Lifespan development is a scientific approach to questions about growth, change, and stability in physical, cognitive, social, and personality characteristics at all ages from conception to death (Feldman, 2014 Seventh Edition). In reading the chapter I found three theories very interesting evolutionary, cognitive, and psychodynamic. The reason I find evolutionary perspective because I feel as though this perspective or theory is the base of study. When we are born we have genetic make-up for two people with two family trees. The blending is sometimes a hard transition. We all have been around child and seen their parents’ characteristics in the child. Evolutionary perspective attributes to the genetic inheritance from our ancestors, contending that genes determine not only traits such as skin and eye color, but certain personality traits and social behaviors (Feldman, 2014 Seventh Edition). We all see and new edition in a family and sit and try and pick out which parent the child looks like. We are a very diverse place. The traits and genetic studies are a constant for new developments and updated current practices. Education on social norms of new populations are a must. As we learned throughout history change is a shock. We need to educate and adapt to the societal new comers. Problems occur in the lag between establishment of new members and educative process which has caused some havoc for community members. With more and more cultural differences and blending there
The folk theory “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree” was invented by Alexander Pope of the 18th century. This theory means that early influences have a perpetual effect on a person’s life. Many things effect development such as environmental factors, social norms, parental and peer influences. A child learns by watching and early on in life when children have no way of communicating that’s all they do. These early year experiences shape who a person will become and how they will act. This applies to lifespan human development in the earliest years of life including infancy, and part of childhood. Children lead by example, so everything that is experienced helps develop their personality. Subcultural differences, nature and nurture, and
According to Annie Murphy Paul’s research (2011), one of the first things babies learn before they are born are the sounds of their surroundings, and most important, the sound of their mother’s voice—her voice is the clearest to the baby so it is the most soothing and calming. Babies also learn smells and tastes in utero, once the olfactory receptors and taste buds are developed. This teaches the baby what is and is not safe to consume. Overall, babies learn about the culture they are going to enter—they learn their mother’s accent and the variety of food available.
The field of study that examines patterns of growth, change, and stability in behavior that occur throughout the entire lifespan is called lifespan development. Lifespan development takes a scientific approach in its study of growth, change, and stability. This development emphases on human development. Developmentalists study the course of development in nonhuman species, the most popular examine growth and change in people. In contrast I will focus on the ways people and myself change and grow during our lives, with the consideration of stability in our live span. Together, these findings suggest that we will go through
Evolutionary psychology is the study of universal human nature, or the sex specific male human nature and female human nature. Human nature consists of domain-specific evolved psychological mechanisms. A psychological mechanism is an information-processing procedure which evolution by natural and sexual selection has equipped humans to possess in order to solve an adaptive problem, such as: survival and reproduction. Psychological mechanisms mostly operate behind our conscious thinking. Evolved psychological mechanisms produce values and preferences, which performers then pursue within their constraints; they also engender emotions.
The American Psychological Association 2009 defines biopsychosocial as “the systematic integration of the biological, psychological and social approaches of the study of mental health and specific mental disorders” (p.48). Santrock, John W (2015) refers the human lifespan as the primary base of the human growth process that starts with the reproduction of cells. The reproduction will include the physical development of the body, brain development and internal organs that are developing during the pregnancy, birth, early, middle, and late childhood, adolescence, early, middle, and late adulthood until they die. In addition to the environments where individuals grow, culture and socioeconomic status also influence the person’s personalities. There exist six main theories of human development and these are: the Psychoanalytic theories, cognitive theories, behavioral and social cognitive theories, ethological theories, ecological theories, and eclectic theoretical orientation (Santrock, 2015).
As mentioned previously in Jeeves and Brown’s book, the field of evolutionary psychology is one of two divisions within neuroscience receiving a lot of attention for its cutting edge research and controversial conclusions. At the beginning of chapter 6, the authors reference evolutionary psychology’s growing popularity, citing particular news articles in prevalent magazines such as Times and Der Spiegel. However, these snippets of debated discoveries in evolutionary psychology should be interpreted with a keen eye. With so much hype and excitement surrounding the field, the scientific basis of evolutionary psychology becomes, at times, distorted. Thus, Jeeves and Brown discuss the true scientific roots of evolutionary psychology in chapter
The evolutionary perspective of psychology is the conception that the brain and body have developed to their current state after centuries of evolution. The center of focus for evolutionary psychologists, which is closely related to that of the biological perspective, is to study how inheritance plays a part in determining thought and behavior. When Philip encountered his old girlfriend and her new boyfriend at a restaurant, he left the restaurant in a rage because he was jealous of the situation. Philip recalls his mother being abusive and calling him harsh names while he was growing up, which are actions associated with the emotion of rage. Evolutionary psychologists have conducted studies that show that there is a certain gene that affects
Charles Darwin was not only a pioneer in evolutionary psychology, also today’s theories of modern lifespan development draw on and are influenced by Darwin’s ideas. His functionalist perspective primarily focused on the reason for development of specific human characteristics over many generations, and therefore an enormously long timescale. However, inspired by the observations in the development his own son, Darwin also acknowledged that “an individual is the result of a gradual sequence of prior changes, both in a broad evolutionary sense and within individual’s own lifetime and further development and changes lies ahead” (Cooper and Roth, p.50, 2003). This notion provided the basis for other researchers to further explore the
Before discussing this question it is important to understand how neurotransmission occurs. Firstly, the neuron impulse needs to be triggered, dopamine for example can be triggered by something a human finds pleasurable such as cigarettes or food. After the neuron is triggered it fires the impulse across the neuron releasing dopamine transmitters into the synaptic gap. From there, the neurotransmitter binds with specific receptor sites to activate the dopamine. Almost immediately after the human is filled with joy and pleasure. This explains how (especially in addicts) the site of things can cause pleasure and affect human behavior in a positive way. Contradicting this however if there is a problem or lack of dopamine, the human will have feelings
Dr. Curtis Dunkel is currently a Professor of Psychology at Western Illinois University. Dunkel’s main research is on Evolutionary Developmental Psychology with a focus on personality and psychosocial development. Dunkel has received numerous degrees from Rock Valley Community College, Augustana College, Western Illinois University, and University of Nebraska.
: The evolutionary perspective revolves around adaptation and survival. When I hear the word ‘evolution’, a few different things come to mind. Concepts like, Darwin, survival of the fittest, the overall adaptation and growth of a species in order to be better equip to survive and reproduce. An evolutionary psychologist would want to find out how this behavior was influenced by survival need. Due to the fact that babies are born completely helpless and without defense, it makes sense in the context of survival for them to desire contact and with a caretaker. Babies receive food and nutrition from their caretakers as well, which only strengthens the need to be close with them in order to live.
is known as the developer of human genetic the one who started investigating the biology of
The lecture this week started with the progress of society. Darwin noted that in a society, competition is need to weed out the weak, also known as survival of the fittest. In the modern society of humans, there is support that is provided for a wide range of differences among all members, so there is little need to apply survival of the fittest to modern society. One man argued against this, and he believed that we should moved towards a utopian state in society where no person has any problems, even if that were to mean losing people along the way. Galton, interested in heredity, noted that certain humans had this eminent characteristic, and discovered that eminent people are typically related to other eminent people. This pushed him to believe that perhaps intelligence is hereditary. If intelligence could be hereditary, then wealth
Recently a start-up social marketing Silicon Valley executive was quoted as saying "If you are comfortable when you launch your site you waited too late."
To study the evolution of human behavior, we must first understand the evolutionary foundation of modern human behavior. Using the knowledge we have about human behavior while observing for patterns that are consistent with evolutionary models. Taking advantage of natural experiments that produce different combinations of variables that can allows us to obtain new approach on human behavior. This chapter will focus on various aspects of human behavior from an evolutionary viewpoint. These involve the “ecology and demography of traditional human societies, patters of human behavior that have been shaped by sexual selection, the interaction between culture and biology in the expression of language, and the emergence of behavioral disease in an