Evolution of psychosocial development.

The relationship between the individual and his social environment was examined by Erickson (1950) in his theory on psychosocial development. Erickson believed that all human beings went through 8 developmental stages starting at birth and ending with death. At each stage the individual is faced with a developmental crisis which can have either a positive or negative resolution. A positive outcome in Erickson’s stage theory results in a stronger ego as the individual is better able to adapt and consequently develop a healthy personality. The positive outcome produce individuals who have hope, will, purpose, competence, fidelity, love, care and wisdom, each the outcome of facing separate developmental crises as a person moves through life. If a person has not successfully mastered a stage it was in Erickson's theory possible to reverse the outcome through psychotherapy (Erickson, 1968).

Although some evidence has been found for the presence of these stages in other cultures (Gardiner et al, 1998) the theory is vulnerable to criticism. The main criticism is that Erickson is merely reflecting the normative culture of the West. Within Christian ethics the positive outcomes in Erickson’s theory can be seen as lofty goals that permit the individual live a complete and fearless life. This ideal is not likely replicated where people are struggling for survival. When it comes to the cross-cultural validity of the theory it should be noted that many people in both the West and in other cultures have no hope for developing “competency” or even “intimacy”, goals that are valued outcomes in Erickson’s theory, since survival is the daily theme of life. A Western college professor or other professional may struggle with issues of “stagnation” toward the end of professional careers, but for others less fortunate the dominant motivator is finding bread for the table. What Erickson calls “generativity” (finding new ways to make contributions in latter stages of life) never becomes a developmental issue for billions of people. People living from paycheck to paycheck who have mounting immediate problems do not have the luxury to contemplate the meaning of life in maturity or achieve wisdom and will despair from just the sheer inability to find economic security. Also despite Erickson theory there is really no struggle over “identity” in many societies since these are established at birth in cultures that define identity through obedience to ideology and social institutions. The theory has applications in societies called individualistic where individuals have some freedom to chose, but as noted even in these situations choices are limited by socio-economic circumstances.

Nevertheless that human development takes place in stages is widely accepted. That there are biological influences is very likely. However, how these stages of developmental achievement take place and when they occur is dependent on unique cultural factors. Therefore there is evidence for both universal and culturally specific behavior in these stage theories.

4.11 Human development is the expression of biology: the presence of universal values.

Only half of the story of cultural transmission is told in cross-cultural psychology. The emphasis in the discipline of cross-cultural psychology is on the transfer of culture within the socio-cultural context. This bias ignores a growing body of research that point to the essential biological basis for cultural and social behavior. The selective adaptation that has occurred over time as a result of evolution is transmitted via the genes and passed from one generation to the next (Mange & Mange, 1999). In evolution and the adaptation of humans to their environment we can understand the important story of cultural survival and the improved chances of reproductive success brought about by gene modification. Biology forms the basis of cultural transmission over the course of our evolutionary history. The key to understanding evolution is the idea that genetic material changes over time by means of natural selection.

When a heritable trait contributes to survival and therefore to successful reproduction the frequency of that trait will increase over time. If the trait contributes to greater fitness and therefore survival members of a species that do not carry the trait disappear from the evolutionary record. Natural selection is the process where the inclusion of a trait that improves fitness leads to systematic and significant changes affecting reproductive success over many generations. In modern times these changes have been associated with modification of the gene and the essential DNA sequences. Changes in genetic material called mutations are often adverse to the organism, but given sufficient time occasionally mutations may confer benefits to those that carry the modification. Other factors that affect the presence of heritable traits include selection caused by migration and isolation from the original mating population, and social rules for mating that favor or disfavor certain biological characteristics. Specified mating rules in some cases lead to inbreeding that affect the frequency of genetic components. In some societies cousins are expected to marry, whereas in other cultures such a union is viewed as incest. Although genetic contributions to behavior is thought independent of environmental factors there is increasing evidence that environmental events can at least influence the regulatory processes of these heritable factors (Gottlieb, 1998).

Natural selection will favor those individuals who possess traits that result in improved adaptation. From the perspective of evolutionary science adaptation occur through interaction with the environment. In social science adaptation refer more specifically to changes occurring within individuals as they cope with the environment. However, in some cases the environmental pressure is so significant that the impact causes changes in the surface of genes carried from one generation to the next. For example during the war on Vietnam the U.S. military sprayed enormous amounts of Agent Orange on Vietnam. The principal component dioxin is the strongest poison known to man (Bouny, 2010), and the spraying produced 4,800000 victims that now span three generations (Stellman, 2003). The new field of epigenetics shows that the environment can in fact affect cellular modifications that are transmitted inter-generationally and which produces outcomes that are lasting. Although the common scientific belief in the past was that the environment could only affect the current generation, results reported by Cloud (2010) show that powerful environmental events can leave an imprint on the genetic material in both eggs and sperm and thereby short circuit evolution and pass the trait to the next generation. The change does not occur in the genetic material, but rather on the cellular material placed on top of the gene that tells the gene to switch on or off. These epigenetic changes represent the biological reactions to extreme environmental events like the poisoning by Agent Orange in Vietnam. The young discipline of epigenetics does not provide a definitive answer as to whether the genetic changes will eventually fade away in the absence of stressor, but regardless there is a cautionary tale in that our extreme disruption of the environment may produce immediate genetic consequences that formerly took many generations (Larsen & Van Le, 2011).

Human beings are not passive in the face of their environmental challenges, but are active participants in shaping the conditions that create selective success. The environment places limits on what solutions are possible, but within these parameters human beings create a variety of cultural responses. Cultural responses to environmental challenges include in the most abstract sense also religion and cultural values. Biology has long recognized the existence of behavior traits that are relatively invariable for species other than humans and coded in the genes of the organism. As science is opening the possibilities of genetic modifications including artificial mutations we are learning more about gene based behavior. Can this science also be applied to human culture?

4.12 The evolutionary basis for human behavior: Maximizing inclusive fitness.

According to sociobiological explanations all human behavior is aimed at maximizing inclusive fitness that motivates people to promote the interests of genetically related people. The concept of inclusive fitness for the human species is not limited to offspring, but includes also maximizing the interest of other kin including nephews and nieces (Wilson, 1975). The promotion of the interest of kin is central to evolutionary reproductive success for social species like humans. Sociobiology extends the argument of genetic determinants of behavior to human on a very broad scale. Wilson suggests that most of the branches of human knowledge in social sciences or humanities are reducible to the biology or sociobiology of a species.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 675