Summery

For over a year now, Jared, age 15, has been spending a few nights a week out with his new friend Damien, who is two years older and has a driver’s license. Often they drive around town looking for action. Often they find it, hooking up with girls they know from school or town hangouts and taking them back to Damien’s basement for a few beers and sometimes more. Jared has had sex by now with about ten different partners and he has not used a condom every time—or even most times. After he complained to his doctor about genital sores, he was diagnosed with a case of genital herpes. He will not tell his parents if he can avoid it. They have been on his case lately about doing poorly in school and staying out too late.

Having sex at an early age, having many sexual partners, and having unprotected sex—all part of Jared’s developmental story—are common examples of sexual risk behavior. In the United States, 44% of females and 47% of males in the 15–19 age range (18% of those age 15 like Jared) have had sexual intercourse at least once (Martinez & Abma, 2015). Only about 60% of sexually active American teens used a condom during their last experience of intercourse (Kann et al., 2014). Teenagers have higher rates of sexually transmitted infections such as herpes than adults (Abma, Martinez, & Copen, 2010; and see Chapter 12). And, although teenage pregnancy rates have decreased considerably since a mid-1950s peak, the current pregnancy rate in the United States, 57 of every 1,000 females aged 15–19, is higher than that of most other Western nations (Abma et al., 2010; Sedgh et al., 2015). Why is there so much sexual risk taking among American teens, and what might we do if we want to reduce it?

What is your explanation? What explanations might the leading theories of human development offer? In this chapter we will illustrate that different theories of human development provide different lenses through which to view developmental phenomena, such as teen sexual risk behavior.

2.1

As noted in Chapter 1, a theory is a set of ideas proposed to describe and explain certain phenomena—in this book, human development. In science, it is not enough simply to catalog facts without organizing this information around some set of concepts and propositions. Researchers would soon be overwhelmed by trivia and would lack “the big picture.” A theory of human development provides needed organization, offering a lens through which researchers can interpret and explain any number of specific facts or observations. A theory also guides the collection of new facts or observations, making clear

• what is most important to study,
• what can be hypothesized or predicted about it,
• how it should be studied, and
• how findings should be interpreted.

Because different theorists often have different views on these critical matters, what is learned in any science greatly depends on which theoretical perspectives become dominant, which largely depends on how well they account for the facts.

In this chapter, we examine four major theoretical viewpoints, each with important messages about the nature of human development:

1. The psychoanalytic viewpoint developed by Sigmund Freud and revised by Erik Erikson and other neo-Freudians
2. The learning perspective developed by such pioneers as Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, B. F. Skinner, and Albert Bandura
3. The cognitive developmental viewpoint associated with Jean Piaget
4. The systems theory approach, exemplified by Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model

We will be asking as we go whether these theoretical perspectives meet the criteria of good theories introduced in Chapter 1—that is, whether they are internally consistent (coherent), falsifiable (testable), and supported by data (confirmed by research). To further aid you in comparing the theories, we outline four key developmental issues on which theorists—and people in general—often disagree (Miller, 2016; Lerner et al., 2015; Newman & Newman, 2016): nature–nurture, activity–passivity, continuity–discontinuity, and universality–context specificity. All of us hold some basic beliefs about human development—for example, about the importance of genes versus good parenting in healthy development. Reading this chapter will make you more aware of your own assumptions about human development and how they compare with those of the major theorists. We therefore invite you to clarify your stands on these issues by completing Engagement 2.1. Table 2.5 at the end of the chapter indicates how the major developmental theorists might answer the questions, so you can compare your assumptions with theirs.

In Exploration boxes throughout this chapter, we imagine some major points each theorist might make about the causes of sexual risk behavior in adolescence. We suggest that you predict what each theorist would say before you read each of these boxes to see whether you can successfully apply each theory. At the end of the chapter (Application 2.1), we’ll invite you to apply the different theories to understanding and preventing risky sexual behavior in adolescence. It is our hope that when you master the major theories of human development, you will be able to draw on their concepts and propositions to make better sense of—and perhaps to guide in more positive directions—your own and other people’s development. Now to the four major issues addressed by theories of human development: nature–nurture, activity–passivity, continuity–discontinuity, and universality–context specificity.

Nature-Nurture

Is development primarily the product of nature (biological forces) or nurture (environmental forces)? As you saw in Chapter l, the nature–nurture issue has been resolved in the sense that the two forces always “co-act” to produce development. However, different theories have taken different positions on the issue and it remains centrally important in the study of human development (Goldhaber, 2012). Strong believers in nature stress the importance of individual genetic makeup, universal maturational processes guided by genes, biologically based predispositions built into genes over the course of evolution, and other biological influences. They are likely to claim that children will typically achieve the same developmental milestones at similar times because of maturational forces, that major changes in functioning associated with aging are largely biologically based, and that differences among individuals are largely because of differences in their genetic makeup and physiology.

By contrast, strong believers in nurture emphasize environment—influences outside the person. Nurture includes influences of the physical environment (crowding, climate, and the like) as well as the social environment (for example, learning experiences, child-rearing methods, peer influence, societal trends, and the cultural context in which the person develops). A strong believer in nurture is likely to argue that human development can take many paths depending on the individual’s experiences over a lifetime.

Activity-Passivity

The activity–passivity issue focuses on the extent to which human beings are active in creating and influencing their own environments and, in the process, in producing their own development, or are passively shaped by forces beyond their control. Some theorists believe that humans are curious, active creatures who orchestrate their own development by exploring the world around them and shaping their environments. The girl who asks for dolls at the toy store and the boy who clamors instead for a toy machine gun are actively contributing to their own gender-role development. Both the budding scientist who experiments with chemicals in the basement and the sociable adolescent who spends hours text messaging are seeking out and creating a niche that suits their emerging traits and abilities—and that further develops those traits in the process (Plomin et al., 2013).

Other theorists view humans as passively shaped by forces beyond their control—usually environmental influences but possibly strong biological forces. From this vantage point, children’s academic failings might be blamed on the failure of their parents and teachers to provide them with appropriate learning experiences, and the problems of socially isolated older adults might be attributed to societal neglect of the elderly.