Chapter 2: Understanding Development Flashcards
Are propositions and hypotheses (they are not fact)?
Theories
What is the purpose of theories?
- human development are models for understanding how individuals develop, grow, and change over time
- helping map out how helpers can intervene to promote change in others
Theories of Development?
1) psychodynamic theories
2) ethological theories
3) humanistic theories
4) behavioral/learning theories
5) contemporary theories
Freud’s psychodynamic theory: the mind has 3 interconnected parts?
1) id - represents our unconscious instinctive drives
2) superego - represents our conscience
3) ego - mediates between the id and superego
Childhood experience inform lifestyle beliefs that influence one’s actions
Humans are born social
Adler’s individual psychology (Adlerian theory)
All behaviors are interpersonal in nature (self does not exist, always influence by social relationship)
Sullivan’s interpersonal theory of psychotherapy
Development is impeded by an inability to negotiate the challenge at each stage
Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development
Uses evolution to explain human development?
Ethological theories
The bond between infant and their primary caregivers is the most critical aspect of human development
Bowlby’s attachment theory
People have an innate capacity to self-actualize
Rodger’s client-centered theory
When people are in the present moment, they are to live authentically and be agents in decision making
Gestalt therapy
Emphasis on personal subjectivity - the way people make meaning of their experience is a central component of development
Existentialism
People have an innate motivation and the potential to live a good life when they are in an environment that fosters such development
Positive psychology
Refers to the degree to which a person’s behavior. attitudes and other personal characteristics are determined or caused by a specific factor
Determinism
This type of determinism states that “who we are is determined by our genes.” (nature)
Biological determinism
This type of determinism takes a strong “cultural-determinist” position. (nurture)
Social/cultural determinism: behaviorism
Stimuli shape learning based on impulse or reflex
Pavlov’s classical conditioning
Reinforcement and punishment shape learning
Skinner’s operant conditioning
Modeling, observational learning, reinforcement, and motivation shape learning
Bandura’s social learning theory
Development is constructed in interpersonal, cultural, historical, and political contexts
Contemporary theories
Behavior and thinking cannot be separated from their cultural context (personality develops from social interaction)
Vygotsky
Examines socialization, the development of the self, and social roles in the context of human interaction
Social constructionism
Looks at the meaning of daily social interactions
Symbolic interactionism
The individual’s self-image is based on how a person thinks they are viewed by others (looking-glass self)
Charles Cooley
3 components of the looking-glass self?
1) how you imagine you appear to others
2) how you imagine those others judge your appearance
3) how you feel as a result
Development occurs within complex social systems that project unique spheres of influence on people’s lives
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory
Are interested in how gender is socially constructed
Feminist theory: gender and socialization
Are interested in disability is socially constructed
Feminist disability theory
Made up of social variables/traits like age, “race” and ethnicity, sex and gender, class, (dis) ability, and sexual orientation
Social location
Negative valued traits/variables “intersect”, and this often results in even worse experiences of discrimination and marginalization
Intersectionality
Michel Foucault
- Ways of speaking about something that produces knowledge and creates meaning
- gain status and come to be known as “truth”
- are marginalized, but can offer a way to resist/challenge/contest dominant discourses
- process of examining how individual discourses developed
- discourse
- dominant discourses
- alternative discourses
- archeology of knowledge
Rooted in feminist and critical theory
Power of telling one’s story and of being heard
Contemporary theories: Narrative theory
