title: Cultural pathways through universal development.
abstract: We focus our review on three universal tasks of human development: relationship formation, knowledge acquisition, and the balance between autonomy and relatedness at adolescence. We present evidence that each task can be addressed through two deeply different cultural pathways through development: the pathways of independence and interdependence. Whereas core theories in developmental psychology are universalistic in their intentions, they in fact presuppose the independent pathway of development. Because the independent pathway is therefore well-known in psychology, we focus a large part of our review on empirically documenting the alternative, interdependent pathway for each developmental task. We also present three theoretical approaches to culture and development: the ecocultural, the sociohistorical, and the cultural values approach. We argue that an understanding of cultural pathways through human development requires all three approaches. We review evidence linking values (cultural values approach), ecological conditions (ecocultural approach), and socialization practices (sociohistorical approach) to cultural pathways through universal developmental tasks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. greenfield@psych.ucla.edu
authors.forename: Patricia M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Greenfield
authors.forename: Heidi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fuligni
authors.forename: Ashley
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Maynard
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003858:Dependency, Psychological; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D007223:Infant; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D010553:Personality Development; D012933:Social Identification; D012945:Social Values; D012951:Socialization