology. The three sciences differ, however, in that whereas the sociologist studies social groups and institutions and the anthropologist studies human cultures, the social psychologist focuses attention on how social groups, institutions, and cultures affect the behavior of the individual. The major areas of research in social psychology are the following.

Socialization. Social psychologists who study the phenomena of socialization, meaning the process of being made fit or trained for a social environment, are interested in how individuals learn the rules governing their behavior toward other persons in society, the groups of which they are members, and individuals with whom they come into contact. Questions dealing with how children learn language, sex role, moral and ethical principles, and appropriate behavior in general have come under intensive investigation. Also widely studied are the methods by which adults learn to adapt their patterns of behavior when they are confronted by new situations or organizations.

Attitudes and Attitude Change. Attitudes have generally been regarded as learned predispositions that exert some consistent influence on responses toward objects, persons, or groups. Attitudes are usually seen as the products of socialization and therefore as modifiable. Because the behavior of a person toward others is often, although not always, consistent with his or her attitudes toward them, the investigation of how attitudes are formed, how they are organized in the mind, and how they are modified has been considered of great practical as well as theoretical importance.

The discovery that attitudes follow from behavior as well as vice versa emerges from the well-tested assumption that people desire to preserve logical consistency in their views of themselves and their environments. A number of theories of cognitive consistency have become important in social psychological thinking. These theories stress the idea that individuals have a personal stake in believing that their own thoughts and actions are in agreement with one another, and that perceiving inconsistency between one’s actions and thoughts leads to attempts to reduce the inconsistency. Through research, social psychologists attempt to understand the conditions under which people notice an inconsistency and the conditions under which they will attempt to reduce it by changing significant attitudes. Studies support the consistency-theory prediction that the attitudes of a person about a group of people can often be changed by inducing the person to change his or her behavior toward the group; the attitude change represents the efforts of the person to bring his or her ideas about the group into agreement with how he has just acted toward its members.

Social Affiliation, Power, and Influence. The factors that govern whether and with whom people will affiliate, as well as whether and how they will attempt to influence or be influenced by others, have received much attention by social psychologists. Researchers have determined, for example, that if people are unsure of how they should feel or behave in response to a new or unpleasant situation, they will seek the company of others who may be able to provide the lacking information. Social psychologists have also found that firstborn and only children are generally more inclined to join groups throughout their lives than are those born later.

Group Structure and Functioning. Social psychologists have studied many issues related to questions of how the group and the individual affect one another, including problems of leadership functions, styles, and effectiveness. Social psychologists investigate the conditions under which people or groups resolve their conflicts cooperatively or competitively and the many consequences of those general modes of conflict resolution. Research is conducted also to determine how the group induces conformity and how it deals with deviant members.

Personality and Society. Some social psychologists are particularly concerned with the development and consequences of stable individual differences among people. Differences in the degree of achievement motivation have been found to be measurable and to have important consequences for how a person behaves in various social situations. Systems of attitudes toward authority, such as the notion of the authoritarian personality, have been found to relate to attitudes toward ethnic minorities and to certain aspects of social behavior. A personality syndrome known as Machiavellianism, named after the Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, has been used to predict the social manipulativeness of people in interaction and their ability to dominate certain interpersonal situations.

Numerous kinds of research methods and techniques are being used in social psychology. The tradition of theory-based investigation remains strong in the discipline. In recent years rigorously exact mathematical models of social behavior have been used increasingly in psychological studies. Such models are projections, based on theory and in arithmetic detail, of social behavior in a possible system of social relationships.

Other techniques include the questionnaire and the interview, both used widely in public opinion polls and studies of consumer preferences. These two methods pose a considerable challenge to investigators. The kind of control of the environment that is possible in the laboratory is not available in the field, and the effects of subtle variables that can be observed in experiments are easily obscured by other variables that may exist in natural environments.

Frequently, behavior in natural settings is systematically observed, or computers are programmed to simulate social behavior. Special techniques are used for analysis of statistics and other data and for attitude measurement as well as measurement of social choice and interpersonal attractiveness. Also important is psychophysiological measurement, that is, the measurement of shared mental and physiological characteristics. Cross-national and cross-cultural research is one of the modern techniques, designed to provide comparisons of behavior between nations and cultures; the same research study is carried out in several different countries in order to determine the cross-cultural validity of the research.

In the study of social behavior in animals, a laboratory environment facilitates controlled experimentation, that is, experimentation considering the previous history of the animals as well as their present environmental conditions. Simple behavioral acts, such as a pigeon pecking at an object, can be isolated and schedules of reinforcement—that is, repetition of stimuli—can be maintained. Social psychological research with animals has led to important new techniques for their training.

The principles developed in laboratory and field research in social psychology have been applied to many social situations and problems. Applied researchers and consultants have worked to ameliorate problems found in ethnic relations, international relations, industrial and labor relations, political and economic behavior, education, advertising, and community mental health. Industries, organizations, schools, and task groups of many kinds regularly use the services of applied social psychologists to improve interpersonal relations, to increase understanding of relations between members of groups in conflict with one another, and to diagnose and help correct problems in group and organizational productivity.