Psychology News
Disclaimer: what I have written below is paraphrased from books, and not my direct findings. I am merely, conveying it through this blog because I think it is noteworthy.
___________________________________________________________
If you believe the adults around you are acting like children, you are probably right. In technical terms, it is called "psychological neoteny" - in which ever-more people retain for ever-longer the characteristic behaviours and attitudes of earlier developmental stages. In a psychological sense, some contemporary individuals never actually become adults. And it's on the rise.
According to Dr. Bruce Charlton (Bruce G Charlton MD, Editor-in-Chief, Medical Hypotheses, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK. e-mail address: bruce.charlton@ncl.ac.uk.), evolutionary psychiatrist at Newcastle upon Tyne, human beings now take longer to reach mental maturity - and many never do so at all.
Charlton believes this is an accidental by-product of formal education that lasts well into the twenties. "Formal education requires a child-like stance of receptivity," which "counteracts the attainment of psychological maturity" that would normally occur in the late teens or early twenties.
He notes that "academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature." He calls them "unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact."
Earlier human societies, such as hunter-gatherers, were more stable and thus adulthood was attained in the teen years. Now, however, with rapid social change and less reliance on physical strength, maturity is more often postponed. He notes that markers of maturity such as graduation from college, marriage, and first child formerly occurred at fixed ages, but now may happen over a span of decades.
Thus, he says, "in an important psychological sense, some modern people never actually become adults."
Charlton thinks this may be adaptive. "A child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviours and knowledge" may be useful in navigating the increased instability of the modern world, he says, where people are more likely to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places. But this comes at the cost of "short attention span, frenetic novelty-seeking, ever shorter cycles of arbitrary fashion, and ... a pervasive emotional and spiritual shallowness." He added that modern people "lack a profundity (i.e. depth of intellect, feeling, or meaning) of character which seemed commoner in the past."
___________________________________________________________
(Crichton, M., 2006, "Next", HarperCollins Publishers , Inc., New York.)
Comments
Post a Comment