Theories of Human

Development
• While there are a lot of controversies surrounding human development, you may
agree with several issues since you use as bases your own personal experiences or
the observations you make about your peers, friends, family members, etc.
• You may also quench your thirst for knowledge based on certain theories of
human development which had long been on certain theories of human
development which had long been developed and which are continuously being
develop.
• Although no single theoretical viewpoint would offer a rather satisfying
explanation of human development, each of the theories, however, may
contribute significant insights to your understanding of yourself and of others in
situations at home, in school or any place you go to.
 Controversies about Human Development
1. Inherently Bad versus Inherently Good.
• Social philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries have
portrayed children as inherently bad (doctrine of original sin),
as inherently good (doctrine of innate good), or as neither bad
nor good (doctrine of tabula rasa).
• As it turns out, each of these ideas has remained with us today
in one or more contemporary theories of human development.
• Although one may search for a theory in vain for explicit
statements about human nature, the theorist will typically
emphasize either the positive or negative aspects of children’s
character or perhaps will note that positiveness or negatives of
character depends on the child’s experiences.
• 2. Nature Versus Nurture.
• This is one of the oldest controversies.
• Are human beings a product of their heredity and other biological predispositions, or
are they shaped by the environment in which they are raised?
• Arthur Jensen (1969) has argued that heredity accounts for some of the variability in
human intelligence; most developmental researchers, however, consider this an
overestimation.
• On the other hand, B.F. Skinner (1971) believes that many human attributes are
determined largely by environment biology playing only a minor role.
• The majority of our human developmentalist now believe that the relative contributions
of nature and nurture depend on the aspect of development in question.
• However, they stress that complex human attributes such as temperament,
intelligence, and personality are the end product of a long and involved interplay
between biological predispositions and environmental forces.
• Thus, it is advisable to think less about nature versus nurture and more about how these
two sets of influences combine or interact to produce developmental change.
3. Activity Versus Passivity.
• Another theoretical controversy is the activity/passivity
issue.
• Some children are curious, activity/passivity issues.
• Some children are curious, active creatures who largely
contribute to the agents of society that treat them.
• Some are passive souls on whom society fixes its stamp.
4. Continuity Versus Discontinuity.
• Continuitytheorists view human development as an
additive process that occurs in small steps, without
sudden changes.
• In contrast, “discontinuity” or “stage” theorists believe
that the developing skill proceeds through a series of
abrupt changes, each of which elevates the child to a
new and presumably more advanced stage.
 Developmental Stage

• A developmental stage is a distinct period of the life

cycle characterized by a particular set of abilities,
motives, behavior, emotion that occur together and form
a coherent pattern.
 Theories of Human Development

• A theory is a set of concepts and propositions that helps to describe and

explain observations that one has made.
• Theories are particularly useful if they are concise and yet applicable to a
wide range of phenomena.
• Good theories are also precise, that is capable of making explicit predictions
that can be evaluated in later research.
 There are several theoretical perspectives on
human development:
• psychoanalytic theory,
• psychosocial theory;
• learning or behavioral theory;
• social learning theory;
• cognitive-developmental theory;
• moral theory;
• ethological and sociological theory.
 The Psychoanalytic Theory
• Freud formulated his psychoanalytic theory from observations and notes that he made about the
life histories of his mentally disturbed patients.
• Frued assumed that people are often reluctant to discuss very personal matters with strangers,
even if the stranger is a therapist.
• For this reason, he favored nontraditional methods of interviewing patients – methods such as
hypnosis, free association, and dream analysis.
• Dreams were thought of as a particularly rich source of information, for they give some indication
of a patient’s unconscious motivation.
• Frued assumed that we all dream about what we really want – for example, sex and power –
unhindered by social prohibitions, and tend to suppress these desires when we are awake.
• Frued was able to influence our behavior. As biological creatures, we have goals or motives that
must be satisfied.
• Yet, society dictates that many of these basic urges are undesirable and must be suppressed or
controlled.
• According to Frued, these conflicts emerge at several points during childhood and play a major
role in determining the course and character of one’s social and personality development.
 Instincts, Goals and Motives
• Frued believed that all human behavior is energized by psychodynamic forces.
• Presumably, each individual has a fixed amount of psychic (or mental) energy that he uses to
think, to learn, and to perform other mental functions.
• According to Frued, a child needs psychic energy in order to satisfy his basic urges.
• Frued viewed the newborn as an inherently negative creature who in relentlessly ‘driven” by two
kinds of biological instincts (or motives) which he called EROS and THANATOS, Eros, or life
instinct, helps the child (and the species) to survive, it directs life-sustaining activities such as
respiration, eating, sex, and the fulfillment of all other bodily needs.
• In contrast, Thanatos or death instinct, is viewed as a set of destructive forces present in all
human beings.
• Frued believed that eros is stronger than Thanatos, thus enabling us to survive rather than to self-
destruct.
• He further argued that if the psychic energy of Thanatos has reached the critical point, the death
instinct would be expressed in some way.
• For example, Frued thought that destructive acts such as arson, to fights, murder, war, or even,
masochism (physical harm directed against self) are outward expressions of the death instinct.
 The Three Components of Personality
• The major function of the id is to serve the instincts by the pleasure principle – by
seeking immediate gratification of instinctual needs. This impulsive thinking, also
called primary-process thinking, is rather unrealistic, however, since the id will
invest psychic energy in any object that seems to gratify the instinct, regardless of
whether the object can actually do so or not.
• The ego is the executive of the personality. It emerges when psychic energy is
diverted from the id to energize important cognitive processes such as
perception, learning, and logical reasoning. The goal of the rational ego is served
by the reality principle, that is, it finds realistic ways of gratifying the instinct. The
ego must at the same time invest some of its available psychic energy to block the
id’s irrational thinking. Frued also stressed that the ego is both a servant and a
master to the id. The ego’s mastery is reflected in its ability to delay gratification
until reality is served.
• The superego is the judicial branch of the personality. It is the person’s moral
arbiter. It develops from the ego, represents the ideal, and strives for perfection
rather than for pleasure or for reality.
• Frued believed that 3-6-year-old children are gradually
internalizing the moral standards of their parents,
eventually adopting these guidelines as their own.
• These international “code of conduct” form the child’s
superego.
• At this point, children do not need an adult to tell
them when they have been bad, they are now aware
of their transgressions and will feel guilty or shamed of
what they have done.
 Psychosexual Stages of Development
• Frued believed that all human beings pass through a series of psychosexual stages, each
stage dominated by the development of sensitivity in a particular erogenous or
pleasure-giving spot in the body.
• Furthermore, each stage poses for individuals a unique conflict that they must resolve
before they go to the next higher stage.
• If individuals are unsuccessful in resolving the conflict, the resulting frustration becomes
chronic and remains a central feature of their psychological make-up.
• Alternatively, individual may become so addicted to the pleasure of a given stage that
they are unwilling to move on the later stages.
• As a result of either frustration or over-indulgence, individuals experience fixation at a
particular stage of their development.
• Fixation is the tendency to stay at a particular stage.
• The individual is troubled by the conflict that characterizes that stage and seeks to
reduce it by means of the behavior characteristics of that stage.
• The oral stage (first year of life) reflects the infant’s eating, sucking, spitting
and chewing do not only satisfy hunger, but also provide pleasure.
• The anal stage (second to third year of life) reflects the toddler’s need for
gratification along the rectal area.
• During this stage, children must endure the demands of toilet training.
• For the first time, outside agents interfere with instructional impulses by
insisting that child should inhibit the urge to defecate until he or she has
reached a designated place to do so.
• The phallic stage (fourth to fifth year of life) reflects the preschooler’s
gratification involving the genitals.
• Children at this stage gratify their sex instinct by fondling their genitals and
developing an incestuous desire for the opposite sex parent.
• According to Frued, a four-year old boy develops an intense sexual longing for
his mother. At the same time, he becomes jealous.
• If he could not have his way, he would destroy his rival for his maternal affection
– his father.
• Frued contends that before age 4, a girl prefers her mother to her father. But
once she discovers that she lacks a penis, she is thought to blame her closest
companion, her mother, for this “contrasted” condition.
• This traumatic discovery results in a transfer of affection from the mother to the
father. Frued believed that a girl of this age envies her father for possessing a
penis and wishes that he would share with her the valued organ that she lacks.
• The latency stage (sixth year of life to puberty) is Frued’s fourth stage of psychosexual
development.
• During this time, sexual desires are repressed and all the child’s available libido is
channeled into socially acceptable outlets such as school work or vigorous play that
consume most of the child’s physical and psychic energy.
• The genital stage (from puberty onwards) is characterized by the maturation of the
reproductive system, production of sex hormones, and a reactivation of the genital
zone as an area od sexual pleasure.
• The adolescent may openly express libido towards members of the opposite sex, but
for the first time, the underlying aim of sex instinct is reproduction.
• Throughout adolescence and young adulthood, libido is invested in activities such as
forming friendships, preparing for a career, courtship, marriage – that prepare the
individual to satisfy his fully mature sex instinct by having children.
• The genital period is the longest of Frued’s psychosexual stages, lasting until old age,
during which the individual may regress to an earlier stage and begin a ‘second
childhood”.
• ERIK ERIKSON’S THEORY OF PSYCHOSOCIAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
 The Nature of Psychosocial Development
• If Frued focused chiefly on psychosexual development, Erikson was chiefly concerned with
psychosocial development, Erikson has formulated eight major stages of developmental
task and simultaneously presenting the individual with a crisis that he must struggle
through.
• As employed by Erikson, a crisis is not “ a threat of a catastrophe but turning point, a
crucial period of increased vulnerability and heightened potential.”
• According to Erikson individuals develop a healthy personality” by mastering “life’s outer
and inner dangers.”
• Development follows the epigenetic principle, which holds that anything that grows has a
ground plan, and out of this ground plan the parts arise, each having its time of special
ascendancy, until all parts have arisen to form a functioning whole.
• Hence, according to Erikson, each part of the personality has a particular time in the life
span when it must develop, if it is going to develop at all.
• Should a capacity not be developed on schedule, the rest of this development is
unfavorably altered. The individual is then hindered from dealing effectively with reality.
 The Psychosocial Stages

1.Trust Versus Mistrust (birth to 1 year).

Basic to Erikson’s concept of development is the element of trust.
Human life is a social endeavor that involves linkages and interactions
among people.
Whether children come to trust or mistrust, themselves and other people
depends on their early experiences.
Infants whose needs are met and who are cuddled, fondled, and shown
genuine affection evolve a sense of a world as a safe and depend able place.
In contrast, when a child is chaotic, unpredictable, and rejecting as brought
about by his environment, he approaches the world with fear and suspicion.
 2. Autonomy Versus Shame and Doubt (2 to 3 years).

• As children begin to crawl, walk, climb, and explore, a new

conflict confronts them: whether or not to assert their wills.
• When parents are patient, cooperative, and encouraging,
children acquire a sense of independence and competence.
• In contrast, when children are not allowed such freedom
and are over-protected, they develop an excessive sense of
shame and doubt.
 3. Initiative Versus Guilt (4 to 5 years).

• During this stage, the repertoire of motor and mental abilities that are
open to children greatly expands.
• Parents who give their children freedom in running sliding, bike riding,
skating, and roughhousing are allowing them to develop initiative.
• Parentswho curtail this freedom are giving children a sense of
themselves as nuisances and inept intruders in an adult world.
• Rather than actively and confidently shaping their own behaviors, such
children become passive recipients of whatever the environment brings.
 4. Industry Versus Inferiority (6 to 11 years).
• During the elementary school years, a child becomes concerned with
how things work and how they are made.
• As children move into the world of school, they gain a sense of
industry by winning recognition for their achievements.
• But they may instead acquire a sense of inadequacy and inferiority.
• Parents and teachers who support, reward, and praise children are
encouraging industry.
• Those who rebuff, deride, or ignore children are encouraging industry.
• Those who rebuff, deride, or ignore children’s efforts are
strengthening feelings of inferiority.
 5. Identity Versus Role Confusion (12 to 18 years).

• As children enter adolescence, they confront a “psysiological revolution.”

• Simultaneously, they must answer the question “who am I?”
• They try on many new roles as they grope with romantic involvement,
vocational choice, and adult statuses.
• In the process adolescents must develop an integrated and coherent sense
of self.
• When the adolescent fails to develop a “centered” identity, he or she
becomes trapped in either role confusion or a negative identity.”
• The identities and roles of delinquent” and “hoodlum” are illustrations.
6. Intimacy Versus Isolation (Young Adulthood)

• As Erikson views intimacy, it is the capacity to reach out and make contact
with other people – to fuse one’s own identity with that of others.
• Intimacy finds expression in deep friendships.
• Central to intimacy is the ability to share with and care about another
person without fear of losing oneself in the process.
• Close involvement, however, may also result in rejection.
• Consequently, some individual pot for relationships of shallow sort.
• Their lives are characterized by withdrawal and isolation.
 7. Generativity Versus Stagnation – (Middle
Adulthood)

• By generativity, Erikson means a reaching out beyond one’s own

immediate concerns to embrace the welfare of society and of
future generations.
• Generativity entails selflessness.
• In contrast, stagnation is a condition
in which individuals are
preoccupied with their material possessions or physical well-
being.
• Scrooge in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, a self-centered,
embittered individual, exemplifies stagnation.
 8. Integrity Versus Despair (Old Age).

• As individuals approach the end of life, they tend to take

stock of the years that have gone before.
• Some feel a sense of satisfaction with their
accomplishments.
• Other experience despair – the feeling that the time is
now short, too short for the attempt to start another life
and to try out alternative roads to integrity.”
 BEHAVIORAL THEORY
• John B. Watson points that the larger community of scientists would never
take psychology seriously until psychologists began to study what they
could see – overt behavioral responses.
• A basic premise of Watson’s “behaviorism” is that the mind of an infant is a
tabula rasa and that learned associations between stimuli and responses are
the building blocks of human development.
• According to Watson, development does not proceed through a series of
stages; it is a continuous process marked by the gradual acquisition of new
and more sophisticated behavioral patterns, or habit.
• Watson believed that only the simplest of human reflexes (for example, the
sucking reflex) are inborn and that all important tendencies, including traits,
talents, values and aspirations, are learned.
 What is Learning?

• Simply stated learning is a process that produces

relatively permanent changes in behavior
potential.
• These behavioral changes are the result of one’s
experience or practice, as opposed to natural
causes as maturation, fatigue, injury or illness.
Learned responses or habits may be acquired in several
ways.

1.Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which a

person comes to associate a neutral stimulus with a
second, non-neutral stimulus that always elicits a
particular response.
• After this association has been made, the formerly neutral
stimulus will have acquired the capacity to evoke the
response in question.
2.Operant (or instrumental) conditioning is a second type of learning in
which a child first emits a response and then comes to associate it with a
particular outcome or consequence.
Two kinds of consequences are significant in operant conditioning –
reinforcers and punishments.
Reinforcers are consequences that promote operant learning by increasing
the probability that a response will occur in the future.
Punishments are consequences that suppress a response and may decrease
the likelihood that suppress a response and may decrease the likelihood that
it will occur in the future.
In summary, operant conditioning is a very common form of learning in
which various acts become either more or less probable, depending on the
consequence they produce.
3.Observational learning is a third process by which
process by which we acquire new feelings, attitudes, and
behaviors.
• If a child watches someone do something or listens
attentively to that person’s reasoning, then the child may
learn to do, think, or feel as the person did.
• In the language of observational learning, the individual
who is observed and imitated is called a social model.
 THEORIES OF SOCIAL LEARNING

• Although Watson argued that learned associations between

stimuli and responses are the “bricks” in the “edifice of human
development” he really did not have a developmental theory to
work with.
Three major theories have been proposed to explain social learning
and the process of development.
• The drive theory of Clark Hull,
• the operant learning theory of B. F. Skinner and
• the cognitive social-learning theory of Albert Bandura.
 1. Neo-Hullian Theory
• This theory differed from the psychoanalytic approach in four important respects. First, instincts
played virtually no role in this Neo-Hullian Theory.
• Second, the personality was no longer described as a system composed of an id, ego, and superego.
• Instead, the Neo-Hullian used the term habit for the well-learned associations between various
stimuli and responses that represent the stable aspects of one’s character.
• Presumably, our interactions with other people will lead to the development of many habits, which
collectively make up our personality.
• Third, that development occurs continuously and is not at all stage like. Neo-Hullians John Dollard
and Neil Miller described the personality as a system of transition: people will interact with one
another until the day they die, and these new social encounters are continually was said to develop
a unique habit structure (or personality), because no two persons are ever exposed to precisely the
same set of social learning experiences.
• In sum, Dollard and Miller view development as the changes that occur in a child’s behavior as a
result of his or her experiences.
• The idea out come of these learning experiences is a collection of habits (or a personality) that is
structured so that the most probable responses to any given stimulus are both socially desirable
and effective at reducing a primary or secondary drive.
 2. Skinner’s Operant-Learning Approach

• According to Skinner, the majority of habits that children acquire

are freely emitted responses (or operant) that are either more or
less probable as a function of their consequences.
• Skinner proposes that behavior is motivated by external stimuli
reinforcers or primitive events – rather than of internal forces, or
drives.
• Skinner’s theory is considered as radical behaviorism because it
focuses exclusively on the external stimuli (reward and
punishment) that influences our behavior and ignores all
cognitive determinants of social learning.
 3. Bandura’s Cognitive Social-Learning Theory

• Bandura believes that children can learn novel responses by merely observing the
behavior of a model, making mental representations to reproduce the model’s
behavior at some future time.
• This, therefore, is a form cognitive learning, wherein children need not be reinforced
or even respond in order to learn by observing others.
• All that is required for observational learning is for the observer to pay close
attention to the model’s behavior and then store this information in memory so that
it can be retrieved for use at a later data.
• In sum, cognitive theorist like Bandura believes that human development is best
describes as a continuous human development is best described as a continuous
reciprocal interaction between children and their environments the environment
clearly affects the environment as well.
• The implication is that children are actively involved in creating the very
environments that will influence their growth and development.
 THE COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
• According to Jean Piaget, children are neither driven by undesirable instincts nor
molded by environmental influences.
• Instead, he and his followers view children as constructivists – that is, as curious,
active explorers who respond to the environment according to their understanding of
its essential features.
• Piaget’s cognitive development is an age-related change that occurs in mental
activities such as attending, perceiving, learning, thinking, and remembering.
• Piaget’s viewed intelligence as a basic life function that helps the organism adapt to
its environment.
• He added that intelligence is a form of equilibrium toward which all cognitive
structures or schema tend.
• Intellectual activity is undertaken with one goal in mind: to produce a balanced or
harmonious relationship between one’s thought processes and the environment.
 Stages of Cognitive Development
1.Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years).
• During this period infants are busy discovering the relationships between sensations and motor
behavior.
• They learn, for instance, that their hands are part of themselves, whereas a ball is not. They learn
how far they need to reach in order to grasp a ball.
• Perhaps the main feature of this stage is the child’s mastery of the principle of object
permanence.
• Piaget observed that when a baby of 4 0r 5 months is playing with a ball and the ball rolls out of
sight behind another toy, the child does not look for it even thought it remains within reach.
• Piaget contended that infants do not realize that objects have an independent existence.
• This proposition explains a baby’s delight in playing peek-a-boo.
• Around the age of 8 months the child graphs the fact of object constancy and will search for toys
that disappear from view.
• Hence, during the sensorimotor stage infants become able to distinguish between various objects
and experiences and to generalize about them.
• This ability lays the groundwork for later intellectual and emotional development
 2. Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 years).

• A key part of the preoperational stage is the child’s developing capacity to employ
symbols, particularly language.
• Symbols enable people to deal with things in another time and place.
• Because of symbols, children are no longer limited to the stimuli that are immediately
present.
• Children use symbols to portray the external world internally – for instance, to talk
about a ball and form a mental image of it.
• They do not have this capacity earlier. In the sensorimotor stage children “know”
about a ball in that they can roll it, throw it, or grasp it, but they cannot conceive of a
ball as an entity apart from these activities.
• Now they learn the word “ball” and use it more or less appropriately to refer to round
objects.
• Egocentrism is another characteristic of the preoperational stage.
• By this term Piaget does not mean that the child is self-serving or
selfish. Rather, children 4 and 5 years of age consider their own point
of view to be the only possible one.
• They are not yet capable of putting themselves in another’s place.
• They are unaware that the other person has point of view. A 5-year-
old who is asked why it snows will answer by saying “So children can
play in it”.
 3. Stage of Concrete Operations (7 to 11 years).
• This stage is the beginning of rational activity in children.
• They come to master various logical operations, including arithmetic, class and set relationships,
measurement, and conceptions of hierarchical structures.
• Probably the aspect of this stage that has been most thoroughly investigated is the child’s growing
ability to “conserve” mass, weight, number, length, area, and volume.
• Before this stage, for instance, children do not appreciate that a ball of clay can change to a
sausage shape and still be the same amount of clay.
• Furthermore, before the stage of concrete operations, children cannot understand that when
water is poured out of a fall glass into a wider glass that the water fills only halfway, the amount of
water remains unchanged.
• Instead, children “concentrate” on only one aspect of reality at a time.
• They see that the second glass is half-empty and conclude that there is less water in it. In the stage
of concrete operations children come to understand that the quality of water remains the same.
• Piaget refers to this ability as the conservation of quality.
• This ability is usually achieved between 6 and 8 years of age.
 4. Stage of Formal Operations (11 years and older).
• In this stage the child’s thought remains fixed upon the visible evidence and concrete
properties of objects and events.
• Now children acquire a greater ability to deal with abstractions.
• The adolescent can engage in hypothetical reasoning based on logic.
• Adolescents, however, respond that snow is black.
• In other words, the adolescent acquires the capacity for adult thinking.
• In the stage of formal operations, young people become capable of abstract thought
with respect to a ball.
• In addition to anticipating what will happen to a ball under various conditions, they
now can discuss it in scientific terms and test hypotheses concerning it.
• They can explain why it is that a billiard ball shot against a surface at one angle will
rebound at a particular complementary angle.
• And they can discuss Newtonian principles about the behavior of spherical objects.
 LAWRENCE KOHLBERG’S THEORY OF
MORAL DEVELOPMENT

• Kohlberg became fascinated by Piaget’s studies of moral

development.
• Because of this, he decided to expand on Piaget’s original
researches by making moral dilemmas that could be
appropriate for older children.
• Thus in 1963 he developed the description of the three
levels and six stages of moral reasoning.
Level One – Preconventional Morality. This is typical of children up to age nine. It is
called preconventional because young children do not really understand the
conventions or rules of a society.
• Stage One – Punishment Obedience Orientation. The physical consequence
of an action determines goodness or badness. Those in authority have superior
power and should be obeyed. Punishment should be avoided by staying out of
trouble.
• Stage Two – Instrumental Relativist Orientation. Here, an action is judged to
be right if it is instrumental or satisfying one’s own needs or involve on even
exchange. Obeying rules should bring some sort of benefit in return.
• Level Two – Conventional Morality. This is typical of nine to
twenty years old. It is called conventional since most nine to
twenty-year old conform to the convention of society
because they are rules of a society.
• Stage Three – Good Boy-Nice Girl Orientation. The right
action is one that would be carried out by someone whose
behavior is likely to please or impress others.
• Stage Four – Law and Order Orientation. To maintain the
social order, fixed rules must be established and obeyed. It is
essential to respect authority.
• Level Three – Postconventional Morality. This usually reached
only after the age of twenty and by only a small proportion of
adults. It is called postconventional because the moral principles
that underlie the conventions of a society are understand.
• Stage Five – Social Contract Orientation. Rules are needed to
maintain the social agreement. At the same time, the rights of
the individual should be protected.
• Stage Six – Universal Ethical Principle Orientation. Moral
decisions should be made in terms of self-chosen ethical
principles.
 ETHOLOGICAL THEORY
• Ethology is the study of the biological bases of behavior, including its evolution, causation, and development .
• According to ethologist, members of each species are burn with a number of innate responses that are products of
evolution.
• These “biologically programmed” behaviors are thought to have evolved as a result of the Darwinian process of natural
selection.
• Presumably, environment stress or demands impinge on members of all species, ensuring that only those individuals with
the most adaptive characteristics will survive to pass these attributes along to their offspring.
• Thus, each “species-specific” behavior is preselected – meaning that it has persisted because it serves some function that
increase the chance of survival for the individual and the nest-building behaviors of lovebirds or crying to communicate
discomfort by human infants.
• One interesting ethological idea is that infants are sociable creatures who are quite capable of promoting and maintaining
social encounters from the day they are born.
• This view point contrasts sharply with that of the behaviorists, who portray the neomate as a tabula rasa or with Piaget’s
“social” infant, who comes to the world equipped with only a few basic reflexes.
• Ethologists also believe that our evolutionary history provide us with inborn motives that affect our behavior in important
ways.
• In sum, ethologists clearly acknowledge that we largely a product of our experiences.
• Yet they are quick to remind us that we are inherently biological creatures who have inborn characteristics that affect the
kinds of learning experiences we are likely to have.
 SOCIOBIOLOGICAL THEORY
• Sociobiology closely related to ethology is a new and controversial discipline that
focuses on the biological foundations of social behavior in species ranging from
amoeba colonies to human societies.
• So with sociobiology which views organisms as only the gene’s way of making
more genes.
• It depicts organisms primarily as survival machines for genes.
• Individual organisms may die, but their genes live on in future generations.
• The key to the entire process is survival, life’s first order of business.
• To survive and thus pass on their genes to offspring organisms must be able to
function in their habitat.
• And if they are to fit better in their environment, organisms must adapt to
changes across time.