PSY 250 Unit 1 (Text Chapter 1) -- Introductory concepts, research methods in lifespan development (Revised September 1, 2006)

Note about your textbook:  Finally, a textbook worthy of the name!  I am very impressed with the Kail and Cavanaugh text (an unsolicited endorsement) and plan to link these Web notes (and the lectures based on them) very strongly with the text readings.  Specific textbook page references are sprinkled throughout the notes below; watch for them, as they can help guide your reading of the text, which you should actively be doing! 

Pages 3-6

As we spend a semester obtaining a "bird's-eye view" of human lifespan development (from womb to tomb), we will have three major goals, all equally important in my view.  The course is organized around these goals, as are the means by which you can earn a grade in the class.

A theoretical goal of the course is for you to gain a solid conceptual understanding of some of the major theoretical perspectives on lifespan development.

A practitioner goal of the course is for you to begin to learn how concepts from this class can help you to be relevant and effective in treating individuals in an age-appropriate manner as a human service provider (teacher, counselor, social worker, health care provider) who may be working primarily with individuals of a particular age range.

An existential goal of the course -- since you are all human beings (other species are strongly discouraged from registering for the course as a matter of university policy) -- is for you to get a sense of age-related influences on your own lifespan experience:  to draw lessons from the past, to appreciate and understand the present, and to anticipate and rationally plan and prepare for the future, including an awareness of the twin influences of change and constancy within your own life experience over the years.  (Note the definition of the field of adult lifespan development on page 3 of the text, and how this is linked to the course goals.)

Note that this course format implies a balance between two different ways of approaching the question of lifespan development.  Anthropologists and social psychologists use the terms etic and emic to describe two different ways of studying a social phenomenon.  To study something in an etic fashion is to stand outside of it and attempt to be objective and impersonal in studying it:  to stand, invariably, above it and to view it from a distance, without participating in it or being “contaminated” by direct involvement in it.  Conversely, to study something in an emic fashion is to immerse oneself in it and be deliberately subjective and personal in studying it:  to become a part of it and to view it as an insider or participant.  (If you have trouble remembering which is which, consider that the word “me” – a very personal word! – starts with the letter m, and the term emic also contains the letter m.  Conversely, a cerebral, purely intellectual, objective, thoughtful process – the word “thought” begins with t – is the etic process, and that word also contains the letter t.

Note that these two approaches to understanding anything are incompatible:  one cannot do both simultaneously.  C.S. Lewis wrote extensively about this paradox, expressed in his famous epigram, “If only my toothache would stop, I could finish writing this chapter about pain.  But once it stops, what do I know about pain?”  Immersed in experience, I lose the ability to step back and conceptualize;  divorced from experience, I have nothing concrete about which to think.  In this class, we’ll try to maintain an effective balance between etic and emic approaches to the study of personality.  While our look at formal scientific theories is clearly etic, the use of application exercises and case study materials is an attempt to look at things from the emic perspective as well.

This course is organized chronologically, which means that each unit of the course represents one "slice of time" out of the human lifespan, as follows.  (The age ranges are useful approximations only;  in adulthood especially, the division points are relatively arbitrary and may not have a great deal of inherent psychological meaning.  Also, increases in life expectancy, as well as various historical-cultural changes over the years, mean that the "psychological barriers" between various age ranges are constantly in flux;  particularly, adolescence begins earlier and ends later, and the stages of elderhood begin later, than they did a generation or two ago.  Whether these trends are linear or cyclical is a matter we'll discuss later in this unit.)  The terms below are approximate (and deviate slightly from those presented in the text):

We'll bracket these time periods with what comes before and after (material on genetics and heritability, prenatal development, and birth on the one hand, and material on death and bereavement on the other hand).

Throughout the course, we'll be viewing the various age ranges through a variety of "lenses" that remind us about some of the important causes of human uniqueness.  In technical terms, we'll be attempting to strike a balance between a nomothetic perspective that emphasizes ways in which we are all alike (the universals of human experience) and an idiographic perspective that emphasizes human differences (what makes each of us distinct and unique).  

Psychologists have an annoying habit of not agreeing with one another about much of anything.  There's a technical reason for that... it's because psychology is a so-called nonparadigmatic science.   (A paradigm is a set of core assumptions that all individuals in a given field of study share or take for granted.)  Thus, we'll find lots of interesting disputes about debatable issues in this course:  here are three of the most important of them.

1.  Nativism vs. empiricism (see text page 5, though the authors use slightly different terms to convey the same idea)

Which is more important in determining an individual's behavior and personality:  inborn, innate, genetic, hereditary factors (the nativist point of view), or situational, environmental factors related to learning or upbringing (the empiricist point of view)?  Both obviously impact most aspects of the person, but which takes precedence in a given situation or context?  (Note that your text uses the terms "nature vs. nurture" to talk about this issue.)

2.  Continuity vs. discontinuity (text page 6)

When we get to a discussion of stage theories in this course, of which there will be many, we'll learn more about this controversy in detail.  But, in brief, some developmentalists think of children turning into adults in a gradual, imperceptible, linear way, while others think in terms of "quantum leap" changes... fits and starts... stages of development that differ dramatically from one another.  (This is related to the question of the extent to which children are "miniature adults", and why or why not.  It's also related to the notion of critical periods or sensitive periods in development, about which more will be said later.)

3.  Cultural universalism vs. particularism (text page 6, again with somewhat different terms used in the text)

As our society becomes increasingly pluralistic and multicultural, this issue takes on increasing importance.  Cultural universalists minimize (though they don't dismiss entirely, of course) the role of culture, suggesting that people are pretty much the same the world over (a theory of lifespan development generated in one culture should have good general applicability to all cultures).  Cultural particularists (although they admit that there are some transcultural or universal themes in human behavior) maximize the role of culture, suggesting that culture is one of the most important influences on people and that most theories of lifespan development are quite culture-specific or culturally embedded.  (Some writers use the term "cultural relativism" to mean the same as cultural particularism.  But to me the term "relativism" implies something else... the idea that values, including ethical and moral values, are products of culture, and therefore that one culture can't meaningfully sit in judgment on another culture.  That's a much thornier issue, and is really the province of the philosophy department... so I'll avoid that hornet's nest by sticking to the more neutral and safer term "cultural particularism".)

Note the excellent discussion in text pages 7-10 of the biopsychosocial framework and of the idea of the life-cycle spiral.  These ideas tie in closely with the discussion below.

One of the most famous and influential books in the philosophy of science is Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which in my view is one of the 10 books every undergraduate should read before being issued a diploma.  One of Kuhn's ideas (as noted above) is that science can never take place in a mental vacuum;  it must be governed and informed by a particular point of view (a paradigm).  Because psychology is non-paradigmatic, different psychologists start from different vantage points;  these are the competing "schools of thought", which will be outlined briefly below.  These different perspectives, taken together, define what the textbook calls the biopsychosocial framework.  Note three important facts about the competing schools:

1.  They are more or less incompatible in their assumptions, since each is attempting to develop a complete and comprehensive picture of the nature of personality.  Those who try to treat the different schools of thought as a smorgasbord from which they can pick and choose as they will are known as eclecticists;  eclecticism means a higher degree of intellectual freedom, the price for which is a higher degree of muddle-headedness.

2.  The different schools can be compared and contrasted in terms of their key ideas (core assumptions or theoretical underpinnings) -- another mission-critical concept of this course.  Not only does each school of thought have its own strengths and weaknesses (things it explains well and things it sweeps quietly under the rug), but each has differing implications, both practical and philosophical.

3.  Since each reasoner's cultural background -- and philosophical assumptions -- colors his or her perceptions of the different schools, it's difficult to be objective in assessing or analyzing them.  

In comparing and contrasting the different schools of thought,  it is important to understand the concept of reductionism.  A reductionistic statement is one that attempts to explain complex phenomena in simpler terms (thus implying that the more complex concepts or levels of explanation are unnecessary).  Let's look at some reductionistic statements to help make this concept clear:

1.  Man is just an animal.

2.  Love is nothing but an instinct.

3.  What we call the "mind" is simply the brain in action.

4.  Societies are nothing more than collections of individuals.

Note the words "just", "nothing but", "simply", "nothing more than".  Words and phrases like these, or similar ones ("only", "merely") are often, though not always, clues to reductionism.  (Don't apply that test blindly or thoughtlessly, though.)  What these four statements have in common is the notion that something that appears to be inherently complex and multifaceted really isn't, and can be reduced to something simpler.

Using this idea as a guide, we can arrange many (unfortunately not all) of the academic disciplines of the university -- at least those in the sciences -- along a continuum from the lowest (simplest or most molecular) to the highest (most complex or molar) levels of explanation.  At the bottom of the pyramid might be physics, since the most reductionistic view possible is that if we understand quantum mechanics, we understand everything, since the entire universe (from this view, anyway) is composed of the same subatomic "stuff".  The hierarchy might look like this:

    Philosophy

    Sociology

    Psychology

    Biology

    Chemistry

    Physics

As we ascend the ladder, the "unit of analysis" gets larger and larger, more and more complex:

   Humanity in the whole or the abstract

   Groups of individuals (societies, cultures)

   Individual persons

   Cells, tissues, organs, organ systems

   Molecules, compounds

   Subatomic particles

To be a reductionist is to draw a line partway up this ladder and to say to the disciplines above the line, "We have no need of you":  that is, to suggest that a thorough understanding of concepts below the line is sufficient to explain all known phenomena.  Thus, for instance, reductionistic statement #1 above can be rephrased as saying, "Psychology is unnecessary, since if we truly understand biology, we understand all that can be known about human beings."

Another, more technically accurate way to think about reductionism is by way of the philosophical superstructure of Herman Dooyeweerd.  Dooyeweerd postulated the notion of distinct (though interrelated) aspects of existence (such as the physical, economic, social, and so forth).  He further suggested that no single such aspect of the cosmos, or of human existence, can be taken as an absolute in itself (the ground of its own being and that of the other aspects).   To do this is to commit the error of ontological reductionism (from the Greek word ontos for "being", that is, a fundamental, irreducible reality).  Some writers use the term metaphysical reductionism to mean the same thing (though a purist would quibble that these are not precisely the same thing).  Because no aspect can be set up as the sole basis for the other aspects, the cosmos and the human condition, says Dooyeweerd, are irreducibly complex.

The different ways of knowing (induction, intuition, and so forth) are related to the aspects (in a complex way we will not ponder in depth here, except to ponder the possibility, along with Dooyeweerd, that each aspect has its own fundamental intellectual methodology or way of knowing associated with it), but they are different in that they are not aspects of reality, but rather ways of coming to terms with (dealing with, operating within, or analyzing) the aspects.  Thus, they are epistemological realities (methods, from the Greek word pistis for "believing") rather than ontological ones. 

However, just as it is possible to fall into the trap of ontological reductionism (like the economic reductionism of Marx, the linguistic reductionism of Derrida, the evolutionary reductionism of Dawkins, the idealistic reductionism of Berkeley, and so forth), it is also possible to make the mistake of epistemological reductionism, namely, to set up a particular intellectual methodology as an absolute and to argue that it alone is necessary, and that all the others can either be derived from it or dispensed with altogether.   In other words, all the ways of knowing are necessary as a means of providing a set of intellectual "checks and balances".  If either leaves its proper sphere, it becomes distorting as its proponents seek to colonize other realms (to subordinate them to itself) or to achieve intellectual hegemony (to "capture the field" by eliminating all intellectual rivals) by means of its improper use.  Many contemporary social debates, intellectual fault lines, and instances of the "culture wars" can be seen in this light:  as a battle between two aspects and/or ways of knowing that are battling for a hegemony which, Dooyeweerd says, can never be achieved.  For instance, the so-called "conflict between science and religion" (which, along with Dooyeweerd, I would say is more illusion than reality -- it is due to unwarranted hegemonic activity in one or more realms) can be explained either in terms of a debate between two forms of ontological reductionism or (at a more sophisticated level) a debate between two forms of epistemological reductionism (an overreliance on induction versus either authority or existential commitment).  Dooyeweerd's way of resolving this problem and keeping the aspects and the ways of knowing in a harmonious balance is too complex to outline here, but involves in part his notion of sphere sovereignty, meaning (in part) that each element stays "in its proper place". 

Make sure you understand the difference between the two kinds of reductionism and can recognize examples of each.  For instance, a person who says that "matter is all there is;  everything is just matter in motion" is an ontological reductionist (there is only one fundamental, self-existent kind of "stuff" by which all apparent complexities of other sorts can be explained).  In contrast, a person who says that "scientific (retroductive) reasoning is the only means by which truth can be determined" is an epistemological reductionist (there is only one fundamentally valid, autonomous or self-governing method for analyzing reality).  Of course, a person who holds to the first view might also hold to the second (although in fact the first premise undercuts the second entirely, but that's another story for another Web site).

Some psychologists are reductionists;  others, like myself, are not.  Look for instances of reductionistic or nonreductionistic thinking throughout the course.  Note that the idea of the biopsychosocial framework implies that differeing levels of explanation, some more reductionistic than others, are needed to garner a full understanding of the human being and his or her lifespan development.  

At least five defined schools of thought exist within the field of developmental psychology:  (see text pages 11-24)

1.  The behavioral (or, learning) school focuses on the influence of the environment, on basic learning processes, on outwardly observable behavior, on nomothetic principles of behavior.

2.  The cognitive (or, cognitive-developmental) school focuses on how the person thinks, or her "active constructions of mental reality";  on stages of intellectual and cognitive development;  on concept formation.

3.  The psychodynamic school focuses on motivation, particularly unconscious conflict and the resolution of intrapsychic conflict;  on the existence and influence of opposing forces or influences (dynamics) within personality.

4.  The ecological (or, systems) school focuses on the cultural contexts within which development occurs, and the levels or layers of culture (micro, meso, macro) that influence children.

6.  The lifespan (or, life course) school focuses on the integration of unique historical events (age cohort influences) within the maturational timetable, and the historical context of lifespan development including changing conceptions of what different life stages mean.  See the text (pages 21-22) for a good discussion of the selective optimization with compensation model (a good illustration of an idea drawn primarily from this school of thought).

Look for specific examples of theories, concepts, and ideas drawn from these various schools of thought as we continue through the course.    

The schools of thought are largely nomothetic in their orientation.  To balance things out (and in keeping with my idiographic emphasis), we'll make extensive use of two models that influence human difference and diversity as outlined below.

Model 1:  The Big Five (or Five-Factor) model of personality

It's a given that humans differ, and all of us pay lip service to the notion that differences are valuable.  Yet most of us also tend, at a more subliminal level, to view ourselves as benchmarks of normality.  We can readily relate to those who are similar to us, but find those markedly different from us to be alienating (even if, perhaps, simultaneously fascinating) and confusing.  

Let's begin with a look at the currently most influential model of personality diversity, the so-called Big Five model of personality (your text provides an overview on pages 510-511, though also addressing some issues we'll return to later in the course).  This model suggests that there are five basic ways that humans differ from one another.  The five dimensions are seen as (largely, if not completely) independent of one another.  While the dimensions are continuous (most people fall somewhere in the middle of a normally distribution of scores), we can think of them in terms of pairs of contrasting opposites as long as we don't take that too literally.

Dimension I:  Extraversion (your Expressive Style)

This dimension addresses a person's preference for sociability and interactivity (high Extraversion, or E+) versus solitude and privacy (low Extraversion, or E-).  E+ types tend to be quick to self-disclose, to process information out loud, to seek high levels of activity (to be outwardly busy), and to seek generalist work roles.  E- types tend to be slow to self-disclosure (or selective about self-disclosure), to process information inwardly, to seek low levels of activity (to be inwardly busy), and to seek specialist work roles.

Dimension II:  Openness (your Intellectual Style)

This dimension addresses a person's preference for abstract ideas and possibilities (high Openness, or O+) versus concrete realities and facts (low Openness, or O-).  O+ types focus on thinking about the world as it might be, are more theory-driven, and tend to focus on the possibility or opportunity side of change (which, depending on their core values, may make them more "liberal").  O- types focus on acting in the world as it is now, are more application- or practice-driven, and tend to focus on the threat or risk side of change (which, depending on their core values, may make them more "conservative").  Under stress, O+ types tend to obsess, O- types to catastrophize.  When solving problems, O+ types habitually try to widen or broaden the question (ask the biggest possible question first), while O- types habitually try to narrow the question (ask the smallest possible question first).  To some extent, O+ types are more nonlinear, O- types more linear, in thought processes and learning styles.

Dimension III:  Agreeableness (your Relational Style)

This dimension measures cooperative (high Agreeableness or A+) versus competitive (low Agreeableness or A-) approaches to interactions with others.  A+ types usually describe themselves as empathic, sensitive, harmony-seeking;  they like tasks and situations in which "everyone wins".  A- types usually describe themselves as impersonal, analytical, outcome-driven;  they like tasks and situations in which there are clear winners and losers.  Correlated to the above, A+ types tend to decide subjectively ("with the heart") on the basis of personal values (but may find it hard to see the dark side of something they value, or may overidealize valued persons and situations), while A- types tend to decide objectively ("with the head") on the basis of impersonal logic (but may fail to factor in subjective or emotional considerations, or may strike others as too cold-bloodedly analytical).

Dimension IV:  Convergence or Conscientiousness (your Work Style)

This dimension measures convergent, task oriented (high Conscientiousness or C+) versus divergent, process oriented (low Conscientiousness or C-) work styles.  C+ types usually describe themselves as organized, structured, systematic, early starters with steady work habits;  they lose efficiency in low structure situations (needing stability), and usually adopt a "work first, play later," serious minded stance to life.  C- types usually describe themselves as spontaneous, flexible, adaptable, "feast or famine" workers who rely on bursts of enthusiasm or energy;  they lose efficiency in high structure situations (needing autonomy), and usually adopt a "mix work and play", fun loving stance to life.  (Note:  all of us can be both serious minded and fun loving;  but C+ types tend to keep the humor inside, C- types to keep the seriousness inside.  This dimension measures what shows on the outside, which is not always the most important aspect of the person.)  C+ types tend to focus heavily on image management (how they look to others), while C- types tend to neglect or ignore such considerations.  C+ types can easily be too rigid or inflexible, while C- types can struggle with disorganization or procrastination.

Dimension V:  Negative Emotionality or Neuroticism (your Stress Management Style)

This dimension measures characteristic responses to stress.  (It does not measure anxiety proneness in a clinical sense;  both poles are normal personality variants.)  High Negative Emotionality or N+ types are more emotionally labile (have a wider emotional range or more mood swings), experience and express anxiety directly (verbally), and tend to be more prone to such mood states as worry, self-doubt, and guilt.  Low Negative Emotionality or N- types are more emotionally stable (have a narrower emotional range or fewer mood swings), experience and express anxiety indirectly (they engage in "anxiety binding" or the "somatization" of anxiety), and tend to be less prone to negative mood states.  While our culture probably values N- over N+, it should be stated clearly that N+ is not only a normal variant but can be an adaptive one (it is, among other things, arguably more authentic, can lead to greater levels of compassion for fellow strugglers, and so forth).

Model 2:  The Strauss-Howe model of generational cyclicity

All of us belong to a generation, which can be defined as a group of people born roughly at the same time (a group of closely linked age cohorts) who identify themselves as belonging to the same group by virtue of a shared outlook and a shared set of defining experiences.  Common titles like "Baby Boomers" and "Generation X" represent this concept.  Historians William Strauss and Neil Howe have systematized and codified this concept in a useful fashion that will also be utilized in this course to highlight possible generational differences in lifespan psychology.

The Saeculum

Strauss and Howe begin with the observation that a wide range of sociological, psychological, and economic variables -- from crime rates to attitudes about gender to vocational patterns -- are well correlated and track in tandem, in a generally predictable, cyclic fashion (see the figure below, where X = time, Y = some empirical variable of interest):

They note that the length of a cycle (e.g., from trough to trough or peak to peak) is roughly fixed over the centuries, and corresponds roughly to the length of a long human life (80 to 100 years).  They call such a cycle a saeculum (the same root word from which we get our more familiar term "secular", meaning transient, changing, and referring to the world of empirical, everyday experience, as opposed to the eternal, constant, transcendent, and metaphysical or sacred).  A human being born at the start of one saeculum might, if he or she did not die prematurely, expect to die in old age at the start of the next one.

The correspondence between the length of a human life and the length of a cultural saeculum is, they say, no accident.  The saecular turnings occur because of specific generational influences as outlined below.

Seasons and Cohort Generations

They note that just as a human life traditionally has four "seasons" each lasting about 20-22 years -- the "spring" of childhood, the "summer" of young adulthood, the "autumn" of midlife, and the "winter" of elderhood -- so, too, can the cultural saeculum be divided in this way.  The parallel is that just as humans are born, live, and die, so eras or epochs in history (the saecula) have a natural life span:  they are bounded by (begin with, and end with) a time of crisis, chaos, external threat (such as a major war), or ekpyrosis.  At the end of each saeculum, the culture must, in a sense, die and be reborn -- or fail to be reborn, as when an entire civilization ceases to exist.  The transformation in a society engendered by moving from one saeculum to another is so dramatic, so radical, so much of a "quantum leap" change that one might say that the society is born into a "new world".  (Hence, Americans still use the phrase "postwar" to refer to the contemporary era or saeculum, even though World War II took place nearly sixty years ago.)  As a nation, America has experienced three such ekpyroses or saecular crises:  the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and World War II.  If Strauss and Howe are right, we are due for yet another one -- the end of the current saeculum -- somewhere around the year 2025. 

As Strauss and Howe use the term, a cohort generation is a group of persons born within the same general time period (usually about 20 years), who share the same set of defining experiences.  Because of the length of a cohort generation relative to the actuarial human lifespan, there are between 4 and 6 cohort generations alive in America at any given time.  As noted below, there are four basic types of cohort generations that recur, in Strauss and Howe’s theory of history, in a predictable, cyclic fashion.  

 

Social Moments

 

A social moment is a key, defining time and series of events that shapes the entire culture and, in a significant sense, ushers in a new phase in history.  There are two contrasting kinds of social moments which, Strauss and Howe assert, occur in an alternating sequence:    

Note that the lapse of time between like social moments is about 80 years, or four cohort generations, in length.  This is no accident, as we’ll see below.  It also suggests that we’ll be due for another secular crisis around the year 2020 (give or take about 5 years).  Hence we’ll soon find out how valid Strauss and Howe’s model is… stay tuned.  

 

Four Generational Types

 

Based on the above concepts, we can define the four generational types as follows.    

Because of the influence of social moments as mediated by the age (phase or stage of life) during which they are experienced by the different cohort generations, the four generational types tend to take on different personalities or values.  Of course, these are generalizations that apply only to the “group persona”, not universally to every member within a given cohort generation:   

What Fuels the Generational Cycle?

Why does the saecular cycle occur?  According to Strauss and Howe, it has to do with the fact that each generation instinctively corrects for the excesses of the previous generation, and in so doing raises its own children in such a fashion that the cycle will continue to turn.  Let's take a look at how this works.

During a Crisis (ekpyrosis or saecular Winter), when the culture is faced with a catastrophic external threat of such proportions that the culture itself may not survive (e.g., World War II), those who are children during this era are understandably raised to be obedient, to be silent, to conform, to basically get out of the way and not impede their elders (young adults) as they tackle the job of saving civilization.  Assuming that the challenge is successfully met (the culture does not die, but is reborn into a new era or saeculum), the young adults who are seen as responsible for this epic victory take on a heroic persona (Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation").  But something quite different happens to their children.

Rising to adulthood in a post-crisis High or cultural Spring, this generation -- the so-called Adaptive or Artistic generation, the most recent example of which is the so-called Silent generation (born between 1927 and 1943) -- faces an intriguing paradox.  On the one hand, outwardly they experience a time of tremendous optimism about the social order:  likely a time of economic prosperity, social cooperation, and tremendous technological progress.  On the other hand, they often feel as if they were "born too late" to emulate the "great deeds" of their next-elders, and feel relegated to an "also-ran" role in which they can, at best, be maintainers of a social system they did not build.  In addition, as time goes by, the dark side of the saecular High begins to show itself, in the excessive conformism of the times, the stifling of autonomy and dissent (e.g., the McCarthy era), and in what increasingly begins to be seen as a spiritual or cultural sterility -- a society that is outwardly (technologically) sound but inwardly devoid of values and meaning.

In reaction to this, Adaptive/Artist parents raise their children (the generation that comes of age during the High or Spring of the culture) to be inward-looking, value-driven.  The children are usually overindulged, at a time when economic prosperity is such that concerns about survival seem remote and rising expectations for each succeeding generation a given.  Coming of age, these individuals then respond dramatically, even violently, to the perceived value sterility and mindless conformity of the culture (they never experienced the cultural Winter that made these traits once a necessity and a virtue, and now only see their outmoded excesses).  The result:  a sudden values transformation, often explosive, pervades the youth culture in a time of Awakening or Summer (the Consciousness Revolution, the Summer of Love -- in a word, the 60's).  This is an Idealist or Prophetic generation (most recently, the Boomer generation, born between 1943 and 1960):  intensely inner-directed, value-driven, autonomous, idealistic, otherworldly, and generally contemptuous of "the Establishment" erected half a saeculum ago by their grandparents and so assiduously tended by their parents.

Committed to the values of individualism and inner-directedness, Idealist/Prophetic parents raise their children even more autonomously and permissively than they were raised, often to the point of neglect ("latchkey children"), partly because they are so preoccupied with the inner search for values and for social transformation of the value landscape of society that they can fail to be good parents, and because (raised in a time of economic prosperity when thrift and planning for the future begin to seem redundant and needless) they tend to focus on the now and/or the eternal, neglectful of the intermediate future of the next generation.  The result:  a time of increasing neglect of, if not outright hostility to, children (it is no accident that abortion became legal around this time), and as a result, a dramatic rise in social pathologies.  This generation of "neglected" or "abandoned" children, a Reactive or Nomadic generation (most recently, Gen X, born between 1961 and 1981), too young to remember the cultural sterility to which their parents were reacting, grow up in a world that seems to them an unsafe, amoral jungle in which only the strong and the pragmatic survive.  Certainly they feel that they receive little or no help, financial or otherwise, and have to learn to make it on their own.  Seeing the excesses of idealism, they often become tough, cynical, hard-bitten pragmatists and adventurers.

Naturally, having experienced a childhood of neglect, these individuals become determined to raise their children very differently, protectively and nurturantly -- at a time when their next-elders reinforce this trend because of alarmist concerns about the breakdown of society, as society's external structures appear to be splintering or falling apart (an Unraveling or Autumn, e.g., the "culture wars" of the late 80's and the 90's).  As the trends started in the Awakening begin to "go too far" and begin to be perceived as rampant individualism, hedonism, and amoralism, society clamps down and begins to look for ways to protect children and to foster collectivism, cooperation, volunteerism and the like.  The result:  a generation of valued children (a Civic or Heroic generation) that grows up believing in the value of order, structure, teamwork, and responsibility in the face of a society that radically needs fixing.  Currently, the Millennial generation (born after 1981) is the current Civic generation, the first wave of whom are just beginning to reach young adulthood.  The last such generation was the generation (born between 1901 and 1927) who, as young adults, fought and won World War II:  Strauss and Howe note many similarities between the young people of the Great Depression and today's Millennials.

Why does the cycle keep turning?  Why another Crisis, Winter, or ekpyrosis?  In part because aging Idealists or Prophets -- intensely value-driven as ever, with the natural inflexibility of idealism, and prone to see the world in black/white uncompromising terms -- are likely to respond to the social Unraveling by means of one last-ditch effort to respond to external threats in terms of a catalysmic, even apocalyptic, moral struggle:  the North versus the South (the Civil War), the free world versus the totalitarian menace (World War II), or... just maybe... America versus the terrorist axis of evil (the pending Crisis of 2025)?  At some point, these trends take on a life of their own, reach a point of no return, and society has little choice but to mobilize in the face of another impending crisis that threatens to engulf the entire culture.  We aren't there yet;  current events, sad and sobering as they are, are a mere harbinger of the Winter to come, if Strauss and Howe's model is correct.  It is late Autumn, not Winter.  But Autumn is a time to prepare, for Winter may soon be here.

If the Heroic generation of that era can rise to the challenge, the cycle will turn yet again and another saeculum will be born.  If not (as has happened, of course, repeatedly throughout history), that particular culture will die.  Cultures almost always fall to ruin, Strauss and Howe argue, during a badly managed Winter or time of Crisis -- the ekpyrosis point of a saecular turning.  Again, stay tuned for the year 2025 (give or take a decade).

Note that once every four generations, the seasons of human life (one generation's youth or Spring, young adulthood or Summer, midlife or Autumn, and elderhood or Winter) match the seasons of the saeculum or wider culture (High or Spring, Awakening or Summer, Unraveling or Autumn, and Crisis/ekpyrosis or Winter).  For this generation -- always an Idealist or Prophetic generation -- old age coincides with the (potential) death and (hopeful) subsequent rebirth of the culture.  Is this poised to happen again within the lifetime of most who are reading these notes?  Time will tell.

Resulting Generational Archetypes

Thus, each generation finds its core values defined by the unique experiences of its own youth:

Types of data utilized in developmental research

Four types of data utilized by developmental researchers are L-data, O-data, T-data, and S-data.  Note how these form the convenient acronym LOTS, since they enable us to collect LOTS of data.  (These ideas are presented, under somewhat different terms, in text pages 25-27.)

1.  L-data (or Life-data) are physical artifacts of a person's life history... the kinds of tangible evidence that (say) a private detective, biographer, or even a historian or archaeologist could uncover.  Examples might be physical possessions, public documents (birth certificates, school records, medical records, tax records), journals or diaries, newspaper clippings about a person.

2.  O-data (or Other-data) represent evaluations, impressions, perceptions, observations, and ratings provided or made by third parties who know the individual personally in a real-world context... such as parents, siblings, teachers, peers.  Formal observations made by trained scientific researchers as part of the formal research enterprise are not O-data, but represent a form of T-data, below.

3.  T-data (or Test-data) represent formal scientific observations of a person's behavior (whether in a lab setting or a real-life field setting) by trained scientific observers utilizing objective standards of measurement and data recording.  Results of objective tests (meaning those for which right and wrong answers exist, like tests of skill, aptitude, competence, or knowledge) also count as T-data.  However, results of subjective measures like paper-and-pencil personality tests, for which there are no right or wrong answers as such, do not comprise T-data, but represent a form of S-data, below.

4.  S-data (or Self-data) represent a person's own self-evaluations, self-assessments, self-ratings, or self-perceptions, including formalized self-audits or self-reports such as might be obtained by structured interviews or structured personality inventories or questionnaires.  Unstructured self-reports generated in the past, such as diaries and journals, are usually regarded as forms of L-data, however.

Why do we need more than one form of data?  Because different kinds of data give us different kinds of insights into the person, since they are generated in different contexts, by different people, in different ways.  They allow us to "triangulate" our impressions of the subjects of our research to get a well-rounded, full-orbed view of the persons we are interested in.  Each form of data has some strengths and weaknesses associated with it, so a lopsided overreliance on one form of data collection to the exclusion of the others is usually, in the long run, a bad idea.

Testable hypotheses

Research begins with a general question of interest which must be turned into a testable research hypothesis.  Not all questions are hypotheses;  some of the most important questions that can be asked, such as "What is the meaning of life?" cannot be turned into scientifically testable hypotheses, which is another way of saying that science cannot answer all questions (because the inductive and deductive ways of knowing are not self-contained, all six of them being necessary).  To qualify as a testable hypothesis, a question must (a) state a presumed cause-effect relationship (b) between at least two variables (c) that can be operationally defined, that is, a precise statement can be made of how, in objective and observable terms, the variable is to be measured or assessed.  Obviously, some variables are easier to operationalize than others;  it is easy to determine a person's height, more difficult to determine his or her  integrity.

Be sure that you can distinguish between variables and levels of a single variable.  For instance, height is a variable;  being 5' 8" in height is a specific value of that variable.  Variables, of course, must be able to take on more than one level or value (that is, they must be able to vary);  a "variable" with only one possible value is no variable at all, but a constant.

Note that questions that are not testable in the sense outlined above may still be important questions, but they are outside of the universe of discourse of the scientific enterprise.

Research designs

Research designs can be characterized as experimental, correlational, or descriptive (see below for definitions), and each can be conducted in either a laboratory (artificial) or field (real-life) setting, yielding 3 x 2 = 6 possible designs.  See text pages 28-34.

Experiments are defined by the direct manipulation of one or more independent variables, as well as the quantitative measurement of one or more dependent variables.  An independent variable is directly controlled by the experimenter (so that, for instance, s/he could randomly assign a research subject to whichever treatment condition or level of the variable s/he chose, with no pre-existing constraints).   Experimental designs can be either between-subjects (each subject receives one and only one treatment condition) or within-subjects (all subjects receive all treatment conditions in turn).  In the simplest between-subjects design, there are two groups:  the experimental group (which receives some treatment or intervention) and the control group (which receives no treatment, or more likely, a placebo -- something that has the outward appearance of a genuine intervention or treatment but which really is expected to have no effect).  The point of the experiment is to test the hypothesis that observed differences in the dependent variable are caused by induced changes in the independent variable.  To make sure that this is a valid conclusion, the groups must be alike (and treated alike) in all other respects to avoid the existence of a confound -- an alternative explanation for the observed differences on the dependent variable.  Confounds cannot be eliminated entirely, but they are kept to a minimum in a well designed experiment.  Even absent any confounds, it is necessary to rule out the particular kind of alternative explanation known as the null hypothesis (the notion that the groups differed on the dependent variable merely by chance), which is accomplished probabilistically using statistical analysis.  

If there is no true independent variable, the design is not an experimental one;  if one or more variables are observed, but none are manipulated, it is a correlational study.  

A correlation is an observed association between variables.  Correlations can be positive (increases in one variable are associated with increases in the other) or negative (increases in one variable are associated with decreases in the other).  Correlations have both a direction (positive or negative, as above) and a magnitude (the extent to which one variable can be reliably predicted based on knowledge of the other).  Correlational relationships hold true only on the average (for an entire sample or population of observations), not necessarily for any single given instance.  For instance, while in general height and weight are positively correlated (tall people on average weigh more than short people), it's possible for a single human being to be 3' 4" in height, 750 pounds in weight.  Such a single observation, which is highly discrepant from the general population trend, is called an outlier.

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation; just because two variables are correlated does not mean that one of them is a direct cause of the other.  When two variables are correlated in the absence of a causal relationship between them, this is called the third-variable problem.  For instance, among a group of mixed-age children, shoe size is positively correlated with reading ability (kids with bigger feet tend on average to read better), but only because both shoe size and reading ability increase with age;  the correlation disappears if children of a single age are examined, and is thus an illusory correlation or artifact.  Neither variable causes the other (reading does not make your feet swell, nor will getting silicone foot implants make you more literate).

If there is not even any systematic numerical measurement of variables, which usually means no specifically testable research hypothesis, it is a descriptive study.

In deciding on a lab versus a field setting, one needs to keep in mind the control-realism tradeoff.  Lab settings maximize control (over potential confounding variables), but are often notably unrealistic.  Field settings maximize realism (are, by definition, closest to life as it is actually lived), but are often fraught with potential confounds.  Since both control and realism are desirable properties of research, yet anything that is done to increase one will generally decrease the other (the two variables are negatively correlated!), one has to prioritize and then maintain a delicate balancing act in selecting a research design and setting.

In addition to these general design issues, there are some specialized issues relating to lifespan development research specifically.  Often, these have to do with the treatment of age as a variable. 

Obviously, if age is being examined as a causal variable (meaning that children of different ages are being explicitly compared in some way), age is not a true independent variable.  It is often treated "as if" it were an independent variable, but because it is really not, various kinds of confounds can exist in such research that could easily be controlled in research in which all the causal variables are directly manipulated.

Three different designs can be used to handle age as a causal variable.  (See text page 33.)

·         In a cross-sectional design, observations are all made at one time, of children who are of different ages (different age cohorts or birth cohorts) at the time of observation.  Thus, there are several different groups of subjects (e.g., some 3-year olds, some 5-year olds, some 7-year olds).

·         In a longitudinal design, the same group of children (a single age cohort or birth cohort) is observed at multiple times (over the course of several years).  Thus, there is a single group of subjects (e.g., children who are 3 years old at the start of the study or first observation, but who have grown to be 7 years old at the end of the study or last observation).

·         In a hybrid or sequential design, the best elements of cross-sectional and longitudinal designs are incorporated:  there are multiple age cohorts (multiple groups of subjects), but also multiple observations over the course of many years.  Such designs are the least confounded but the most expensive, so are infrequently utilized.

In deciding whether to use a cross-sectional or a longitudinal approach, one needs to consider the relative strengths (and corresponding weaknesses) of these two approaches.

·         Cross-sectional designs are faster and more cost-effective.  They are less likely to suffer from historical artifacts (events that occur between the start and the end of the study, such as the 9/11/01 terrorist attack, that influence the subjects in the study) and from sample attrition (subjects differentially dropping out partway through the study).

·         Longitudinal designs provide the capacity to track the behavior of individual subjects, allowing for the observation of specific individual or subgroup trends that are actually unfolding in real-time.  They are less likely to suffer from adventitious cohort effects (e.g., generational effects relating to defining experiences which one birth cohort experienced and the others did not) and from other inadvertant group differences.

Ethical considerations

Ethical issues in research include confidentiality, informed consent, and questions relating to the proper use (if any) of deception in research.  See text pages 34-35.

Study Guide

1.  What are three goals of this course and how do they differ?  How are they related to the emic-etic distinction?

2.  What are the general age boundaries of the ten "stages" of the human lifespan as utilized in this course?  Why might some of the suggested age cutoffs be questionable, or why should they not be taken too literally?

3.  Explain the following terms, and contrast each pair:  nomothetic vs. idiographic;  nativist vs. empiricist;  continuous vs. discontinuous;  universalist vs. particularist.

4.  What is a paradigm?  What does it mean to say that psychology is non-paradigmatic?  What is the relationship between this fact and the schools of thought?  Between the schools of thought and eclecticism?

5.  What is reductionism?  What is the relationship between reductionism and the "biopsychosocial framework"?

6.  Summarize (and, compare and contrast) five different schools of thought in lifespan development.

7.  Summarize the Big Five model of personality;  the Strauss-Howe model of generational cyclicity.

8.  What are four types of data and how do they differ?

9.  What are three elements that must be present in order for a research question to be a testable hypothesis?  What is the relationship between scientific testability and the "universe of discourse" of science?

10.  Be able to classify research designs and the variables associated with those designs.  Discuss advantages and disadvantages of different designs.

11. Discuss some key ethical issues in developmental research.

On to Unit 2

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