Life-Span Developmental Psychology. Methodological Issues

365 Pages·1973·6.366 MB·English

by  John R. Nesselroade and Hayne W. Reese (Eds.)

CONTRIBUTORS
DONALD M. BAER JUM C. NUNNALLY
PAULB. BALTES WILLIS F. OVERTON
P. M. BENTLER SLOBODAN B. PETROVICH
RAYMOND B. CATTELL HAYNE W. REESE
LUTZ H. ECKENSBERGER KLAUS F. RIEGEL
L. R. GOULET TODD R. RISLEY
ECKHARD H. HESS K. WARNER SCHAIE
FRANK H. HOOPER EDWIN P. WILLEMS
JOHN R. NESSELROADE MONTROSE M. WOLF
LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY
METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES
Edited by
JOHN R. NESSELROADE and HAYNE W. REESE
Department of Psychology
West Virginia University
Morgantown, West Virginia
1973
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List of Contributors
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contributions begin.
DONALD M. BAER (187), Department of Human Development, University
of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
PAUL B. BALTES* (219), Department of Psychology, West Virginia
University, Morgantown, West Virginia
P. M. BENTLER (145), Department of Psychology, University of California,
Los Angeles, California
RAYMOND B. CATTELL (111), Laboratory of Personality Analysis,
Psychology Building, Champaign, Illinois
LUTZ H. ECKENSBERGER (43), Psychologisches Institut der Universität
des Saarlandes, Germany
L. R. GOULET (281), Department of Educational Psychology, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
ECKHARD H. HESS (25), Department of Psychology, The University of
Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
FRANK H. HOOPER (299), Department of Home Management and Family
Living, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
*Present address: College of Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, Pennsylvania.
ix
χ List of Contributors
JOHN R. NESSELROADE* (219), Department of Psychology, West Virginia
University, Morgantown, West Virginia
JUM C. NUNNALLY (87), Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt Uni-
versity, Nashville, Tennessee
WILLIS F. OVERTONt (65), Department of Psychology, State University
of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York
SLOBODAN B. PETROVICHt (25), Department of Psychology, The
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
HAYNE W. REESE (65), Department of Psychology, West Virginia University,
Morgantown, West Virginia
KLAUS F. RIEGEL (1), Department of Psychology, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Michigan
TODD R. RISLEY (177), Department of Human Development, University
of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
K. WARNER SCHAIE (253), Department of Psychology, West Virginia
University, Morgantown, West Virginia
EDWIN P. WILLEMS (197), Department of Psychology, University of
Houston, Houston, Texas
MONTROSE M. WOLF (177), Department of Human Development, Uni-
versity of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
*Present Address: College of Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University, University
Park, Pennsylvania.
tPresent address: Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
^Present address: Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland.
Preface
During the past three years, a series of conferences held at West Virginia
University has focused on the general topic of Life-Span Developmental
Psychology. The second conference, held in 1971 and reported in this volume,
provided a forum for the discussion of a variety of methodological issues
related to the study of developmental processes over the life-span.
The principal objectives of the Life-Span Conference have been not only
to explicate, by successive approximation, the range of empirical phenomena
with which a life-span developmental psychology should be concerned, but
also to explore issues about theory, measurement, design, and data analysis
which bear upon it. Although the situation is changing, a sufficiently large
cadre of "true" life-span developmentalists does not exist to permit mounting
such a conference wholly from their ranks. Consequently, our strategy was
to invite several participants who, by their research activities, showed interest
in related aspects of developmental psychology, and to challenge them to
identify, formulate, and discuss critical methodological issues as, in their
perception, they pertained to a life-span approach.
Augmenting the schedule of conference participants by researchers not
ostensibly committed to a life-span orientation was not only necessary but
may be seen as a virtue to the extent that the various perspectives and interests
each offers serve to sharpen and refine the meaning of Life-Span Developmental
Psychology. Until time renders possible a judgment based on hindsight you,
the reader, must evaluate the success of the venture.
XI
Acknowledgments
The editors gratefully acknowledge the cooperation and assistance of all
those who helped to make the second Life-Span Conference a reality. Ray
Koppelman, Provost for Research and Graduate Affairs, and K. Warner
Schaie, Chairman of the Department of Psychology, arranged the necessary
financial support. Graduate students in our program, whom the conference
was designed to benefit directly, assumed many of the responsibilities related
to playing host and discharged them admirably. They include William Arnold,
Thomas Bartsch, William Birkhill, Barbara Buech, John Burke, Dana Cable,
Nicholas Cavoti, Joseph Fitzgerald, Edward Forbes, Wanda Franz, John Friel,
Carol Furry, Frances Hoyer, William Hoyer, Erich Labouvie, Gisela Labouvie,
Anne Nardi, Diane Papalia, Leighton Stamps, and Richard Swanson.
Xlll
1
CHAPTER
Developmental Psychology and Society:
Some Historical and Ethical Considerations
KLAUS F. RIEGEL
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
Ethical issues, as commonly conceived, concern the individual's actions toward
other individuals. Thus, the guidelines prepared by the American Psychological
Association (1963) provide standards on professional interactions. By and large,
they disregard the scientist's responsibility toward the society within which
his discipline has emerged. The second ethical consideration concerns this connec-
tion and impels the scientist to be engaged in or, at least, to be conscious
of social actions. In the following paper, attention will be directed exclusively
toward the latter issue.
I. Social, Political, and Economic Bases of the Developmental Sciences
A. Historical Node Points in the Conception of Man
. . . for what everyone wanted was denied by everyone else, and
what resulted was what no one had wanted
—FRIEDRICH ENGELS
1. Psychological Interpretations
Our concern with the history of civilization and, especially, our atempts to
answer the question of whether a non-Western developmental psychology, for
1
2 Klaus F. Riegel
instance, a black psychology is possible, might be compared with the attempts
of psychoanalysts. Inquiries into the distant past of our society are similar to
their attempts at discovering points of choice and/or catastrophe in the life
of an individual (Wyatt, 1963). The psychoanalyst essentially restricts his efforts
to the discovery of these points; it is left to the patient to reconstruct his life
in a new and "healthier" fashion. Similarly, our historical inquiries aim at
uncovering points in time at which crucial choices were made. We can trace
the history back to these points, but any distinct groups, such as minority groups,
would have to construct their own new interpretation of life, a new philosophy
of man and his development.
A great many writers have expressed similar viewpoints. In his theory of
human development, Erikson (1968) distinguishes various binary choice points
which lead to either trust or distrust, initiative or guilt, identity or identity
confusion, etc. Erikson extended his interpretations to cultural developments,
for instance, by relating the identity choice to the historical period of the Reforma-
tion and by demonstrating this interpretation through an analysis of the Young
Man Luther (1958). It is tempting to suggest that minority groups within the
Western civilization are faced with similar identity problems. Thus, like an
individual, perhaps they need to go back to such points in history in order
to find their identity and aim at its conceptual description.
In contrast to Erikson, Jung's work (Jacobi, 1962) has focused more strongly
upon universal features of civilization. By looking at art, symbolism, customs,
and social conventions across developmental and historical stages, he searched
for those forms and expressions common to all men. Jung (unlike his teacher,
Freud) emphasized the constructive aspects in the therapeutic process. It is
not enough, he maintained, to rediscover and identify the choice points of the
past, but it is necessary to construct new perspectives, a new philosophy of
life. This should not be left to the patient; the therapist should be of active
assistance.
In his Comparative Psychology of Mental Development, Werner (1926) drew
parallels between the development of children and that of so-called primitive
societies. Thus, he revived the recapitulation hypothesis of evolutionary theory
and extended it to psychological and social conditions, claiming that children
undergo developmental sequences similar to those that characterize historical
progression. Psychopathological conditions are regarded as regressions to or
fixations upon early developmental levels. With much support from cultural
anthropologists, Werner restricted his interpretations to noncognitive behavior.
In comparison, Piaget in his studies of Genetic Epistemology (1950) claimed
that in the development of intellectual and logical operations as well, children
recapitulate the steps through which societies had to pass in order to attain
the knowledge of modern civilization.
Developmental Psychology and Society 3
We do not intend to draw upon these recapitulation models in order to specify
different conceptualizations of man and his development. However, historical
studies make us aware of critical node points at which alternative models of
interpretation were still existent but, afterward, were repressed for the sake
and success of the dominant civilization.
2. Pre-Grecian Civilizations
In a recent presentation, Smith (1970) delineated modes of psychological
conceptualization which characterize the civilizations preceding the Greco-
Roman period. While the latter has been described by an ontological dualism
between being and becoming and modern Western civilization by the epistemolog-
ical dualism between mind and body, the ancient civilizations of Sumer, Babylon,
Assyria, or Egypt emphasized distinctly different dimensions and dichotomies
(Moscati, 1957). The corresponding philosophies of the universe, life, and man
need not concern us in detail, but it is of interest to analyze how these conceptions
were overcome or repressed through the emergence of the Greco-Roman civiliza-
tion.
During the early periods of this civilization, we find an array of different
world views with which the Greeks became acquainted. This confrontation has
been emphasized by several scholars. Nestle (1940) considered the entire develop-
ment of Greek civilization as a struggle between mythos and logos, between
the forces of darkness and light and—as elaborated by Nietzsche (1872) and
Benedict (1934)—between the Dionysian and Appollonian ideals. During the
history of the Greek civilization, the latter and thus rational thought attained
dominance and the "alien" ecstatic forces of emotionality were successfully
controlled and repressed.
Early in Greek history, the term "barbarian" denoted nothing else than "the
other," i.e., a person of non-Greek origin. However, it soon came to indicate
an uncivilized, alien, inferior person. This change characterizes the effort among
ancient Greeks to facilitate their own cultural identity by downgrading persons
and groups with different languages, habits, customs, and conceptions of man.
Since many of these so-called barbarians had attained a much higher level of
civilization than the Greeks of the Homeric period, their attempts appear highly
artificial. The Greeks at that period were the "barbarians," indeed.
For similar reasons, romantic and idealized interpretations of Greek civilization
have dominated modern historical views since the Renaissance and, especially,
since the classicism of Winkelmann, Herder, and Goethe. Consequently, the
Greek civilization appears as an elevated historical period initiated by a distinct
historical break. Only recent research and interpretations have revealed the herit-
age from pre-Greek civilizations, especially from Persia, Mycenae, and Egypt.