This paper presents a discussion-board exchange in which students compare major theories of human development through the lens of cultural influence. The primary post contrasts indigenous psychology with transactional models, illustrating each with cross-cultural examples involving Korean academic achievement and American Indian children's cognitive assessment. Five peer responses then examine additional theoretical pairings — including Piaget and Confucianism, Erikson and Bandura, cognitive and behavioral theories, and Vygotsky alongside Gardiner and Mutter's contextualization model. Reply posts engage critically with each peer, probing issues such as passive versus active modeling, the relationship between developmental theory and mental illness, and the cultural limitations of Piaget's stage theory.
The field of psychology has grown increasingly sensitive to the need to take cultural differences into consideration when evaluating theories of human development. Previously, theories such as Piaget's concept of cognitive stages and Terman's conception of intelligence tended to view development as a universal trajectory applicable to all cultures. In contrast, "indigenous psychology advocates examining knowledge, skills, and beliefs that people have about themselves, and studying them in their natural contexts" (Kim & Park, 2006, p. 289). Theories of indigenous psychology can help explain seemingly inexplicable statistical trends within non-Western cultures when compared with our own.
Self-efficacy theory has long linked high self-esteem to high levels of academic achievement. Intelligence and success are usually seen as rooted in the individual's character. In South Korea, however, individual achievement and self-efficacy are not valued as highly. Instead, a strong cultural belief in hard work and the fulfillment of social obligations has produced a level of academic achievement that surpasses that of the United States. Korean values reflect the Confucian ideal of character: character is something that must be worked at and willed, rather than merely "expressed," as in the American belief system. Students believe they must work hard to honor their parents and that hard work will be rewarded with academic success. Indigenous psychology thus helps explain why pressures that might be viewed as "negative" in a Western context — such as parental pressure to succeed, as opposed to the unconditional love valued in the United States — may have a positive effect on Korean students' grades, even alongside lower rates of self-reported self-esteem.
Another theory, the transactional or dynamic systems model, helps explain why certain individuals living within the same cultural context may respond better or worse to particular types of education. "Transactional models emphasize the bidirectional effects between individuals and cultural contexts and underscore the impact of accumulated exposure to physical and social environments on development" (Tsethlikai, 2011, p. 194). Individuals consciously or unconsciously select which cultural influences they will respond to. Transactional models help explain why children of indigenous parents — even when technically immersed in both American and Native culture — perform considerably worse than their Caucasian counterparts on certain components of intelligence tests. Despite efforts to eliminate bias, there is still a strong priority given to crystallized intelligence, which favors children of higher socioeconomic backgrounds. This leaves "American Indian and Alaska Native children typically doing well on performance test items and performing poorly on verbal items" (Tsethlikai, 2011, p. 194). For example, components of intelligence tests designed to measure working memory use reading-span tasks, although Native children perform much better on memory tests that are less verbally oriented (Tsethlikai, 2011, p. 200).
Like the indigenous model, transactional models stress the culturally bound nature of constructs such as intelligence. Transactional models focus more on the technical aspects of how different components of "intelligence" evolve differently across cultures, whereas indigenous models offer a broader assessment of values. Indigenous models question whether "intelligence" can be understood cross-culturally at all, given that different societies conceptualize the term in such different ways. What is considered "hard work" in America may be conceptualized as a component of intelligence in Korea.
References
Kim, U., & Park, Y. S. (2006). Indigenous psychological analysis of academic achievement in Korea: The influence of self-efficacy, parents, and culture. International Journal of Psychology, 41(4), 287–292.
Tsethlikai, M. (2011). An exploratory analysis of American Indian children's cultural engagement, fluid cognitive skills, and standardized verbal IQ scores. Developmental Psychology, 47(1), 192–202.
Colleague's post: It can be argued that to know people, we must understand how they were raised. We can observe how they interact with the outside world and what adaptations they make through those experiences. Additionally, we can observe the interactions they have with the people around them and what roles they assume based on social positions. These two viewpoints of human development have been associated with the 20th-century cognitive theorist Jean Piaget and the Chinese philosopher Confucius from the 5th century BCE. At first glance, these two theories of human development appear starkly different.
Jean Piaget believed that human development progressed cognitively, starting with the sensorimotor stage from birth until about age two and ending around age 11 with formal operations (Piaget, 1930), though other researchers proposed that cognitive development continues into adulthood (Labouvie-Vief, 1985; Moshman, 2005, as cited in Berk, 2010, p. 20). These stages were believed to become more complex as a child aged. Confucianism, by contrast, concentrates on the social development and progression a person makes as components of human development. The primary relationship begins with the interaction of parent and child and the roles assumed by each person within that relationship. As a person grows older, the contexts and social environments he or she engages in require different relationships, and expectations of the roles at those stages develop accordingly (Kim, 2001, p. 68). The goal is to develop harmony and stability within the strata of social development.
Even though Piaget's theory concentrates on cognition and Confucian philosophy emphasizes social development and filial respect, both share commonalities. Piaget proposed four stages by which a child develops into an adult based on cognitive progression. Confucianism is organized around four contexts: self, family, school, and society. As progression occurs in both frameworks, the development of social roles and responsibilities becomes more complex. Piaget also extended his research to how children interact socially, despite the common perception that he focused exclusively on cognitive development (Berk, 2010, p. 19). From a cultural perspective, examining how people have developed their social roles within immediate families and more distant relationships offers a valuable lens for understanding human development. Kim (1998) examined the transformation of Confucian values as they moved from a traditional rural setting to a modern urban one, finding that industrialization in East Asia has altered how family members interact, how community members relate, and how business is conducted — while traditional values of respect, loyalty, honor, and obedience continue to shape expectations within human relationships.
Reply: I agree that there are meaningful similarities between Confucianism and Piaget's developmental theories. They may appear different at the surface level, and those differences are amplified by Piaget's emphasis on cognitive development and Confucianism's emphasis on relationships. Nevertheless, both frameworks conceptualize development as a process with discrete stages linked to a person's age. By examining a child's age, one could assess whether development was proceeding appropriately or whether developmental delays had occurred.
References
Berk, L. E. (2010). Development through the lifespan (5th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
Kim, U. (2001). Culture, science, and indigenous psychologies: An integrated analysis. In D. Matsumoto (Ed.), The handbook of culture and psychology (pp. 11–34). Oxford University Press.
Kim, U. (1998). Understanding the Korean corporate culture: Analysis of transformative human resource management. Strategic Human Resource Development Review, 2, 68–101.
Piaget, J. (1930). The child's conception of the world. Harcourt, Brace & World. (Original work published 1926).
Colleague's post: The two theories of human development selected here are Erikson's Developmental Theory and Bandura's Social Learning Theory. Erikson's theory of personality development characterizes individual development as occurring through a series of eight bipolar stages across the lifespan, with each stage characterized by a psychosocial crisis that reaches ascendancy based on changes in biological, psychological, and social processes (Sneed, Whitbourne, & Culang, 2006). Social learning theory, by contrast, suggests that both the environment and a person's motivation to learn proactively from important social referents determine individual behavior (Bandura, 1977).
Erikson's theory describes the impact of social experience across the whole lifespan, beginning with infancy (birth to 18 months) and extending through maturity (age 65 to death). Each of the eight stages has a basic conflict, a set of important events, and an outcome. Bandura's theory is mainly concerned with how children and adults operate cognitively on their social experiences and with how these cognitive operations then come to influence behavior and development (Grusec, 1996).
Bandura's Social Learning Theory is considered the stronger explanation for cultural influences on human development. Individuals are believed to abstract and integrate information encountered across a variety of social experiences — including exposure to models, verbal discussions, and discipline encounters. Through this abstraction and integration, they mentally represent their environments and themselves in terms of response-outcome expectancies, perceptions of self-efficacy, and standards for evaluative self-reactions. These cognitions influence not only how individuals respond to environmental stimuli but also the kinds of environments they seek out. According to Bandura (2009), as a society we enjoy the benefits left by those before us who collectively worked for social changes that improved our lives, and our own collective efficacy will determine whether we pass on a habitable planet to future generations.
Reply: There are components of Bandura's social learning theory that I find very appealing, though much of his work on modeling is based on information that children received passively, rather than on modeling the behavior of actual peers or adult mentors. This raises the question of how passive learning differs from active adult modeling, and whether the tremendous influx of passive media — television, movies, and video games — has meaningfully altered the course of human development. Research indicating that internet use can literally alter brain structure adds further complexity to the developmental implications of such passive exposure.
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Prentice Hall.
Bandura, A. (2009). Social cognitive theory goes global. The Psychologist, 22(6), 504–506.
Grusec, J. E. (1994). Social learning theory and developmental psychology: The legacies of Robert R. Sears and Albert Bandura. In R. D. Parke, P. A. Ornstein, J. J. Rieser, & C. Zahn-Waxler (Eds.), A century of developmental psychology (pp. 473–497). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10155-016
Sneed, J. R., Whitbourne, S., & Culang, M. E. (2006). Trust, identity, and ego integrity: Modeling Erikson's core stages over 34 years. Journal of Adult Development, 13(3–4), 148–157. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-007-9026-3
Colleague's post: History provides many reasons why human behavior needs to be studied, not least of which is the prevalence of increasingly serious behavioral problems. From that standpoint, cognitive theory — particularly as articulated by Jean Piaget — and behavioral theory as developed by B. F. Skinner represent two enduring pillars of psychology.
Piaget is known for his work on the four stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages. This framework traces development from infancy to adulthood. As McLeod (2009, updated 2012) notes, Piaget showed that young children think in strikingly different ways from adults, and he believed the mind of a child was far more interesting than that of an adult.
"Compares Piaget's cognition with Skinner's behaviorism"
"Contrasts Vygotsky's ZPD with multicultural contextualization model"
"Explores cultural dimensions in Piaget and Erikson together"
"Revisits Piaget's cultural limitations through Bandura's lens"
You’re 51% through this paper. Sign up to read the remaining 4 sections.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.