Historical Change And Human Development Research Paper

Historical data are also used to test general theories of the family, life course, and life span. This approach does not deny that historical forces operate in unique ways to shape development, but it does consider the generalizability of theories across historical settings. Accordingly, this research paper then examines how historical data are used to test general theories of behavior.

1. The Historical Time Frames Of Human Development

Human development reflects mechanisms that operate in three historical time frames, each of which is studied from different disciplinary standpoints. First, human behavior reflects evolutionary mechanisms that operate across historical epochs covering many millions of years. These mechanisms are studied by biologists, anthropologists, and evolutionary psychologists who share a set of Darwinian assumptions. Second, individual development reflects the unique influences of historical periods that are comparatively limited in their duration. For example, social historians and students of psychohistory examine how the organization and ideology of Medieval society led to specific biographical patterns. Finally, life-span psychologists and life course sociologists examine connections between human lives and the ‘historical present,’ which encompasses the historically specific circumstances of a person’s life (e.g., the Great Depression or the 1970s).

1.1 Historical Epochs: Phylogeny, Ethology, And Evolution

One of the most influential (albeit erroneous) contributions to the study of human development has been the principle of recapitulation, which emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although many nineteenth century biologists subscribed to recapitulation, its greatest proponent was Ernst Haeckel, whose biogenetic law maintained that ontogeny (the life history of the person) recapitulates phylogeny (the evolutionary history of the lineage leading to the person). That is, the morphological development of each person quickly repeats—indeed, is caused by—the adult forms of the evolutionary history that preceded it. For example, Haeckel argued that because ‘the human egg is a simple cell, we may at once infer … a unicellular ancestor of the human race resembling an Amoeba.’ Similarly a later embryonic form in humans points to a ‘primitive worm-like ancestral form which is related to the sea squirts or Ascidians …’ (quoted in Gottlieb 1992, pp. 29–30). Because this recapitulation takes place in the embryonic and juvenile stages of development, the further evolution of a species depends on terminal addition, the appending of new characteristics to ‘the end of an unaltered ancestral ontogeny’(Gould 1977, p. 74).

The biogenetic law fails principally because there is no known mechanism that links the evolution of a lineage with the development of an individual. And yet this law is important for two reasons. First, even though it was commonly rejected in biological circles in the early twentieth century, various forms of psychological recapitulation continued to influence many develop mentalists, including Baldwin, Freud, Hall, Piaget, and Preyer (Gould 1977). For example, the biogenetic law (as it addressed both morphological and behavioral development among its proponents) and Larmarkian biology influenced Freud in pervasive ways. Thus, Freud held that the psychoanalytic stages of development (e.g., the oral and anal stages) were recapitulations of the phylogenetic sexual stages of our remote ancestors (Sulloway 1979).

This influence also is illustrated clearly in Totem and Taboo (Freud [1913] 1962) and such later works as Moses and Monotheism ([1939] 1967). In these works, Freud elaborates his theory of psychosexual recapitulation—this time focused on the Oedipus complex—involving an early trauma, a defensive reaction, a latency period, and then the outbreak of a neurosis. This theory, he believed, characterized the history of the human species, the history of the Judeo Christian tradition, and the life history of the individual.

In the history of the human species, following the Ice Age a horde of brothers killed and consumed their father because of their sexual desire for his wives. Later, the brothers atoned for this act by deifying the slain father, now represented by a totem, and by observing prohibitions against parricide and incest. This sequence of acts was probably repeated over the millennia and was traumatic; consequently, by way of Lamarckian inheritance (which posits that acquired characteristics can be transmitted to successive generations), the feelings that surrounded these events were passed to later generations and now reside deep in the memory of all people. That is, according to Freud, the Oedipus complex is an inherited psychological structure rooted in phylogeny.

The life history of the individual repeats this sequence. Childhood sexual traumas (either real or conjured from phylogenetic fantasies that often involve the Oedipus complex) are repressed and forgotten during a period of latency. Additional traumas or disappointments in adulthood can then lead to high levels of distress and often to a neurosis. Thus, mental disturbances in adulthood need not trace back to a trauma that is consciously experienced by people during their own childhood; all humans are born with inherited traumas that reside deep in the unconscious and that can compromise pathways of adult development. Unfortunately, Freud’s theoretical edifice is flawed because of its strong and erroneous biological assumptions. Referring to Lamarkian biology, Freud himself remarked in Moses, ‘If things are different, then we are unable to advance one step further on our way, either in psychoanalysis or in mass psychology.’ (Freud [1939] 1967 p. 128, Sulloway 1979).

Second, although the biogenetic law was a flawed attempt to link the evolutionary time frame with individual development, the link is still being pursued at the beginning of the twenty-first century, albeit in very different ways, including, for example, through ethology and life history theory. Ethology is the study of animal behavior, its causes, development, functions, and, importantly, its evolution. Developmentalists have drawn on ethological research to provide principles whose applicability to humans can then be assessed (Hinde 1982). This approach is vividly illustrated by Bowlby’s attachment theory, which relies heavily on ethological research (e.g., animal imprinting). In Attachment and Loss (1969–80), Bowlby explains that the attachment behavior of young children, which includes variations in proximity seeking to the primary caregiver, is an instinctual behavior observed in many birds and mammals because it facilitates survival (but see Belsky 1999). According to Bowlby, the attachment relationship in humans between child and primary caregiver leads to an ‘internal working model’ of felt security, which in turn has pervasive implications for one’s later relationships and psychological development.

Life-history theory refers to evolutionary explanations for the specific timing of biological events during the life course. Life-history theory assumes that natural selection has influenced when and how energy is allocated to growth, maintenance of the self, and reproduction so as to maximize reproductive output. Hence, life-history theory attempts to explain, for example the age of maturation, fertility rates and the spacing of children, menopause, senescence, and the length of the life span. For example, ‘disposable soma theory’ provides an evolutionary explanation for why people senesce (i.e., experience a decrease in bodily functions with increasing age). According to this theory, death from unavoidable causes (e.g., accidents, predation) in the course of evolution was inevitable and thus energy was diverted from attempts to live for exceedingly long periods to reproductive efforts earlier in the life span. Indeed, empirical evidence supports the proposition that the rate of senescence is directly related to the probability of death due to difficult-to-avoid causes. One of the major challenges to life history theory, however, is its application beyond nonhuman species and primitive peoples. Many of its expectations refer to environments that were typical of the evolutionary past and so require further elaboration or restriction when applied to modern societies, especially societies that have experienced the demographic transition (Hill and Kaplan 1999).

1.2 Historical Periods: Social History And Psychohistory

Compared to evolutionary epochs, historical periods are more limited in both time and place. Historical periods typically refer to intervals in history that represent relatively cohesive and distinct patterns of material living conditions, ideologies, norms, social organizations, and institutions.

Social history is often concerned with how these factors jointly shape biography, especially factors such as childhood socialization, school, work, and family. For example, many historians have studied how changing social circumstances have altered the meaning of ‘childhood,’ ‘adolescence,’ and indeed the functions of the family before, during, and after the Early Modern Period, which is often defined in terms of the Industrial Revolution. Aries’s path-setting Centuries of Childhood (1962) provided the impetus for many contemporary inquiries. According to Aries, in medieval society (and much later among the lower classes), childhood and adolescence did not exist; rather, ‘as soon as the child could live without the constant solicitude of his mother, his nanny or his cradle-rocker, he belonged to adult society’ (p. 128).

Beginning in the sixteenth century, parents began to educate their children before they could enter the adult world. As educational systems developed, youth were taught in age-segregated settings according to curricula that were increasingly less concerned with vocational training than the medieval guilds had been. With this prolongation of education and segregation from the adult world, childhood and adolescence emerged as distinct age-graded identities. While Centuries of Childhood has been criticized in matters large and small, its basic analytic orientation—one that emphasizes the interconnectedness of work, school, family, and the phases of the life course—remains a point of departure for historians interested in human development (e.g., Kett 1977).

Psychohistory emphasizes the psychological development of the individual. Its primary focus is on the complex relationships between historically unique processes and the psychological functioning of individuals or, in some cases, mass psychology. Numerous biographies that utilize psychological data or theories have followed Freud’s early attempts. Most draw on some form of psychoanalytic theory, although there are notable exceptions (e.g., B. F. Skinner’s application of behavioral theory to his autobiography).

Erikson’s Young Man Luther ([1958] 1993) is often acknowledged as one of the great contributions to psychohistory. He focuses on the adolescent identity crisis because, according to his general theory of the life span, the resolution of this crisis ideally leads to the rejuvenation of the person and, potentially, to the rejuvenation of society. Erikson claimed that Luther’s crisis consisted of an intense Oedipus complex that prompted Luther to question the moral authority invested in father figures, be they his own father or the Pope. Both his father and the Catholic Church attempted to control Luther with a ‘negative external conscience’ since both had contributed significantly to his superego, which emphasized his inherently flawed nature: In the case of his father, Luther did not find support in his choice of occupations, and, in the case of the Church, he felt sinful and unworthy of his priesthood. According to Erikson, Luther’s uniquely strong sense of conscientiousness led to an affirmation of his inner voice as a valid instrument of both self-determination and religious belief, thereby justifying salvation based on faith rather than on obedience to an ecclesiastical (paternal) authority. ‘In laying the foundation for a religiosity for the adult man,’ Erikson argued, Luther ‘displaced the attributes of his own hard-won adulthood; his renaissance of faith portrays a vigorous recovery of his own ego-initiative.’ (Erikson [1958] 1993 p. 206).

Erikson’s biographical approach is unusual for its reciprocal view of history and human development: historical forces clearly shaped Luther and yet, in resolving his identity crisis, Luther in turn shaped history. There are, however, several basic difficulties common to analyses such as Erikson’s, including, for example, a lack of pertinent biographical information about the subject’s childhood, difficulty establishing causal links between early and later events in a person’s life, and identifying why one person—and not another among many people in similar circumstances—becomes a historically great figure (Runyan 1982).

1.3 The ‘Historical Present’: The Life Span And Life Course

Social historians and psychohistorians emphasize common elements of context that people share in a historical period. Yet within historical periods, unique trends and events occur that differentiate age groups and even individuals within age groups. Life-span psychology and life course sociology represent two approaches to the historical present and development.

Life-span developmental psychology refers to a series of interrelated concepts and propositions that emphasize the complexity of development in historically changing contexts. According to this perspective, age-graded development is markedly influenced by existing sociocultural conditions and by social change. Indeed, development can be viewed as the interactions among age-graded, historical, and nonnormative (or idiosyncratic) influences (see Baltes et al. 1998). The life-span paradigm has been especially influential in charting connections between age trends in psycho- logical phenomenon and historical time.

For example, Nesselroade and Baltes (1974) examined the relative contributions of age and history to the development of adolescent personality and ability between 1970 and 1972 in the USA. They reasoned that because youth are highly influenced by social circumstance and because personality reflects situational factors, trends in variables such as adolescent ego strength, independence, and ability may be explained by (a) unique historical experiences shared by young people born in the same year (a birth cohort effect) and (b) historical experiences that exert a similar influence across many age groups (a period effect). To examine these possibilities, they studied a sample of adolescents of diverse ages (ranging from 13 to 18) and, within age groups, adolescents from different birth cohorts (e.g., 15 year olds born in 1955, 1956, and 1957).

Empirical analyses reveal significant declines in self-rated ego strength and achievement and a significant increase in independence between 1970 and 1972, irrespective of age, which suggests that the development of adolescent personality and ability are less dependent on age than on historical setting. According to Nesselroade and Baltes, the observed effects may reflect several historical features that characterized the early 1970s and affected many adolescents (i.e., a period effect), including the tendency of youth to value moral, social, and political questioning (especially of the Vietnam war) rather than to value cognitive achievement, and the widespread decline in confidence in public and educational leadership. This research and related studies suggest that psychological development does not proceed as ‘an orderly, sequential unfolding of universal, stage-like behavior patterns’ (Nesselroade and Baltes 1974, p. 57), but rather is shaped in significant ways by historically based experiences (see also Schaie 1996, for notable cohort and period effects on adult cognitive development).

The life course refers to the sequence of age-graded roles that typically characterize development. These roles (e.g., student, worker, mother) bring with them expectations, opportunities, and limitations, all of which shape the contours of people’s lives. This sequence of roles, their timing, and content are sensitive to immediate historical circumstances. Thus, the study of the life course typically begins with social changes and traces the implications of these changes to the developing person.

Drawing on data from a wide variety of sources, for example, Modell (1989) shows that the ‘normative’ sequence of roles often associated with the transition to adulthood—the completion of school, entry into work, marriage, and becoming a parent—became less common through the twentieth century. Modell juxtaposed his quantitative findings with the qualitative study of US cultural practices (dating, for example) to suggest that as youth were freed from the constraints of family and as they acquired financial resources of their own by wage labor, they increasingly became ‘shapers of youth,’ making choices about when and how they would enter adulthood. The aggregate of these choices creates a ‘demonstration effect’ for subsequent cohorts, until the next demonstration effect comes along to replace it.

The study of the life course owes much to Elder’s watershed Children of the Great Depression ([1974] 1999), which integrated a focus on historical and social change with the study of the family and the social and psychological development of the person. A key analytic tool in Elder’s research is the birth cohort (i.e., the year a person is born), which situates the person’s development in the context of historical events. For example, Elder compared the lives of older children (ages 11–13 in the depths of the Depression) and younger children (ages 3–5 in the depths of the Depression) during and after this event. He further distinguished between families who did and did not experience serious financial burdens because of economic downturn. Although the Depression led to similar changes in the deprived families of both cohorts—involving the division of labor, altered family roles, and social strains—its developmental effects varied by the age of the children. For example, children in the younger cohort from deprived families were more vulnerable to family strains and indeed were less likely to be hopeful, self-directed, or confident about their future than were their counterparts in families not adversely affected by the Depression. In contrast, the older boys from deprived families were likely to take active steps to help their families and themselves; these experiences in turn enhanced their social independence, which had lasting effects on their lives (see Elder et al. 1993).

Elder’s research established a general analytic model that interrelates economic downturn and individual development. The basic model posits that economic stressors lead to marital tensions, which in turn have negative implications for parenting and children’s well-being. Although the model was developed in the context of the Great Depression, it has proven useful in understanding other economic downturns (e.g., the Farm Crisis of the 1980s). Elder’s research also established a series of analytic principles for the study of change and human development across historical circumstances. For example, the life-stage principle asserts that the influence of a historical event depends on the age at which the person experiences it. This principle is illustrated by the differences observed among the older and younger children of the Great Depression, but it has also been used, for example, to study the effects of military service, German reunification, and China’s Cultural Revolution on people’s lives.

2. Historical Data And Theories Of Human Development

While the theories and empirical research discussed in the previous section emphasize how particular historical forces lead to specific patterns of development, some scientists use historical data to test general ideas about human behavior. This approach has yielded valuable insights, for example, about the factors that affect physical height (Fogel et al. 1983), human creativity (Simonton 1999), and the timing of puberty (Mitterauer 1993).

One of the landmark contributions in the use of historical data to test general psychological principles is Sulloway’s Born to Rebel (1996). Sulloway developed an elaborate theory that interrelates birth order, family dynamics, and aspects of personality. For example, his theory predicts that later-borns are more likely to subscribe to radical ideas than first-borns. He tested this and other expectations by drawing on a comprehensive database of 6,566 participants in famous scientific, religious, and political movements in history. A noteworthy feature of this research is the use of experts to rate the participants in these events in terms of their personality and social attitudes.

Drawing on these unique data, Sulloway found support for his theory. For example, the Copernican revolution and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection are both rated as radical scientific theories and in fact the leaders of both were likely to be later-borns, including Copernicus and Darwin themselves. (Alfred Russell Wallace, sometimes considered the co-originator of evolution by natural selection, was also a later-born.) In contrast, scientific breakthroughs of a technical nature are likely to be achieved by first-borns as found, for example, in the cases of Watson and Crick, the cofounders of the structure of DNA (as well as in the case of their chief rival, Linus Pauling, also a first-born). Sulloway’s research is exemplary for its attempt to document person-bysituation interactions involving the historical context, such as birth order and the social implications of a scientific revolution.

3. Integrating History And Development

The preceding discussion suggests two directives for future research. First, accounts of human development will ideally incorporate explanatory factors from all three historical time frames. The case of attachment illustrates the potential of this approach. In terms of epochs, ethological research has contributed to an understanding of the instinctual basis of attachment behaviors. In terms of historical periods, the parent– child relationship is heavily conditioned by social institutions such as education, work, and family. And, in the historical present, parental loss or changes in the parent–child relationship are often precipitated by immediate circumstances of historical import. Indeed, attachment theory was inspired in part by the countless children left without parents after World War II.

Similarly, Sulloway’s work on sibling strategies and family dynamics unites evolutionary theories about sibling competition with a consideration of historical practices (such as primogeniture), and finally with statistical patterns associated with individual development.

Second, interdisciplinary collaborations will benefit from the integration of diverse methods of inquiry. Many developmentalists rely on statistical analyses of data that were recently collected; these accounts typically emphasize how contextual and personal factors predict behavior. In contrast, many historians rely on the qualitative study of archival materials; these accounts typically emphasize the complex combinations of structural contingencies and cultural meanings that shape biography. If developmentalists often ignore the interactionist, cultural stance of historians, historians are often skeptical as to whether their interests can be measured and subjected to statistical analyses. Yet a growing number of studies illustrate the value of integrating diverse methods, including, for example, Modell’s (1989) study of the transition to adulthood and Elder’s study of the Great Depression (Elder et al. 1993; for another example see Hareven 1982).

In short, as research on attachment and family dynamics illustrates, all three historical time frames come together to shape one’s life, and thus render the study of human development an interdisciplinary task that encompasses diverse historical influences. And as research on the transition to adulthood and the Great Depression illustrates, the quantitative and qualitative methods of the behavioral sciences can be used in complementary ways to uncover these many historical influences as they shape development and the biography.

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