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Human behavior
Human development is a broad concept that revolves around a number of issues. The development process gives a foundation to several characteristics such as personalities, addiction, defines human behavior, and sometimes opens ways to coping mechanisms such as resilience. The lifespan of an individual depends on human development. A person is expected to go through optimal development as part of the transition. Furthermore, human development defines a human being at their late stage of the lifespan, which is old age. However, the development process is challenged by unfortunate events such as addiction, exceptional wellness, and traumatizing events. As discussed below, human development is explained by a number of theories and is broken down into different categories for easy understanding (Knight, 2017).
Life span development
Lifespan development defines the human changes and behaviors that range from birth to old age of a person’s life. For lifespan to occur, there must be individual and family developments that are typically related. Many theories explain individual and family development. One of them is explained by Erikson that individual development occurs according to age and stages in life, such as childhood, adolescence, maturity, and old age (Knight, 2017). Additionally, these stages are characterized differently, and the behaviors of individuals belonging to a certain age bracket are independent of the next age group. The childhood stage is associated with shame, guilt, and trust. The next stage of lifespan transition is adolescence and is majorly characterized by behaviors such as intimacy, isolation, self-confidence, and identifying themselves to certain groups. The last of the lifespan stage is adulthood, where the individuals are known for maturity, responsibility, and parenting. Family development plays an essential role in individual development either by shaping or directing the individual through the lifespan stages (Knight, 2017).
Learning and personality
Personality defines how an individual feels, behaves, and their thinking capacity. Personality development occurs when an individual adopts certain behaviors through learning. The learning process can be either active or passive, which is mainly categorized into three approaches, according to Bandura, namely behaviorism, cognitive, and constructivism (Kail and Cavanaugh, 2018). Behaviorisms termed natural learning where the individual adapts to the nature of a surrounding environment; therefore, their personality is shaped through observation of the immediate surroundings. Behaviorism is reinforced and sometimes consequential. Personality development can occur through cognitive learning, which is achieved by the personal understanding of any new information. An individual’s perception of the information incorporated into them decides their personality. Another approach to personality development is through constructivism where a preexisting experience and social interactions mold a new character. The individuals who use this kind of approach depend on role models and urge to experience i.e. through the social influence, hence developing a given personality. Other scholars link personality to life stage experiences; for example, a person might develop a given character as a result of their past either positively or negatively (Capuzzi, Stauffer and O’Neil, 2016).
Traumatizing events
Trauma causing events such as crises and disasters affect people regardless of their age. The events include human activities such as terrorism, assaults such as sexual and physical, robbery with violence, murder, and abusive language. Other events are naturally occurring and are inevitable, including war, accidents, political unrest, and natural calamities. Victims of these events end up being stressed traumatized and even depressed during and after the occurrence (Capuzzi et al., 2016) Traumatized individuals exhibit behaviors such as fear, anxiety, unrest, and panic. Some of them may have drastic changes in their ways of operation, such as insomnia leading to the usage of substances to cool down their minds. Additionally, the victims are exposed to the risk of mental disorders such, schizophrenia, bipolar and hallucinations. The side effect of the trauma causing events is that the individual’s relations are likely to ruin because of social distancing, financial stress and also developing hatred either towards nature or on other human beings i.e., gender discrimination may develop in case of sexual assault and regional or religious enmity as a result of terrorism (Stauffer, 2016).
Resilience
Resilience in human psychology is a coping strategy or a recovery capacity after tough life events such as tragic. Resilience is necessary for as it makes one mentally strong either by going through all stages of mental pain or by getting relief from mental stress (Knight, 2017). Starting from own individual l, growing to couples, family, culture and the community, resilience can be termed as a basic need throughout the lifespan. Individual resilience is self-renovation and coping mechanism, through meditation, self-control, and taking precaution measures. Couple and family resilience is realized when there is an understanding of each other, ensuring that there is emotional care where people regulate their emotions to avoid hurting one another. Moreover, there is a need for acceptance and forgiveness. The community and cultural resilience are achieved when the people embrace attributes such as confidence and control for the better co-existence. There has to be a connection among the people who share culture and as a community, so social support is felt. Another way of achieving resilience is by ensuring that individuals are aware of the coping mechanism in case of mental unrest by having sensible communication skills(Knight,2017).
Exceptional abilities
Low or extreme norms describe exceptional abilities among the victims. The affected norms include communication difficulties such as delayed speech, slow learning, and autism. Others include intellectual disabilities that are characterized by a delay in physical and mental development. Correspondingly, physical disabilities such as visual and orthopedic impairment explain exceptional abilities. In some cases, health normalcy is disrupted, and some of the disorders being epilepsy, hyper, and hypoactivity (Kail and Cavanaugh, 2016). Individuals with exceptional activities call for special attention to intervene in their situation. Strategies set to help these individuals include close monitoring to ensure that they are on the correct progress as the rest. The individuals need direct and explicit instructions for any sort of confusion that might trigger their emotions negatively. The exceptional ability persons need to be timely updated about their daily progress, which is essential in their evaluation. In a rare situation where punishment has to be imposed, it should be light, free of mockery, and non-provoking (Kail, 2016).
Human behavior
Human behavior defines the physical, mental, and social attributes of an individual during their lifetime. Human behavior can either be reserved, self-centered, or average. Developmental crises negatively affect human behavior such that healthy development is altered, including the dystonic, which are negative and syntonic, which are positive crises, according to Erikson (Knight, 2017). The crises require a reasonable balance for favorable behavior. Disabilities affect human behavior in the sense that the majority of the disabled tend to feel inferior, and their self-esteem is lowered, so they behave differently in social places away from their normal behaviors. Human behavior by the use of psychopathology is open to different approaches and understanding of it, which makes it easy to deal with. Through psychopathology, it is discovered that human behavior normalcy and abnormality is affected by both situations and environments that surround an individual. Both the environmental and situational factors influence the behavior by either discouraging or motivating a given behavior (Capuzzi et al., 2016).
Etiology of addiction
Etiological theories of addiction fully explain the different kinds of addictive behaviors inclusive of environmental, neurobiological, psychopathological, and behavioral addictions. Addiction is of varied forms and nature and can be caused by the adverse use of substances such as drugs, internet and social media addiction, pornographic and sex, habits such as gambling, gaming and social entertainment, work addiction, among others. Uncontrolled addictive behaviors severely affect the addicted over a period of time; for instance, they become mentally disturbed, finically strained, social distancing, depression, and disorders and also may indulge in social crimes. A cording to Kail and Cavanaugh (2016), addiction is linked to three types of theories, such as genetic theory, which states that addiction is inherited i.e., when the parent is a smoker or a workaholic, the child is likely to inherit those traits. Another theory that is metabolic explains that the exposures to the drugs or other addictive activities greatly influence the surrounding people, and they are bound to be addicted. The last theory states that one can become an addict as a result of a substance taking control over the functioning of an individual. The substance could have been introduced to the body system for curative purposes but ends up being an addiction, and lack of it can result in serious wellness. Several measures have been put in place to prevent and intervention measures to curb addiction, such that giving substances that are less addictive, taking control over behavioral addiction, and creating awareness on the effects of addiction. Addiction lacks specific treatment but is controlled through rehabilitation, guiding and counseling, administering substitute substance e.g., when treating mental disorders (Kail and Cavanaugh, 2016).
Optimal development
Optimal development is defined as a full process that is undergone by an individual, especially a child, to be a potential being. The optimal development process is expected to be consistent with positive, stimulating interaction from others such as parents, to simplify the steps of human development, several theories explain the optimal development; psychosocial development theory which explains the human growth stages that are based on social interaction. The social learning theory links the optimal interaction to direct influence by observation. In contrast, psychosexual development theory states that final human behavior is influenced by the experiences of an individual during the early lifespan stages. The attachment theory is clear that the optimal development is liked to immediate people and places directly linked to a child, and cognitive development theory brings about revolutionary changes where the children’s way of doing something is totally different from the parents. Wellness over the lifespan is a necessity. An individual is expected to be well emotionally, physically, and intellectually for smooth human development and a lifespan transition (Knight, 2017).
Human development emerging theories
Human development is undergoing new trends, and new theories concerning them are emerging. Human development today is more of a rooted cultural view. The new dynamics are inclusive of human development challenges, language development, modern education, gender and development, globalization and industrialization, and technological advancement. All these trends in the world directly influence human development by changing their perception over lifespan patterns. The new technology, for instance, shapes human development by either positively or negatively influencing the individuals as opposed to natural human development. There is an evolution of the human mind in that there is an erosion of cultural concepts, and the political and economic minds are taking over (Capuzzi,2016). In today’s world, children rarely get socially influenced by role models; instead, they are nurtured and trained, and their personality is shaped in schools and sometimes at home. The spiritual shaping is another twist in human development, making people grow their personalities while obliged to their spiritual directors such as religion. Conclusively, human development is on a gradual process, and different adaptive measures are discovered in day to day researches because human development is inevitable, and it needs all kinds of wellness for it to be effective. There is a need for creating awareness about human development and control measures to avert negative influence (Capuzzi et al., 2016).
References
Capuzzi, D., Stauffer, M. D., & O’Neil, T. (2016). Theories of Human Development. Human Growth and Development Across the Lifespan: Applications for Counselors, 25-54.
Kail, R. V., & Cavanaugh, J. C. (2018). Human development: A lifespan view. Cengage Learning.
Knight, Z. G. (2017). A proposed model of psychodynamic psychotherapy linked to Erik Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy, 24(5), 1047-1058.