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Two Lives, One Lifespan: Rethinking Adulthood and Development · Professor Peterson’s Psychology Classroom

• 0:05
  Welcome to Professor Peterson's Psychology Classroom,
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  connecting the science of human behavior to everyday life.
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  Here's Dr. Curtis Peterson.
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  All right, so this section is all about human development and,
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  and a kind of a subcategory that was put into this
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  section dealing with emotions. Okay,
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  but I first want to begin just
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  talking about what is the study of human development.
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  And if we were to put it in its most basic form,
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  it's the study of how people change over time.
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  And specifically here in a minute, we'll talk about the 3 domains
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  that developmental psychologists really focus
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  on. But I do want to bring up some
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  changes that have occurred.
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  And I really need to update this slide. It should say about in the last
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  about 40, 50 years that has changed
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  our ideas about human development. Okay,
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  because historically it
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  was assumed that by the time an individual
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  reached the age of 18, uh,
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  their intelligence was set, their personality was
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  set, um, they're, that they,
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  they're basically an adult. And,
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  uh, we could go through and talk about,
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  uh, why they chose the age of 18,
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  uh, but I will say it's mainly Because when
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  developmental psychology really started to study
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  human development, the average lifespan
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  was around the— around between about 30 to 45
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  for the average person. So it
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  left very little time for adulthood.
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  And so a lot of theorists, starting with Sigmund
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  Freud, who really put 18 as
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  a hard line. And then we saw— we'll
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  see someone named Piaget do the same thing.
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  And our first lifespan model really
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  didn't start to develop until our lifespan really
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  started to expand. Okay. And mainly
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  due to hygiene improvements,
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  medical improvements and technologies,
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  vaccines, over about the last 200 years,
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  human life expectancy has doubled.
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  In the United States, I believe the age is 70-something
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  or 80-something. We'll get those exact numbers at another
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  time. But literally, because of our medical advancements,
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  a lot of theorists actually believe that we actually live 2 lifespans.
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  Because what a lot of the theorists
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  and researchers are seeing is that we have this 0
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  to 40-ish age, and somewhere in the
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  40-ish age, we go through a transition.
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  If we look at the age between about 35 to 45,
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  this is where we have the highest divorce rates.
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  We have the highest number of job turnover
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  and job rate turnover. And this tends to
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  be an age group where adults decide to go back
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  to school and start to develop a
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  different occupation. Okay, and so there's
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  this idea that we actually kind of live 2 lives within
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  our first life, and we'll look at that a little bit closer,
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  um, as we get through,
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  uh, these series of lectures. But I want
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  you to think about the significance of living in a time
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  where, uh, just 200 years ago
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  only about 5 to 10% of the population made
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  it in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. And now the majority
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  of the populations are making it into that age range.
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  And it's kind of a crazy thing to think
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  about, given it's happened in
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  such a short period of time.
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  And so this this recognition and
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  these ideas, we, we began to realize that
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  having a set age for 18 was
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  somewhat ridiculous. It really didn't make
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  sense. Um, and so we started looking
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  at what are some changes that occurred during the 20s, 30s,
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  40s, and to the end of the lifespan. And we
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  found that true development,
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  really, the— if we look at, for example, studies dealing
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  with the prefrontal cortex, which is, you know,
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  that really decision-making processing
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  center at the fore of our brain, we're finding
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  that it doesn't actually fully develop until mid
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  to late 20s.
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  And so what does that mean when we define quote unquote
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  adulthood? Okay. In fact, in a lot of
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  the literature, there,
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  there's some new terms after adolescence,
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  and it's called emerging adulthood. And then
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  after emerging adulthood, starts young adulthood, which starts
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  at around the age of about 26 to 33.
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  So our ideas about how humans
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  develop have really changed significantly
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  culturally and scientifically.
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  In, in the field of human development, there's really
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  3 areas that tend to be focused on
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  quite a bit. And if you'll notice,
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  they are represented by a Venn diagram because all
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  of these areas greatly influence one
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  another. Okay, the first one
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  is probably, probably an obvious one.
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  And that's biological processes and how
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  they develop and change over time. And we've
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  mentioned a few throughout this course. So we know
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  that we're born with a physically underdeveloped brain,
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  and it continues to develop physically until about the age
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  of 6. How was it over there? We've talked— we've
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  talked about The rapid myelination
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  during puberty, which accelerates the
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  brain to make it a fast reactive brain instead of a
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  slow processing brain. We find,
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  again, we just mentioned this, the frontal cortical areas
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  of the brain don't really completely develop until
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  the mid to late 20s.
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  We find that our best,
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  our best processing abilities are in our
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  20s and 30s. But going into,
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  and then we know that as the life grows biologically,
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  we start to lose some of
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  our neural and behavioral processes. But the
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  interesting thing is, is that's not always inevitable.
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  And we'll get to this notion of cognitive
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  and biological decline as we age.
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  And if you note all of these changes in
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  our neurological system, they all map
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  really closely to our cognitive processes and
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  our ability to make informed
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  decisions to solve complex problems.
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  And we can see in that early childhood area,
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  yeah, there is a lot of needs of what is known as scaffolding
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  so that the child can get to understand
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  the world they exist in and be able to develop language
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  and all of those things.
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  That are within that cognitive
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  domain. Okay?
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  And both of these processes,
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  one could argue, really depends on our social,
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  socio-emotional processes because
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  the brain and our cognitive abilities
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  learn from our environment, and our social context.
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  The brain develops physically based upon
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  its environment, the neural connections that it'll make.
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  All of those things is because it's reading
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  information from its social, cultural,
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  uh, physical environment, environmental world.
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  And it's the world is telling the individual
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  kind of who they're going to be in a
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  lot of ways. So we'll spend a good
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  amount of time talking about the interaction between
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  our social world and how that interacts with
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  our biological and cognitive processes. Okay.
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  And so these are our 3 domains.