Successful Human Development Research Paper

In view of this broad range of possibilities, the question of how and under what circumstances human development can succeed proves to be complex in several respects. The purpose of this research paper is to deal with two questions. The more important, of course, is the question of what makes development successful: which are the prerequisites of an ‘art of life’ (Staudinger 1999)? To answer this question, however, the term ‘successful’ needs to be clarified.

1. What Is ‘Successful’ Development? The Problem Of Criteria

Since the work of David Hume (1978), many have argued that while empirical sciences like psychology may, for reasons of principle, apply criteria which are value judgments, they cannot justify or legitimize the use of such criteria. According to this view, no matter how good science may be, it can only describe and explain the world, but it cannot judge it. Is the question of ‘successful’ development hence unanswerable from the start, at least from the viewpoint of an empirical science?

Actually, the relationship between empirical description and explanation on the one hand and value judgments or normative standards on the other is in fact more complex than that. Even if empirical facts do not constitute sufficient conditions for making evaluations, as a rule they are nevertheless necessary ones (Brandtstadter and Schneewind 1977). Any decision or action is predicated not only upon preferences and value judgments but also upon expectations which take account of empirical facts. For instance, the demand for a juvenile who commit crimes to be ‘educated’ by a punishment assumes that punishment actually serves to influence his future actions. This is an assumption that can, and indeed must, be empirically tested. In this respect science plays a key role in answering the question of successful development, even if the criterion for measuring ‘success’ has had to be determined on a prescientific basis.

Yet it is open to question whether assessments of human action and biographies really are as completely arbitrary as is suggested by a Humean perspective. Without wishing to become involved in the finer points of the philosophical debates surrounding the ‘deducibility’ of normative statements from descriptive ones, it can nevertheless be said that all positions purporting to offer proof of the inherent distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ in fact tend to presuppose this ‘gap’ of principle rather than to prove its existence (Mavrodes 1968). In search for firm foundations for value judgments as well as for empirical descriptions, the last line of defense is the practice of simply not calling certain statements into question because the grounds for doubting them appear more dubious than the statements themselves.

So although we can forget any prospect of finding ‘the’ best biography per se in the foreseeable future, indisputably negative examples can easily be identified within the variations realized. For instance, there is no doubt that a person who persistently and repeatedly violates others for no reason, leads a less ‘productive’ life than one who shows reasonable consideration for others’ interests and needs when taking his or her actions and decisions. Likewise, one can hardly describe an old age marred by illness and loneliness, causing distress particularly to the aged person but also to his or her relatives and friends, as ‘successful’ without arousing the suspicion that this is an artificial, academic discussion or simply cynicism. The details of examples such as these will be controversial, and here too particular constellations will lead to changes in our assessments. Nevertheless, such examples show that in many cases value judgments (‘better’–‘worse’) are scarcely more doubtful than the ‘brute’ facts.

However, the search for universal criteria of successful development which can be applied to all people irrespective of their individual, cultural and historical circumstances, is likely to be fruitless, because it follows from the actional perspective of human development that people’s ‘success’ depends to no small degree on what they themselves consider to be successful. Within the development-regulating normative rules and developmental tasks of a culture, which incidentally are themselves subject to cultural development processes, the individual organizes ways of shaping his or her own life, looking for and construing orientations which give meaning to his or her personal development (Brandtstadter 1998).

These considerations point toward a solution to the question of criteria. Beyond the fulfillment of the fundamental conditions essential for life, the prerequisites for successful development are clearly those metacompetencies and meta-resources which ensure that individuals can make use of opportunities and encouragement, can compensate for deficiencies and vulnerabilities, can choose and realize their own developmental goals, and thus can actively shape their development within the framework defined by immediate and potential possibilities (Brandtstadter and Schneewind 1977). This metaperspective implies a multicriteria approach on the one hand, and the integration of subjective and objective criteria of ‘success’ on the other (Baltes and Baltes 1990).

2. What Makes Development Successful?

If human development is basically the product of culture and, at the same time, the result of individual action, an essential prerequisite for successful development is the capacity to act, i.e., to choose developmental goals, to make decisions, to form intentions and to put them into practice, and also to overcome resistance and to revise strategies where necessary. Acting successfully entails first the precise competencies needed to carry out a particular action in practice. Additionally, an adequate representation of these competencies and potentials in the person’s self-concept is a prerequisite for an appropriate and autonomous choice to be made from among the possible developmental options. Thus, processes of self-regulation perform an integrating, ‘orchestrating’ function for human development (Staudinger et al. 1995).

Self-regulating processes can essentially be classified into two modes (Brandtstadter and Greve 1994). In the assimilative mode, goals are maintained even against resistance, and strategies are pursued tenaciously until they are achieved. Obviously, development can only succeed if people are sufficiently willing and capable; anyone who always gives up immediately will achieve neither essential tasks nor those of his or her choosing. In the accommodative mode, when faced with goals that are truly or are perceived to be unachievable, or with irreversible losses and deterioration, preferences and orientations are adapted in a way that avoids meaninglessness and depressive tendencies, and preserves subjective wellbeing, but at the same time brings new, achievable goals into view, which revive the capacity and motivation to act. These aspects are illustrated with examples from the research fields of juvenile delinquency and successful aging.

2.1 Autonomy And Social Integration: The Sample Case Of Juvenile Delinquency

Although difficulties of coping with developmental tasks occur throughout the life-course, juvenile delinquency serves as a good example with which to illustrate such difficulties. Challenges such as physical changes and sexual maturation, the need to develop interpersonal skills (e.g., for relationships with the opposite sex), acquiring education and, in particular, forming a personal and social identity are not just the storms to be weathered during adolescence; these challenges are vitally bound up with laying the groundwork for successfully solving the tasks and meeting the demands of adult life (Crockett and Crouter 1995). In particular, social developmental tasks play a particularly prominent role during the years of youth (Petersen and Leffert 1995). Especially at a juvenile age, the dualism involved in social integration is patently evident: at one and the same time, social integration is an aim in itself and a prerequisite for successfully fulfilling the developmental task of preparing adulthood. However, both the necessity and the opportunity to change and challenge social contexts are characteristic features of adolescence too. Since the dividing line between creatively transgressing the social rules and a deviant or pathological disregard for social limits can be a fuzzy one, these dilemmas of individuation vs. integration and of autonomy vs. adaptation may serve as a background for the explanation of juvenile delinquency (Coie and Dodge 1998). Delinquent juveniles, in particular those whose deviance is ‘adolescence-limited’ (Moffitt 1993), have evidently not managed to cope successfully with these tasks (Petersen and Leffert 1995). Thus, personal resources of coping with discrepancies between the social demands on the one hand and the personal goals, desires and competencies on the other gain a key function in explaining juvenile delinquency and, as a consequence, successful juvenile development. In particular, the goodness of fit between the individual and his or her social environment thus becomes an important precondition and, at the same time, a central criterion for developmental success of adolescence.

2.2 Resources Of Resilience: The Sample Case Of Successful Aging

Going yet another step further, human development in general can be regarded as a hierarchical, interactive sequence of micro-and macroscopic coping processes. While current coping processes and resources are shaped by developmental conditions, coping reactions can also act as forces in creating future development. That leads on to the investigation of developmental constellations of individual and social resources that make an individual either resilient against or vulnerable to new strains as they arise. The discussion of the conditions under which people cope successfully with aging illuminates this aspect very well. Numerous studies have shown that people’s ability to function and their sense of well-being are not greatly impaired as they grow old, if at all. Indicators of overall psychological status such as self-esteem, general sense of well-being, or being convinced of having control over one’s own life are variables which, taken together, do not show any substantial covariance with age (e.g., Brandtstadter et al. 1993, Staudinger et al. 1995). As a consequence, the stereotype of aging being a process strongly characterized by deficiencies and loss has gradually gone out of favor as being too one-sided and incomplete, to be superseded by a more multifaceted view of ‘productive’ and ‘successful’ aging (Baltes and Baltes 1990). These findings are most surprising when set against the well-documented fact that, whether in terms of cognitive development, changing sensory functions or morbidity, aging does entail a real increase in the losses and impairment people suffer (Bond et al. 1995).

This apparent contradiction between the growing strains and losses on the one hand and the stability of the self and well-being on the other is resolved once the personal constellations of ‘resilience’ (Rutter 1990) are made the focus of the theoretical perspective (Baltes and Baltes 1990, Brandtstadter 1998, Staudinger et al. 1995). In addition to the model of developmental self-regulation already mentioned (Brandstadter et al. 1993), the main model providing important insights that help to explain resilience in old age is that of ‘selective optimization with compensation’ (Baltes and Baltes 1990). As losses occur, they can be partly cushioned or alleviated by way of selective improvement (training, expertise), and compensated for as people reorient their lives or change their strategies. Against the background of the actional conception of development, it is important to point out that resilience is not just a reactive quality, but is often brought to bear proactively, before the troubling event actually occurs or the degenerative tendency sets in. For instance, the fact that people have less chance of becoming crime victims as they grow older is partially explained by an increasing tendency to behave more cautiously (Greve 1998).

3. Conclusion: Courses And Conditions Of Successful Development

In terms of cognitive functions, social integration, and self-regulation, human development features a considerable amount of plasticity (Baltes et al. 1998), which not only makes up the core prerequisite for the dynamics of resilience and the coping processes discussed here, but indeed is also a general precondition for the very possibility of lifespan development. Self-regulation processes are both a central criterion for adaptation processes on the one hand and they substantially control them on the other.

Personal well-being and psychological health, and social integration can only be maintained and improved if the individual can be protected against unfavorable conditions by resilient resource constellations, if personal and social coping resources can help to cushion and compensate for the crises and losses that will inevitably occur, and if the individual capacity to act is largely maintained, whether by stabilizing the required conditions or by finding a new orientation toward achievable objectives. Actually, all of these aspects can be seen both as the products and the producers of successful development.

Development essentially consists in upholding and implementing the individual’s capacity to adapt to the discrepancies in new situations and developmental tasks as he or she seeks (via assimilation or accommodation) to attain a solution to, or dissolution of, the discrepancies that are generating a crisis or creating a burden, if these are unavoidable in the long run. Thus, successful development implies a progressive adaptation which simultaneously maintains or indeed expands this plasticity and adaptivity. As far as we know today, this is possible—and usual—at least up to the latest years of very old age (Baltes 1997). That leads to the somewhat tautological-sounding statement that successful development essentially means ensuring that development, i.e., progressive adaptation, will always be possible and really will occur.

The emerging perspective of adaptivity and activity as the roots of successful human development suggests essential new research perspectives focusing on sources of resiliency and vulnerability at any stage of human development. Moreover, even if the preconditions and processes are known which provide successful development, the ways to improve the individual’s capacity to acquire or to use them are still to be investigated. Thus, studies in applied developmental science are needed in order to discover techniques and strategies of individual and social improvement of both of these core conditions, with respect to special interventions, e.g., in the case of juvenile delinquency, as well as with respect to primary prevention of developmental crises, e.g., in the case of successful aging in very old age.

Bibliography:

1. Baltes P B 1987 Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology 23: 611–26
2. Baltes P B 1997 On the incomplete architecture of human ontogeny. American Psychologist 52: 366–80
3. Baltes P B, Baltes M M 1990 Psychological perspectives on successful aging: The model of selective optimization with compensation. In: Baltes P B, Baltes M M (eds.) Successful Aging. Perspectives from the Behavioral Sciences. Cambridge University Press, New York
4. Baltes P B, Lindenberger U, Staudinger U M 1998 Life-span theory in developmental psychology. In: Lerner R M (ed.) Handbook of Child Psychology: Theoretical Models of Human Development, 5th edn. Wiley, New York, Vol. 1, pp. 1029–143
5. Bond L A, Cutler S J, Grams J (eds.) 1995 Promoting Successful and Productive Aging. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA
6. Brandtstadter J 1998 Action perspectives on human development. In: Lerner R M (ed.) Handbook of Child Psychology: Theoretical Models of Human Development, 5th edn. Wiley, New York, Vol. 1, pp. 807–63
7. Brandtstadter J, Greve W 1994 The aging self: Stabilizing and protective processes. Developmental Review 14: 52–80
8. Brandtstadter J, Schneewind K A 1977 Optimal human development: Some implications for psychology. Human Development 20: 48–64
9. Brandtstadter J, Wentura D, Greve W 1993 Adaptive resources of the aging self: Outlines of an emergent perspective. International Journal of Behavioral Development 16: 323–49
10. Coie J D, Dodge K A 1998 Aggression and antisocial behavior. In: Eisenberg N (ed.) Handbook of Child Psychology: Social, Emotional, and Personality Development. Wiley, New York, Vol. 3, pp. 779–862
11. Crockett L J, Crouter A C 1995 Pathways through adolescence: An overview. In: Crockett L J, Crouter A C (eds.) Pathways Through Adolescence. L Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 1–12
12. Greve W 1998 Fear of crime among the elderly: Foresight, not fright. International Review of Victimology 5: 277–309
13. Hume D 1978 [1739–40] A Treatise of Human Nature. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK
14. Mavrodes G I 1968 On deriving the normative from the nonnormative. Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 53: 353–65
15. Moffitt T E 1993 Adolescence—limited and life-course— persistent antisocial behavior: A developing taxonomy. Psychological Review 100: 674–701
16. Petersen A C, Leffert N 1995 What is special about adolescence? In: Rutter M (ed.) Psychosocial Disturbances in Young People. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 3–36
17. Rutter M 1990 Psychosocial resilience and protective mechanisms. In: Rolf J, Masten A S, Cicchetti D, Nuechterlein K H, Weintraub S (eds.) Risk and Protective Factors in the Development of Psychopathology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 181–214
18. Staudinger U M 1999 Social cognition and a psychological approach to an art of life. In: Blanchard-Fields F, Hess T (eds.) Social Cognition and Aging. Academic Press, New York, pp. 343–75
19. Staudinger U M, Marsiske M, Baltes P B 1995 Resilience and reserve capacity in later adulthood: Potentials and limits of development across the life span. In: Cicchetti D, Cohen D J (eds.) Developmental Psychopathology. Wiley, New York, Vol. 2, pp. 801–47