1.4 Contexts and Settings of Development

Ecological Systems Model

As you’re aware, human development is complex. Bronfenbrenner’s original ecological systems model helps to rein in that complexity by providing a framework for understanding the various sources of influence on an individual’s development (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). This map of the social and physical contexts for development can integrate the major contextual influences the field of lifespan psychology focuses on in one model or diagram. It helps account for and make sense of varied sources of development and points the way toward context-specific avenues for enacting change in a developing person’s life.

For example, if we want to ensure every young person has a sense of purpose, the eological systems model shows a variety of contexts where we can begin to build programming and other types of interactions to develop that sense. In this case, their purpose could include a series of curricular interventions at school, followed by community events at the county’s recreation center, a media campaign on local television, and outreach to pediatricians’ offices. In this way, the social ecological perspective proves its worth by serving developmental psychology’s research and application goals.

The ecological systems model comprises several interrelated systems, nested inside one another, with the individual and their psychological and physical attributes at the core (Figure 1.13). Each system is made of various groupings of environmental influences, called contexts. As we move from the individual level toward the outer systems, influences on development become more removed from the individual and less direct. Proximal influences are those closest to the individual and that have the most direct influence.

Figure 1.13 Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model provides a framework for exploring the various contexts that influence human development across the lifespan from the individual to their direct experiences (microsystem) to more indirect influences (mesosystem and exosystem) to the broader culture (macrosystem) and across the passage of time and historical events (chronosystem). (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

The individual at the core of the ecological systems model includes all past and current psychological and physical functioning, including genetic influences. The developing person is active in this model by participating in and interacting within and among the variety of social contexts represented in each surrounding circle, such as school, peer group, health-care system, home environment, media, and community. Traditionally, much research in developmental psychology has focused on understanding how development occurs within these different contexts. For example, an entire subfield of psychology called educational psychology has the purpose of uncovering the psychological principles and schooling practices that foster academic achievement and personal development (El Zaatari & Maalouf, 2022). What Bronfenbrenner’s model does is help us see that a child interacts, sometimes daily, sometimes on longer timeframes, within many such social contexts.

These different and distinct contexts or environmental settings—schools, family, peers, health care, faith community, and so on—together form the microsystem. If a developing individual directly experiences something, that is a part of their microsystem. Parents, siblings, peers, teachers, extended family members, adult mentors, and health-care professionals are all actors within a child’s microsystem.

The mesosystem in Bronfenbrenner’s model consists of interactions between the microsystems. These mesosystem contexts don’t directly involve the developing individual. An example is parent-teacher communication, such as a parent-teacher-only conference. When elements from separate microsystem contexts such as school and home interact with one another, the individual is affected, though indirectly. The child will not be at the conference but will certainly become aware of any follow-up a parent or teacher may put in place. When a concerned neighbor calls a young adult’s parents about their driving habits, this is another example of the mesosystem in action. And in some U.S. states, the driver’s license bureau can share data with the local board of elections in order to register drivers to vote—another example of two different settings communicating for the benefit of the individual.

The next level outward, the exosystem, is also made up of social and physical settings or contexts that affect the developing individual indirectly, but they are even further removed from the person’s immediate experience or even knowledge. For example, a new workplace policy granting the ability to work from home twice weekly changes the way a caregiver can balance work and home life, likely making it easier to schedule doctor’s appointments, run errands, and attend school functions. The developing child in this example may never visit the caregiver’s workplace and might not be told about the new policy, but they certainly experience the indirect impacts all the same. Exosystem contexts often include a caregiver’s workplace, the broader neighborhood or town, local political constituencies, the school board, extended family, and mass media.

At the furthest circle of influence is the macrosystem, which includes more abstract principles and ideas. This is where the beliefs and ideologies of culture reside. Broad, far-reaching influences like general social conditions and forces, national politics and laws, economic systems, cultural values, and/or religious ideology and/or cultural values help to shape the underlying structure of the entire social ecosystem. A change in one of these elements means large-scale, far-reaching, but very indirect changes to many other contexts in the exosystem, mesosystem, and microsystem.

One final level of the social ecological model is what Bronfenbrenner called the chronosystem. This element was his way of noting that all the contexts and interactions at all levels are moving together through historical time. Even if we could take a snapshot of an individual and map out all the sources of influence in great detail, the chronosystem reminds us that all those parts, and that detailed understanding, are subject to change over time. The COVID-19 pandemic is an example of both a macrosystem and chronosystem change as a historical event that forced the rethinking and reordering of nearly every function in every context in people’s lives. The COVID-19 pandemic also impacted the life periods of each individual based on their life stage. For example, the stage of life a person was in when the pandemic began resulted in different experiences for the individual—from specific years of “school at home,” to a shift to work from home, or even to moving up a retirement date to avoid individual health risks.

To understand how the ecological system model applies to the individual at its center, consider the example case of Elyse, who lives in the midwestern U.S. state of Minnesota. Elyse is six years old, healthy, feisty, and gender identifies as female (the individual). Her microsystem is her family (home environment), two neighborhood friends, her school and teachers, her pediatrician, and extracurriculars (art and T-ball). Elyse’s mesosystem consists of the interaction and connection between the microsystem and other systems. For example, her father volunteers at her school and regularly talks to her teachers. Her exosystem is the government in the state and country, the political systems around her, the lawmakers of Minnesota, mass media (children’s television and movies), and the county school district and school board, as well as her parents’ colleagues, and work interactions. For example, when her mother has a stressful day at work, she comes home a bit grumpier and is less fun to play with. She doesn't interact with her mother's work personally, but it still influences her and the environments around her. Elyse’s macrosystem is the U.S. culture and values of the current time (e.g., a value for consumerism and gender roles will influence her and the things around her even if in her family she is encouraged to be free to be herself and androgynous, or to value the “reduce, reuse, recycle” concept). Finally, Elyse’s chronosystem is how these elements develop and change over time. For example, global concerns over environmental resources may result in shifts in the culture as more people take on values of sustainability.

There are a few ways developmental psychologists might describe the role of various environmental contexts and systems. For example, Bronfenbrenner later updated the ecological systems model to improve on the original model. The updated model is often referred to as the bioecological model, an expansion of the ecological systems model that includes the representation of the active individual human at the center of the model and engagement and growth across all the contextual layers (Tong & An, 2024). Another influential system theory is dynamic systems, which focuses on the interaction between aspects of the child, such as their cognition and physical motor skills, and their environment, such as their play space or home (Thelen & Smith, 2007). The unifying theme of these systems models is that humans are growing and changing in a rich set of contextual environments: just as the environments influence the individual, the individual also influences the environment.

Contexts of Growth and Change

In the study of psychology across the lifespan, microsystem contexts help to place development within major influential settings. In many cases, a context becomes a source of its own unique set of influences. Schooling, for example, is a major portion of most children’s day and presents its own forces and situations that shape an individual’s development. You’ll learn about these contexts—like schools, parents, peers, media, legal settings, and health-care settings—where especially relevant to understanding unique sources and mechanisms of influence on development, and to identify specific opportunities and challenges facing those who wish to apply developmental science within these settings. Some of the questions and issues you’ll explore in this course include the following:

• What is the best way to structure the school day in terms of start times?
• Should students be grouped by similar ability level or across levels?
• At what age is an individual ready to participate in medical decision-making?
• Are there ways to prevent bullying behavior?
• How much screen time is unhealthy for development?
• What laws and policies can best support work-life balance?
• How best can we support successful retirement planning?

Historical and Cohort Contexts

Ahmed was born in 1978 and is a member of Generation X, the name often given to the group of individuals born approximately between 1965 and 1980. Members of this age cohort (you may have heard this termed “generation”) grew up without computers in their homes but likely were exposed to computers in their K–12 or college education. The internet emerged in the mid-1990s when this group entered young adulthood. Social media became available as this age cohort approached middle adulthood.

The chronosystem is the basis for the notion of a cohort effect, the influence of a shared or common experience on people who are about the same age at the same time (Figure 1.14). Like the members of other cohorts, Gen Xers likely share the experience of many historical events, cultural milestones, and technological innovations, such as the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the cultural explosion of music videos. Most importantly, they were in roughly the same age range during these experiences, making them members of a generational cohort who share similar psychological consequences of these events. For example, Gen Xers have been referred to as digital immigrants, whereas individuals born after 1980 (the age cohort sometimes called Millenial) are considered digital natives. People in these different generational cohorts tend to have different comfort levels with new uses for digital technology. One study found that individuals in the older cohort were willing to adopt “tap” payment systems in stores and restaurants, but weighed the risks and convenience factors more carefully than those born more recently (Agardi, et al., 2022).

Figure 1.14 People belonging to a generational cohort share the experiences of historic events and social changes at a similar age. For example, individuals who experienced (a) the Great Depression, (b) the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or (c) virtual schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will share some aspects of development with others who experienced those at the same life stage. (credit a: modification of work “Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone” by National Archives at College Park/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit b: modification of work “Explosion following the plane impact into the South Tower (WTC 2) - B6019~11” by “rds323”/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit c: modification of work “Teachers Teaching” by Phil Roeder/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Thus, age, history, and society combine to provide groups of individuals with shared experiences that may affect a variety of issues related to psychological functioning across the lifespan, such as having shared anxiety about the threat of nuclear war (GenX), or being more open to sharing many aspects of their lives with strangers on the internet (age cohorts raised during the rise of smartphones and social media). However, it is important to remember that not all group members share all these experiences, and age cohorts are often twelve to fifteen years in range, making for a varied degree of impact of cohort effects (Pew Research Center, 2023a). For example, some from the Gen Z cohort (born after 1996) who were born in 1997 likely have different experiences with smartphones and the age at which they got their first smartphone compared to Gen Z members born in 2007 around the same time that smartphones were becoming widely available to many. Nevertheless, cohort effects, as part of Bronfenbrenner’s chronosystem, remind us that the world is ever-changing.

Link to Learning

Visit the Mindset List that compiles information about cohorts of college students by class year on Marist College’s website. Examine the graduating college class of 2023 and the latest class of 2027 list for examples of cohort-based experiences and trends that have shaped the mindset, experiences, and career opportunities of these cohorts.

It is also important to keep in mind that the term cohort often more accurately describes a group’s shared experiences than the term generation, which can sometimes result in stereotyping a group according to their age. Individual differences in things like cultural experiences, economic resources, and where you live can mean that two individuals who share the same year of birth have very different experiences. For example, a child growing up in a family with more financial resources and/or parents who value staying connected may receive a smartphone while they are in elementary school, while a child growing up in a family with fewer financial resources and/or parents who pay close attention to “tech time” might not have their first smartphone until they are in their mid-to-late teens. At the very least, psychological research needs to be mindful of the potential impact of such effects and periodically revisit research findings and theories to test for any influence of such cohort-based experiences.

Link to Learning

Have you ever thought about what your generational cohort has in common with other generations? Or do you tend to only focus on the differences? Review this brief list from the Pew Research Center about how the term “generations” can be misused to learn more.

Identity, Social, and Cultural Contexts

Research findings in psychology are often broken down by social or cultural sub-groups of particular interest or identification. These include biological sex, gender, race and ethnicity, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, and cultural influences, among others. When developmental psychologists use these terms, they do so with the specific meanings they carry in psychology. These contexts are all important to the overall process of human development and our understanding of it.

Sex, gender, and sexual orientation are key components of human development and are distinctive terms (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, & Medicine, 2022). An individual’s sex is assigned at birth based on their biological anatomy and physiology (such as chromosomes). People may be assigned female, male, or intersex. An individual’s sex should not be confused with their gender, which describes society’s ideas about the roles, attitudes, and behaviors associated with someone’s sex assignment. For example, being born with a penis results in being assigned the sex male; exhibiting behaviors such as participating in rough sports or suppressing emotions results in being associated with the gender male in cultures where those behaviors are associated with masculinity. Some people, researchers, and advocates aim to separate descriptors of sex (female and male) from those of gender (girl, woman, boy, man, nonbinary, and so on). While it is best to be as precise as possible, this practice is not universal and may be complicated when both sex and gender are involved in a topic or outcome. As a result, many studies or documents use sex and gender terms interchangeably.

The way a culture decides whether a characteristic or behavior is associated with a gender can also change over time. For example, in the United States the color blue is often associated with baby boys; however, if you looked to popular trends before the 1940s, pink was associated with boys and blue was associated with girls (Maglaty, 2011). Someone’s psychological sense of their gender is their gender identity and reflects ideas about femininity, masculinity, non-binary characteristics, and other dimensions of gender. How someone labels their gender identity is also related to whether their gender matches society’s expectations based on sex assignment. Conforming is denoted by the prefix cis- (such as a cis gender man) and non-conforming by the prefix trans- (such as a transgender individual). A person’s sexual orientation sexual identity, sexual behavior, and sexual attraction, or to whom someone is sexually attracted. Note that sexual attraction can differ from emotional attraction. Figure 1.15 visualizes some of these terms and their varied meanings.

Figure 1.15 The “Gender Unicorn” is a visual concept developed by Trans Student Educational Resources. This “Flying” version from Florida International University was created to promote education and discussion about the many facets of gender. (credit: modification of work “The Gender Unicorn” by Landyn Pan and Anna Moore/Trans Student Educational Resources, CC BY 4.0)

Race and ethnicity are also often confused, but they are distinct contributing parts of an individual’s identity. The concept of race is extremely complex and has a long and troubling history, and there is no genetic basis for race (Duello et al., 2021), meaning an individual’s race cannot be determined by analyzing their DNA. Race is thus a socially constructed concept that describes a highly variable mix of physical characteristics, heritage, culture of origin, and the way someone identifies themselves and how others identify them. Someone’s ethnicity describes shared characteristics or identification based on cultural or social elements such as heritage, religion, language, or geographic or national origin, and includes ideas about race. Often, the two concepts are conflated. For example, one study might focus on Black individuals (a racial designation) and another on African American participants (a designation of ethnicity). It is important to be aware of racial and ethnic categorizations when reviewing research. Ethnicity is often best described as accurately as possible and in a way that respects how that group or person identifies. For example, using the term Japanese American (a designation of ethnicity describing individuals living in the United States with Japanese culture or heritage) might more precisely describe a group than the term Asian American (a designation of ethnicity that includes the cultural heritage of a wide range of Asian countries or Asian ethnicities). In most cases, the psychological processes of interest in any comparison are more closely related to the cultural and/or national heritage of the participants (Irizarry et al., 2023) than to race. The reason is that heritage includes many behaviors, attitudes, and practices that are the likely mechanism of influence for any psychological findings. For this reason, we also use the term ethnoracial for findings that focus on ethnicity as the primary variable but also acknowledge the social construction of race.

Generally speaking, socioeconomic status (SES) is a description of someone’s social standing. It has three main components: income level, educational attainment (the highest level of formal schooling reached), and occupational prestige. As an example, for many mid-career cardiologists, income level is moderate to high, educational attainment is the highest, and occupational prestige is high, resulting in a middle- to upper-middle SES position in society. In contrast, a college professor raising two children on one income may be described as having a low to moderate income, with educational attainment at the highest, and a moderate to high occupational prestige. For identifying the SES of children and adolescents, researchers use parental information about the three elements.

An individual’s religious or spiritual beliefs and practices, and those that surround them, also play an important role in development across the lifespan. A religion is a formal system of beliefs, values, and practices organized around the worship of a higher being(s) or power(s). According to a 2022 Gallup poll, two-thirds of the world’s population belong to a religion. The term religiosity refers specifically to religious behaviors such as praying, giving money to a place of worship or religious organization, and being active within a religious community. It is possible to identify as belonging to a religion but to be low in religiosity. The term spirituality refers to an individual’s search for the sacred. This search can vary across a spectrum from belonging to an organized religion to being very personal and private. Almost a quarter of U.S. adults (22 percent) consider themselves spiritual but not religious (Alper et al., 2023). One way to think about the relationship among these three concepts is that religion is part of your social identity, religiosity describes your behaviors within that social group, and spirituality is what you experience on a psychological level.

The term culture is often used interchangeably with “nation” or “society,” but it is broader than either and often refers to the shared characteristics of populations that cross national boundaries. Sometimes a culture might also overlap with a religious group. For example, a person may describe themselves as part of the Jewish culture and may or may not also identify with Judaism (as a religion). It’s important to note that in many instances these terms may overlap each other. Others may be drawn toward both, valuing the different aspects of cultural and/or religious Judaism. So these terms are often not clearly distinct from one another. Culture also include informal institutions, rules, and practices. Veganism, for example, is a culture. Similarly, the college you attend like has its own college culture. A society, in contrast, is a recognized group of people who live within a formal system of rules and institutions like a government and school systems. The Navajo Nation is an example of a society, though many members may identify themselves as part of the Diné culture. In a review analyzing the many uses of the word “culture,” Cohen (2009) outlined three main concepts of its psychological definition.

• Culture includes a set of adaptations to the physical and social world—a set of practices, behaviors, rules, norms, and ways of being that help members of that culture navigate the challenges and opportunities of life.
• These adaptations have meanings shared by members of the culture.
• These shared adaptations are passed from generation to generation, thereby ensuring the culture persists over time.

A culture can have many members or just a few, if these three elements are present. Each of us is likely a member of many different cultures, some more important or central to our sense of self than others. For example, you may be part of Southern California culture, American culture (broadly), Mexican American culture, and Generation Z culture simultaneously. These overlapping cultural groups contribute to your unique identity.

Generalizability

Lifespan developmental psychology is a broad discipline. It is not only a subfield of the scientific study of psychology: it also often incorporates perspectives and research findings from across a variety of disciplines including anthropology, neuroscience, biology, sociology, economics, and history. As the world gets smaller and more interconnected via travel, migration, trade, and communication technologies, the biggest challenge the discipline faces is assessing the generalizability of its findings. In short, to what extent do the theories, research methods, and findings apply universally—that is, to all people in all societies around the world?

In the last decade, psychology has been challenged to address the universality of its findings. A landmark article by Henrich et al. (2010) highlighted that much of the research on which psychology is based is WEIRD. The acronym describes the people researchers have often studied:

• Western (includes the United States, Canada, and Western European countries, such as France and Germany)
• Educated (includes those who have gone to college)
• Industrialized (includes countries with infrastructures and advanced technology)
• Rich (includes those who have enough money to have a higher standard of living)
• Democratic (includes political systems based on elected representation and individual rights)

Why might this be so? Recall that psychology at its founding emphasized the study of individuals, which meant that some societies, through their emphasis on individuality, were more receptive to this new discipline than others (Pelham et al., 2022). As such, psychology’s roots in many European countries, especially Germany, Great Britain, and France, and the quick pace in which the discipline took hold in the United States and Canada, inadvertently introduced this WEIRD bias. Findings from this restrictive WEIRD sample have long been assumed to generalize to people from most societies. But today we must ask: how truly representative of all humans are these findings? In research we often strive for a representative sample which is a sample of participants that accurately reflects, or represents, the group of people we are making conclusions about. A more representative sample allows us to better generalize our findings to the population.

Although the establishment of psychology’s scientific roots occurred first in Europe and the United States, it did not take much time until researchers from around the world began to establish their own laboratories and research programs. For example, some of the first experimental psychology laboratories in South America were founded by Horacio Piñero (1869–1919) at two institutions in Buenos Aires, Argentina (Godoy & Brussino, 2010). In India, Gunamudian David Boaz (1908–1965) and Narendra Nath Sen Gupta (1889–1944) established the first independent departments of psychology at the University of Madras and the University of Calcutta, respectively. These developments provided an opportunity for Indian researchers to make important contributions to the field (Gunamudian David Boaz, n.d.; Narendra Nath Sen Gupta, n.d.).

In searching the psychological literature, Draper and colleagues (2023) found rare instances when a topic had been studied across multiple cultures. Nevertheless, a growing amount of research in a variety of psychological topics is now aimed at determining whether the discipline’s findings are universal or whether we should expect cultural variation to be the norm (Draper et al., 2023). These topics include personality structure, visual perception, attachment and human bonding, conceptions of the self, degree of interconnectedness, conformity, and reasoning style.

Consider the example of schoolchildren learning fractions. Recall that in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development, language can be a tool that guides cognition and cognitive development. Cross-cultural research has highlighted a language-based explanation for why Korean children may have an easier time learning fractions than their U.S. counterparts. The Korean language is more straightforward when describing fractions—½ is expressed as “one of two parts” instead of “one-half” as in English (Paik & Mix, 2003). The more transparent expression may help Korean children master the concept more readily. Learning complex mathematical concepts is universal, but the rate and level of achievement might vary due to cultural differences.

The lack of representation in historic research and modern insights into generalizability provide the discipline of lifespan development with a call to expand thinking and research to include people from more walks of life and from across the globe. The psychological sciences have already made large advances in including more representation in those who do the research—or the experts in the field of psychology and lifespan development. For example, in terms of gender inclusion, the American Psychological Association began in 1892 with all men members, but by 1946, nearly one-quarter of American psychologists were women (Women and Minorities in Psychology, n.d.).

Making progress in representation of the experts in the field of study as well as the populations and cultures studied can advance our understanding of human development at every contextual level—from individual differences to cultural commonalities. An example is the ManyBabies project, which is a global collaboration of developmental researchers that has shown how similar babies across cultures are when it comes to things like their preference for certain speech styles, known as infant-direct speech (ManyBabies, 2024). Sometimes the research shows us that the early findings exclusive to WEIRD populations are also found in newer research on non-WEIRD populations. For a science that looks to both nature and nurture for sources of influence on development, we are likely to find patterns of similarity in psychological functioning across all humans, even as we find specific behaviors that have their own nuanced and even unique developmental trajectory around the world.